Strategic Initiatives

UConn Library partners strategically with other organizations at the national, regional, and state levels to help control the cost of scholarly resources, enhance access to critical research and learning materials, and foster information sharing and best practices.

Core Partnerships

• Association of Research Libraries (ARL) brings together North America's leading research libraries to serve as a catalyst for collective action to create, share, and sustain global knowledge.
• Boston Library Consortium (BLC) is a resource sharing and strategic collaboration consortium of New England research libraries facilitating access to member libraries’ collections through interlibrary loan, onsite access, and collective purchasing.
• Information Delivery Service Project (IDS) is a national resource sharing cooperative making resource sharing more efficient and cost-effective.
• NorthEast Research Libraries (NERL) is a national buying consortium that negotiates the best possible pricing and terms with publishers on behalf of more than 160 research libraries. UConn Library saves time and money by leveraging NERL’s collective buying power for scholarly resources.
• RapidILL is revolutionary resource sharing delivering resources to us in the fastest, most cost-effective way through a worldwide network of libraries.

University Partnerships

We partner with a number of other UConn departments to share the cost of scholarly resources.

• Center for Career Development
• Health Sciences Library
• Office of the Vice President for Research
• School of Business
• School of Law Library

Connecticut Partnerships

UConn Library collaborates across the State of Connecticut’s academic community and beyond. Partners include the Connecticut State Colleges & Universities, the Connecticut Library Consortium, and the Council of Connecticut Academic Library Directors.

The Connecticut Digital Archive (CTDA) is a statewide repository program hosted at the UConn Library in collaboration with the Connecticut State Library designed to preserve and provide access to digital resources for educational and cultural institutions and state agencies in Connecticut.

Other Partnerships

UConn Library is an active member of many other national education and advocacy organizations:

• Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)
• National Information Standards Organization (NISO)
• Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)

These memberships foster expedited open access, content discovery, and best practices across the information community.

UConn Library is leading the way in reenvisioning our millions of print books and journals as part of a collectively stewarded national collection.

Eastern Academic Scholars’ Trust (EAST)

EAST is a national initiative involving approximately 80 academic and research libraries in more than a dozen states from Maine to Florida to facilitate the preservation of the scholarly record. Member libraries commit to retain agreed-upon titles in their local collections for a minimum of 15 years and make those titles available to other EAST members. These libraries retain unique, scarcely held, or frequently used scholarly monographs in support of research and learning. More than 250,000 UConn Library books—and 8.6 million books nationwide—are committed to EAST retention.

Center for Research Libraries (CRL)

CRL is a global consortium of 200+ academic and research libraries. CRL preserves and provides access to a vast collective collection of more than 5 million journals, books, dissertations, and newspapers in various formats. Many of these items are rare or in languages other than English. UConn researchers have free and unlimited access via interlibrary loan to these collections.

HathiTrust Digital Library

HathiTrust is a national digital library that preserves and provides lawful access to more than 17 million digitized books and serials. During the COVID-19 pandemic, HathiTrust is providing temporary access to 50% of the UConn Library’s print book collection.

Interlibrary Services

We obtain materials for members of the UConn community to support their academic research, learning, and professional growth.

• Interlibrary Loan – request books, chapters, articles, papers, and other resources not held by the UConn Library.
• Request UConn Items – request books and other physical items owned by the UConn Library for pickup at the library location of your choice.
• Scan on Demand – request scanning and PDF delivery of chapters and articles from UConn print items.

Each year the UConn Library’s Interlibrary Services unit provides tens of thousands of items to UConn community members and partner libraries worldwide.

Learn more about what Interlibrary Services can do for you.

Responsive Collection Development 

We deliver user-centered, cost-effective access to over 150,000 scholarly ebooks and streaming videos through programs with JSTOR and other providers. Researchers trigger automatic purchases when we reach predetermined usage thresholds, or expert librarians select individual titles for permanent online access, based on demand and relevance to the UConn community. We also regularly monitor interlibrary loan and course reserve requests and purchase electronic versions to offset demand.

Library subject specialists meet long-term research needs by investing $300,000 annually to buy books and other materials for the collections.

All collection development decisions are made accordance with the Library's Collection Development Policy.