Q. What is the Joint Library Facility (JLF)?

Texas A&M University Libraries – College Station (TAMU) and the University of Texas – Austin Libraries (UT) decided to fund and build a 6.3 million dollar joint print collaborative storage facility for all of their system libraries. This storage unit would be different from a repository storage unit, as ownership of the deposited item would rest with both institutions instead of having the ownership of the item transfer to the storage unit. Driven by the current economic conditions, the rationale for this joint project rested on the foundation that both systems needed a long-term cost effective solution to their space constraints rather than a short-term quick fix that would address the current higher education budget reductions but still have these two systems facing the same problem a few years down the road. Both institutions wanted to save money by avoiding future campus construction costs and knew that if they took the cooperative storage collection one step further and adopted the concept of “Resources in Common” (RIC) they would be able to achieve their goal. Unlike most other cooperative storage units, TAMUs and UTs decided they would de-duplicate their low use print collection and achieve this cost saving goal by housing only one print copy “owned” between the two institutions.

The 18,000 square foot facility will hold over 1 million print volumes with the option of extending the facility by another 2 million volumes. The building opened on May 24th, 2013 and will make these print materials available for use by other academic or medical libraries across Texas for free. For additional information please contact the Joint Library Facility at 979-458-5900.

For additional information see the Joint Library Facility website.