ReCAP

ReCAP, the Research Collections and Preservation Consortium , founded by Columbia University, The New York Public Library, and Princeton University in 2000 to preserve and make accessible the collections of its members, has expanded its scope and membership, transforming its original mission from serving as a shared physical repository to becoming a model for shared collection building and management.

The Research Collections and Preservation Consortium (ReCAP) was created in 2000 to support its members' goals of preserving their library and archival collections, and making them available to researchers.

In January 2019, Harvard University joined the consortium with the aim of implementing strategies for collaboration in building, sharing, and preserving physical and digital collections in the coming years. An associate member since 2016, Harvard has relocated over 1 million books to the Princeton facility, which is growing at the rate of 1 million volumes annually. In the two decades ReCAP has existed, its shared repository on Princeton’s Forrestal Campus has grown to hold 16 million items. The consortium members annually fulfill approximately 250,000 requests from researchers and libraries around the world. More than sixteen million items are currently in ReCAP's care and they are used to fulfill approximately 250,000 requests for materials each year, from its partners and from libraries around the world.
ReCAP's facility was designed and constructed to provide high-density shelving for library items while using strict inventory control, so that retrieval requests are completed quickly and reliably. The facility environment is optimized for the preservation of library and archival collections. Careful management of temperature and humidity reduce the rate of chemical decay in ReCAP's stacks so that material life expectancy is four to five times greater, compared to normal library stack environments.

Individual items at ReCAP are sorted by size and fit into open-top trays which are placed on an appropriate-sized shelf, in order to store the maximum number of items in the minimum floor area. This close packing provides an additional level of environmental insulation, reduces oxygen exposure to guard against fire, and provides mechanical support to reduce physical strain on the collections.

ReCAP has the capacity for approximately 19 million items in its current facility, and has land assigned for future modules. ReCAP's purpose-built facilities and carefully-designed operations maintain collections in a highly cost-effective manner. The efficiency and reliability of ReCAP helps our partner libraries realize their preservation objectives and provide access to expansive collections of research materials.

Scope of the Project -
"The scope of the project is to expand the vision of the ReCAP facility from a shared storage facility to a shared collection with enhanced access to the patrons of each of the participating libraries by implementing an integrated SCSB utilizing established industry architectures. The functional requirements for SCSB will encompass all of the existing functionality, plus changes and enhancements to improve user experience and collection management"

The ReCAP project has the following main objectives:

Improve visibility of ReCAP shared collection items from any participating institution in Partners' Discovery Systems.
Display of real-time status of items in ReCAP, including availability for request, restrictions and available pick-up locations.
Improve services that can be embedded into the online catalog or discovery services of the participating institutions to capture and validate requests made by patrons or by library staff for ReCAP materials
Provide real-time tracking for ReCAP materials requested by patrons from the time that they leave the ReCAP until they are returned for refiling.
Provide tools to support the management of the ReCAP collection, such as collaborative collection development, automated processing of duplicates, or designation of preservation retention.