**Apologies for cross posting**
Baltimore, Maryland | November 6, 2025 - The National Information Standards
Organization (NISO) announced today that its draft Collaborative
Collections Lifecycle Infrastructure Project (CCLIP) Recommended Practice
(NISO RP-46-202X) is now available for public comment through December 15,
2025, at the project web page:
https://www.niso.org/standards-committees/cclip. The community is
encouraged to read and comment on the draft recommendations.
The CCLIP Recommended Practice represents both a collective and aggregated
vision for how libraries can work together more intentionally and equitably
across various aspects of the collections life cycle, embracing open,
inclusive, and sustainable approaches to build stronger, more responsive
library ecosystems. The draft describes various levels of collaboration,
then uses a loose collaboration model to explore best practices, gaps, and
opportunities to better support prospective collaborative collections
decisions. The recommendations examine such structured collaborations in
light of organizational strategies and governance, collection development
and selection, acquisition, data and assessment, cataloging and metadata,
and consortial frameworks.
The CCLIP Recommended Practice is one element of the larger Collaborative
Collections Lifecycle Project
<https://sites.google.com/view/cclifecycleproject/home> (CCLP), which aims
to improve the development and management of library collections through
cross-institutional partnerships. Funded in part with a grant from the
Institute of Museum and Library Services, the CCLP project is a community
effort supported by participation of more than 70 institutions co-led by
NISO, the Partnership for Academic Library Collaboration and Innovation
(PALCI), and Lehigh University Libraries. Components of the CCLP project
that have been previously distributed include a study of community
collaboration conducted by Ithaka S+R
<https://sr.ithaka.org/blog/collaborative-collection-development/> and
development of a prototype middleware to facilitate these collaborations
<https://video.niso.org/EducationVideo/Awareness-Informed_Action%3a_Empowering_Collaborative_Collection_Building_-_CCLP_Winter_2025_Public_Update_Webinar/e592ec5c-daf3-49db-a4dd-15f7618c2463>
.
“The CCLIP project is an important step forward toward improving
interlibrary collaboration,” said Jill Morris, Executive Director of PALCI,
and co-PI of the project. “This recommended practice represents the first
detailed description of the many components that would need to work
together to advance collective collections management in the library
community. We hope this guidance will support further collaborative
networks and additional development work related to how libraries can work
more effectively together.”
“For libraries of all types, partnerships with other institutions are an
obvious means of collectively offering the best resources to our users,
increasing capacity, improving services, and building efficiency,” added
fellow co-PI Boaz Nadav Manes, University Librarian at Lehigh University.
“Still, cooperative initiatives have long been challenged by complex
organizational structures, limited data exchange and interoperability, and
the absence of robust decision-support frameworks. Strategies to address
these challenges are described in this Recommended Practice. Combined with
the prototype work of CCLP, we’ve made significant progress in
demonstrating how libraries can work together more effectively to serve
their patrons.”
NISO’s Standards Program Manager Keondra Bailey adds, “NISO would like to
express its sincere appreciation to the many members of the CCLIP Working
Groups, as well as the CCLP Steering Committee for their dedicated efforts
in undertaking guidance for this significant initiative. We urge the
community to actively share their insights and feedback, as their
contributions are crucial to shaping the future of this Recommended
Practice."
The draft Recommended Practice is available for comment through December
15, 2025.
About NISO
Based in Baltimore, MD, NISO’s mission is to build knowledge, foster
discussion, and advance authoritative standards development through
collaboration among the cultural, scholarly, scientific, and professional
communities. To fulfill this mission, NISO engages with libraries,
publishers, information aggregators, and other organizations that support
learning, research, and scholarship through the creation, organization,
management, and curation of knowledge. NISO works with intersecting
communities of interest and across the entire life cycle of information
standards. NISO is a nonprofit association accredited by the American
National Standards Institute (ANSI). For more information, visit the NISO
website (https://niso.org) or contact us at nisohq@niso.org.
Received on Thu Nov 06 2025 - 15:02:57 EST