Yale University to join Research Collections and Preservation Consortium (ReCAP)

Princeton faculty, students, and researchers will be able to more easily access 2.7 million books and titles owned by Yale University after Yale joined the Research Collections and Preservation Consortium (ReCAP), a library and research repository housed just miles from campus.

ReCAP is composed of Columbia University, Harvard University, The New York Public Library, and Princeton University. Yale was announced as the fifth member of the consortium, effective July 1.

ReCAP stores some 18 million items in a shared repository on Princeton’s Forrestal Campus, located across Route One, in a facility designed to maintain optimal preservation conditions. Due to the facility’s conditions, materials deteriorate at a rate four times slower than in traditional library stacks.

ReCAP members also have access to the Harvard Depository, Harvard’s large-scale storage facility that is also sometimes used by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The consortium additionally promises that items requested from one member’s library catalog can be delivered to another within two business days.

ReCAP is a 501(c)3 not for profit corporation incorporated in 2000, and is owned and operated by its member universities. It was originally launched in 2017 with funding from the Andrew M. Mellon Foundation.

According to an announcement made on July 18, Yale University will now contribute 2.7 million unique titles and will also gain access to 8.8 million unique titles within the consortium. Today, the consortium together holds 18 million items, held in a shared repository on Princeton’s Forrestal Campus. ReCAP fulfills approximately 300,000 research and library requests per year, with usage continuously growing due to access through the Discovery to Delivery Program.

In an announcement from Princeton University Library, Yale librarian Barbara Rockenbach said the university was “thrilled” to join.

“The ReCAP partnership embodies Yale University Library’s commitment to preserving and enhancing access to the scholarly record,” she said. “Through this shared collection, we can leverage the deep investments each partner library has made in print holdings, both past and future, to ensure that all researchers have access to the print resources they need.

Anne Jarvis, Dean of Libraries at Princeton, added, “today, partnerships with libraries of similar mission are essential to creative and innovative services. ReCAP is an example of what can be achieved when we work together.”

Originally composed of Princeton, NYPL, and Columbia, Yale is the next university to join the group following Harvard’s admission in 2016.

David Yun is a News contributor for the ‘Prince.’