Five Colleges, Incorporated: Librarians' Council

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The Five College Librarians have traditionally been in the forefront of promoting collaboration in sharing resources among the schools. A decade or more before the consortium was established, for example, the circulation librarians founded HILC, an inter-library center that enabled Amherst, Mount Holyoke, and Smith to acquire and share little-used serials and monographs. Although HILC has been largely disbanded with the advent of open library borrowing and the Five College automated library system, the Librarians have continued to meet over the years and, as the members of the Librarians' Council, have in recent years introduced a number of innovations that further sharing of resources for research and teaching.

Council Members:
Sherre L. Harrington, Librarian of the College, Amherst College
Susan Dayall, Director of Library and Information Services, Hampshire College
Gail Scanlon, Director of Access and Technical Services, Mount Holyoke College
Christopher Loring, Director of Libraries, Smith College
Jay Schafer, Director, UMass Amherst Library
Lorna M. Peterson, Executive Director, Five Colleges, Incorporated

Five College Library Committees:
Archives: Not assigned
Cataloging: Gai Carpenter
Collection Management: Jay Schafer
Circulation: Chris Loring
Digital Environment Development and Coordinating Committee (DEDCC): Chris Loring
Preservation: Sherre Harrington
Research, Instruction, and Outreach Committee (RIO): Sherre Harrington
Acquistions and Serials (Acq/Ser): Jay Schafer
Systems: Not assigned

Recent Projects
Five College Archives Digital Access Project: With the support of a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the libraries are making the special collections in women's studies at several of the campuses more widely known and broadly accessible to users through a new online database.

Five College Depository: The Council is currently developing a common depository for specified serials in the collections of the Five Colleges. With a projected capacity of 340,000 volumes, the Five College depository will provide scholars with ease of access to complete runs of specified serials while also freeing shelf space for acquisitions. Housed in a portion of an underground facility owned by Amherst College, the shared facility will offers an on-site space where scholars may consult materials as well as copying services that can be requested through interlibrary loan.

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