Sustainable Collection Services is a new venture for you. Tell us about it. Who are the partners? Is it a sole proprietorship, a sub-S, or another configuration? What is your remit? How many employees will you have initially? RL/RF: Sustainable Collection Services (SCS) grew directly out of R2's consulting work. In project after project, we saw libraries struggling to find space to accommodate users. Stacks are full, and yet print collection use is low and declining. Weeding and storage processes, especially for monographs, are incredibly labor-intensive. We realized that new thinking and new tools were needed to support efficient deselection, based on rules defined by the library. We decided it would be interesting to build one of those tools. We needed help, and called on our friends Andy Breeding and Eric Redman. In February 2010, we formed SCS as a partnership. We've known Eric for years in his role as Chief Architect and Director of Engineering at Blackwell's. He knows the MARC format inside out, and has long experience with large record sets. Andy and Rick met 20 years ago in the MLIS program at Simmons. Andy's skills in product design, user experience, and high-end SQL work were exactly what we needed, and he very much wanted to be part of a start-up. Ruth and Rick have previously built Web products and decision-support systems, and have spent years immersed in library workflows and strategies. The four of us make an excellent team. On our Website (http://sustainablecollections.com), we define our remit like this: Sustainable Collection Services (SCS) provides data-driven deselection services to academic libraries. SCS tools enable carefully managed drawdown of print monograph collections, while supporting shared print archiving efforts. ATG: Are you still running R2 Consulting? Can you tell us the difference/relation between the two companies/ventures? RL/RF: There is still strong demand for R2's services. For the past 18 months, we've been running both businesses. We've now decided to take our own advice and stop doing some tasks in order to focus on others. R2 will be on hiatus for 2012 so that we can work exclusively on SCS. We'll revisit that decision at the end of the year. ATG: As we understand it, you are focusing on deselection issues with Sustainable Collection Services. You have always focused on popular trends. Is deselection a trend driven by circumstances (need for space for example)? What is your definition of sustainable?
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.