Speicherverbund Nord - A regional print archiving cooperative in northern Germany

PurposeSpeicherverbund Nord is a print archiving cooperative of seven academic libraries from Northern Germany. Its scope is the shared archiving of print serials with multiple holdings. This article presents the history and key events from the start of the initiative till today and gives a report of the main questions and fundamental decisions and definitions that have been made during the process.Design/methodology/approachThe approach of Speicherverbund Nord is to identify a common stock of journal titles and to assign one site each to be responsible of future archiving. The local capacities are exploited to establish a joint archiving environment.FindingsSpeicherverbund Nord is a pragmatic, not too complex cooperative for shared archiving. It has reached a stable routine operation since four years now and gains a small but steady output of archive commitments that is focused on key areas. Additional resources are not required.Practical implicationsThe cooperation partner can share the loads of archiving, gain freedom for weeding out print stocks and implement a framework to identify and document archive titles. Foreign libraries can find and rely on the archiving commitments, too. With its efforts Speicherverbund Nord has come to be a kind of precursor for other archiving initiatives in Germany.Originality/valueThe cooperative is the first of its kind in Germany. As it is a regional initiative for Northern Germany, other regional initiatives can follow.