Borrowing Latin American Materials in the Big Ten Academic Alliance: A Case Study for Consortial Data Analysis

Abstract

Inspired by the 2017 Big Ten Academic Alliance Library Conference’s collective collection theme, the authors undertook a study to better understand the consortium’s resource-sharing needs for Spanish and Portuguese materials published in Latin America. The authors employed multiple technologies to expedite gathering, reconciling, and analyzing data from different sources, making this project an excellent case study for consortial data analysis. In addition to presenting the methodology and key findings, the article encourages academic librarians to use resource-sharing data to inform cooperative collection development in area studies to build distinctive collections supporting consortial and national resource sharing.