NEW YORK, NY.- ReCAP, the Research Collections and Preservation Consortium, welcomes Yale University as its newest member, effective July 1. The group, comprised of Columbia University, Harvard University, The New York Public Library, and Princeton University, made the announcement earlier this month.

“The ReCAP partnership embodies Yale University Library’s commitment to preserving and enhancing access to the scholarly record,” said Barbara Rockenbach, Yale’s Stephen F. Gates ’68 University Librarian. “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. This collaboration amplifies the reach and impact of all of our collections. We are thrilled to be part of it.”

With this addition, Yale will be making available 2.7 million unique titles to the consortium and will gain access to 8.8 million unique titles owned within the consortium.

“The addition of Yale to the consortium is such an exciting development,” said Ann Thornton, Chair of the ReCAP Board of Governors and Vice Provost and University Librarian at Columbia University. “The last 25 years of collaboration have shown that this model of resource sharing and collection-building works, enabling us to be responsible stewards of resources while expanding access for our respective academic communities.”

Harvard University joined the consortium in 2019, with the aim of implementing strategies for collaboration in building, sharing, and preserving collections.

“Harvard is honored to be part of ReCAP, a consortium that exemplifies the power of partnership—broadening access to knowledge today while building a foundation of sustainable stewardship for generations to come,” said Martha Whitehead, Harvard’s University Librarian and Vice President for Harvard Library, and Roy E. Larson Librarian for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

In the two decades ReCAP has existed, its shared repository on Princeton’s Forrestal Campus has grown to hold over 18 million items. The consortium members fulfill approximately 300,000 requests from researchers and libraries worldwide each year.



"Yale's entry into the ReCAP partnership is a pivotal moment, amplifying our collective capacity for collection stewardship and resource sharing. I'm delighted to continue to work together with our peer institutions to make our formidable collections accessible to the public for generations to come," said Brent Reidy, Andrew W. Mellon Director of the Research Libraries at The New York Public Library.

Launched in 2017, with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (and incorporated as a 501(c)(3) organization in 2000), ReCAP’s Shared Collection Service today enables users at Columbia, Harvard, the New York Public Library, Princeton—and now Yale—to experience increasingly seamless access to the partners’ extraordinary holdings accessioned over centuries.

Under the Discovery to Delivery Program, users request items directly from local catalogs of each consortium member for two-business-day delivery, the use of shared holdings across each partner institution has increased by more than 30 percent, demonstrating the value of seamless access to distributed collections.

Anne Jarvis, Dean of Libraries and Robert H. Taylor 1930 University Librarian at Princeton University said “Today, partnerships with libraries of similar mission are essential to creative and innovative services. ReCAP is an exemplar of what can be achieved when we work together. ”