Collections' Role

Our Commitments and values

NYU Libraries collects, shares, and preserves materials of all kinds in support of the diverse needs of our learners, teachers, and researchers. We are guided by the academic needs of the University, by a desire to build on our current strengths, and by the need to discover and bolster collection areas relevant to the NYU community but underrepresented in academic libraries, or in the scholarly communications infrastructure.

Preserving resources for longevity

We factor in our ability to preserve and steward collections when making decisions about what to collect. We assess and preserve existing collections and we identify lost or damaged items for replacement.

We understand the value of preserving and providing long-term access to scholarly research, and we are guided by a desire to support current and future scholarship for today’s NYU community. We collaborate with groups inside and outside of the Libraries to think broadly about retention and preservation of current and future resources.

Building a community

Our liaisons and subject specialists build collections through relationships with NYU students, faculty, and scholars. We strive to build the community, infrastructure, and expertise needed to address the challenges of equitable access to scholarly materials.

We are committed to the idea that building collections cannot happen without collaboration and a supported infrastructure to describe, share, and preserve resources. We do not collect without considering the impact that our decisions have on the larger scholarly communications landscape.

Contributing to the collective collection

We participate in a network that thinks broadly about the retention and longevity of resources in a local and global context. Our collection is not only what we have but what we can help our users get. When we are able to share broadly, what’s in our collection is part of the collections at other institutions.

We also rely on patrons to maintain our collection. Each item in the library exists in its location because somebody returned it in the condition they found it in. Library users should return what they’ve borrowed because our materials have been collected with the intent to keep, preserve, and share with the entire scholarly community.