VALE Last Copy Preservation Program Guidelines

Criteria for Last Copy Status:
Due to improved bibliographic control (OCLC, JerseyCat, and Web access to online catalogs), the costs associated with archiving low-use materials and cost-effective and timely ILL/document delivery from within and outside the State, the policy of keeping a "last copy", a unique copy of any monograph, serial, newspaper, or microform in an academic library in New Jersey is no longer necessary or appropriate.

Instead, "last copy" status will be restricted to circulating titles outside of Special Collections that fit in one or more of the following categories:

  1. titles published prior to 1900,
  2. titles published by small and university presses in New Jersey,
  3. titles written by a New Jersey author,
  4. titles about New Jersey,
  5. limited editions, titles with monetary or artifactual value (e.g., provenance, binding, illustrations, etc.),
  6. titles in subject areas for which NJ libraries are known to have special collections of importance, and subject areas important to the State's economy (e.g., the pharmaceutical industry), or
  7. a single print or analog file of back runs of print journals to which there is licensed electronic access. (Currently, other state libraries are testing this practice with JSTOR titles, for which a single, state university library retains a single, complete run.)

Storage and Protection of Last Copy Items:
Participating VALE libraries agree not to discard any Last Copy Item that meets any one of the above criteria.

Such titles may be retained in the owning library or offered to another VALE library and designated as an item in the VALE Last Copy Preservation Program according to local policies.

Based on Last Copy Policy Model Documents:

This page is maintained by Mary Mallery. Last updated 12/14/09.