Shared Archiving Austria (a.k.a. Shared Storing Austria) is a joint initiative of all Austrian University Libraries with the goal to implement an Austrian-wide archiving policy for already existing print copies. Print volumes which are electronically available will be archived only once. This does not necessarily mean cumulation at one institution, but identifying institutions who own the best holdings and selecting them as the archiving libraries. This principle of shared archiving should lead to an equal distribution of the burden of storage. The archiving institution is obliged to ensure certain quality standards like long-term preservation and fast content availability (e.g. via document delivery). Other partners are free to weed out their duplicates with the benefit of reducing expenditures for their university.
The partners agreed upon initiating this project primarily by utilizing their existing strengths, competencies and facilities and not based on new premises or external money.
The initiative benefits greatly from three well-established nationwide cooperations: the Austrian Academic Library Consortium (KEMÖ), which is the Austrian consortium for joint acquisition of electronic media, the Austrian Library Network and Service Ltd (OBVSG), who is the operator of the Austrian Union Catalogue and Search Engine and ubifo, the Council of Austrian University Libraries, a platform for regular meetings of the directors of university libraries.
Since October 2021 the Austrian Library Network and Service Ltd (OBVSG) has acted as the coordinating agency for the Shared Archiving Austria initiative.
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