Cornell and Columbia University libraries will collaboratively support the Latin American and Iberian studies collection development activities of both institutions. This is the latest in a series of resource-sharing agreements between Cornell and Columbia developed through the 2CUL partnership.

Both universities have built important Latin American and Iberian studies collections. This collaboration will reduce unnecessary duplicative collecting through closer coordination of acquisitions with the goal of adding more items to the libraries of both institutions.

Columbia's Latin American and Iberian studies librarian, Sean Knowlton, will lead coordination of the collections at both schools. He will also assist Cornell faculty members and students via email, phone and video conferencing and will visit the Cornell campus at least once a semester.

"Our Slavic studies agreement has been well received by the scholarly community here at Cornell, and we're excited to embark on a third collaboration [Southeast Asia was the second} using a similar model," said John Saylor, associate university librarian for scholarly resources and special collections. "Our 2CUL partnership is making both of our libraries stronger and allowing us to better serve the deep research needs of specialized users in international areas."

Said Pamela Graham, Columbia University Libraries' director of area studies: "We see tremendous potential in this new approach to building strong collections that will fully support the needs of students, faculty and other researchers while allowing us to extend and enhance more specialized collecting from and about these regions of the world."

The faculties and students of both institutions will receive expedited interlibrary borrowing as well as reciprocal onsite access to the Latin American and Iberian collections of Cornell and Columbia.

Gwen Glazer is the staff writer and editor at Cornell University Library.