Avoiding extinction: the case for a national research collection

Rapidly changing technological and publishing environments coupled with shifting influences in tertiary education will require dramatic solutions for the storage of lowuse legacy print material, especially monographs. This paper discusses recent developments in the academic library environment, which may support the need for shared last copy/single copy collections. The paper suggests a way forward that can provide cost effective, reliable long-term access to print material which may otherwise disappear. This paper focuses on the preservation of monographs within Australian academic libraries and offers some preliminary costs of such an exercise using an existing last copy facility as a case study.