6 November 2025
The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has released its draft Collaborative Collections Lifecycle Infrastructure Project (CCLIP) Recommended Practice (NISO RP-46-202X) for public comment through December 15, 2025, at the project web page: https://www.niso.org/standards-committees/cclip. The community is encouraged to read and comment on the draft recommendations.
The CCLIP Recommended Practice represents both a collective and aggregated vision for how libraries can work together more intentionally and equitably across various aspects of the collections life cycle, embracing open, inclusive, and sustainable approaches to build stronger, more responsive library ecosystems. The draft describes various levels of collaboration, then uses a loose collaboration model to explore best practices, gaps, and opportunities to better support prospective collaborative collections decisions. The recommendations examine such structured collaborations in light of organizational strategies and governance, collection development and selection, acquisition, data and assessment, cataloging and metadata, and consortial frameworks.
The CCLIP Recommended Practice is one element of the larger Collaborative Collections Lifecycle Project (CCLP), which aims to improve the development and management of library collections through cross-institutional partnerships. Funded in part with a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the CCLP project is a community effort supported by participation of more than 70 institutions co-led by NISO, the Partnership for Academic Library Collaboration and Innovation (PALCI), and Lehigh University Libraries. Components of the CCLP project that have been previously distributed include a study of community collaboration conducted by Ithaka S+R and development of a prototype middleware to facilitate these collaborations.
“The CCLIP project is an important step toward improving interlibrary collaboration,” said Jill Morris, Executive Director of PALCI, and co-PI of the project. “This recommended practice represents the first detailed description of the many components that would need to work together to advance collective collections management in the library community. We hope this guidance will support further collaborative networks and additional development work related to how libraries can work more effectively together.”
“For libraries of all types, partnerships with other institutions are an obvious means of collectively offering the best resources to our users, increasing capacity, improving services, and building efficiency,” added fellow co-PI Boaz Nadav Manes, University Librarian at Lehigh University. “Still, cooperative initiatives have long been challenged by complex organizational structures, limited data exchange and interoperability, and the absence of robust decision-support frameworks. Strategies to address these challenges are described in this Recommended Practice. Combined with the prototype work of CCLP, we’ve made significant progress in demonstrating how libraries can work together more effectively to serve their patrons.”
NISO’s Standards Program Manager Keondra Bailey adds, “NISO would like to express its sincere appreciation to the many members of the CCLIP Working Groups, as well as the CCLP Steering Committee for their dedicated efforts in undertaking guidance for this significant initiative. We urge the community to actively share their insights and feedback, as their contributions are crucial to shaping the future of this Recommended Practice.”
The draft Recommended Practice is available for comment through December 15, 2025.