Farmington Plan
Open-knowledge reference entry
The Farmington Plan was a twentieth-century collective collections initiative developed by American research libraries in order to ensure access to research materials and publications regardless of war or other events around the world. The plan created a cooperative acquisitions program for foreign materials by region and subject. Even prior to the Farmington Plan, some institutions had already developed their own foreign acquisitions and preservation programs, including the University of Florida, which preserved Caribbean materials and was only added later as partner in the Farmington Plan.
The Farmington Plan was directed from a central office located at the Harvard College Library.
This central office was responsible for financial coordination as well as maintaining and collating annual records regarding the plan. The office was initially supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and later by the Harvard College Library. Materials were selected and purchased by Farmington Plan Agents in foreign countries, classified, and shipped to participant libraries.
The plan was plagued with difficulties. Agents had difficulty classifying acquired materials, which led to delays in the placement of documents in library collections. In addition, differences in currency and international laws complicated materials acquisitions from foreign booksellers.
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This entry incorporates text from “Farmington Plan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.