ScholarsTrust is a partnership between two regional consortia of research libraries, the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL) and the Washington Research Library Consortium (WRLC), and that is aimed at preserving their print collections. It combines the contents of their respective shared print journal collections under a single retention and access agreement. As a result, the combined list of print format titles to be preserved through ScholarsTrust exceeds 8,000 journal titles and more than 300,000 volumes, making ScholarsTrust one of the largest shared print journal repositories in the United States. In conjunction with the formation of Scholars Trust, WRLC and ASERL libraries have agreed to extend reciprocal priority Inter-Library Loan (ILL) services across the group.
The ScholarsTrust agreement requires the archived materials to be held until at least December 31, 2035, possibly longer. The materials archived by WRLC are housed in a central facility in suburban Maryland. The materials being archived by ASERL members are held at various locations across the Southeast. Tulane's Howard-Tilton Memorial Library is a long-time, active member of ASERL. A large majority of the print archive contents is readily available online from many sources, but print preservation is viewed as important to preserve back-up and original copies for the longest term.
