Columbia and Cornell Libraries announce new partnership

"The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded $385,000 to the libraries at Columbia University in New York City and Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., to support the development of an innovative partnership dubbed 2CUL. This new relationship has the potential to become the most expansive collaboration to date between major research libraries. Starting this fall, Cornell and Columbia will plan significant partnerships in collaborative collection development, acquisitions and processing. The two universities will form a separate service entity to facilitate the collaboration. Ithaka, a not-for-profit organization that assists research libraries and the academic community to leverage advancing information technologies, will provide project management and assist in the planning. Initial work will focus on several global collecting areas, as well as collaborative funding and support of technical infrastructure in various areas. 2CUL - pronounced "too cool" - stands for the acronyms of both Columbia University Library and Cornell University Library. The partnership is not a merger, and the two libraries remain separate institutions"