1. INTRODUCTION
The Western Regional Storage Trust (WEST) is a distributed, retrospective print journal repository program. Under the WEST program, participating libraries consilidate and validate print journal backfiles at major library storage facilities and at selected campus locations. Rice University has participated as a WEST archive holder since 2012 and became an archive builder in June 2012 for the second year of the initial grant period. The volumes covered by the project typically start with the earliest held and extend through 2005, though in some cases later volumes may be included.
The WEST titles selected for archiving are divided into three archive types, based on the risk profile of each title assigned by WEST: Bronze (low risk), Silver (moderate risk), and Gold (higher risk). The Bronze titles may be housed either in the LSC or in Fondren or BIC; all Silver and Gold titles will be transferred to the LSC. The Bronze titles require no validation standards, Silver titles are validated at the volume-level for completeness only, and Gold titles are validated at the issue-level for both completeness and condition. Validation is done by LSC staff, who fill out audit sheets noting missing volumes or issues and (for Gold titles) any condition problems (such as missing pages, water damage, etc.). These audit sheets are then reviewed by Rice's project coordinator (currently the Assistant University Librarian for Research Services) and given to the Serials Cataloger. Using these sheets and information already present in the MARC holdings records, Cataloging staff add the completeness and condition fields to the holdings records in Sirsi.