What does it take logistically and organizationally to make a shared image service a reality for a university system with ten campuses? This paper examines a collaborative initiative to share digital images across the University of California campuses, focusing on four areas: 1)Selling it: The confluence of needs and progress, 2)Defining it: Principles and goals, 3)Assessing it: Balancing local needs and the needs of the share environment, managing risks, and understanding assumptions and trends; 4)Implementing it: tackling metadata standardization, terms of use, integration, training, and stakeholder communication. How do you sell the idea of a shared collection to various stakeholder groups? What are some of the guiding principles and goals? What players need to be involved in the decisions and how do you get them to take the time out of their busy schedules to do it? What are the content and technological issues that have to be addressed? How do you enable communication among large numbers of participants and stakeholders? It’s finally here! Will they use it? These key issues will be examined as well as those on the periphery of the service, including legacy image management systems, data migration, faculty personal collections, and preservation.

Lena Zentall, University of California’s Image Service Manager describes the development process from the concept to the reality of a UC Shared Image Collection.  Maureen Burns, University of Irvine visual resources curator on the front lines discusses contributing to the shared collections and the needs of faculty and students using the images for research, teaching, and learning.