In 1968 the National Science Foundation awarded a grant to support a project called Collaborative Library Systems Development (CLSD). Participants in the project were the libraries of the University of Chicago, Columbia University, and Stanford University. Two of the more important objectives of the CLSD Project were: 1) to test certain technical assumptions such as the feasibility of developing a mechanism to facilitate cooperative work, and the possibility of developing compatible and transferable automated library systems; and 2) to communicate the findings and experience of the project group to the general library community. Two invitational conferences were organized to report on the CLSD effort, the first at Stanford in 1968, and the second in New York in 1970. Approximately 100 people from large research libraries involved in automation attended these conferences. At each, the program was divided between papers describing CLSD project efforts and invited papers on topics of general interest. The reaction to both conferences was favorable. This volume contains all of the major papers presented at the New York Conference (Section I), a selection of the papers presented at the Stanford conference (Section II), and a paper describing and summarizing CLSD experience from 1968 through 1970. (Author)