In 1968, the libraries of Wheaton College, Bridgewater State College, Stonehill College, and Southeastern Massachusetts University (now called UMASS Dartmouth) founded the Southeastern Massachusetts Cooperating College Libraries (SMCCL). This agreement between the colleges gave both students and faculty access to a much larger collection of publications. In the 1970s, several other libraries such as Bristol Community College and the War Veterans Hospital Library joined as affiliate members. With the addition of these new libraries, SMCCL voted to change the name to Southeastern Massachusetts Cooperating Libraries (SMCL) to account for the new members that were not college libraries.

Every six months SMCL published a Union List of Serials. This was a compilation of all periodical and serial holdings of all the libraries within SMCL. Within this collection, there are copies of all the Union Lists published between 1979 and 1987. In order to help facilitate the interlibrary borrowing system, a van was purchased by SMCL to transport materials between the libraries. Twice a week, this van traveled to all the affiliated libraries to deliver requested materials.

In the early 2000s, Bridgewater and UMASS Dartmouth left SMCL to join the state’s library system. Then in 2005, Wheaton College joined HELIN, a consortium of mostly Rhode Island college libraries. SMCL didn’t formally end, but the withdrawal of three of its four major members meant that it could no longer operate. Although SMCL did not dissolve until 2005, the records contained in this collection only go up to 1992. Around this time, the Director of SMCL organized and archived all their records held at Wheaton College. Since that time, the collection has not been added to, leading to the abrupt end of records in 1992.