Library consortium

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A library consortium is any cooperative association of libraries that coordinates resources and/or activities on behalf of its members, whether they are academic, public, school or special libraries, and/or information centers. [1] Library consortia have been created to service specific regions or geographic areas, e.g., local, state, regional, national or international. Many libraries commonly belong to multiple consortia. The goal of a library consortium is to amplify the capabilities and effectiveness of its member libraries through collective action, including, but not limited to, print or electronic resource sharing, reducing costs through group purchases of resources, and hosting professional development opportunities. [2] The “bedrock principle upon which consortia operate is that libraries can accomplish more together than alone.” [3]

Contents

Types of library consortia

"Library consortia are as varied as the libraries they serve" and can vary in almost all aspects, including scope, organizational structure, membership size, and mission. Broadly, library consortia can be classified using three categories: geographic region, membership participation, and governance framework. [4]

Geographic regions

Library consortia have been operating globally for decades, with a majority of consortia located in the United States and Europe. [5] Library consortia are also established in Canada, Asia, United Kingdom, South America, Middle East, Australia, Africa, and New Zealand. Geographically, consortia can represent state, regional, national, or international interests.

North America, including the United States and Canada, accounts for nearly 60% of consortia registered with the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC). [5] North American consortia typically exist at the local, state/provincial, and regional level. While some consortia exist at the national level, groups are often initially formed to address concerns within a network of geographically associated libraries. [6]

In Europe and other regions of the world, consortia usually represent libraries at the national level. For example, Couperin negotiates for electronic resources on behalf of academic library organizations in France. [7] Japan’s Alliance of University Library Consortia for E-Resources (JUSTICE) provides similar services for libraries in Japan. [8]

Internationally, multi-country consortia represent libraries cooperating across the globe to develop specific services, such as technology-driven AMICAL, [9] or to pool resources for specialized organization types, such as international law library consortium NELLCO. [10]

Membership participation

Participation in a library consortium can differ by library type and library activity, and, in some instances, level of membership. Membership is not always restricted, and libraries can belong to one or more consortia. [11]

A consortium can represent the interests of a single type of library, which include academic libraries, special libraries, and public libraries, while a multi-type consortium represents multiple library types and often serves all libraries in a central region. [12]

A consortium may also serve specific library interests or activities, such as electronic resource licensing or resource sharing.

Governance frameworks

Library consortia can be established informally or formally, with few or many staff, and with widely differing procedures, funding models, and strategic mandates. [4] The most prevalent governance frameworks can be classified by the underlying funding model of the consortium, [6] which commonly include:

Types of consortial work

Library consortia perform a variety of functions, typically focused on a few key activities, intended to serve their members and the wider community.

Licensing and content negotiation

The most traditional function of a library consortium is content negotiation. As publishers increasingly offer digital packages of content, such as scholarly databases, ebooks, electronic journals, streaming video, and other digital content, library consortia provide negotiation power to ensure better licensing agreements for their members. When negotiating with publishers, consortia staff focus both on obtaining a better price for their content and better licensing terms that are agreeable to the libraries. [13] Libraries choose to work through consortia because they receive more resources for their money while expending less staff time in vendor negotiations. Publishers are incentivized to work with consortia because they receive more guaranteed income from increased participation. [14]

In recent years, a major focus of consortial content negotiation is Open Access (OA). Many national consortia set and/or enforce national mandates for open scholarship, which dictate what types of scholarship must be published as OA. This is often done through licensing negotiations with major publishers. For example, the Danish National Library Authority’s licensing negotiations “include price, conditions of use, open access in accordance with the support of the National Strategy For Open Access.” [15]

Many of the agreements consortia make on behalf of institutions and researchers are called “transformative agreements,” meaning that they are transforming formerly paywalled content into open content. In the U.S., for example, the California Digital Library negotiated a deal with scientific publisher Elsevier in 2021 to ensure that all research produced by scholars working in the University of California system would be published as OA over a four-year period. [16]

Shared technology infrastructure

A shared technological infrastructure is a newer, but no less important, function of library consortia. For some consortia, this means centralized hosting of shared information systems. For example, consortia often host integrated library systems on behalf of networks of libraries, so that no single institution is responsible for the technical demands of the software. [17] Other consortia host centralized repositories of digital materials, which could be themed around geographic regions (such as the Kentucky Digital Library devoted to digital archives from the Commonwealth of Kentucky [18] ) or subject matter (such as the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, a self-publishing repository for social, behavioral, and health sciences research data [19] ).

Some consortia are hubs for software development, working with their library constituents to identify technological gaps in their institutions. These projects are often community-led and/or open source. For example, Jisc, based in the UK, developed IRUS, an Institutional Repository Usage Statistics software service, which calculates standards-based usage statistics for institutional repositories of university publishing. [20] In an example of cross-consortial work in the U.S., the Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium (PALCI) partnered with the Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI) to develop and pilot an open-source, multi-tenant institutional repository specifically for consortia (Hyku for Consortia). [21]

Other shared technology infrastructure initiatives might include open source software hosting, [22] joint digitization services, and digital content accessibility testing.

Professional development

Increasingly, library consortia provide professional development opportunities for their member libraries. Different consortia provide paid or free opportunities for librarians to learn new skills, introduce new technologies, and learn about trends in the field. Many consortia internally develop in person or online programming [23] and often host their own regular meetings and/or conferences to encourage networking and skill sharing amongst their members. [24] The Professional Development Alliance is an effort to share professional development content amongst consortia. [25]

Shared print programs

Library consortia help coordinate shared print programs, allowing institutions within certain geographic regions to maintain a practical number of copies of scholarly monographs. These programs “protect against the loss of resources as pressure grows to reduce and repurpose space in library buildings.” [26] Shared print programs can be regional or national in scale.

Library consortia often cover many different activities not mentioned above, including, but not limited to consulting services, grant funding, and industry research.

History in the United States

Library cooperation in the United States has been documented as early as 1867 with the American Library Association (ALA)’s Committee on Cooperation in Indexing and Cataloguing College Libraries. Despite the early cooperative activity, the earliest example of a formally established consortium would not arise until 1933 with the Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN), which was founded to serve the major academic libraries of North Carolina. [27]

The 1960s and 1970s are considered the “heyday of consortia development,” with many consortia established during this time period. [28] However, several significant developments in the United States between the late 1940s to the mid-1990s marked the current evolution of library consortia.

An early form of “shared print,” now a widespread consortial activity, began in 1949 when the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) was founded as a consortium of ten major research libraries “to conduct and maintain a place or places for the deposit, storage, care, delivery and exchange of books ... and other articles containing written, printed, or recorded matter.” [29]

In 1967, OCLC was formed for the purposes of shared library cataloging. As a focus of library activity, shared cataloging was accompanied by the spread of online catalog systems, and many new statewide and regional consortia coalesced around shared online catalog systems, particularly in the 1970s and continuing through the 1990s. Some of these consortia were associated with OCLC as “OCLC networks,” and these consortia often crossed state lines to cover broad regions of the United States. [30]

By the mid-1990s, a new consortial activity rose to prominence: the collaborative licensing of electronic resources. Consortial licensing became a primary activity for many consortia as libraries transitioned from print-focused collection development to providing access to a growing number of online indices, databases, and encyclopedias. [6] The market of consortial licensing has continued unabated to the present, as content providers provide new content or new services, such as research support and publishing metrics. [31]

See also

Related Research Articles

arXiv Online archive of e-preprints

arXiv is an open-access repository of electronic preprints and postprints approved for posting after moderation, but not peer review. It consists of scientific papers in the fields of mathematics, physics, astronomy, electrical engineering, computer science, quantitative biology, statistics, mathematical finance and economics, which can be accessed online. In many fields of mathematics and physics, almost all scientific papers are self-archived on the arXiv repository before publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Some publishers also grant permission for authors to archive the peer-reviewed postprint. Begun on August 14, 1991, arXiv.org passed the half-million-article milestone on October 3, 2008, had hit a million by the end of 2014 and two million by the end of 2021. As of April 2021, the submission rate is about 16,000 articles per month.

An institutional repository is an archive for collecting, preserving, and disseminating digital copies of the intellectual output of an institution, particularly a research institution. Academics also utilize their IRs for archiving published works to increase their visibility and collaboration with other academics However, most of these outputs produced by universities are not effectively accessed and shared by researchers and other stakeholders As a result Academics should be involved in the implementation and development of an IR project so that they can learn the benefits and purpose of building an IR.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open educational resources</span> Open learning resource

Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials intentionally created and licensed to be free for the end user to own, share, and in most cases, modify. The term "OER" describes publicly accessible materials and resources for any user to use, re-mix, improve, and redistribute under some licenses. These are designed to reduce accessibility barriers by implementing best practices in teaching and to be adapted for local unique contexts.

The California Digital Library (CDL) was founded by the University of California in 1997. Under the leadership of then UC President Richard C. Atkinson, the CDL's original mission was to forge a better system for scholarly information management and improved support for teaching and research. In collaboration with the ten University of California Libraries and other partners, CDL assembled one of the world's largest digital research libraries. CDL facilitates the licensing of online materials and develops shared services used throughout the UC system. Building on the foundations of the Melvyl Catalog, CDL has developed one of the largest online library catalogs in the country and works in partnership with the UC campuses to bring the treasures of California's libraries, museums, and cultural heritage organizations to the world. CDL continues to explore how services such as digital curation, scholarly publishing, archiving and preservation support research throughout the information lifecycle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ann Shumelda Okerson</span> American librarian

Ann Shumelda Okerson is an American librarian and expert on the licensing of electronic resources and the place of digital technologies in academic and research libraries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electronic Information for Libraries</span> Nonprofit organization founded in 1999

Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL) works with libraries worldwide to enable access to digital information for people in developing and transition countries. They are an international not-for-profit organisation based in Vilnius with a global network of partners.

Library acquisitions is the department of a library responsible for the selection and purchase of materials or resources. The department may select vendors, negotiate consortium pricing, arrange for standing orders, and select individual titles or resources.

The International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) is an informal, self-organized group of library consortia from around the world; it exists for the strategic and practical discussions of issues of common interest among its consortia members. The ICOLC first met informally as the Consortium of Consortia (COC) in 1997. Over time, its name was adjusted to reflect its increasingly global character.

Research data archiving is the long-term storage of scholarly research data, including the natural sciences, social sciences, and life sciences. The various academic journals have differing policies regarding how much of their data and methods researchers are required to store in a public archive, and what is actually archived varies widely between different disciplines. Similarly, the major grant-giving institutions have varying attitudes towards public archival of data. In general, the tradition of science has been for publications to contain sufficient information to allow fellow researchers to replicate and therefore test the research. In recent years this approach has become increasingly strained as research in some areas depends on large datasets which cannot easily be replicated independently.

Scholarly communication involves the creation, publication, dissemination and discovery of academic research, primarily in peer-reviewed journals and books. It is “the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future use." This primarily involves the publication of peer-reviewed academic journals, books and conference papers.

The Center for Research Libraries is a consortium of North American universities, colleges, and independent research libraries, based on a buy-in concept for membership of the consortia. The consortium acquires and preserves traditional and digital resources for research and teaching and makes them available to member institutions through interlibrary loan and electronic delivery. It also gathers and analyzes data pertaining to the preservation of physical and digital resources, and fosters the sharing of expertise, in order to assist member libraries in maintaining their collections.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of Cape Town Libraries</span> Library system of the University of Cape Town

University of Cape Town Libraries is the library system of the University of Cape Town in Cape Town, South Africa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samvera</span>

Samvera, originally known as Hydra, is an open-source digital repository software product. Samvera main components are Fedora Commons, Solr, Blacklight, and HydraHead. Each Samvera implementation is called a "head".

Open educational resources in Canada are the various initiatives related to open education, open educational resources (OER), open pedagogies (OEP), open educational practices (OEP), and open scholarship that are established nationally and provincially across Canadian K-12 and higher education sectors, and where Canadian based inititatives extend to international collaborations.

Open access to scholarly communication in Sweden is relatively widespread. In 2010 the Swedish Research Council began requiring its grantees to make research results available in open access form. Lund University Libraries and Stockholm University Press belong to the international Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association.

South African National Library and Information Consortium (SANLiC) is a non-profit consortium of member institutions aimed at negotiating the procurement of, and securing access to information resources on behalf of its members.

The Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) is an academic library consortium of Ontario's 21 university libraries located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Formed in 1967, OCUL member institutions work together to maximize the expertise and resources of their institutions through shared services and projects. OCUL works together in a number of key areas of importance for library services, including collective content purchasing, shared digital infrastructure, external partnerships, and professional development initiatives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Collective collection</span> Form of collaboration between libraries

A collective collection, shared collection, or shared print program is a joint effort by multiple academic or research libraries to house, manage, and provide access to their collective physical collections. Most shared print programs focus on collections of monographs and/or serials. Similar efforts have addressed acquisition and/or retention of microform, federal government documents, and digital collections. Shared print programs often have activities in common with national repositories and archiving programs. Discussions surrounding shared print programs in their current form have come to the forefront as a popular solution to shrinking collection budgets, rising costs of resources, and competing space needs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open thesis</span>

An open thesis, also known as an open dissertation, is a thesis that is freely available for members of the public to access upon publication, and often also during the planning and writing process. The decision to write an open thesis is made by the author, who will usually explain their rationale for creating an open thesis as part of the final published work or while developing it. Writing an open thesis is a process with many decision points regarding where and when to share information openly - from the planning stage, through research and writing, the defense/ voce viva and ultimate publication. Open theses are usually created and located in digital and multimodal formats.

References

  1. ↑ "Library Consortia". Universal Service Administrative Company. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
  2. ↑ "Frequently Asked Questions - Library Consortium Management FAQ's | EIFL". www.eifl.net. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
  3. ↑ Grogg, Jill; Rosen, Hannah (2020-10-21). "Consortia: An Evolving Landscape". Collaborative Librarianship. 12 (2). ISSN   1943-7528.
  4. 1 2 Horton, V. and Pronevitz, G. Library Consortia: Models for Collaboration and Sustainability . American Library Association (ALA), 2014. p. 8. ISBN   978-0-8389-1249-2
  5. 1 2 "Participating Consortia | ICOLC Website". icolc.net. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
  6. 1 2 3 Burke, R. “Cooperation and Consortia”. Reference and Information Services: An Introduction, 5th Edition. ABC-CLIO, 2016. p.138-154. ISBN   978-1-4408-3697-8
  7. ↑ "COUPERIN". www.couperin.org. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
  8. ↑ "大学図書館コンソーシアム連合：JUSTICE". contents.nii.ac.jp. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
  9. ↑ "AMICAL Consortium". AMICAL Consortium. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
  10. ↑ "NELLCO: Mission & Values". NELLCO Law Library Consortium, Inc.
  11. ↑ Grogg, Jill (17 Apr. 2019). "Strategies for Cross-Boundary Consortial Collaboration". The Power of Library Consortia: How Publishers and Libraries Can Successfully Negotiate. https://www.niso.org/events/2019/04/power-library-consortia-how-publishers-and-libraries-can-successfully-negotiate. Retrieved 2019-10-29.
  12. ↑ "A Snapshot of Priorities & Perspectives: U.S. Library Consortia" (PDF). OCLC.org. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
  13. ↑ "Library consortia purchasing power | Emerald Publishing". www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
  14. ↑ Turner, Christine N. (2014-01-30). "E-Resource Acquisitions in Academic Library Consortia". Library Resources & Technical Services. 58 (1): 33–48. doi: 10.5860/lrts.58n1.33 . ISSN   2159-9610.
  15. ↑ tag. "Danmarks Nationale Strategi for Open Access — Uddannelses- og Forskningsministeriet". ufm.dk (in Danish). Retrieved 2021-10-29.
  16. ↑ "UC secures landmark open access deal with world's largest scientific publisher". California Digital Library. 2021-03-16. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
  17. ↑ "Buscador Timbó Foco". foco.timbo.org.uy. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
  18. ↑ "KYVL: KDL - Kentucky Digital Library: About". kyvl.org. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
  19. ↑ "About openICPSR". www.openicpsr.org. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
  20. ↑ "IRUS | Jisc". irus.jisc.ac.uk. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
  21. ↑ "About the Project – Scaling Up a Collaborative Consortial Institutional Repository" . Retrieved 2021-10-29.
  22. ↑ "Hosting-Client-Services". www.lyrasis.org. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
  23. ↑ "Professional Development Services". CAUL. 2017-11-10. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
  24. ↑ "Eğitimler – ANKOS" (in Turkish). Retrieved 2021-10-29.
  25. ↑ "Professional Development Alliance | SCELC". www.scelc.org. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
  26. ↑ "Shared Print Program". Atla. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
  27. ↑ Horton, V. and Pronevitz, G. Library Consortia: Models for Collaboration and Sustainability. American Library Association (ALA), 2014. p. 9. ISBN   978-0-8389-1249-2
  28. ↑ Horton, V. and Pronevitz, G. Library Consortia: Models for Collaboration and Sustainability. American Library Association (ALA), 2014. p. 10. ISBN   978-0-8389-1249-2
  29. ↑ "History of CRL | CRL". www.crl.edu. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
  30. ↑ Bailey-Hainer, Brenda (2009-10-19). "The OCLC Network of Regional Service Providers: The Last 10 Years". Journal of Library Administration. Informa UK Limited. 49 (6): 621–629. doi:10.1080/01930820903238792. ISSN   0193-0826. S2CID   61936408.
  31. ↑ Anderson, Kent (2018-02-06). "Focusing on Value — 102 Things Journal Publishers Do (2018 Update)". The Scholarly Kitchen. Retrieved 2021-10-29.

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