Library Consortia: Practical Guide for Library Managers

Libraries are burdened with increased demand for resources and services and inflating expectations against shrinking or stagnant budgets. An individual library cannot cope with the situation. Hence, libraries form alliances for cooperation and sharing. Emerging changes in the publishing industry are phenomenal and have forced libraries to move toward a strategic partnership called library consortia. Information technology has played a vital role in developing such partnerships. Publishers offer packages of resources to library consortia benefitting all member libraries. Library consortia protect the interests of individual members while considering the business interests of publishers. This book is a start-up guide to libraries and librarians desiring to form library consortia. It covers the various facets of library consortia and corresponding activities. The chapters are presented with different consortia models, formations, business negotiations and various licensing schemes.

• presents a detailed guide and criteria for establishing library consortia
• discusses consortia models in detail, with examples
• includes examples of staff patterns and governance issues of library consortia
• provides examples of different licensing and pricing models
  

Aditya Tripathi is an associate professor in library and information science at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India, where he has taught for 11 years. His interests include digitization, digital libraries, digital preservation, information retrieval systems, web applications, library management and quality assurance in libraries. Before joining the university, Aditya was a senior research fellow at the Documentation Research and Training Centre, Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore. He has contributed to several courses at Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi. Aditya was awarded Best Young Teacher by the Indian Association of Special Libraries and Information Centres.

Jawahar Lal is assistant librarian at Sayaji Rao Gaekwad Library, Central Library, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. Prior to this, he was assistant librarian at Kashi Naresh Government Post Graduate College, Gyanpur, Sant Ravidas Nagar Bhadohi under the Directorate of Higher Education, Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad. Jawahar manages the periodical, newspaper, magazine and thesis sections of the library.