Managing Consortia
in Libraries
Prem Chand
Librarian, Indian Institute of Advanced Study,
Shimla
chanprem@gmail.com
NACLIN- 2011: Visva-Bharti
Introduction
• Library consortia
• Need of Library Consortia
•
Benefits of Library Consortia
• Governance , funding and operation
• Types and model of Library Consortia
• World wide Library consortia
• Managing Library Consortia: Licensing and usage
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Library Consortia
• A consortia is an association of two or more individuals,
companies, organizations or governments (or any
combination of these entities) with the objective of
participating in a common activity or pooling their
resources for achieving a common goal.
• A library consortium is a group of two or more libraries
that have agreed to cooperate with each other in order
to fulfil certain similar needs, usually resource sharing.
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Library Consortia
A group of libraries, preferably with some homogeneous
characteristics by subject, or institutional affiliation, or
affiliation to funding authorities, who join together with
the primary objective of providing expanded access to
information resources needed by its user community
through a process of pooling and sharing information
and infrastructure resources with due adherence to
copyright compliances.
It allows publishers to sell their e-journals in big
packages to several institutions at the same time,
reaching out to more institutions than they ever had
before.
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Library Consortia
• Consortia are also called as “Big Deal”
• A Big Deal “may consist of hundreds of titles—often the
publisher’s entire journals’ list—sold in a bundled package to
a consortium of libraries on a one-price, one-size-fits-all
basis,” according to Ingenta’s Mark Rowse in 2002.
• First introduced by Academic Press (AP) in 1996, the Big
Deal—in which publishers sell online subscriptions to large
bundles of electronic journals—is now the principal means
by which academics access research literature
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Why Library Consortia?
Serial Crisis :
• In 1990s Serial prices started rising, at about 10% per annum.
• During that time, serials prices increased 10.8 per cent in 1995,
9.9% in 1996 and 10.3 % in 1997, eventually reaching 10.4 %
in 1998.
• Library budgets were struggling to keep up the subscription ,
and every time the price of a journal increased, a few more
libraries cancelled their subscriptions.
• This led publishers to increase prices further, which triggered
another round of cancellations.
• It was a vicious cycle that many felt threatened to destroy the
350-year-old scholarly publishing system.
Why Library Consortia?
• It was in the state of subscription spiral where library
funding goes down and, consequently, prices go up, so
subscriptions drop even further.
• Budget cuts and price increase brought libraries into each
others’ arms, and formed consortium .
• Consortia based purchased was widely seen as a solution
to the so-called serials crisis, and both publishers and
librarians embraced it enthusiastically.
• It is believed that consortium offers flexible pricing that
offers researcher access to :
 Multi Journal, multiyear license access to electronic
journals on cheaper
price.
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Trends in scholarly communication
Trends in Serial Publication and annual journal pricing:
Over 23,700 journal titles are being published , and
estimate of the global annual systemic cost is £174.6bn
Elsevier, Springer and Wiley, publish 42% of journal articles
It is estimated that some 1.59 million articles are currently
produced globally each year, by roughly 1.92 million
researchers
Serial prices is increasing at about 10% per annum.
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Journal Pricing
• Journals prices are currently growing by 6% to 7% per
year.
• Some journals cost $10,000 a year or more. The most
expensive believed to be, Elsevier’s Biochimica et
Biophysica Acta, is $20,930
• Discipline wise average Price of journals are:
Chemistry
Physics Engineering
Business
Sociology
$3,429
$2,865
$820
$528
$2,071
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Benefits
• The cost-benefits are enormous. – Libraries world over have
reported gains ranging from 70-90%.
• Access to a greater number of journal titles and a stronger
negotiating position through the purchase of a greater volume
of content.
• Indian consortia are a step ahead in their negotiation skills
and have been able to secure gains up 96%.
• Smaller institutions (historically unable to afford many
journals), can have access to wide range of journals
• Researcher and author also get benefit as consortia made
it possible to expend greater potential readership.
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Benefits
• Win -Win situation for both publishers and Libraries
• Publishers continue to make very attractive profit. Elsevier, for
instance, routinely reports profits of 30%-plus. In May, The
Economist reported that, despite the recession, the company
made £724m, an operating-profit margin of 36%.
• Publishers claim that journals are currently growing in volume by 6% to 7%
per year. As a consequence, prices must inevitably go up.
• Libraries claim that there is a significant increase in access to full text
journals.
• Librarians argue that cost per download is low and it is getting lower. In
2003 in UK, the cost per article download averaged was £1.69 and five
years ago the cost per article download was over eight pounds.
• Cost of article of INFLIBNET consortium was Rs. 65.35 in 2009. it was
17.97 USD in 2004.
Not everyone agrees!
“The Big deal is the best invention since sliced bread. I
agree that there was once a serial pricing problem; I
have never denied there was a problem. But it was
the Big Deal that solved it”
Derk Haank, CEO, Springer
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The first ‘real’ library consortium?
• In the late 1980s the first US state-wide consortium –
OhioLink–was established. It received widespread attention
as they were able to obtain additional state funding for their
cooperative work.
• A trend led by the U.S.-based OhioLink, the Ontario
Academic Research Libraries (OARL) consortium in
Canada, and the PICA group of universities in Germany and
the Netherlands.
•
In Great Britain, Research Libraries UK ( RLUK ) later came
to play a similar consortial role and signed agreement for 3
years with Academic Press (1996).
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.
Continued….
• Importantly, other publishers also saw the logic of the
consortia based subscription and rushed to introduce their
own offerings.
• In India: The first limited purpose and successful, consortialike model can be traced to Tata Institute of Fundamental
Research (TIFR) in 2000 , which used the consortia model
offered by Springer for multi-site licensing and cross
sharing of content among all the libraries falling under
TIFR’s affiliation
• Today, a growing number of library consortia around the
world had signed license agreement and are operational,
ranging from small to big,
and region and national
consortia
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Governance, Funding, Operations and
Management
• The structure, membership, and funding of consortia vary
largely from funding agency, participating members and
subject disciplines.
• National Steering Committee, Negotiation Committee,
Review Committee and Working Groups are responsible for
Licensing, purchasing, managing electronic resources and
training.
• Various Committee monitor, evaluate and review the
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consortium.
Governance, Funding, Operations
and Management
• Negotiation committee members are from various other
bigger consortium besides members from funding agency
• Consortium negotiates and sign agreements on behalf of
member libraries
• One of the Institute is designated as a nodal centre for
operation and implementation of consortium.
• In India most of the consortiam are funded and supported by
Government agencies.
• In open ended consortia, participating libraries contribute for
subscription of resources.
• .
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Types and model of Consortia
• Central Funded Consortium




INDEST-AICTE Consortium
CSIR E-Journals Consortium
UGC Infonet Digital Library Consortium
MCIT Consortium
• Open Consortia and shared Budget
 FORSA
 IIM Libraries Consortium
 HELINET
 BJ Medical Library Consortium
• Closed group
 CSIR/ DST , DRDO, DAE etc
• National Consortium
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Consortia model in India
• Indian consortium ranges from closed to open ended . Most of the consortia
are central funded where member libraries don’t contribute.
• UGC INFONET Digital Library Consortia:
• ILL through JCCC
• Print independent + print retention
• Access to Elsevier Science : Retention of print clause
• The universities have been provided the access to 1036 titles from 10
subject collections (Biochemistry, Genetics & Mol. Biology,
Agriculture & Biological Science, Chemistry, Computer Science,
Economics, Immunology & Microbiology, Mathematics, Physics &
Astronomy, Social Sciences, Psychology) with access to back files
since 1995.
• Option for download 500 article annually to 60 universities from non
subscribed journals
• Member libraries can not discontinue print base.
• Remaining universities can request for article under Document
Delivery to INFLIBNET
Chronology of Indian Consortium
• COMSAC – (Consortium for Material Science and Aerospace Collection) is
the first known formal consortia initiative led by the National Aerospace
Laboratory (NAL) in 1998 for a few databases
• Forum for Resource Sharing in Astronomy and Astrophysics (FORSA)
• The first limited purpose and successful, consortia-like model can be traced
to Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in 2000, which used the
consortia model offered by Springer for multi-site licensing and cross
sharing of content among all the libraries falling under TIFR’s affiliation.
• The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) can take the credit
being the first major and formal consortium at national level to sign license
to access Elsevier journals in 2001
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Chronology of Indian Consortium
• Department of Automatic Energy (DAE) formed a consortium and signed up
with Science Direct in 2002
• Indian National Digital Library in Engineering Sciences and Technology
(INDEST) 2003
• HELINET (2003)
• UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium 2004
• Recent developments : ICAR, NML, DST, MCIT, DRDO etc
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Sr
no
Name of Consortium
Funding agency Members
1
UGC-INFONET Digital Library
Consortium
INFLIBNET
Centre
Universities
2
INDEST-AICTE Consortium
MHRD/IIT, Delhi/
(48) institutions
including IISc, IITs,
NITs, IIMs ,1096
associate members
3
NKRC E-journal Consortium.
(CSIR/ DST )
NISCAIR
40 CSIR and 26 DST
institutes
4
DAE Consortium
Department of
Atomic Energy
36 institutions
including BARC, TIFR
and SAMEER
5
MCIT Library Consortium
Ministry of
Communications
and Information
Technology
DIT, DOT, DOP and
their related
organizations and
PSUs
6
IIM Consortium
IIMs
All IIMs
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Sr no Name of Consortium
Funding agency
Members
7
DRDO Consortium
DESIDOC
DRDO Labs
8
FORSA Consortium
Indian Institute of
Astrophysics
11 institutions
including TIFR,
PRL, IUCAA, etc
9
RGUHS-HELINET Consortium Rajiv Gandhi University
of Health Science
All the affiliated
colleges of RGUHS
10
DeLCON Consortium
Department of
Biotechnology (DBT),
14 DBT Institutions
including ICGEB,
New Delhi and 18
North Eastern
Region (NER)
Institutions
11
ERMED Consortium
National Medical Library
72 Government
Medical
Colleges/Institutes
including ICMR
affiliated research
institutes
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Sr no Name of Consortium
Funding agency
Members
12
Consortium for E-resources in
Agriculture (CeRA)
Indian Council of
Agriculture (ICAR)
123 agricultural /
animal science
Universities /
Deemed
Universities /
Research Institutes
of the Indian
Council of
Agriculture (ICAR)
13
N-LIST Consortium
INFLIBNET Centre
Govt aided / non
aided Colleges
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World wide Library
Consortium
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USA
• Currently, there are roughly 215 consortia operating in U.S.
These range from large/comprehensive to regional and small
consortia. They are:
 GWLA (Greater Western Library Alliance)
 LYRASIS: Was formed by a merger of the regional
consortia SOLINET (Southeast), NELINET (New
England) and PALINET (Mid- Atlantic). The Consortium
has more than 2,500 members
 CRL (Center for Research Libraries)
•
Small consortia:
ALICE (Adventist Library Information Cooperative)
FLO (Fenway Libraries Online)
SWITCH (Southeastern Wisconsin Info Tech Exchange
Library consortia in UK and other countries
ICOLC members: 50 European consortia are operational
(March 2011). Major among them are:




Irish Research electronic Libraries (IReL)
Scottish Digital Library Consortium (SDLC)
The Swedish Consortium –BIBSAM
Finnish National Electronic Library ( FinELIb) in Finland library consortia
UK: Consortium of University Research Libraries (CURL) ,NESLI, SUPC ,
London Libraries Consortium,M25 Consortium of Academic
Libraries - UK Academic Library Consortia
China: China Academic Library and Information System (CALIS)
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Library consortia in UK and other countries
• South Africa:
• Cape Library Co-operative (CALICO), ESAL (Eastern
Seaboard Association of Libraries), , FRELICO (FREe State
Libraries and Information COnsortium , GAELIC (GAuteng
and Environs LIbrary Consortium , SEALS (South Eastern
Academic Libraries’ System, South African National Library
and information Consortium (SANLiC)
• Australia:
• National & State Libraries Australasia (NSLA) EResources Consortium
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Managing the Consortia
• Access to license materials
• Usage statistics
•
Negotiation and Licensing
•
Funding
•
Promoting Use of E-Resources and Membership of the
Consortium
•
Copyright and IPR Issue
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Access
• The access to electronic resources is IP-enabled for member
institutions (Multiple IP address, log in and password)
• Access to entire journals
file.
with current and ten years back
• Remote access via authentication: Ezproxy and Shibboleth
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Usage Statistics
• Usage statistics
is important to validate the library’s
investment. It provides insights into usage patterns of
journals used.
• Usage data available can be used to assess the value of the
journals.
• ‘COUNTER’ compliant monthly, yearly or cumulative usage /
statistics and send the usage statistics of member libraries to
the agency responsible for implementation of the consortium.
• The consortium should be given facility to extract the data
from publisher’s site NACLIN- 2011: Visva-Bharti
Sl. No.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
Publishers
2007
2008
2009
2010
Increase
in 2008
ACS
AIP/APS
AR
Blackwell
CUP
Elsevier
Emerald
IOP
560506
302270
81533
278690
49304
95770
48776
134241
594960
336234
62528
121077
66745
155931
43480
168213
1031237
419658
76731
178869
72972
165029
69363
232573
1196487
377910
71637
526986
58165
181162
74499
249259
6.15
11.24
-23.31
-56.55
35.37
62.82
-10.86
25.31
73.33
24.81
22.71
47.73
9.33
5.83
59.53
38.26
16.02
-9.95
-6.64
194.62
-20.29
9.78
7.40
7.17
JSTOR
Nature
OUP
PM
Portland
RSC
616560
42894
171952
46140
13706
134121
1382961
47996
198760
89975
13617
178676
1566952
79456
208692
89175
22294
185985
2140689
107648
304269
86094
220134
124.30
11.89
15.59
95.00
-0.65
33.22
13.30
65.55
5.00
-0.89
63.72
4.09
36.61
35.48
45.80
-3.46
-100.00
18.36
SpringerLink
TandF
Pr. Euclid
SIAM
443024
134141
429
NS
977395
247849
551
828
1397193
293286
2124
1922
1501513
378814
2151
1643
120.62
84.77
28.44
NA
42.95
18.33
285.48
132.13
7.47
29.16
1.27
-14.52
Total
3153628
4686397
6089465
7475266
48.60
29.94
22.76
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Increase
in 2009
Increase
in 2010
Average increase in download : 61.80
Economics of e-Consortium
Publisher-wise Cost Recovery during 2009
Highest in JSOR followed by Springer and ACS
Cost Recovery
The total cost that has been recovered amounts to
Rs. 4570 million as against the total expenditure of
Rs. 410 millions with Rs. 4160 millions as the cost of articles downloaded in excess.
Cost per downloads (Year-wise)
Average cost per article
Average cost is: 65.35.
Increase in No. of Downloads from 2003 - 2006
(on Logarithmic Scale)
100000000
10000000
1000000
2003
100000
2004
2005
2006
10000
1000
Group I (IITs /
IISc)
Group II (NITs)
Group III (IIITs)
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Group IV (IIMs)
JCCC
Licensing
• Consortia licensing is a legal process of acquiring usage
rights of the intellectual property governed by the copyright
laws for a community of members. License should address
following:
• Publishers and consortium sign license agreement which is
binding for both. The standard license agreement
addresses following clauses:
 Authorized users
 Restriction of commercial use
 Course packs
 Electronic reserves
 Fees, Members, secure network, subscription period, usage
rights , ILL and other terms and conditions etc.
Licensing
•
Simultaneous Users:
 There should be no limit on number of simultaneous user
on any of the resources subscribed by the Consortium.
Any number of users can access e-resources including
e-journals and bibliographic databases at any given time.
• Walk-in Users:
 Walk-in users, physically present at the subscribing
institute should also be allowed to use the resources
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Licensing
• Inclusion of additional Titles
 The Licensor should provide access to new journal titles that are
added during the contract period at no additional cost.
• Electronic Link:
 Licensor should use suitable technology to establish electronic links
to all the articles of licensed materials.
• Print Copy of Journal:
 A print copy of the digital content should be kept as a backup of
journals subscribed under the consortium
• Perpetual Access and Archival Rights:
 In case of termination of the agreement or on the expiry of the
agreement, licensor should extend perpetual access to e-resources
for the paid period of subscription along with their back files offered
during the subscription period
Licensing
• Print-independent Subscription:
 Subscription to e-resources should be print-independent.
Discontinuation of print subscription which is available through
consortium should not be binding to member Institutes.
• Protection on Increase of Price:
 There should be no annual increase of the price. Annual
increment of the price should be below 5%.
• Inter Library Loan:
 Licensee should be allowed to fulfil ILL requests from nonauthorized users using (Arial software) electronic copy of
article downloaded from the licensor’s Web site
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Funding
• It is desirable that the consortia device innovative ways of
generating and managing funding to sustain its activities.
• Adequate funds must be set aside for consortium
operations and management, which includes user
education and training, development and deployment of
technology and infrastructure to improve access to
resources, etc.
• Substantial funding is also imperative to subscribe to more
e-resources, support uninterrupted subscription, and
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operational cost
Conclusion
• Study the usage pattern and identify the most used titles
during last five years. It is estimated that 50% of titles
have never been used.
• An alternative scenario and possible future model is to
explore user driven acquisition.
• Explore other model , perhaps national consortium where
negotiated can be done centrally by consortium and then
the package could be purchased by Individual Institutions.
• California state university is successfully piloting a
scheme called “ get it Now” , a user driven document
delivery scheme claims to deliver articles to users quickly.
• The model is successful in California, there is no reason
that why canuld’t be successful elsewhere.
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Conclusion
• Study the total number of downloads from all the consortium
explore
and evolve the most used title-by-title jounal
subscriptions supplemented and relying for the rest on
document supply and interlibrary loans.
• It is estimated that at least 10% of papers are now available
on an OA basis. Out of Remaining 90 % we may require only
30%.Negotition should be done on only 30% most used
journals.
• National consortium
 It is need of the hour to have national consortium which
should address the requirement of large population
irrespective of affiliation.
 The model will overcome to duplicate subscription
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Thank you
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