“…Modern consortia offer resource sharing of print collections via InterLibrary Loan, and/or e-content through licensing and “big deals”; they provide shared print storage and/or digital repositories; they share staff expertise and human resources by enabling communication between libraries and/or by organising training programmes; they build new infrastructure, new services, or import new technology. Three major surveys conducted between 2006 and 2015 (Davis, 2006, 2009; OCLC, 2012; Horton and Provenitz, 2015) and previous studies (Dong and Zou, 2009; Machovec, 2013) focused on listing the most common consortia services; Gonda and Papatheodorou (2021) summarise these findings as follows:- Collaborative Collection Development : the coordination of libraries for their collection development is a self-evident activity for consortia. As an umbrella term, it includes cooperative purchasing of print material, electronic content licensing and shared storage facilities of print collections.
- Consortium Management : the term might seem to refer more to an in-house operation than to a service offered to the participating libraries, but it includes the management of shared human resources, assistance in library assessment, collective budgeting and financial management, and lobbying and public relations.
- Cooperative Digitisation Services : many consortia engage in digitisation initiatives, building digital libraries and developing union catalogs, thus preserving special, rare collections or archives.
- Institutional Repositories : the software and hardware infrastructure for collecting the intellectual output of a research institution is primarily an activity for academic library consortia.
- Programmes for Users : several consortia organise summer reading campaigns, offer seniors’ technology education or STEM programmes and exhibitions.
- Resource Sharing and InterLibrary Loan : one of the pillars of library cooperation, the sharing of print materials and more recently, of e-content; the term could refer to physical delivery services, loaning from library to library, document delivery, and licensing that allows the distribution of digital material.
- Shared Integrated Library System and Collaborative Cataloguing : collaboration between libraries started with the sharing of bibliographic records and naturally progressed to include union catalogues and shared systems.
- Staff Training and Consulting : the consortium may provide or facilitate the sharing of personnel that includes specialists in specific areas, consultants, trainers and event organisers.
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