Introduction

Libraries rarely act in isolation. As non-profit organizations, libraries have little need to compete with one another—Johnson (2018) quotes Atkinson: “cooperation is, somewhat paradoxically, one of the few competitive advantages libraries have” (p. 323). Partnerships among libraries have long been a key resource for mitigating the effects of economic challenges on collection development (Chadwell, 2009), and as the diversity of the content, formats and uses of information resources continues to grow, resource sharing strategies have needed to expand as well (Strieb, 2016). Consortia have long faced challenges related to administration, balancing the needs of partners, and relinquishing independent control over collections, and current issues around e-resource licensing have further complicated libraries’ ability to share resources. Advances in technology continue to create both new opportunities and new challenges for creating shared collections, making attention to the structures, goals and values of the consortia in one’s own library ecosystem a crucial component in effective collection management. This chapter will focus on examples from Canadian and U.S. academic libraries to illustrate the role of consortia in collaborative collection management activities.

Background and Current Context

A consortium in the library context is defined as “two or more libraries that have formally agreed to coordinate, consolidate, or cooperate in certain functions . . . on the basis of geography, function, type, or subject” (Johnson, 2018, p. 387). Terms like cooperatives, networks, collectives, alliances and partnerships may also be used to describe groups of libraries collaborating to improve services to their patrons, and the potential functions and scopes of these collaborations vary widely (Horton, 2015a). Consortia may be composed of any type of library and can be found worldwide. However, one context where the role of consortia is particularly pronounced is among research libraries in Canada and the U.S.—Canada, for example, has four major regional academic consortia^[1] and two large national consortia^[2]that serve all major universities, as well as numerous smaller regional consortia that serve a mix of library types, and consortia serving specific domains, such as health information networks and accessibility networks (Johnson, 2018, p. 349).

Cooperation among libraries isn’t new—an interest in library cooperation goes back to at least the 1880s (Johnson, 2018, p. 323; Horton, 2015a, p. 8). An early example of large-scale cooperative collection development is the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), which initially formed in 1949 as the Midwest Inter-Library Corporation (CRL, n.d.). With 10 U.S. universities as members, the center was formed as a repository where less-used research materials were deposited by members, and soon also took responsibility for collecting many serials and government documents for the shared use of members. Their scope soon expanded beyond the Midwest, and today CRL has over 200 members, including major Canadian universities.

Automation in libraries opened up new potential for resource sharing among libraries, and nearly 100 academic library consortia were established in the late 1960s alone (Johnson, 2018, p. 348). Tripathi and Lal (2016) suggest that it was in the 1960s that the idea of access over ownership gained momentum and that consortia for coordinated collection development and resource sharing became popular. The emergence of ‘megaconsortia’ like Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) and Research Libraries Group (RLG) in the 1970s and 1980s provided access to enough bibliographic utilities that close collaborations became less of a focus for many libraries. The current role and ubiquity of consortia in academic libraries began to build momentum in the 1990s, as both financial pressures and the complexity of the information landscape continued to increase. By the early 2000s the role of consortia in purchasing digital resources had become central to academic libraries’ collection activities (Maskell, 2008). It was in the early 2000s that the Canadian academic community saw many e-resource-focused additional consortia emerge. A major example is the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN)—this collaboration was initiated by the collaboration of Canada’s four regional academic library consortia and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) to approach federal organizations for funding to license electronic journals and research databases for members across the country (CRKN, n.d.; Chadwell, 2009).

Many of the foundational activities of consortia have remained consistent, including coordinated collecting building and management, as well as selection or development of the tools needed to share these collections, such as resource sharing systems and shared catalogues (Johnson, 2018), but the evolution of technology continues to open up new opportunities for how these projects are implemented. A 2012 survey of U.S. library consortia listed resource sharing, shared online catalogues, and cooperative purchasing as the most used services of library consortia, with shared licensing of e-content as a strong emerging service (OCLC, 2013). While consortia may also support activities like professional development and advocacy, most core consortia activities are collections-centred (OCLC, 2013). Shared collections are a means of managing limitations in budget and space while ensuring that users continue to have access to materials that include a wide range of content and formats, and can also ensure the preservation of knowledge, such as through print preservation agreements (Strieb, 2016). However, increased interdependency can also introduce new challenges and complexities in collection management.

Collaborative collecting activities might be user-centred, aiming to expand the scope of resources available to patrons; library-centred, where financial and storage challenges can be addressed, and opportunities can be created to share expertise and collect more unique materials; or project-centred, where the partnership is meant to address a current issue with a new tool or service (Burgett et al., 2004). Consortia may also be considered in terms of how closely partners are collaborating—arrangements such as shared licensing agreements for e-resources and large inter-library lending agreements generally involve a lower degree of collaboration, and may be executed by large-scale consortia. As a collaboration becomes closer, more staff involvement is needed, and less independence is possible in decision-making. However, more complex shared goals can also be achieved (Kaufman, 2012). More intensive collaborations might include shared print agreements, especially when a shared storage facility is used; creating a union catalogue or otherwise centralizing local resource-sharing; or developing other shared resources like digital libraries.

Interlibrary loan (ILL) and other resource-sharing activities remain a major form of library cooperation, guided by the same principles as consortial collecting: that to access the full realm of information, libraries need to share their collections. Best practices for ILL service were first codified by the American Library Association (ALA) in 1917, and guidelines for these services continue to be updated by both the ALA and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) (Johnson, 2018, p. 326). Requests are made by users and may be processed by librarians or be unmediated, where the request is made directly within a shared online catalogue. Currently OCLC provides one of the largest centralized bibliographic resources, facilitating global resource sharing through the WorldCat catalogue and the linked WorldShare ILL platform (ICOLC, 2022; Johnson, 2018). However, other interlibrary lending systems also exist, including local shared catalogues in many regionally-based consortia to allow for more straightforward resource sharing. While libraries may participate in ILL without consortial ties, consortia or groups of consortia often facilitate ILL, such as through agreements to lend to each other at a reduced cost, or by funding a resource sharing platform (Johnson, 2018). The ability to reliably share resources beyond a single library system is foundational to all collaborative collecting activities, whether by lending physical books, sharing e-resources, or sending copies of excerpts such as journal articles or book chapters.

When reliable resource-sharing mechanisms are in place, it becomes possible to strategically coordinate collection-building activities among libraries in a consortium. A frequent approach is for each library to have a ‘core collection’ of heavily-used materials, and to specialize in certain peripheral areas based on local priorities, with the ideal result being that each consortium member will have different specialties that lead to a balanced collection across the network (Johnson, 2018). As the formats of collections have become more varied, additional avenues for cooperative collecting have developed, including shared print agreements and shared licensing for e-materials. In shared print agreements, print collections are downsized in consultation with other libraries in the agreement to ensure copies of all materials are preserved somewhere in the system. An example in Canada is the Council of Prairie and Pacific Libraries’ (COPPUL) Shared Print Archive Network (SPAN): 22 libraries in western Canada participate in the program, to track the availability of print material and preserve a full range of materials for shared use (COPPUL, n.d.).

Shared collecting of e-resources is an increasingly important reason for consortial membership, but has also introduced new challenges. Burgett et al. (2004) note that consortia became more appealing with the growth of digital resources, as shared purchases could theoretically be provided ‘on demand’ regardless of location, but in practice not all e-resource licenses allow this type of sharing. (For a further discussion of the challenges around e-licence restrictions in relation to ebooks see the chapter “Locked In: EBook Loan Limitations and Licensing Agreements in Public Libraries” by Danielle Deschamps). Shared purchasing arrangements for e-resources are primarily intended to give libraries increased bargaining power in vendor relations. These arrangements range from purchasing electronic resources to share directly within a smaller consortium, to consortia that negotiate license terms for the benefit of all members in a region. An example of the latter is the British Columbia Electronic Library Network (BC ELN), which negotiates electronic resource licenses for 34 partner libraries, as well as providing shared tools like a repository, open access journal hosting, online learner supports and an ILL portal (BC ELN, n.d.).

Many libraries are members of several consortia, some of which are regional or national alliances and others which serve specific functions, such as licensing particular e-resources, facilitating a digitization or print preservation project, or collecting in a particular subject area. As an example, the University of Alberta, a top five university in Canada, promotes their library’s membership in many types of consortia and partnerships (University of Alberta Libraries, n.d.). These include alliances of major research universities, such as the national CARL and CRKN, and the cross-border Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and CRL. Contributions are made to the American digital library initiatives HathiTrust and Internet Archive. Membership in western Canada’s regional academic library consortium, COPPUL, is noted, and further local alliances are also present: The Alberta Library (TAL) is a provincial consortium with over 300 members representing public, academic and specialized libraries (TAL, n.d.); the NEOS consortium includes 17 government, health and academic libraries in northern and central Alberta and provides a shared catalogue and centralized resource sharing services (NEOS Library Consortium, n.d.). An example of a more specialized collaboration is the Health Knowledge Network, which is a partnership with the nearby University of Calgary to provide access to health information for practitioners and researchers in the province of Alberta. This combination of contributions to major research networks with localized partnerships that facilitate more direct collection management activities is typical among academic libraries in Canada.

Cooperation among libraries is essential to the library’s mission of providing access to information for their users. While trends in the size, goals and outcomes of consortia continue to evolve, a collective approach to collection management remains deeply entrenched, particularly in academic libraries. When a library collection is viewed as a shared resource, the scope of materials available expands, but the complexity of managing a collection grows as well: for the networked library, decisions about purchasing, licensing and retention must take into account the opportunities and responsibilities implicated in each partnership.

Challenges

A combination of human and technical challenges can limit the success of collaborative collection management activities. Professional pride from both librarians and other stakeholders like university faculty around the traditional goal of building an impressive local collection may be the first barrier to overcome (Johnson, 2018). After an agreement is entered, issues with communication, administration and leadership may emerge, and tensions can grow if the costs and benefits of the collaboration and the distribution of labour are not perceived as fair by all members (Johnson, 2018; Burgett et al., 2004). Success also depends on an effective infrastructure to support bibliographic and physical access to materials for all users (Johnson, 2018). This issue of access has become increasingly complex with the prevalence of e-resources, which are provided by a range of vendors with different policies around the use and sharing of their content. Ambitious visions for what a shared collection could be will inevitably be tempered by financial, interpersonal, technical and legal realities.

Teamwork & administration

Many of the greatest challenges to effective consortia are the same challenges faced by all shared endeavours: issues of teamwork and management. What are the costs and benefits of one’s library joining each consortium? Does the consortium have an effective administrative structure, clear goals, and a realistic financial plan? Can trust and shared vision be sustained throughout a partnership? These are the questions that often make or break a collaboration. Johnson (2018) quotes Branin: “cooperative collection development is at its most basic level a political, not a technical issue” (p. 353). Sustained efforts need to be made by library professionals for a collaboration to be successful (Clement, 2008). Consortia leaders need to ensure that communication and trust are being supported, and that policies and commitments are being adhered to. Without these efforts, partnerships may lack longevity or fall short of their goals.

With many consortia with different scopes and goals available, strategically choosing partners can also have a major impact on the viability of a library’s consortial activities. Relationships among organizations, like those between individuals, require time and energy to develop and sustain (Kaufman, 2012, p. 58). Liaising with a consortium can require advanced communication, management and decision-making skills. Clement’s (2008) survey found that senior librarians most often led consortial participation, and that familiarity with licensing, copyright, and evaluation of resources, as well as communication and negotiation skills, were all highly important—skills that most respondents felt their professional education had not adequately prepared them to implement (p. 200–201).

These relationships are further complicated by the fact that most libraries have several potentially overlapping collaborations and partnerships. A lack of clarity about accountabilities and responsibilities of each consortium and its governing members can lead to conflict and undue personal influence (Ridley, 2013). Clarity about structure is not only needed for functional reasons, but to understand the organization’s legal responsibilities—consortia may be organized as non-profits, divisions of university systems, government organizations, associations, or unaffiliated groups, and each of these statuses may come with certain recordkeeping and activity requirements (Horton, 2015b). The benefits of joining any consortium need to be weighed with a realistic assessment of the responsibilities, time and expertise that will be expected from each library.

Whose collection?

Another key barrier to collaborative collecting is the loss of control. Will collections still serve local users as they expect? Is one’s own library receiving a fair share of budget and locally stored materials? Many contemporary consortial collecting arrangements revolve around ‘big deals’ with vendors for e-resources,^[3] leaving individual librarians with little control over large portions of their collection budgets (Horava, 2018). Even retrospective arrangements like print preservation agreements place limits on collection autonomy by limiting the de-selection of materials.

There are costs associated with all types of collaborative collecting. In addition to membership fees and labour involved in administering or participating in consortial activities, costs related to the shared collections themselves also need to be analyzed. Shared or consortially negotiated digital licenses and other vendor packages might be lower in price than if they were negotiated alone, but could also include materials that are unnecessary for smaller or more specialized libraries, or lock libraries into multi-year deals that do not align with local budget changes (Horava, 2018). Shared print collections can incur costs in the forms of labour for collection analysis and project management, long-term provision of suitable storage space, and transportation and labour costs associated with interlibrary borrowing programs (Payne, 2016). The more varied a consortium’s membership is, the harder it can be to balance costs and benefits (Ridley, 2013), as the specific value each library derives from a partnership will vary depending on their users’ needs and the other networks and infrastructure available to each member.

Dempsey (2019) notes that a tension between autonomy and consolidation is persistent in library collaborations, especially when it comes to collection building: “new infrastructure (consortial borrowing system, for example, or shared storage) is being consolidated, while institutional collection development strategies remain autonomous” (p. 231). Whether it is librarians or other community members, such as faculty in an academic library, who have concerns about local control, the desire for local optimization is frequently what sets the boundary of a collaboration’s depth. The prevalence of consortia means that libraries are highly interdependent, and the values, culture and goals of each institution need to be considered if a partnership is to be successful in the long term (Ridley, 2013). Responsiveness to local user needs as well as to local challenges like budget reductions can be limited by existing consortial commitments.

To relinquish local control of large portions of the collection, trust that the consortium is acting in all members’ best interests is essential (Ridley, 2013), and this trust needs to be deliberately built. Chadwell (2009) suggests that these issues of trust and identity go hand in hand—a library should have a strong sense of their values and priorities before entering new partnerships, or they risk local concerns being subsumed by the priorities of the consortium. As an ever-increasing quantity of both information and formats competes for limited collection budgets, any shared collection commitments must be weighed carefully for their relevance to the library’s users.

Electronic licensing

Although e-resource licensing costs are often cited as a reason for the current proliferation of consortia, digital collecting has also introduced new issues with resource sharing. Nearly all ARL members have been found to belong to consortia “for the primary purpose of acquiring commercially available e-resources” (Johnson, 2018, p. 338), including libraries not previously involved in cooperative agreements. While the greater bargaining power provided by these buying clubs can help to manage the impacts of prohibitive e-resource pricing, these arrangements do not always serve all members equally. Although the ability to share the task of negotiating licenses is considered by many to be the primary advantage of consortial membership (Murphy, 2019), many e-resource licenses do not support cooperative collection use: they may operate on an individual library basis, restrict interlibrary lending, or not allow multiple simultaneous users (Sweet & Clarage, 2020; Machovec, 2020). These restrictions on sharing digital resources were especially impactful when existing resource-sharing networks could not lend physical materials during Covid-19 shutdowns (Machovec, 2020).

When libraries acquire physical materials, they make a single purchase and can then lend and keep these materials as they see fit, including lending materials to other libraries and sharing copies of portions of these resources subject to local copyright legislation (specifically “fair dealing” in Canada and “fair use” in the U.S.) (De Castell et al., 2022, pp. 11–12). While in theory these principles should apply regardless of format, e-resource purchases are often subject to contracts that place additional conditions on their use. Pricing may depend on the number of expected users, whether a resource can be viewed by one or many users simultaneously, and whether resources are purchased in perpetuity or for a limited amount of time. New models also continue to emerge, such as patron-driven acquisitions (PDA), where materials are only purchased when accessed by users. Further context regarding these e-resource purchase and lending models can be found in other chapters, particularly “The Ebook Pricing War: The Fight for Control Between Libraries and Publishers” by Amy Nowakowsky and Kat Voy, and “‘Just in Time’ Collection Development: Background and Current Challenges” by Melissa Ramsey.

The complexity of contracts for e-resources is increased when a consortium negotiates a purchase on behalf of many members. For legal purposes, the authority for a consortium to negotiate and make a purchase on behalf of members, and to accept the contractual terms, needs to be clearly established (Machovec, 2015). Conflicts can arise if a library has multiple options for contracts with the same vendor through different consortia, especially if a deal was negotiated based on a certain number of expected participants. Price isn’t the only consideration in selecting the best deal—e-resource contracts may also override existing ILL practices, particularly by restricting full ebook lending, and restrictions may also be placed on which types of users are authorized to view the resources. For example, alumni and community patrons of an academic library may not have access to all digital resources, and consortium members with existing resource sharing agreements may not necessarily share all e-resources. Regardless of what a consortium’s goals may encompass, if e-resource licensing is part of their mandate, negotiating these contracts may require a disproportionate amount of staff time and effort.

A recent report from the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) paints clear concerns about the current state of the information industry: underfunded libraries have turned over control of much of their information infrastructure, leading to “‘learned helplessness’ in the face of increasingly privatized information” (ICOLC, 2022, p. 3) and dwindling options due to consolidation. While consortia increase bargaining power for libraries, vendors are also increasing their power as smaller publishers and platforms are absorbed by the largest companies, which can lead to higher costs and less responsiveness to changing library needs. The influence of multinational publishers not only on pricing for libraries, but on interpretations of the fundamental copyright provisions that support library lending, represents a major challenge to not only collection development, but to other collaborative collection management projects, such as the ability to digitize and share historical holdings (De Castell et al., 2022). The ability to share library collections, despite its long history, is far from guaranteed in the evolving information environment. However, strong organization and creative solutions have allowed many consortia to continue to find success in collaborative collection development initiatives.

Responses

While many potential stumbling blocks are present for consortia, these partnerships are essential for many collection activities and are worth investing in. Many challenges can be addressed through the same techniques that apply to any management and relationship-building activities, such as communication, planning, and shared vision. New technologies and strategies for facilitating and tracking the use of shared collections continue to emerge. The developing challenges around collective use of digital collections might call for bolder approaches, however, going beyond coordinated collecting to the creation of shared platforms and tools for providing access to and even producing digital resources.

Strong Foundations

The first step in a collaboration is to develop the relationship itself. Ongoing communication and information sharing is essential (Chadwell, 2009; Johnson, 2018). Libraries should enter partnerships with a strong knowledge of their own priorities and where they are compatible with prospective partner libraries (Kaufman, 2012). Partners should be appropriate to the type of collaborative activities being considered—Johnson (2018) suggests that “institutions in geographic proximity have more success with coordinated collection development” (p. 335), as the ability to provide quick delivery of physical materials between libraries means duplication of resources can be avoided without having a major impact on the user experience. Similarities in size, budget and mission are beneficial for close coordination, as these often correlate with similarities in collection goals, and regional connections are still common for most consortia (Burgett et al., 2004). However, partners in digital initiatives and special projects may be more dispersed or diverse in nature, with shared goals and complementary resources becoming the more essential considerations. For example, a larger library may have more extensive technological and labour resources that can be used to expand access to a specialized collection held by a smaller library.

Many administrative challenges can be addressed with clear agreements and policies. Documentation that establishes both the vision of a consortia and how it will be translated into practice is an essential foundation (Burgett et al., 2004). Once compatible partners and shared goals have been identified, formal policies for the consortium should be developed. Ideally these policies should articulate the vision and goals for the collaboration; identify and address operation, governance and legal issues; establish membership policies, roles and responsibilities, and communication channels; define investments of time, energy and money; formalize the partnership as its own organization; and set benchmarks for evaluating success (Kaufman, 2012, p. 60). Strong metrics for evaluating collection use can help to optimize future directions and monitor the usefulness of shared e-resource subscriptions (Mongeon et al., 2021). Logistics of the particular projects that will be undertaken need to be clearly laid out, such as holding locations and methods of discovery and delivery for shared print collections (Payne, 2016). A business model that accurately assesses costs of staffing both the projects or services and administering the consortium itself, as well as transportation and space for physical materials, is also essential. Costs should be shared equitably and in a manner that encourages participation while still being sustainable—tiered cost-sharing is a common approach, where membership fees are relative to a member library’s size or budget. Financial transparency, such as ensuring all members are consulted on pricing models, is an essential component of building trust (Horava, 2018). Thoughtfully created structures are often what sustains a collaboration through difficulties or changes in direction.

Future-Oriented Collaborations

While clearly defined objectives help consortia to take action, the best partnerships are those that are willing to continue to take on new ideas—Ridley (2013) suggests that for many collaborations, the overarching objective is to give each participating library more capability than they had separately, allowing for more transformative development than would be possible individually. These transformations take many forms. Atkinson (2004) made three predictions about the future of collaborative academic library work that have proven apt. The first was that libraries would take increased responsibility for ensuring access to knowledge produced in their own institutions. Projects such as library hosting of open access journals, open educational resources and research repositories are manifestations of this, and are made possible for a wider range of institutions when the digital infrastructure for these projects is developed and maintained collaboratively.

Secondly, Atkinson (2004) spoke directly to coordinated collection development, stating that “to select something should no longer be understood as . . . equivalent to buying it” (pp. 15–16). Access to core resources should be shared, and extended collecting in local networks should be strategically coordinated to maximize scope. Mongeon et al. (2021) found that Canadian universities had a high degree of overlap in their core, most-used journals—and that many current “big deal” packages include a large number of rarely-used materials that could be opted out from by many institutions if other strategies like ILL could fill the need for access to more niche materials. This suggests that negotiating consortial access to these core materials would benefit all members, as a large portion of materials are used across all institution types even if peripheral needs vary. This ties closely to Atkinson’s final note, which is that an access-based approach to secondary literature such as journals will diverge from a preservation approach to primary literature. To preserve rare and low-use materials, “retrospective synergistic cooperation” (p. 17) will be needed. This is manifested in shared print agreements, as well as large digital library initiatives, that ensure peripheral materials remain available in some form.

The following examples explore in more depth some of the ways consortia have been using their shared resources to test new ideas and systems and respond to these ongoing changes in the information environment.

Evaluating New Models. Consortia can provide the resources to undergo pilot projects that test the feasibility of different collection strategies. Sweet & Clarage (2020) discuss a series of pilot projects in patron-driven acquisition (PDA) undertaken by an academic library consortium in Illinois. The first involved loading records for books not held by any members into the consortial catalogue, which would be ordered by the consortium rather than any individual library if requested by a patron. This project was followed by an ebook PDA pilot, where titles used a certain number of times were purchased in perpetuity for use across the whole consortium, resulting in over 3000 titles being purchased out of the consortial budget that were accessible by over 100 members at no additional cost (p. 437). This is an example of how collecting can be optimized on a group level—user responsiveness is possible while still minimizing purchases by proactively avoiding duplication within the local network.

The Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) has also tested consortial ebook PDA programs (Jurczyck et al., 2019). OCUL had already established a platform, Scholar’s Portal, for locally hosting ebooks for shared use in the consortium; for this pilot they added approximately 4000 ebook titles that could be purchased for the use of the whole consortium if accessed 25 or more times. While materials remained more heavily used within the libraries that had requested them, the collection developed during the pilot has nonetheless seen consistent use. Weeding the pool for duplication of already-held materials, as well as potentially restricting PDA efforts to sub-groups of member libraries with more similar program offerings or otherwise using human mediation to select only more broadly applicable requests were suggested as ways a future program could be more efficient. While these experiments in e-resource licensing do not provide universal solutions to the many challenges implicated by digital resources, a willingness to engage in and gather data from these types of shared projects is essential to establishing best practices for future consortial purchasing plans.

Beyond the Big Deal. Flexible approaches to collaborative collecting can help libraries to balance consortial benefits with local needs. Okerson (2012) describes a case where consortium members could choose which databases and deals they subscribe to, and notes that other solutions like consortial borrowing arrangements and shared repositories could help fill the gaps for libraries when subscribing to many “big deals” is no longer feasible. Membership in multiple consortia also potentially creates more chances for flexibility, and allows each consortium to develop a structure and set of values that serve specific needs rather than seeking agreement on all topics.

Ridley (2013) describes the ways in which the roles of various academic consortia in Ontario emerged from different shared goals—the TriUniversity Group of Libraries (TUG) is a close collaboration between three similar library systems^[4] that began with the implementation of a shared integrated library system (ILS). While shared licensing was an activity of the consortium at one time, these activities have moved to larger groups, but the shared infrastructure—the ILS, shared offsite storage, a delivery service—have remained an important asset for the partner universities. However, the libraries in this group also remain members of the larger consortia OCUL and CRKN. OCUL has been successful at providing digital infrastructure, most notably the Scholar’s Portal Digital Library, to 21 member libraries, most of whom would not have had the resources to create this type of system on their own. Meanwhile, CRKN has emerged as the primary negotiator for electronic journal licensing. Separating these activities gives each library more flexibility to shift their interdependencies over time—Queen’s University in Ontario, for example, opted out of certain CRKN deals that no longer served the university well, but remained closely invested in OCUL projects such as migration to a new discovery platform, and entered a new shared print and digitization partnership with only six member libraries (Keep@Downsview, based at the University of Toronto) (McMullen, 2021, p. 3–5). A further example of a collection need that can lead to new collaborations is the growing area of research data management, as discussed by Dandi Wang in the chapter “Collection Development and Management of Research Data.” While navigating a network of different collaborations can be labour-intensive, proactively evaluating a library’s level of participation in various consortia can help to maintain a level of autonomy in how the collection is managed while balancing costs and opportunities.

Library-Led Infrastructure. Another solution to e-resource licensing challenges is to find alternate modes of information sharing entirely separate from major publishers. The ICOLC report (2022) notes that “the origins of many library services are collaborative and community-owned” (p. 3), but in recent decades there has been an increasing reliance on proprietary and corporate-controlled solutions. They argue that collaboration can help libraries overcome challenges in budgets and expertise by pooling resources, so that a return to library-led solutions can be made (ICOLC, 2022). While only the largest libraries may have the resources to create new infrastructure on their own, consortia can be an avenue for sharing the work and expanding the impact of investments in projects like open source alternatives for integrated library systems, catalogues, repositories, and other infrastructure. These library-led solutions may be able to facilitate smoother resource-sharing by emphasizing library needs for interoperability, inter-library loan and bibliographic utility.

Sweet & Clarage (2020) reinforce this idea that cooperation between libraries is essential in the current economic climate, and suggest consortial budgets should be directed not just to purchasing, but to creating shared infrastructure and training for creating and sharing openly licensed resources. As many universities invest in creating open journals and open repositories for local scholarly work, libraries can play a role in ensuring this work reaches users throughout their networks—for example, OCUL’s Alma discovery platform includes listings for open access articles alongside purchased materials (McMullen, 2021, p. 5). Open publishing infrastructure may also be provided by purpose-developed collaborations such as Open Education Alberta (the publisher of this book). In this case, the University of Alberta Library, as the largest library system in the partnership, provides infrastructure for hosting and publishing open educational resources (Open Education Alberta, n.d.b), with project directions and publications contributed by over a dozen other post-secondary institutions in the province (Open Education Alberta, n.d. a).

Collaboration not just within but between consortia on digital projects can create even larger impacts. Digitization as an aspect of shared print programs can combine local structures with larger organizations like HathiTrust to not only preserve unique scholarly materials, but provide global access. Bringing together Canada’s current regional print preservation groups into a national plan may also be a possible future direction for creating a more robust shared information network (McMullen, 2021).

As the landscape of scholarly communications continues to change, library networks have the potential to become leaders in ensuring diverse information in all formats is made accessible to as many users as possible. Horava (2018) suggests “the new frontier for library consortia is moving away from content focus,” (p. 18), towards investment in the whole process of scholarly communication—a task too large to take on without cooperation. Resource sharing, then, can be conceptualized as not only the direct sharing of information materials, but as the sharing of expertise and funding through consortia to support new directions in collection services.

Conclusion

Teamwork is never simple, but collaboration among libraries remains an essential method for providing patrons with access to a wide variety of materials. Collaborations often arise in response to challenges (Ridley, 2013), and collaboration will likely be the answer to many of the collection management challenges that continue to emerge. By investing in strong foundations early in a collaboration, and being open to further partnerships with groups, consortial and otherwise, that share their goals, libraries can achieve goals that are not possible in isolation. With strong management and shared values as a foundation, library consortia and other partnerships can provide crucial avenues for sharing resources, ideas and expertise to expand the scope and infrastructure of library collections.

Sources for Further Reading

Hale, D. (ed.) (2016). Shared Collections: Collaborative Stewardship. ALA Editions.

Two of the introductory articles in this book are cited in this chapter. However, further explorations of current collaborative collection issues, as well as several illustrative case studies, are also available in this book.

ICOLC (2022). Strategies for Collaboration: Opportunities and Challenges to Build the Future We Need. https://icolc.net/statements/strategies-collaboration-opportunities-and-challenges-build-future-we-need

ICOLC represents perspectives from about 200 library consortia around the world and exists purely as an information-sharing network for consortia issues, making them uniquely well situated to provide perspectives on contemporary issues facing library consortia. This recent report provides an overview of current challenges as well as many ambitious possible future directions for library consortia, including specific examples of open-source or community-led library management software available as of 2022 on pages 16–25.

Johnson, P. (2018). Collaborative collection development and management. In Johnson, P., Fundamentals of Collection Development and Management, 323–365. ALA Editions.

Johnson provides a comprehensive introduction to the history and recent role of consortia and other cooperative agreements in library collection development. Strategies, challenges and infrastructure requirements for a wide range of potential cooperative collection management activities are discussed.

Kaufman, P. (2012). Let’s get cozy: Evolving collaborations in the 21st century. Journal of Library Administration, 52, 53–69. https://doi.org/10.1080/01930826.2011.629962

Kaufman brings together the quickly-evolving technological environment with age-old wisdom about relationship building to make a case for the importance of collaborations for the contemporary library. A clear summary of points to consider when establishing a partnership, on p. 60, as well as several examples of new or evolving partnerships on pp. 63–67, are two highlights.

Ridley, M. (2013). Culture, values and change: observations from three consortia in Canada. In Melling, M. & Weaver, M. (eds.), Collaboration in Libraries and Learning Environments. Facet Publishing. https://doi.org/10.29085/9781856049511

Ridley explores the perennial issues of collaboration through the lens of values and culture. These points are supported through specific examples from Ontario library consortia that paint a useful picture of the ways consortia interact in the Canadian research library community.

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