Consortia build negotiating strength.

Recently I negotiated, alone, an agreement for an electronic resource. It was intimidating.

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I would not call it negotiation. It was my clear submission to the mercy of the publisher. I had no experience, no one to discuss it with, and no support group.

By the time I realized I was entering into unfamiliar grounds and the product was too expensive, it was too late. I had already requested an invoice, inquired about the availability of funds and somehow entered into an oral agreement with the publisher.

I tried to get out of it by saying maybe I would just go with the print resource. But the publisher made it clear that the figure on the invoice was the amount due. I was so shocked and so afraid of being sued or having the higher levels of my organization get involved that I caved in. Luckily, I had only licensed the product for one user and for one year. Later on, though, I found out another library in the same ministry was licensing the same resource; we could have collaborated.

Consortia

It is difficult for special libraries to form consortia or to join in any collaborative effort, simply because of their specialized nature and the different types of information they each provide. However, once common needs are established, consortia provide new opportunities for libraries.

Consortia are now emerging rapidly; and the ones that exist are becoming larger and larger, as individual libraries continually come together to join.

Consortia of libraries operate at the local, state, and regional levels. There also are different types: loose federation, the most common, governed by member libraries or by a sponsor with a group chaired by a member; multi-type/multi-state networks, which have separate governing bodies elected by their members; the tightly knit federation, which has a highly select membership; the centrally funded state-wide consortium, restricted to state colleges and universities within a state (Childs and Weston). However, the needs of a library also play a major role in determining membership.

Membership fees are required to join a consortium, but the "type of funding for each consortium depends on its own agenda, how it was created, and how it is managed" (Childs and Weston). The fewer the libraries involved, the higher the cost per library to participate.

Some networks of consortia are quite complex; however, a consortium generally works like this:

Member libraries come together and select a committee, a consortia committee, with representatives from each library. These are the more experienced staff or librarians who have already been involved in contract negotiation. However, less experienced staff may also be on the committee to gain experience. Some consortia may even initially work with a contract lawyer.

The consortium may decide to deal directly with a given publisher or to go through a vendor. John Blosser argues that vendors act as intermediaries between libraries and publishers and work to standardize the format, language, definitions, and general conditions specified in licensing contracts. However, as consortia gain experience in negotiation, they can deal directly with the publisher and cut the cost of a middleman.

Many online resources provide principles, guidelines, and standards to follow in the negotiation of licenses such as "Principles for Licensing Electronic Resources," which the Special Library Association was instrumental in formulating (www.sla.org/content/SLA/advocacy/infobank/principles.cfm). The International Coalition of Library Consortia, also known as the Consortium of Consortia, also has published a "Statement of Current Perspective and Preferred Practices for the Selection and Purchase of Electronic Information" (updated October 2004, www.library.yale.edu/consortia/2004currentpractices.htm#1111).

Benefits of Consortia

Consortia take the burden of license negotiations off the shoulders of the individual librarian. Membership in a consortium gives individuals who are comfortable and experienced in the art of negotiation such responsibility. For them, the consortium offers a support structure for the review of license contracts and the clarification of difficult clauses in the contract. What one librarian may overlook, another may not.

According to Sheila Lacroix, the library coordinator at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health at the University of Toronto, one important role played by the Health Sciences Information Consortium of Toronto, is advocacy (personal communication, March 5, 2004). The consortium provides support for issues the library may need to take up with higher administration. An individual librarian may not be able to convince the directors within an organization of the need resources, but a larger body advocating for the needs of its member libraries provides an advantage for each library involved.

One significant role of consortia is to counteract what some see as an inverse relationship between electronic resources and licenses. In "Reference and the Licensing Agreement" (Canadian Law Libraries, 2002), Nancy McCormack says that "at the same time that electronic resources are opening a vast universe of information for researchers, they are shrinking that same universe for reference librarians and document delivery personnel as a result of the licensing agreements that accompany these products." Consortia not only play the role of intermediary in the negotiation of license contracts, but because of strength in numbers, they are able to widen the universe of resources for libraries--in effect, increase the quantity. It is more likely that a publisher will be more willing to adjust to the needs of a group of libraries rather than to one library.

There is also the advantage of increased access for more people from a consortium deal. Librarians argue that license agreements work counter intuitively to the role of libraries, which is access, and that the agreements attempt to limit access. McCormack phrases it nicely when she says, "The library profession has a prime directive: to make information available. Yet these licensing agreements require us, under certain circumstances, not to make information available." Even within the organization, "access may be purchased to an online source that provides a username and password for one individual only. The price increases if additional individuals obtain usernames and passwords," McCormack says.

However, membership in a consortium opens up access for more people, by decreasing the per-person costs for the use of electronic resources. The Canadian National Site Licensing Project has one agreement in which an "estimated 650,000 students, researchers and academic scientists in the Canadian consortium ... have unlimited online access to full text, peer-reviewed articles" (CNSLP). Recently the Research and Information Center at the Ministry of Finance Toronto was able to take advantage of a license agreement that increased access from one individual to 131 people (Helen Katz, personal communication, March 6, 2004).

Many member libraries, may say that the greatest advantage of consortia membership--or even the reason for such membership--is the reduced prices for electronic products. A consortium buying electronic products is somewhat like bulk buying, and "costs reduction, more specifically the unit costs of providing core services is a primary benefit gained from consortial membership ... Because of high material costs, especially for periodical subscriptions, libraries are interested in getting more bang for the buck out of their budgetary expenditures. Membership in a consortium allows a group of libraries to pool their financial resources to leverage greater control over their marketplace" (Childs and Weston).

However, even if a library is not able to benefit from low costs because they are not part of a particular license agreement, membership in a consortium also facilitates greater resource sharing and interlibrary lending among member libraries. In license agreements, publishers may want to restrict interlibrary loans, but IFLA's "Licensing Principles" advises, "Provisions for interlibrary loan or equivalent services should be included" in agreements. The consortium signs an agreement as one body, so sharing within this body should be allowed between consortium members.

The Health Sciences Information Consortium of Toronto has as part of its mandate cooperative resource sharing initiatives and collection rationalization, as well as free lending of books and journal articles among member libraries. "There can be no doubt that resource-sharing programs need special libraries, just as much as specials need those programs. Special libraries constitute between them an enormous research collection ... Special libraries can bring to networking different perceptions about the information process by virtue of the cross section of the community they serve ... Indeed it is the variety of participants that enable such resource sharing programs to flourish (Borchardt). Collaborative efforts among these libraries provide this opportunity.

Consortia positively influence the marketplace in the creation of electronic products. An example of the influence on electronic products is the Electronic Resources Subcommittee of the Toronto consortium. The committee evaluates resources' content, platform, interfaces, and so on, and voices collective user concerns to vendors on performance and quality standards. Therefore, the ability of consortia to influence the marketplace, not only because of their collective power, but also because of the feedback given to vendors, is an important role of consortia with respect to electronic products.

Another important role of consortia is facilitating professional development for librarians in member libraries. As part of its strategic goals, the Toronto consortium aims to facilitate effective librarian instruction of clients in the use of knowledge-based resources, as well as ongoing communication, professional development, and information exchange among all members. As part of its negotiation for electronic products, consortia negotiate for ongoing training--for example searching strategies for abstracts, full text, keywords, etc.

Advantage of Consortia To Publishers

Though it may appear that consortia operate to the disadvantage of publishers, there are advantages to be gained for publishers also. Kohl identified a number of these advantages. Significantly, with the rise of journal prices in the 1980s and 1990s, consortia were able to stop the large-scale cancellation of journal subscriptions when individual libraries were not able to afford the increased costs. For a larger body, increased costs of electronic resources are not as burdensome. Subsequently, publishers are now able to experience revenue increase and establish predictability and stability in their markets. There is also the increased visibility of their journals through wider distribution.

Kohl, discussing the OhioLINK consortia model says, "What is remarkable is how well this model works for both publishers and libraries. Publishers increase their revenue while only giving up part of their market, which is probably never going to buy their product anyway ... Further, the costs of providing access to many copies of electronic versions of the journals also does not increase for the publisher in any significant way after the first electronic copy."

Given the strength of consortia, publishers must respond to the needs of libraries. Consortia should take a big chunk of credit for the clear and positive collaborative effort between publishers and libraries.

Problems

However, before you start making phone calls and searching the Internet for a consortium you can join, you should also know there might be some hitches. Baker discussed a number of problems, such as limited staff resources, different pricing models, and the overwhelming number of "special offers" that bombard consortia staff. There is also the problem of overlapping consortia, the dilemma of participation in too many cooperative activities, and the fact that a library's selection of one consortium deal might negatively affect colleagues who are in another consortium (Machovec, 2000). According to Olivia Madison, "challenges facing consortia center on increased competition, severely strained budgets of their members, limited consortia budgets, and the need for staff and member-based leadership to effectively carry on consortial business" (Snyder, 2004, p. 6).

Many special libraries simply do not join consortia because of the fees for membership. Another issue raised by Katz is the time-consuming work involved in starting a consortium--or even being a member of one.

Lacroix also mentioned of the time and "extra work" involved as a result of membership, especially for the library whose staff has responsibility for an issue on behalf of other member libraries. She also pointed out the bulk packages that her library sometimes gets from a license deal may be of little or no use to her library because of specialized needs. "You get what you sometimes don't need or want" (personal communication March 6, 2004).

The advantage of special libraries--their unique collections--seems to be a disadvantage when it comes to joining consortia. Says JoAnn McQuillan, director of information and communications at the Institute of Communications and Advertising, "I am too small and isolated to get involved in any group buying/licensing. Very few solos would be involved in this" (personal communication, March 5, 2004).

Another problem could be internal conflicts among members that may fragment consortia and result in prolonged decision-making. In consortia of special libraries, what is the ideal resource when each library has its unique special collection? Who decides? Whose interest should come first? Larger libraries may have a louder voice in determining what is the ideal electronic resource to purchase.

Conclusion

However, many of these problems can be overcome if libraries that come together share the same needs and have the same objectives. Also, many of the electronic resources have multiple databases with multiple subject areas that all the libraries in the consortium can use. Moreover, membership in consortia provides an umbrella of protection and benefits for individual libraries.

Look around, there must be a few libraries nearby willing to collaborate, or maybe the consortia that is right for you already exists.

References

American Association of Law Libraries, American Library Association, Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries, Association of research Libraries, Medical Library Association, and Special Library Association. (1997, July 15). Principles for licensing electronic resources. Retrieved November 25, 2003, from http://www.arl.org/scomm/licensing/principles.html

Baker, Angee. (2000, June). The licensing deals that consortia can negotiate on behalf of their member libraries have a lot of impact on libraries collection development decisions. Computers in Libraries, 20(6), 46-50.

Blosser, John. (2000). Vendors and licenses: Adding value for customers. The Serials Librarian, 38(1-2), 143-146.

Borchardt, Max. (1983). Resource sharing in a network: The special library role. Australian Special Libraries News, 15(4), 147-151.

Canadian National Site Licensing Project (CNSLP). (2003, January). Canadian National Site Licensing Project acquires ScienceDirect[R] for online journal access. Retrieved March 1, 2004 from http://library.Concordia.ca/news/elseviernews.pdf

Childs, Miriam., & Weston, Will. (2003). Consortia and electronic journals: An overview. In David Fowler (ed.), E-Serials collection management: Transitions, trends and technicalities (pp. 91-110). Binghamton, NY: Haworth Information Press.

Davis, Trisha, L., & Reilly, John. J. (1998). Understanding license agreements for electronic products. The Serials Librarian, 34, 247-260.

Health Sciences Information Consortium of Toronto (2003). Consortium profile. Retrieved March 4, 2004, from http://www.library.utoronto.ca/hsict/profile.htm

International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC). About the International Coalition of Library Consortia. Retrieved February 13, 2003, from http://www.library.yale.edu/consortia/

International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). Licensing Principles (2001). Retrieved March 1, 2004, from http://www.ifla.org/V/ebpb/copy.htm

Kohl, David. (2003). Consortial licensing vs. tradition: Breaking up is hard to do [Electronic version]. Learned Publishing, 16(1), 47-53.

Machovec, George. S. (2000, December). Challenges facing consortia in the licensing of electronic resources. [Electronic version]. Online Libraries and Microcomputers, 18(12).

McCormack, Nancy. (2002). Reference and the licensing agreement. Canadian Law Libraries, 27(5), 244-245.

Snyder, Carolyn. A. (2004). The role and future of consortia from the perspective of research library directors: An interview with Olivia M.A. Madison, Iowa State University library, and James F. Williams II, University of Colorado. Library Administration & Management, 18(1), 4-7.

Tenopir, Carol. (2001). Still the big three in special libraries. Library Journal, 126(14), 43-44.

Yale University Library. (2003, September). International coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC). Retrieved February 13, 2004, from http://www.library.yale.edu/consortia/

Karen Eccles has a master's in Information Studies from the University of Toronto. She returned to Trinidad where she lives and was appointed librarian at a public branch library. In early 2005, she joined a special library in the Ministry of Finance, Inland Revenue Division. She currently holds the position of librarian at the Regulated Industries Commission Information Centre (a body responsible for the regulation of utilities in Trinidad and Tobago).

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