Page 60 - DLIS001_FOUNDATION_OF_LIBRARY_AND_INFORMATION_SCIENCE

Unit 3: Place of Library in Dissemination of Information

Notes
2. Limited Finance: Crunching funds is another factor has lead libraries to go for
consortia development activities. Libraries are finding it hard to maintain the
subscription to even for core journals due to ever increasing cost of the journal
subscription especially international ones by Indian Universities which is even less
than 300 titles, whereas the average number of journals subscribed by the western
countries is much higher. For example, there is an increase in the budget of periodicals
in University of Pune library by 5%, but yet this library has to reduce the number of
titles subscribed every year because of rising subscription price of journals.
3. Users Demand: Access to Information differs from user to user. Students may require
books for educational purpose but a scientist or a specialist needs some advanced
literature in his area of research. To meet all these requirements successfully by a
single library is quite impossible. No library, however big, is in a position to claim
self-sufficiency in these multitude and mass sources of knowledge. The demand of
the user is changing and ever increasing with newer revolutions and developments.

4. Professionalization: The professionalization of library service has the most
important influence on consortia. The changing role of librarian from ‘gatekeeper
of information’ to manage ‘gateways to information’ has enhanced the value of
library consortia.
Issues

The library consortium activity is a complex process, which involves the wholehearted
support and concerted efforts of the librarians, their management and the publishers.
They form an important trio in the new scholarly information environment. A large
number of issues related to consortia include zeroing in and identifying the resources,
uninterrupted online access, perpetual access to back issues, pricing, licensing, subscription
payment, copyright and archival solutions, etc.
1. Resources Identification: Identifying the most suitable product which is agreed
upon by all the members of the consortium is more or less a difficult proposition.
This is mostly because each and every member will have their own wish list of
information products and services, though the overlap between the products will be
on the higher side in the case of an ideal homogeneous group.

2. Technology Infrastructure: Long range planning and sourcing of the appropriate IT
and Communication infrastructure conducive for proper delivery of information
resources is prerequisite for every participating library.
3. Pricing: As discussed earlier, there are no standard practices or processes being
followed by majority of the publishers of scholarly literature and hence this is a
gray area all together. In most cases, cost of the journals are out of reach of many of
our libraries and only a consortia approach could provide some meaningful practical
solution. Publishers are invited for negotiations and asked to offer their best prices
to the consortia. Several methods of pricing are followed, but what is important is
that finally the price offered by the publisher should be economically viable for the
participating libraries. And it should also ensure uninterrupted and perpetual access
to the resources.
4. Access: Various access methods are offered by publishers towards accessing their
resources and it varies from case to case. Access authentication could be User ID/
Password based or IP based which are more popular. Uninterrupted and hassle free
access to the scholarly content is the ultimate objective of the consortium but varying
practices may make access sometimes cumbersome to use consortia approach.
Contd....

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 55