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Unit 2: Colleges and Universities Libraries

• to extend the benefit of Consortium to its associate members including private universities Notes
and colleges;
• to impart training to the users, librarians, research scholars and faculty members of the
institutions in use of electronic resources with an aim to optimize their usage;
• to promote use of e-resources with gradual decrease in print subscription;

• to promote interaction and inter-library cooperation amongst the participating universities;
• to evaluate the usage of the subscribed resources and to identify new resources that are
required to be subscribed under the programme;
• to bring qualitative change in teaching, learning and research with an aim to meet the
ever growing challenges of globalization of higher education; and
• to increase the research productivity of the institutions both in terms of quality and
quantity of publications.

Benefits
The consortia-based subscription to e-resources is a viable solution for increasing the access
to electronic resources across institutions at a lower rate of subscription. Major benefits of
UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium are as follows:
(i) The Consortium acts as a single-window service for a large number of universities with
their diverse research and academic interest;
(ii) The Consortium, with its collective strength of participating institutions, attracts highly
discounted rates of subscription with most favourable terms of agreement for a wider
range of e-resources. Most of the e-publishers have responded positively to the call of
the Consortium. The rates offered to the consortium are lower by 60% to 99% depending
upon the category of institutions;
(iii) Users have immediate access to material previously not subscribed to, at no incremental
cost for accessing back files;
(iv) It improves the existing library services and reduces the subscription cost;
(v) The research productivity of beneficiary institutions is expected to improve with increased
access to international databases and full-text resources;
(vi) The Consortium is expected to trigger remarkable increase in sharing of both print and
electronic resources amongst participating library through J-GATE Custom Contents for
Consortia (JCCC);
(vii) The Consortium has been opened-up for all other universities / educational institutions
through its “Associate Membership Programme”. Private universities and other institutions
can join the Consortium and get the benefit of not only highly discounted rates of
subscription but also the favourable terms and conditions;
(viii) Members of the Consortium have the benefit of cap on the annual increase in the rates
of subscription. While the usual increase in price of e-resources vary from 15 to 20%, the
consortium enjoys the cap on increase in price ranging from 5% to 8%;
(ix) The Consortium is offered better terms of agreement for use, archival access and preservation
of subscribed electronic resources, which would not have been possible for any single
institutions; and

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