Most academic libraries are members of at least one consortium, and many belong to multiple consortia. However, consortia vary widely in the services they offer and in how they are structured. This project, carried out in the fall of 2009, focused on a review of fifteen academic library consortia that: Included two-year colleges, either…

This article explores the historical foundations of the South Carolina Digital Library, a collaborative statewide program that ties together academic special collections and archives, public libraries, state government archives, and other cultural resource institutions in an effort to provide the state with a comprehensive database of online…

The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), a unit within the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, is the world's largest social science data archive. The data sets in the ICPRS database give the social sciences librarian/subject specialist an opportunity of providing value-added bibliographic…

The Carolina Consortium came into being for one purpose: to conclude deals that would allow the sharing of both the costs and the content of a large number of academic journals from three major publishers--Wiley, Springer, and Blackwell. In just a few months--and without any central authority, funding, or administrative overhead--librarians from…

Florida's Ask a Librarian service (http://www.askalibrarian.org) brings virtual reference to users at their moment of need via the Internet. Ask a Librarian is a growing service with 76 participating libraries including public, school, four-year, and community college libraries. The following article describes how Ask a Librarian was developed…

Thirty years ago most resource sharing took place between libraries, with a few formal organizations (library consortia) providing logistical support. Today there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of organizations around the world facilitating resource sharing. Automation has greatly accelerated the growth of resource sharing. As access to…

When the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), an academic consortium of 12 major teaching and research universities began implementing the Virtual Electronic Library, a Continuum of Security Needs list was created which outlines the security and authentication issues that must be addressed. The thirteen security items on the list are…

What is the impact of an academic library consortium on the perceptions of library services experienced by users of the member institutions' libraries? What is the impact of an academic library consortium on the perceptions of library services experienced by users of the member institutions libraries? In 2002 and 2003, OhioLINK (Ohio's consortium…

As a reference guide for library professionals, this volume helps librarians prepare for the future in the growing electronic environment by examining the historical and theoretical background of the National Electronic Library and assessing the role of libraries in the past, present, and future. The book is divided in two sections: "The…