Presents perspective of the executive director of the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS) on information networking, covering developments in the last 15 years, NCLIS activities, economic and political problems of networking, ownership and governance of networks and databases, and other difficult and challenging…

Describes the Washington Research Library Consortium (WRLC), whose member universities share book collections, an online library system containing multiple electronic resources including a union catalog, an offsite book storage facility, and a separately staffed service organization. WRLC's organizational development, structure, governance,…

Discusses academic library consortia, examines types of consortia, and presents three case histories (OhioLINK, PALCI and CIC). Highlights include economic competition; changes in information access and delivery; growth of information technology; quality improvement; and future strategies, including pricing models for electronic information,…