Library Consortia with reference to India: An over view
Introduction:-
Today is the age of globalization. We have to see everywhere globalization in different field of the world. Today we have to see that Information becomes a tool of achievement. Today we have to see growth in quantity, new methods of scholarly communications, complex technological requirements, stringent economic circumstances, increased user demand, diminishing budget, and the changing concept of ownership to access are serious concern. However the price escalation in e-resource subscription has great impact on libraries. To encounter with these prevalent situations and the confusing array of pricing-models have resulted the significant growth in number of Library Consortia – an emerging toolkit for libraries to survive... In fact, consortia based subscription of online resources has proved to be a common strategy among the libraries to sustain the buying power in collection development. Our is growing country. Like developed countries, Indian libraries also need to have changed strategies to face the unending fiscal constraints. In sense of our country one thing is fact in Information era –“ Library Consortium. ”.
What is Consortia?
Library Consortia is the sharing of resources among the participant’s libraries. In the second word consortium is the formal agreement between two or more libraries based on a number and functions over their respected areas. Library consortium development is rooted on the base library, it means, types o library like Academic, Special, Public etc. We have to know about a history of library cooperation. Consortium is the most modern developed form of one kind Library cooperation. A regional and local consortium may be based also driven by the need to provide remote users on a geographical area. A consortium is “an agreement, common platform other goal, aiming to reduce costs per unit through or group formed to undertake formation of purchasing consortia. These national regional and an enterprise consortia will be the focus of member”
Why Consortia?
Access to resources is now considered more important than the collection building. The
consortium facilitates the libraries to get the benefit of wider access to electronic resources at
affordable cost and at the best terms of licenses. A consortium, with the collective strength of
resources of various institutions available to it, is in a better position to resolve the problems of
managing, organizing and archiving the electronic resources.
- · The explosive growth of all form of literature.
- · Increasing demands on information.
- · Inflation in the cost of materials
- · Reduced budget provision
- · Impossible to be self sufficient to meet increasing demands of its users from own collection and it is not desirable to development huge collection anticipating future demands.
Definition of Consortia
- · An association or a combination, as of businesses, financial institutions, or investors, for the purpose of engaging in a joint venture.
- · A cooperative arrangement among groups or institutions: a library consortium. an association or society.
- · Consortia, Consortium a partnership; a union; a fellowship.
- · According to the Oxford English Dictionary, consortium means a “temporary cooperation of a number of powers, companies, etc. for a common purpose. It is an association of similar type of organization/ institution who are engaged for producing and servicing the common things for providing services for a specific purpose of its users”.
After this discussion the common definition of consortia is A consortium is an arrangement to optimize buying power and make best use of scarce procurement skills by aggregating the requirements of more than one local government organization,
Features of Consortia
These are the features of library consortia following below.
- · It provides each organizations and institutions with the capacity to share their resources without sacrificing the individuality of each member library
- · The collections of the Consortium libraries enable each member library to support scholarly research for its users.
- · Cooperative research and development in application of information communication and technology enhances service and realizes cost effectiveness.
- · Staff development and interaction with quality of service.
- · It is the cooperative task to reduce the cost of purchase consortia. As a result, end users can take benefits of more resources than would be available through one library.
- · To advance library services are provided with an emphasis on access to new E- resources including databases and services offered through the internet and www.
- · To expanding inter library searching at less cost is possible.
- · Uncertainties in legal issues are handled with more confidence.
Library Consortia in Indian Sense
INDEST (Indian National Digital Library in Engineering Sciences and Technology)
The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) has set-up the “Indian National Digital Library at New Delhi. in Engineering Sciences and Technology (INDEST) Consortium” on the recommendation made by the Expert Group appointed by the ministry under the chairmanship of Prof. N. Balakrishnan. The Ministry provides funds required for subscription to electronic resources for (48) institutions including IISc, IITs, NITs, IIMs and a few other centrally-funded Government institutions through the consortium Government or Government-aided engineering colleges and technical departments in universities have joined the Consortium with financial support from the AICTE. Today more than 1403 members of the consortia. The INDEST-AICTE Consortium is the most ambitious our country. The benefit of consortia- is for all AICTE-accredited and UGC-affiliated institutions. Recently engineering colleges and institutions joined under self support- new scheme.
CSIR Library Consortia (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research)
The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) was established in 1942 at New Delhi. has developed this consortia for to use of CSIR Laboratories for Accessing e-journals. CSIR in India has 40 scientific laboratories. The major functions of the laboratories are working on basic and applied research in various disciplines. Many of the laboratories have well equipped libraries. Access to electronic journals through the use of state-of-the art technology is possible in many of the libraries belonging to these laboratories. Each of the laboratories have a well established library or documentation centre that is also backed up with strategic information support from the National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resource (NISCAIR), a constituent establishment of CSIR formed with the merger of INSDOC and NISCOM. NISCAIR implemented agency for the process of providing access to globally available Electronic Journals to entire S&T staff of CSIR and its constituent units through a consortia approach. Today more than 4500 e-journals available on this consortium.
FORSA (Forum for Resource Sharing in AstronomyanAstrophysics) FORSA established in 1980.Astronomy librarians in the country together and a first meeting was held on July 29 1981 at Raman Research Institute, Bangalore and informally launched "FORUM FOR RESOURCE SHARING IN ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS" (FORSA) with a vision and mission to share resources held in each library. Since 1989, FORSA members meet every year, in conjunction with Annual Meeting of the Astronomical Society of India. A noteworthy feature of such meetings is that FORSA members interact with the astronomers in the Joint Session, in which developments in library and information handling activities in the field of astronomy/astrophysics are presented and comments from users are solicited to improve and expand library services. At present, there are eleven institute members, viz. ARIES, Bose Institute, Nizamiah Observatory, HCRI, IIA, IUCAA, NCRA (TIFR), PRL, RRI, SINP, SNBNCBS and TIFR.
HELINET (Health Sciences Library & Information Network)
HELINET was established by Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Science , Banglore. Health Science Library and Information Network. conceived by the University and successfully implemented which is first of its kind in the country. The consortium was started with a vision to improve the quality of education and research in the Health Science institutions of the state through enhanced access to high quality medical information HELINET’s goal is to deliver information to users’ desk-top, with round-the-clock access. The major benefit of this consortium was expanded access to core international e-journals. Before the launch of the consortium, access to foreign medical journals by each college was limited to around 100. HELINET has made it possible for each college to access and share the contents in more than 600 journals, in effect increasing the access provision by 6-times. To network all the Health Science libraries for minimizing the cost of acquisition and maintenance of learning resources and maximizing their utilization among the faculty, students and researchers in the health science colleges and institutions.
ICICI Knowledge Park (Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India) Government of Andhra Pradesh in collaboration with the Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India (ICICI), has set up a Knowledge park near Hyderabad. The ICICI Knowledge Park is a 200-acres facility, providing organizations with ready-to-occupy research and development laboratories. The park also provides infrastructure to small and medium scale enterprises at affordable prices. The ICICI Knowledge Park will also house a Biotech Knowledge Centre. A Biotechnology Park is being set up adjacent to the existing ICICI Knowledge Park.
IIM’s (The Indian Institute of Management) Library Consortia 2000 was a landmark in the history of IIMs, with the formation of the Consortium. The objective was to ensure among the IIMs, optimum utilization and enhancement of the resources, and to minimize the expenditure by consortia based subscriptions to the commonly subscribed databases and journals. The idea was to approach publishers of CD-ROM Databases to begin with, as a consortia, for better prize and services. Eventually, other digital databases and journals were also planned to be covered by the programme. The consortium meetings were proved to be very productive and successful.
UGC-DAE Consortium for Scientific Research DAE Library Consortia
UGC-DAE Consortium for Scientific Research, was elected a Fellow of The National Academy of Sciences, India at Allahabad in 2006. As per the present MoU, collaboration between the Department of Atomic Energy and University Grants Commission will be expanded to cover the disciplines of physical sciences, chemical sciences, life sciences and engineering sciences. DAE will continue to make the major research facilities accessible to the researchers from the universities and institutions of higher learning through the consortium. It will also make available the infrastructural and accessorial facilities such as laboratories, library, workshop etc. necessary to carry on the research work. The UGC, through the Consortium, will continue to make suitable financial provision for the salary of the core scientific, technical and administrative staff, fellowship to research students, the travel and stay of the visiting faculty, and other recurring and non-recurring expenditure on the functioning of the Consortium. It will also provide adequate grant for equipment and consumables.
UGC-Infonet INFLIBNET Consortium
The University Grants Commission (UGC), India has launched a consortium of
e-journals for its member universities to provide access to journals through its nationwide communication network, UGC-INFONET. It is overlaid on Education and Research Network (ERNET) infrastructure to provide assured quality of service and optimal utilization of Bandwidth resources. On behalf of the UGC, the INFLIBNET is executing the UGC-INFONET project in collaboration with the ERNET. This Consortium aims to promote the use of electronic database and full text access to journals by the research and academic community in the country. Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET) Centre, is the nodal agency for coordination of the UGC-INFONET. Today more than 294 members(Institution/Univeersity) are joined this programme. UGC-INFONET is a boon to the higher education system in the country.
TIFR(Tata Institute of Fundamental Research) Libraries Consortium: TIFR Library, Mumbai, took a resource sharing initiative in 1999 among the centers (five) and field stations (six) libraries of the ‘Institute’. These centers (HBCSE, NCRA, CML, NSBS, & TIFR Bangalore Center for Mathematics) and field stations (HEGRO, GMRT, CRL, RAC, Gravitation Laboratory, & Balloon Facility station) are the constituent part of the TIFR Institute. Initially they started consortia-based subscription from AMS (MathSciNet) & Springer LINK (unlimited access to 250 titles on Comp Sc, Life Sc, Math, Phy & Astro), for limited centers. Subsequently they increased the co-operation and now they have several consortia-based subscription of electronic resources.
ISI (Indian Statistical Institute) Library Consortia
The ISI (Indian Statistical Institute) Library initiated an idea under the chairmanship of Professor D. Dasgupta, which was implemented in 2003. Basically the ‘initiative’ was considered as a measure of duplicate (even triplicate) journal subscription, simultaneously made by two branch libraries of ISI at Delhi & Bangalore, which made little economic senses and consumed excessive library space. Several discussions were made in this direction. Ultimately an arrangement of consortia-based subscription to Science-Direct (a division of Reed Elsevier Inc) was made with the Elsevier group of publishers, and a “License Agreement” was signed between the two parties. The agreement offers, a platform fee (9% of the print cost) and content fee (based on print subscription), so as to provide unlimited access to more than 1500 titles from Elsevier group of publishers (ES, AP, NH, Pergamon, Excerpta Medica, etc.) with excellent search facility and access to archives. It included online full-text access to Elsevier journals over print subscriptions (more than 86) made by any of the three centers of ISI along with the complementary access to other centres. Additionally it provides online-full-text access to 48 journals (as selected by ISI faculty members from the Elsevier group of titles) in order to realize the amount of duplicated/ triplicated print subscriptions within three centers. Access to full-text journals is equally applicable to all the centers as mentioned above and in all the cases (print & exchange) back-files are available since 1995. Recently the ISI Library has become a member of the INDEST for the subscription of IEEE’s Electronic Library (IEL) and also formed a consortium for Springer-Link among the three centers. Importantly, the ISI Library is required to gear up the consortia based subscription of electronic resources and should pursue for the induction to possible members of ISI consortia initiatives.
ICAST (National Information Centre for Aerospace Science and Technology) Consortia
The NAL Library and Information Centre was established in the year 1959. The library has been recognized as the National Information Centre for Aerospace Science and Technology (ICAST) in 1975 by the National Information System for Science and Technology (NISSAT/DSIR), UNESCO and AR&DB. ICAST with its state-of-the-art expertise, infrastructure and services caters to the information requirements of the Indian aerospace community in particular and the engineering and technical personnel in general ICAST is well known for its aerospace collections of books, journals and specifically technical reports from NASA, DLR, ONERA, NLR, ARL and UTIAS. The centre offers Online, Web and CD-ROM based literature search services including access to e-journals, News clipping services, Online Public access Catalogue, Union Catalogue of Serials held by CSIR/ Aerospace Libraries. The centre has created a portal ‘Aero Info’ for Aerospace Science & Technology, the first of its kind in the country which serves as one window information search facility for Web sources in aerospace community in the world in general and India in particular.
Conclusion
The advent of e publishing has brought a revolution in journals publication, subscription
as well as access to the scholarly literature. The age of library consortia is at the doorsteps to
prove the library cooperation locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. It is the one of the
emerging tool kit for the maximum libraries to survive if the libraries have to provide information to their users.
References
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Prepaid By : જિતેન્દ્ર પરમાર
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