This chapter discusses the different aspects of cooperation and collaboration initiatives for libraries that includes associated opportunities, issues, and challenges. A proposed model for library consortia is depicted to illustrate the benefits that can help institutes to overcome these issues and challenges faced by the libraries for smooth functioning. The proposed cross-resource sharing model may provide an appropriate platform for both institutes and publishers that can enhance the library cooperation and collaboration in a much more effective way by overcoming the fund issues and to enable a suitable platform in improvising the library services. By achieving a successful and appropriate library consortia model, the cooperation and collaboration initiatives for the libraries gives an effective result and better services to its users.
TopIntroduction
Library patrons are consistently increasing their demand for required resources from the library in various forms such as Print books, e-Books, Print Journals, e-Journals, e-Database, Standards, etc. to fulfill their teaching and research activities. On the other hand, there are certain issues such as increase in prices of such resources continuously from the publishers every year along with diversified terms and conditions, license policies on procured resources, etc., change in the currency, acquisition process, applicable taxes by government, etc.. Such issues will hinder the acquisition process of required resources and make impact on the collection development of the libraries. Hence, not all libraries can acquire and fulfill the increasing demand of the users due to the paucity of fund or unavailability of the expected budget for procurement of the required resources.
The primary purpose of this chapter is to address the above mentioned issues faced by the libraries and provide probable solutions to overcome the problems such as lack of fund to procure eResources, enriching collection development, licensing, lack of expertise, enhancing the library cooperation among member institutes, discovery and access of contents, developing search interface, etc. In this scenario, a consortium at national level plays a crucial role to bridge between the educational institutions and publishers in controlling such aspects. In spite of consortium at the national and international level, there are still some other issues which need to be addressed.
Background
The literature of similar studies reviewed from various sources has published around the world such as Chandra (2017), Chatterjee (2007), Gaffar & Gunjal (2016), Jha (2001), OCLC Survey Report (2012) and many more. All these studies depict on various aspects of consortia, cooperation, and collaboration among the libraries that can help in providing the library services to their clientele. Numerous consortia at national and international level have already framed the policies and performing the activities to address the common issues faced by the member libraries. Some of the critical issues about academic libraries such as funding issues to procure resources to the library, no uniform policy in managing the resources/subscribed content by various publishers, lack of experts to support libraries, cooperation among participating/similar institutes, etc.
In this regard, as there is a need for cooperation and collaboration initiatives among the libraries that can boost the usage of resources and solve the funding issues in the procurement of the required resources along with other problems faced by the libraries. Hence, in this chapter, a consortia model has been proposed by which the common issues faced by the libraries may be addressed smoothly to enhance the services to its users.
Cooperation And Collaboration Initiatives For Libraries
No library in this world can satisfy the needs of the users with all the demanded resources; there may be one or the other issues in procuring the same due to the paucity of the fund. In this scenario, cooperation and collaboration initiatives among the libraries play a prominent role. By this way, somehow libraries will try to attend satisfy the maximum requirements of the users.