Abstract
Library consortium is an umbrella term that covers the concept. With cooperation it was possible for sharing of union catalog, document delivery services, storage facilities, collection development, and human resources at local, national, and regional levels. It is the single solution of these concepts. Consortium gives the freedom for a library having less collection as they can access any product at the nominal price. Out of 335 respondents, 232 (69.3%) respondents were aware of N-LIST resources, whereas 103 (30.7%) of them somewhat aware of N-LIST resources. This study shows that majority of the respondents were aware of N-LIST resources. All the respondents, 335 (100%), were utilizing the N-LIST resources. 177 (52.8%) respondents were spending ‘1-2 hours' for accessing N-LIST resources, 101 (30.1%) respondents were spending ‘3-4 hours', 30 (9%) of them spent ‘below 1 hour', and 27 (8.1%) of them spent ‘more than 5 years'. This analysis shows that nearly 53% of the respondents were spending ‘1-2 hours' to access N-LIST Resources in a day. 111 (60.3%) assistant professors and 66 (45.7%) associate professors were spending ‘1-2 hours' in a day to access N-LIST resources. The authors were made to aware about N-LIST resources the respondents have given ‘guide by the librarian' as first priority, followed by ‘orientation programme', ‘trial and error method', ‘through YouTube tutorial', ‘online user guide', and ‘guide by friends and colleagues' is the least priority.
TopConcept Of Library Consortium
Library consortium is an umbrella term which covers the concept with co-operation it was possible for sharing of union catalogue, document delivery services, storage facilities, collection development and human resources at local, national and regional level. It is the single solution of these concepts consortium gives the freedom for a library having less collection as they can access any product at the nominal price.
The term consortium existed for decades but it is gaining so much importance in recent years. A consortium is said to ‘a co-operative arrangement among groups or institutions or an association or society’. Consortia are commonly formed to increase the purchasing capacity of the collaboration institutions to expand the resource availability and of offer automated services. In other words, it is described as a group of organizations whose purpose is to collectively facilitate and support the work of a service program in ways that add material and human resources beyond those available to each organization individually. A consortium is an association of two or more individuals, companies, organizations or governments (or any combination of these entities) with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources for achieving a common goal. The consortium is a Latin word, meaning ‘partnership, association or society’ and derives from consumers ‘partner’, itself form con ‘together’ and sors ‘fate’, meaning owner of means or comrade (Wikipedia – free Encyclopedia)7.
There are many different interpretations of the word “Consortium”. A consortium could be described as a group of organizations who come together to fulfill a combined objective or project that usefully requires co-operation and the sharing of resources. They sometimes develop out of existing working partnerships, but need to have a clear mutual goal in order to ensure their success. The aim should be to deliver “more than the sum of the individual parts”. Consortia vary in how they are staffed, the roles they fulfill and how they are structured. Not all call themselves consortia; some choose “Network”, or partnership as a preferred description. However, they are sufficiently similar for us to be able to extract information, which could be useful to others, wishing to go down the route of developing a voluntary and community sector learning consortium.
Key Terms in this Chapter
DAE Consortium: The Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) Consortium, initiated in 2003, caters to the information requirement of 36 institutes including BARC, TIFR and SAMEER. The consortium is funded by the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), Govt. of India.
Electronic Resources in Medicine (ERMED) Consortium: An initiative taken by Director General of Health Services (DGHS) to develop nation-wide electronic information resources in the field of medicine for delivering effective health care for all.
IIM Library Consortia: A Digital Library network system based on internet technology to provide the IIM community (faculty, students and staff) an online web-enabled access to the information resources available in all the IIMs without any barriers of time and distance. It will be a simple, efficient and cost-effective system.
HELINET: ( Health Science Library and Information Network): A Health Sciences Library and Information Network hosted by Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences, Bangalore. HELINET is the first medical library consortium launched in 2003. It provides access to 600+ core international e-journals, 2000+ e-books and 1500+ videos to all affiliated colleges of RGUHS with an objective of networking the libraries affiliated to the University to promote resource sharing, especially with reference to international medical journals and databases.
N-LIST: The National Library and Information Services Infrastructure for Scholarly Content (N-LIST), launched in 2010 as an NME-ICT funded project have graduated to be a college component of UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium. It provided access to more than 6,000+ e-journals and 30,00,000+ e-books to all Govt. /Govt. aided as well as non- aided colleges except colleges imparting courses in management, medical, nursing, agriculture, engineering, pharmacy.