Cooperative Arrangements and Consortia
Cooperation and collaboration have long been traditions in libraries of all kinds. Cooperative arrangements may be in place for a variety of activities and services, but the focus of this section is on arrangements that are agreed upon in order to share the responsibility of collection development and management.
Types of Arrangements
- Internal partners
- The library shares the cost and/or administrative burden of a resource with another department within the same institution. A (MOU) can be helpful in this instance but is often not required.
- Example: The library helps evaluate and renew a pharmacy database subscription on behalf of the School of Pharmacy. The library charges the school annually for the subscription cost while managing access for the whole campus. This type of arrangement can be very helpful when funding policies or budget challenges limit collections in certain areas.
- The library shares the cost and/or administrative burden of a resource with another department within the same institution. A (MOU) can be helpful in this instance but is often not required.
- External partners or affiliations
- The library shares the cost and/or administrative burden of a resource with a separate university, hospital, business, government agency, or entity. Usually a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the library’s institution and the other entity is required and will determine the reasoning for and limits to this relationship.
- Example: The library’s institution and the Department of Public Health (DPH) have a longstanding relationship and created an MOU that states that the library will manage a hospital library on DPH’s behalf. The annual budget is provided by DPH and resources are only available to DPH employees.
- The library shares the cost and/or administrative burden of a resource with a separate university, hospital, business, government agency, or entity. Usually a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the library’s institution and the other entity is required and will determine the reasoning for and limits to this relationship.
- Regional partners or affiliations
- Academic institutions in a region (e.g., local, county, state) may sign or interlibrary loan agreements with one another, without being part of a consortia. For example, this may take the form of local colleges and universities having reciprocal borrowing privileges, or members of a state health sciences libraries association providing each other reduced cost or free ILL.
- Library consortia
- A group of libraries, typically across a defined geographic area, that participate in collaborative collection development in order to reduce redundancies and achieve cost savings. Consortial membership can either be voluntary or required, depending on the mission of the consortium and participating institutions. Likewise, participation in consortial subscriptions also varies by consortium: some allow members to opt out of subscriptions they do not wish to subscribe to while others require members to subscribe to all negotiated resources.
- Examples:
- Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA)
- Boston Library Consortium
- California Digital Library (CDL)
- Examples:
- A group of libraries, typically across a defined geographic area, that participate in collaborative collection development in order to reduce redundancies and achieve cost savings. Consortial membership can either be voluntary or required, depending on the mission of the consortium and participating institutions. Likewise, participation in consortial subscriptions also varies by consortium: some allow members to opt out of subscriptions they do not wish to subscribe to while others require members to subscribe to all negotiated resources.
Best Practices for Cooperative Arrangements
- Ensure that the arrangement is mutually beneficial to all participating parties.
- A common guiding principle for consortia is to ensure that no member institution pays more for a resource through the consortium than it would by subscribing as an individual institution.
- Create a written agreement so guidelines, restrictions, and rights are known.
- Make clear what is opt in and opt out.
- Make deadlines for actions like activation and renewals clear.
- Ensure each member has a vote on what resources are part of the agreement.
- As much as possible, centralize and reduce redundancies in the licensing, cataloging, access maintenance, billing, and payment processes.
- Seek legal expertise for the partnership agreement itself and resource licensing issues.
Communities
References and Further Reading
Breeding M. (2013). Case study: The Orbis Cascade Alliance: Strategic collaboration among diverse academic institutions. Library Technology Reports, 49(1): 30-31. https://journals.ala.org/index.php/ltr/article/view/4408/5107
Carrigan, E.E., Burford, N.G., & Urgaz, A.G. (2018). Collaborative collection development. In Kendall S.K. (Ed.), Health sciences collection management for the twenty-first century (pp. 149-166). Rowman & Littlefield.
Douglas, S., Flinchbaugh, M., Kruse, T., Ohler, L., & Zimmerman, M. (2009). The benefits and challenges of acquisitions in a consortium. Against the Grain: 21(4). https://doi.org/10.7771/2380-176X.2462
Hale, D. (2016). Shared collections: Collaborative stewardship. American Library Association.
Johnson, P. (2018). Fundamentals of collection development and management. American Library Association.
See Chapter 9 on “Collaborative Collection Development and Management.”
Machovec, G. (2015). Calculating the return on investment (ROI) for library consortia. Journal of Library Administration, 55(5), 414-424. https://doi.org/10.1080/01930826.2015.1047282
Machovec, G. (2018). Consortial partnerships with libraries and vendors. Against the Grain, 30(2), 26-28. https://doi.org/10.7771/2380-176X.8039
Schlimgen, J., McCray, J., Perry, G. J., & Flance, L. (2001). Considering a consortium? Practical advice to hospital librarians from the Arizona Health Information Network (AZHIN). Medical Reference Services Quarterly, 20(3), 67-73. https://doi.org/10.1300/J115v20n03_07
A document that defines the parameters of a deal between two or more parties. It will specify the parties involved, a time-bound contract length, and specify what goods or services will be performed or offered by either party. Unlike a contract, however, MoUs are typically not legally binding.
Programs where partnering institutions agree to extend in-person borrowing privileges to their users. Usually reciprocal borrowing privileges are leveraged between institutions in a localized region.
