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The Council of Federal Libraries (CFL) ConsortiumEmil Daniel, Consortium Coordinator Introduction Cooperation on the part of libraries is a tradition of long standing. The partnerships that have been established for interlibrary loans and cooperative cataloguing are just two of the major resource-sharing successes that the library community can be proud of. According to the 1999 Survey on Resource Sharing in Canada, libraries form consortia so that they can work cooperatively to accomplish goals that they could not reach individually. The results of the survey also show that most Canadian libraries belong to some kind of consortium, with multiple memberships being very common -- as many as 19 in the case of the University of British Columbia. The alliances that are formed can be based on the type of library (academic, public, government, etc.), location (a province or region) or a specific function (e.g., collection rationalization, purchasing, access to resources). The theme central to each, however, is the cooperative approach. The dramatic growth in the number and importance of purchasing consortia is relatively recent. Downsizing, frozen budgets, ever-increasing costs, electronic products and the penetration of the Internet are all factors contributing to their proliferation. Many librarians also feel that the balance has drastically shifted in favour of the producers and sellers of information products, forcing libraries to re-examine their relationships and come up with an operating model that gives them a stronger position from which to negotiate. The aims of consortia are not only to get better prices but also to have more influence on the development of information products and the terms and conditions under which they are sold. Individually, libraries may be small, but they have enormous collective purchasing power. The CFL Consortium A consortium of federal government libraries presents its own special challenges and opportunities. We have a common employer, and we all have come under heavy pressure during the government downsizing of the last 15 years. This has spurred our efforts to cooperate in order to rationalize services and collections, to meet the challenge of the new electronic environment and to generally get more for our information dollar. Beyond that, there is tremendous diversity. Federal government libraries vary in size from the one-person library at the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation to the National Library of Canada with a staff of over 400. Structures range from the single central library at the Bank of Canada to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s network of 26 libraries located across Canada. Subject areas include science, finance, human resource management and law. Mandates range from providing support to a small, tightly defined group of researchers and policy makers to serving elected members of Parliament to providing a window, nationally and internationally, to Canada’s published heritage. The idea of creating a purchasing consortium for federal government libraries came from the Council of Federal Libraries Sci-Tech Committee. Their report of March 31, 1994, on Partnerships and Shared Arrangements was followed, in December 1994, by a National Library/CFL business case for a joint purchasing initiative for federal government libraries. When a survey of CFL libraries showed significant interest in the idea, an outside contractor, Paul Kitchen Associates, was hired to prepare a feasibility study, and a few months later the CFL Consortium was launched. Membership in the CFL Consortium is voluntary and open to all federal government libraries. The National Library of Canada gives it a home and support in its National and International Programs Branch, while funding for the consortium is provided through membership fees. There is a full-time coordinator who receives direction from a six-member advisory committee elected from the members. In the five years since it was established, the consortium has grown to include 117 member libraries from 37 different federal government departments and agencies. Until now, the consortium has concentrated on facilitating purchasing and information exchange among its members. In almost all cases, members interested in an offer deal directly with the vendors, the lone exception being a group subscription to Online Computer Library Centre services. However, pressure is increasing on the consortium to act as the intermediary in some acquisitions - to sign contracts and handle consolidated invoicing. This is especially true in the case of national and international offers negotiated by groups of consortia. The Future Just as libraries can benefit by aligning themselves into consortia, so too can consortia gain power and influence by cooperating on a higher level. These alliances are becoming increasingly important to the CFL Consortium. The International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC), which first met in 1997, now lists 131 consortia on its Web site. On the national level, there is Consortia Canada, of which the CFL Consortium was a founding member. Consortia Canada addresses problems and requirements that are uniquely Canadian, including those resulting from the size and demographics of the Canadian market and specific issues relating to Canadian content. The wave of the future seems to be national and international offers made through the above organizations. Continent-wide offers that have been negotiated where the price depended on the total number of users include those for the online Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Oxford English Dictionary and Access Science. Through these types of agreements, even the smallest libraries can benefit from the low prices that ICOLC members are offered, as their users are pooled with the millions of other consortia clients. Consortia Canada has launched similar discussions with the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions for its new product, Early Canadiana Online. Discussions are also underway for the Canadian version of the online Books in Print. A model has been developed where a consortium negotiating for a high-profile product can volunteer to become the lead consortium and negotiate an offer on behalf of a wide range of libraries. In this way, a one-person CFL Consortium library was able to take advantage of the low price offered to three million end users for online access to the Oxford English Dictionary. The offer was negotiated between Nylink, a New York state consortium, and Oxford University Press. It was open to all American consortia and extended to Canadian consortia through Consortia Canada, with the BC Electric Library Network (ELN) acting as our national lead. Conclusion It would be difficult, if not impossible, for an individual library to negotiate an agreement such as the one involving the Oxford English Dictionary. Through consortia, however, such offers may become commonplace. In its first five years, the CFL Consortium has built a strong foundation: a solid membership base, partnerships with other consortia, good working relationships with vendors and experience with common billing and invoicing. In the future the CFL Consortium will be able to consider taking a more active role in arranging group purchases and facilitating common information access initiatives within the federal government. For more information on the Council of Federal Libraries Consortium, please contact: Emil Daniel |
