Dear Professionals, We are happy to announce this month's NCSI-NET meeting to be held on Saturday 4th March 2006 at seminar hall, NCSI, IISc, Bangalore-12 from 11.00 am onwards. Mr. I R N Goudar would be delivering the lecture on Library Consortia Initiatives in India: Best Practices and Issues. ==================== TITLE: Library Consortia Initiatives in India: Best Practices and Issues. By Mr. I R N Goudar, Head, Information Centre for Aerospace Science and Technology , NAL, Bangalore. ABSTRACT: The old concept 'consortia' means a strategic alliance of institutions having common interests. The applications of IT and IR systems for on-line catalogues, bibliographic databases and full text electronic documents have facilitated quick information exchange. The advent of e-publishing has brought a revolution in journal publication, subscription, access and delivery mechanism. Print subscriptions still continue to dominate publisher's revenue. While dwindling library budgets and growing number of journals force libraries to form consortia for accessing e-journals, other role players like primary publishers, aggregators, vendors, subscription agents and document delivery agencies have their own reasons to encourage consortia movement. The early 'subscription clubs', the so called consortia leaders have developed and adopted consortia strategies like mission, vision, goals, planning, structure, membership, management and standards suitable for different models. However, there are no universally acceptable e-journals pricing and licensing models. Same thing holds good for other kind of documents like books, technical reports, etc. Major concerns of consortia formation include funding, pricing, personnel, training, service, archiving, technology and copyright issues. The pricing factors include number of nodes, multiple campuses, access mode, training and perpetual access. Consortia models could be participants oriented or purpose oriented and homogeneous or heterogeneous. Many libraries especially in developing countries are not geared up for accessing e-Journals due to various reasons including user ignorance, infrastructure and funds. While there is an urgent need for changing the mindset of librarians, users and the administrators for subscribing to e-journals in India, a satisfying note is that few forward looking libraries have made a modest beginning in forming consortia. Some initiatives include - Indian Institutes of Management for accessing bibliographic databases, CSIR Laboratories for >3200 journals from 10 major publishers, FORSA for accessing Astronomy and Astrophysics journals, Hyderabad Knowledge Park members for J-Gate, INFLIBNET initiative for providing access to 100 universities for full text journals of Some ACS, RSC, IOP, and bibliographic databases, INDEST for a host of full text sources like ScienceDirect , IEL Online and few bibliographic databases for the benefit IITs, IISc, IIMs and engineering college and GE Global Research initiative for the benefit of different GE Centres world over. Some of the pricing and payment constraints specific to Indian libraries include - inadequate funds, single point payment, rigid administrative, financial and auditing rules, problems of defining asset against payment and pay-per-view not yet acceptable. Consortia approach is the only way to satisfy increasing information requirements of vast number of Indian academic and R& D community. ============================ Please confirm your participation to either me or Prasanna(t.s.prasanna@intel.com) Warm Regards, NCSI-NET coordinators. ================ H Rajendra Babu Financial Research Analyst Capco. Salarpuria Annexe, 351/5 - 10 Luskar, Hosur Road, Bangalore- 560 034 T-+91-80-51997351 http://www.capcoinstitute.com/ Capco Institute is the research arm of Capco Capco is the first services and technology solutions provider exclusively focused on forming the future of the financial markets. We unite thought leadership and practical application to improve profitability for our clients. ************************************************************************ The information in this email is confidential and is intended solely for the addressee(s). Access to this email by anyone else is unauthorized. If you are not an intended recipient, please notify the sender of this email immediately. You should not copy, use or disseminate the information contained in the email. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender specifically states them to be the views of Capco. http://www.capco.com/ ************************************************************************