eIFL Electronic Information for Libraries From Cooperation to Consortia: Resource sharing across bou

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eIFLElectronic Information for LibrariesFrom
Co-operation to ConsortiaResource sharing
across boundariesSlides prepared by Monika
SegbertPresented by Frederick J. Friend
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Topics of presentation

• Motivation
• History
• Geographic range
• The consortium approach
• eIFL.Net mission
• eIFL.Net activities

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eIFL Guiding Principles

• Cost of multiple access to digital information is
  only marginally higher than access by only a few
  institutions
• The consortial purchasing power of many libraries
  leads to affordable and sustainable access to
  electronic information
• Access to information is essential for education
  and research
• This has direct impact on the social and economic
  development of societies

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eIFL History

• April 1999 invitation to tender for the
  provision of electronic journals in social
  sciences and humanities to the countries in the
  OSI network
• A few selection criteria
• Lowest access prices per country some 95
  discount
• Country wide licences unlimited number of
  not-for-profit institutional users
• Highest number of FT titles
• Both online and CD/DVD format
• 1999 global contract with EBSCO Publishing

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eIFL History

• 2000/2001 consolidation of registration, access,
  training, fund-raising in 40 countries
• 2001/ 2002 building of national consortial
  infrastructures and eIFL network
• 2001/2002 ST tender and free trials
• 2002 building of global multi-country consortium
• 2002/2003 geographical expansion
• 2003 negotiations with new publishers

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The global eIFL network

• 27 countries in Central and Eastern Europe,
  Caucasus, Central Asia and Mongolia
• 10 Southern African countries
• Guatemala, Haiti, Peru
• Nigeria
• China
• South East Asia
• Other countries waiting to join up.
• Eligible participants academic, research,
  national, public, parliamentary libraries NGOs
  that provide public access Not-for-profit!
• More than 2,500 libraries are registered

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Countries ranked by number of searches
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eIFL online usage
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Teething problems and lessons learned

• Initially many voices per country who will do
  all the coordination?
• Awareness raising and marketing
• training
• fund-raising
• invoicing, deadlines for payment, registration
• The lesson we learned
• Cooperative infrastructure is best to sustain the
  project
• Clear consortium structure is better than a loose
  agreement between libraries

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A word about consortia

• Library consortia are
• organisations formed by several libraries coming
  together
• with some kind of formal structure
• to do things which none could do on their own

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What do consortia do?

• Many different things !
• but mainly
• sharing resources effectively

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eIFL consortia Funding examples

• Central funding by government (Czech Republic,
  Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia)
• Subscription covered by participating libraries
  (Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan)
• Hybrid one part central, one part from libraries
  (Lithuania, Poland)
• Funding (whole or part) by donor agency (Armenia,
  some countries in Africa)

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eIFL national consortia examples

• By type of library or mixed (academic/public
  Estonia, Slovenia)
• Run by National Library (Slovakia, Czechia)
• Run by consortium office (Poland, SA, Kazakhstan)
• Only for eIFL or also other activities
  (Lithuania, Armenia)
• Regional model in Central Asia
• Coalition of consortia in SA and Nigeria

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Motivation for the globalmulti-country
consortium eIFL.Net

• To unite purchasing power of a large number of
  libraries all over the world
• To give one voice to these libraries and their
  consortia when talking with vendors and producers
  of information
• To represent views and needs of consortia to
  policy makers, funders, international fora
• To create an administrative infrastructure for
  central negotiations, payment, support and
  services
• To share knowledge and expertise
• ..to maximise scarce resources!

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eIFL.Net Mission and Vision

• eIFL.Net
• is an international network of library consortia
  that leads, supports, motivates, and advocates
  for the information needs of all library users in
  countries in transition
• Leads national library consortia in the provision
  of electronic information services
• its values are collaborative, service oriented,
  communicative, providing cost effective
  solutions, resource sharing

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eIFL.Net Goals

• Provide electronic content through the highly
  effective acquisition and management of
  electronic information resources
• Provide educational, consulting and marketing
  programs and services which are highly responsive
  to the needs of the membership
• Influence and change the information environment
  to affect pricing models and practices related to
  the electronic environment

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eIFL.Net activitiesSupport to national consortia

• Advice on building consortia
• Grant scheme for the formation of consortia
• Support for participation in international fora
  (ICOLC, IFLA, international conferences)
• Annual eIFL coordinators general assembly
• National and regional workshops on consortium
  building, licensing, negotiating
• Training and provision of resources in consortium
  building, licensing, negotiating
• Knowledge and resource sharing throughout the
  eIFL network in meetings, listserv and website

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eIFL.Net activitiesContent

• 9 EBSCO databases, plus ERIC and Medline
• EBSCO now also content in Russian
• ST free trials of electronic journals of 6
  publishers currently in process
• Partnering with WHO on access to medical content
• Future negotiations with other publishers
• Planned directory of free scholarly content on
  the web
• Planned eIFL partners with the Budapest Open
  Access Initiative

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eIFL Priorities 2003

• Expand and intensify usage of licensed content
• Negotiations with new publishers
• Content in other languages
• Strenghten consortia in licensing issues
• Continued support to national consortium forming
• Orderly geographical expansion
• Introduce portal technology and journal
  management software
• Partner with funding bodies to improve
  connectivity and infrastructure in some countries

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THANK YOU!

• www.eifl.net
• Monika Segbert
• Info_at_monikasegbert.com
• Frederick J. Friend
• f.friend_at_ucl.ac.uk