Consortium Building for Libraries, Part 2

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Consortium Building for Libraries, Part 2

• An eIFL sponsored workshop
• Ann Okerson
• July 2004
• ann.okerson_at_yale.edu

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Attributes that lead to success

• Developing consortia isnt easy!
• High level of participation, support, commitment
  needed initially and over time
  
• Institutions and individuals must be willing to
  take a leadership role, devote time
  
• Work for common good and strength rather than
  individual priorities
  
• Clear sponsorship and sustainable funding
• Requires much communication at many levels
• Efficient operations are needed

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Structural decisions

• The organizations structure will grow out of
  program choices and priorities (and who wants to
  take a lead) some goals might be
  
• Pursuing electronic resources and licenses
• Greatly strengthening technology infrastructure
  (connectivity and computers)
  
• Training and supporting users students
  researchers, citizens
  
• Developing online and union catalogs of holdings,
  print and electronic through a system for the
  nation
  
• Acquiring, lending, and storage of print
  materials
  

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Structural decisions, 2

• The organizations structure will grow out of
  type and size of library membership and
  participation (more variety requires more
  consultation and balancing)
• Academic only? Multi-type? What range?
• How many libraries or organizations and how
  comparable are their missions?
  
• Are they all funded in the same way or in many
  different ways?
  
• Are all government funded?
• Are they supported by a variety of NGOs?
• Combination?
• Private institutions? etc.

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Structural decisions, 3

• What leadership currently exists and where?
• Is there already any organization such as a
  committee or advisory group?
  
• Is the range of members appropriately represented
  in this group or committee?
  
• What are the criteria for a leadership role?
• How will appointments or elections made and by
  whom?
  
• Are there subcommittees for the various tasks, or
  individuals identified to carry forward the
  various goals?

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Structural decisions, 4

• Does the leadership have a way to resolve
  disagreements about program directions or other
  matters?
  
• How does the leadership create, review and adjust
  goals, with the broadest participation?
  
• How is the leadership group accountable to all
  the members, in general?
  
• What are the communications mechanisms? To whom
  and how?
  
• In case of disagreement, who decides?

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Structural decisions, 5

• How do you record and show your structure to
  others
  
• Simplest Letter of Agreement (see NERL example)
  or Memorandum of Understanding (see VIVA
  example)
  
• Most complex Legal incorporation or charter
  with clearly described legal requirements and how
  your consortium will meet them
  
• In between Start with written agreement,
  document in writing agreements that are
  developed.
  
• NOTE you can always change your structure to a
  more complex one if needed over time

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First a brief mission statement

• Start by writing down the reason for the
  existence of your consortium
  
• Keep the statement brief and clear easy for
  everyone to remember and quote! For example
  
• VIVA's mission is to provide, in an equitable,
  cooperative and cost effective manner, enhanced
  access to library and information resources for
  the Commonwealth of Virginia's non-profit
  academic libraries serving the higher education
  community.
• NELLCOs mission is to provide efficient and
  effective access to legal resources by promoting
  a full range of resource sharing services which
  support the objectives of the individual law
  libraries of the member institutions and the
  groups as a whole.

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Then develop a brief vision statement

• A vision statement is short, developed with and
  by the members, and looks at what the consortium
  as a whole wishes to achieve over a period of
  time, for example
• VIVA The investment of the Commonwealth in
  VIVA creates permanent lasting benefit for the
  Commonwealth in building a sustainable
  infrastructure for library sharing at all
  levels.
• NELLCO The vision is to be the leader of
  resource sharing and networking in the legal
  community through cutting-edge communication
  technology.

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Strategic planning, 1

• Now that the mission and vision have been
  expressed, develop a way to get there, commonly
  called a strategic plan
  
• It will address, for a 3-5 years
• Specific key goals that members strive to
  achieve
  
• These need to be realistic, because the strategic
  plan needs to help make some specific plans,
  difficult choices, allocations, and priorities
  
• For example, if a strategic plan includes
  developing an online catalog or list of library
  holdings for the country of Laos over the next 5
  years -- next step would be to make a specific
  program plan to achieve this union list (and so
  on)

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Strategic planning, 2

• The strategic plan will clearly identify the
  necessary resources to achieve desired goals
  (cataloging, technical support, etc.)
  
• The strategic plan needs regular (annual?) review
  and adjustment
  
• As an example, after each year, how far along is
  the consortium with the online catalog?
  
• Are the different parts of the online catalog
  plan being accomplished?
  
• Is this goal on target and on time?
• If not, what needs to be done to succeed?
• Strategic plans need to include ways of
  understanding what success means how to
  measure it?

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Strategic planning, 3

• Benefits of planning include
• Identifies most important targets and how to get
  there
  
• Identifies the costs of attaining those
  targets
  
• Makes clear to all what the organization is going
  to accomplish
  
• Involves many people in the group
• Gets buy-in from staff and supporters,
  especially if they can be involved and feel their
  input matters
  
• Establishes a baseline against which success and
  accomplishment can be gauged
  

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Where does the money come from?

• What type and how many resources are needed for
  the desired goals? People? Donations of money?
  
• No resources no success
• Internal what can members contribute?
• External what can be raised from whom?
• Need to cover
• Current and planned expenses
• Infrastructural and project-based needs
• Growth or change in goals

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Where does the money come from? 2

• Internal possibilities
• Volunteers (can their time be spared?)
• Annual dues for participants (supports internal
  operations available to all)
  
• Payments for those who use special services (such
  as subscriptions, or special training)
  
• Based on ability to pay, size, usage or?
• External possibilities
• Any chance to develop fee-for-service?
• Volunteers
• Grants from foundations or agencies
• Government funding

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Where does the money come from? 3

• Ongoing reliability of funding is key to success
• The external sources (except for government
  appropriations, which might be allocated annually
  for operations) are more likely to be one-time
  or unpredictable
• Foundations give startup funds expect those who
  receive funds to develop long-term sources
  
• The internal sources are more difficult to
  organize but over time can be more predictable
  
• You need both you need as many sources of funds
  as possible!

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Where does the money come from? 4

• Best practices (thanks to Arnold Hirshon,
  NELINET)
  
• Target external funding for one-time expenses
• Try gradually to increase member-based revenue
  generation
  
• Diversify funding as much as possible
• Dont over-rely on any one source
• Develop reasonable internal charging and
  contributions with members to achieve fairness
  
• Market the value of your consortium to all
• Budget for predictable revenues (dont budget
  what you arent likely to get!)
  
• A balanced budget is the key

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Where does the money come from? 5

• ICOLC Survey of fund sources by Arnold Hirshon
  (30 consortia responded)
  
• Central government funding
• Only 30 of consortia receive any funds from
  central government
  
• Only 10 receive 100 of funding from government
  or central funds
  
• On average, for the 30 who receive central
  funds, only 22 of their running costs are paid
  from those central funds

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Where does the money come from? 6

• ICOLC Survey of fund sources, continued
• Member funding
• For consortia that fund all or part from member
  funds, 77 are funded mostly or entirely by
  members!
  
• Of all consortia reporting, 53 fund databases
  from member funds
  
• In 23 of consortia, all the purchases or
  licenses are paid by the individual libraries,
  who choose them

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Doing a SWOT Analysis

• SWOT
• Strengths
• Weaknesses
• Opportunities
• Threats
• A way to collect your ideas about what are the
  most important things to think about in your
  planning

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Strengths-Weaknesses

• Know who you are your institutions, the kind of
  consortium that you want
  
• What are your strong points? What are your
  advantages in building consortial relationships?
  
• Example good professional relations already
  with others in the group
  
• What could slow you down? What could make it
  harder to succeed?
  
• Example key people already overworked so little
  time for a large new activity

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Opportunities-Threats

• What could happen to change things?
• OPPORTUNITIES these are things you control,
  that could make things better
  
• Example eIFL support is available and the time
  is ripe for progress
  
• THREATS these are things you dont control,
  that could make things worse
  
• Example Global economic downturn that would
  make publishers less willing to negotiate on
  pricing

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Doing the SWOT analysis

• Break out into smaller groups to do this
• Quickly go through each of the 4 categories and
  see how many ideas you can produce.
  
• Dont discuss each item just see how long you
  can make the list
  
• After you have four lists, then ask yourselves
  which are the three most important items on each
  list
  
• Bring the results back to the larger group to
  identify agreements and differences
  

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ICOLC International Coalition of Library
Consortia

• ICOLC is a group of consortium leaders with a set
  of common interests (directors, coordinators of
  consortia)
  
• It was founded spontaneously in early 1997
  following discussions by a few people at other
  national meetings
  
• First meeting 2/1997, Missouri, 30 consortia
• Meets twice a year, 15 meetings to date
• Now also meeting in Europe as e-ICOLC
• No dues, no staff -- purely a volunteer effort

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Resources, ICOLC

• Public Web site sortia
  
• Documents are developed by volunteer committees
  and working groups
  
• Documents are widely distributed
• Statement of Preferred Practices Update
• Guidelines for Statistical Measures of Usage
• Guidelines for Technical RFPs
• Privacy Guidelines

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ICOLC http//www.library.yale.edu/consortia
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Resources - articles

• Library consortia and information technology
  the past, the present, the promise. Special
  issue of the journal Information Technology and
  Libraries, 1998, volume 17, part 1. Includes a
  number of articles describing the emergence of
  library consortia to deal with electronic
  resources during the 1990s.
• Special issues of the journal Information
  Technology and Libraries, 1999, volume 18 number
  3, and 2000, volume 19, part 2, include a number
  of papers dealing with consortium activities in
  various countries, including Australia, Brazil,
  Canada, China, Israel, Italy, Micronesia, South
  Africa, and Spain.
• Contents, abstracts and some full papers will
  soon be available. Write to jim-duncan_at_uiowa.edu
  

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Resources, web sites

• eiFL site provides numerous helpful links and
  documents at onsortium.html
  
• Licensing everything you wanted to know
  including definitions, bibliographies, links,
  model licenses, principles, and much more at
  
• IFLA Licensing principles at b/copy-r.pdf
  
• Consortial strategic plans, by Bernie Sloan
  (ILISCO)

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Developing Nations Initiatives