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Academic library consortia activity has become an integral part of academic libraries’ operations. Consortia have come to assert considerable bargaining power over publishers and have provided libraries with considerable economic advantage. They interact with publishers both as consumers of publishers’ products, with much stronger bargaining power than individual libraries hold, and, increasingly, as rival publishers themselves. Are consortia changing the relationship between academic libraries and publishers? Is the role of academic library consortia placing academic libraries in a position that should and will attract the attention of competition policy regulators? Competition policy prohibits buying and selling cartels that can negatively impact the free market on which the Canadian economic system, like other Western economies, depends. Competition policy as part of economic policy is, however, only relevant where we are concerned with aspects of the market economy. Traditionally, public goods for the greater social and cultural benefit of society are not considered part of the market economic system. If the activities of academic library consortia are part of that public good perspective, competition policy may not be a relevant concern. Using evidence gained from in-depth interviews from a national sample of university librarians and from interviews with the relevant federal government policy makers, this research establishes whether library consortia are viewed as participating in the market economy of Canada or not. Are consortia viewed by librarians and government as serving a public good role of providing information for a greater social and cultural benefit or are they seen from a market-economic perspective of changing power relations with publishers? Findings show government has little in-depth understanding of academic library consortia activity, but would most likely consider such activity predominantly from a market economic perspective. University librarians view consortia from a public good perspective but also as having an important future role in library operations and in changing the existing scholarly publishing paradigm. One-third of librarian respondents felt that future consortia could compete with publishers by becoming publishers and through initiatives such as open source institutional repositories. Librarians also felt that consortia have had a positive effect on librarians’ professional roles through the facilitation of knowledge building and collaboration opportunities outside of the home institution.

We extend the literature on network perception by introducing a novel view of how this perception is structured. We propose the concept of Cognitive Aggregated Social Structures (CASS) as a framework to capture perceptions of opaque networks – that is, networks where relations are difficult to observe due to their features, their members, and the characteristics of the environment in which they operate. We argue that actors simplify their perception of opaque network structures via “chunking,” that is, by cognitively representing network ties as between categories of actors rather than between specific network members. We test the validity of the CASS construct and its predictive power by showing how these representations affect actors’ perceptions of relevant network outcomes. Using data from a major inter-organizational technology consortium, we show that perceived density among “chunks” in the knowledge transfer network is positively related to perceived consortium performance. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings for the strategic management literature, highlighting potential contributions to strategic formulation and implementation, category emergence, industry evolution, and cognitive barriers to entry.

This chapter explores the feasibility of establishing a consortium for the sharing of electronic resources between two libraries: the University of the West Indies at Mona and the University of Technology, Jamaica, both of which are located in Kingston. After a description of the institutional and library contexts, the two libraries are compared in terms of missions, staffing, funding, and collections and other differences and similarities including the e-resources. To analyze the feasibility of establishing a partnership/consortium, the exploration and evaluation of formation of a consortium were done using three kinds of analysis: a literature review, interviews, and a review of existing processes and documentation. The data gathering methods and results are described followed by a potential blueprint for implementation. The researchers did not interview or solicit the views of the university administrators and governing bodies or government officials as to the feasibility of such cooperation in light of the tentative nature of the investigation. The authors however worked with the premise that with the proper infrastructure, a consortium between the two universities would be viable. Other institutions considering development or formation of potential consortia might find the approach and methods in this chapter useful as a possible methodology.

The purpose of this chapter is to highlight the activities of various library consortia functioning across India. A questionnaire was used to collect information for the present study from Indian consortia and their web sites were also visited to collect data. The study ascertains that consortia approaches help libraries financially and save money through collective access to databases and e-resources as opposed to individual subscriptions. It also suggests that different consortia can be merged to form a single one across a country and provide services to the users. The analysis has been done on the basis of approximate subscription prices conveyed by vendors through oral communications. The chapter highlights how libraries can function in consortia mode to enhance their services to users in the face of dwindling budgets and spiraling costs of scholarly journals and databases. The chapter analyzes and demonstrates that consortia agreements can lead to more judicious expenditure by libraries and suggests areas for further research to gain deeper insights into the activities and functioning of various consortia. It also makes suggestions about formation of a nation-wide collaboration to maximize savings and avoid overlapping access through a number of consortia.

Different operational models of joint libraries of universities and polytechnics are examined in this chapter. These joint academic libraries were founded in Finland during the 2000s. Although universities and polytechnics have different objectives, educational programs, and educational degrees, they are nevertheless expected to cooperate. Library services have become a well-functioning model of cooperation in four provincial centers. Joint libraries serve their parent organizations, but are also open to the public and in this way they support the availability of scientific and vocational information in their regional areas. The emphases of this case study are the administrative solutions and matters concerning personnel. In addition to this, electronic resources are dealt with. Since the electronic licenses are institution specific, they complicate the joint library services. Because the operational environments of the libraries differ, the models will not be placed in any order of supremacy. Regardless of the challenges that the joint libraries face, they still show how relatively small educational organizations can develop the library services within their own community through cooperation.

Companies inevitably interact and entrench in complex organic systems of business relationships with other. These business networks are not objectively defined, instead they are shaped by the subjective perception of actors. This inherent subjectivity is associated with the notion of network pictures, that is, a research tool that researchers or managers can use to grasp practitioner theories. In this chapter, we discuss how the importance of identifying these theories results mainly from underlying principles of sense-making theory, as well as from the idea around performativity. Drawing on these theoretical groundings, this chapter has two objectives: to explore how practitioners actually perceive their business surroundings and to assess the extent of overlapping between (IMP Group) academic theories and practitioner theories. To achieve these objectives, the researchers use a dimensional network pictures model previously developed in the literature to analyze the network pictures of 49 top-level managers across 17 companies from two very distinct contexts or networks: a product-based network and a project-based network. Among other practices, findings illustrate how practitioners tend to simplify what is going on in their complex surroundings, to personalize their relationships with those surroundings, and to think in a stereotyped way. Moreover, the juxtaposition between the captured practitioner theories and academic (IMP Group) theories show that these are not always overlapping, and are in some cases quite the opposite. This research contributes to the ongoing discussion of the importance of grasping actors’ views of the world, arguing that sense-making theory and the notion of performativity are the two main conceptual drivers justifying the urgency in making those views more visible. This research also adds to the research on the impact and suitability of IMP Group theories on managerial thinking and practice. Finally, this research reinforces the current call for further practice-based research in business network contexts.

Ways of sharing information as part of the development and implementation of new evaluation methods were studied in a project involving thirteen public libraries, one polytechnic library, and one university library. The purpose of the project was to initiate collaboration in evaluation and to develop qualitative evaluation tools that would be easy to use. Communities of practice, comprising of representatives of the different libraries, had a focal role in the development work, in which sharing of information was elemental. Qualitative tools consisted of portfolios and various forms for collecting information. In addition, informal consortium benchmarking was applied to evaluate different library tasks. Although small units have rarely been studied with regard to the sharing of knowledge or information or benchmarking, they should be. Moreover, small units may even be able to contribute to development. The study is based on information gathered from participants using interviews and questionnaires as well as project documentation, the contents of which have been analyzed qualitatively.