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Increasingly, publishers are looking to sell through library consortia. The advantages of consortia to publishers include the ability to simplify the sales process, to help publishers increase their market penetration and communication with more libraries, and increase the speed of sales. However, all consortia are not organized in the same way, which requires that publishers work with different consortia in different ways. Publishers will need to continue to maintain their own marketing and sales staff to augment the services that may be available through the consortium, and to overcome problems such as inconsistent communications to libraries. Publishers will also need to have strategies to work with multiple consortia with overlapping memberships.

This paper aims to report on several initiatives towards formation of national consortium among academic libraries in Malaysia. The consortium focused on subscription of online databases.

In July 2004, CDC on behalf of PERPUN members made several initiatives towards formation of national consortium of Malaysian academic libraries. Proposal paper on the formation of the consortium has been submitted to the Ministry of Higher Education. Through “loose consortia” formed, CDC and later known as Malaysian Online E-Resources Consortium (MOLEC) succeeded in negotiating for subscription of online databases and was able to get financial aid from the Ministry of Education to subscribe several databases since 2002.

A commercial databases committee (CDC) was formed in year 2000 as a platform for academic libraries to evaluate, select, negotiate and manage the online databases. Complications involved in online databases subscriptions such as cost increase, license agreement, various formats of usage statistics, merger and takeover of publishers have made PERPUN (Malaysian Standing Conference of National and University Libraries) realize that there is a need for a formal consortium to be formed.

An improved service was established for the benefit of the academic libraries in Malaysia.

A more coordinated approach to consortial dealings is being established in Malaysia.

This is a report on the process and outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the Korean consortia models generally and discuss how the consortium governing body, Korea Education & Research Information Service (KERIS), manages the e‐book consortium effectively from the Korean perspective.

This research is conducted with overall consortia models of online resources by KERIS. Over several years of modeling it has contrived to develop a few consortia modeling patterns in Korea and assess their effectiveness on collection management. The e‐book consortium modeling process entailed the following: identifying the appropriate consortium model, sampling the consortium size for pricing models and selecting the criteria for e‐book title selection.

Two types of e‐book consortium models are presented. One is the subscription model and the other is the purchasing model. Both sharing and purchasing options are quite cost‐effective for Korean universities since they try to balance the digital and paper collections. The consortium model for e‐books in Korean universities was successful and fit into the conservative collection management in Korea for academic use. Also, perpetual access and purchase model is preferred rather than annual access and lease model.

Online resources including e‐books need a sustainable model for continuous access due to budget constraints. Considering the life‐span of information we need to find the appropriate business and service models for all the resources available online. Various criteria for consortia have been presented. No previous research has been conducted on the nationwide consortium model in Korean universities.

This paper aims to share the successful experiences and suggestions from the 2007 Chinese e‐books consortium.

A survey of the participant libraries of the 2007 Chinese e‐books consortium was conducted. Survey results were analyzed.

The consortium improved the Chinese collections with perpetual ownership, and demonstrated the bargaining power that exists through a consortium. Most participants would consider joining the consortium in the future.

Since the 2007 Chinese e‐books consortium has only just been completed, the usage statistics have not been compiled. It will be interesting to see how readers adapt to the Chinese e‐books in the future.

The results have practical implications for the operation of library consortia.

This study provides the latest opinions and suggestions from the consortium participants, which can be valuable to those who are interested in initiating new library consortia. The study results can also be of value to librarians who are considering joining any library consortia.

This study proposes a framework for performance measurement of library consortia services by implementing the indicators listed in ISO 11620. The framework is validated by using real data from HEAL-Link, the national consortium of Greek academic and research libraries to calculate the indicators.

The paper reports on the related work regarding the services consortia offer to their members and the known methods and tools for assessing consortia services; the HEAL-Link case study, the aggregation and handling of data, is presented; ISO 11620 performance indicators for HEAL-Link services are calculated, and the results are discussed in terms of what was learnt- about the consortium, about measuring consortia services performance, and about the standard.

ISO 11620 could be used to measure performance for assessing consortia services. The performance indicators’ results reflect the two major events (mergers and COVID pandemic) that took place during the time of the study. ISO 11620 offers a basic insight that could be well complemented with other tools and standards.

The current study suggests that a widely accepted, easily applied, benchmarking ISO standard could be used to measure common consortia services’ performance, thus contributing to consortia assessment.

Business consortiums for temporary projects have limited time and less attention from individual organisations concerning leadership alignment. Recognising the need to study relationships in alliances, this study aims to identify the fundamental organisational beliefs perceived by the leaders in a construction business consortium and relate them to the companies’ belief system as conceptualised by Simons.

The research adopts a positivist qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews, literature review and document analysis through a case study in a temporary business consortium formed by three large construction companies.

It was possible to verify alignment between the beliefs of the consortium and its leadership and infer that the flow of beliefs can be affected by the duration of the project. The research underlines the importance of the belief system within an organisation and how differences can cause internal conflicts, whilst alignment can improve competitiveness. The authors concluded that conflicts emerge due to a lack of alignment regarding the business’ core beliefs and the presence of different cultures and the duration of the project. Also, it was possible to create two different propositions for future studies regarding the project timeframe and improve competitiveness with the alignment of beliefs.

Whilst there is academic literature that identifies challenges in successful project execution attributed to the misalignment of teams at a cultural level, organisations today still largely neglect the importance of team alignment. A better understanding of beliefs across organisations could have significant impact on social aspects resulting in improvements concerning projects timescales and quality of deliverables.

The main contribution is to explain how beliefs flow from individual parties to a temporary business consortium. This research addresses the lack of empirical studies relating to the alignment of temporary projects whilst providing recommendations to inform future research.

The paper explores library cooperation in Zimbabwe and gathers views from librarians on the need for a library consortium model to underpin national development. This study aims to investigate the development of library consortia in Zimbabwe and then propose a model that will both accelerate their development and support the country’s national development agenda.

The paper opted for an investigative study using a multi-method research design. Data on existing library consortia, namely, Zimbabwe University Library Consortium (ZULC) and College and Research Library Consortium (CARLC), were collected through questionnaires and interviews. The data were complemented by documentary analysis including primary sources of information, for example, annual reports and brochures. Data were analysed qualitatively and quantitatively.

The paper provides empirical insights on how ZULC and CARLC are transforming the provision of library services in several ways, for example, providing for the dynamic needs of users and strategizing on overcoming rising costs of scholarly content through resource sharing. The proposed model effectively elevates the fundamental library consortium principles of cooperation and sharing onto the national development stage, and it is novel and pioneering. The gestures and general remarks made recently by Zimbabwe Library Association and some ZULC members about national development and ZIMASSET are given rigorous and scholarly expression in this model.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalisability beyond Zimbabwe. It is therefore imperative for researchers to test the proposed propositions further.

The paper includes implications for the development of a library consortia model to underpin national development in Zimbabwe. The existing academic sector library consortium still excludes other types of libraries from participating in resource sharing and promoting access to information on a national development scale. The proposed library consortium model providing for nation-wide access to information is critical in realising national development goals in Zimbabwe. Currently, academic library consortia are contributing immensely through supporting learning, teaching and research in their respective institutions. Such benefits can also be extended to all institutions through a national library consortium to support development in Zimbabwe.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study how the development of a nation-wide library consortium model can be realised. There is relatively little researched information on library cooperation and library consortia and national development in Southern Africa with specific reference to Zimbabwe. The paper seeks to close the gap by providing information on library cooperation and library consortia and national development in Zimbabwe.

At what stage and under what circumstances does an informal consortium need to think about changing from an alliance of non‐ affiliated institutions to a formal legally incorporated body? This paper draws on research funded by the Western Australian Group of University Librarians (WAGUL). It provides an analysis of 11 small to medium‐sized consortia of primarily academic libraries in five countries. The aim is to canvass the range of different models that currently exist for library consortia and from that to identify the factors that determine when and how incorporation should be considered. The factors identified are the joint ownership of assets, payment for services, provision of joint services and protection under the law.

The purpose of this paper is to review consortia efforts in developing countries.

This paper reviews the literature on library consortia in developing countries in general and India in particular. The paper also outlines the advantages and disadvantages of consortia.

“Library consortia” refers to co‐operation, co‐ordination and collaboration between, and among, libraries for the purpose of sharing information resources. Libraries in developing countries have been working on consortia at national, regional and international level. However, some barriers such as poor technological and communication infrastructure, inadequate finances, culture and context, attitudes toward consortia and multiple efforts are reported to be limitations of consortia activities in developing countries.

The paper provides a useful overview of consortia in developing countries, particularly in India.

That institutions of higher education should cooperate with one another is hardly an uncommon idea. In recent years, especially since colleges and universities began to feel pressures for growth and, later, constraints of financial stringency, the general concept of interinstitutional cooperation has been advocated with enthusiasm and near unanimity; national commissions have recommended it and governments have virtually demanded it. But what is much less common is knowledge about the formal arrangements by which cooperation has been achieved widely in the United States and now is the object of serious consideration and some application in other countries. The consortium is not the only application of the cooperative idea. Councils, coordinating boards, compacts, federations, are all forms of cooperative arrangements among colleges and universities, but the inter‐institutional lexicon is not exact and these forms are not distinct. Because the consortium is the most formal and complex organization for inter‐institutional cooperation, it represents well almost all of the characteristics and problems of all cooperative endeavor between higher educational institutions. Thus, the observations and conclusions made about the consortium have a broader applicability. This discussion will address four basic questions about inter‐institutional cooperation as represented by the consortium: What motivates colleges and universities to cooperate with one another? What are the advantages of inter‐institutional cooperation? What are the disadvantages? What are the organizational and managerial problems of the consortium?