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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.

This paper aims to describe the library consortium experienced at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan, Nigeria. Activities involved improving researchers' timely access to resources for research for development.

The approach taken was a librarian interview and observation of library records.

The consortium involves agricultural libraries in both developing and developed countries. Using the library software Inmagic database enhances the web‐based centralized online public access catalogue of all the participating institutions, the CGV Library. This enabled access to their comprehensive collections, promoting better library services to agricultural researchers. Hence, it bridges the digital gap between developing and developed countries. They are involved in joint acquisition of electronic journals and timely response to sharing their independent collections through electronic document delivery services.

The paper recommends that Nigerian libraries, especially agricultural research institutes, could emulate the IITA library consortium.

The paper provides recommendations to libraries wishing to form consortia in Nigeria and notes the positive impacts that this would have on national development.

The paper aims to critically examine the bibliographic utility as a roadmap to increase library consortia and provide an insight into a new library consortia strategy that integrates librarians into a system of sharing both resources and knowledge.

This study adopted a literature review approach with a focus on bibliographic utility as a necessary prerequisite for effective library consortia, which is a paradigm shift from the concept of individual ownership to a collective access of distributed network resources and knowledge.

The reviewed literature indicated that significant bibliographic utilities and integrated library systems are factors that shaped and developed consortia activities in libraries.

The bibliographic utility has limited literature, and a few published scholarly studies have combined bibliographic utility and library consortia as strategies to share resources and knowledge

This paper looks at the major goal and objectives set by Ghanaian academic libraries for the formation of a multipurpose consortium different from the Ghana Interlibrary Lending and Document Delivery Project (GILLDDNET). It also discusses the challenges that will be faced in achieving the stated goals and objectives and suggests what librarians can do to make a success out of the proposed consortium.

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 article presents ten issues in migrating a multi‐type library consortium to a shared client/server library system. The issues have been selected as especially pertinent to a consortium and describe the migration experiences of the Detroit Area Library Network (DALNET), a consortium of 20 academic, public and special libraries in the Metropolitan Detroit area. The issues are: (1) more control to member libraries; (2) pre‐migration decisions; (3) Web interface design; (4) training; (5) consortium staffing; (6) communication; (7) system maintenance; (8) security issues; (9) telecommunications network; and (10) commitment of member libraries. The capabilities of the client/server system will enable the consortium to provide new information and new information services not possible before, and will help consortium staff to meet the challenges of such a complex migration.

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.

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 analyse the current situation and the social and economic benefits from the consortia acquisitions of electronic resources by the China Academic Library and Information System (CALIS) South China Regional Centre and to recommend improvements for consortia acquisitions.

Analyses of price and usage made within the CALIS South China region of databases from a range of suppliers including EBSCO, LexisNexis and Springer are presented.

The electronic resource acquisitions by the CALIS South China Regional Centre have yielded remarkable social and economic benefits as the range of electronic collections has been expanded and enriched, benefits have accrued, money has been saved and it has proved to be of benefit to users; however, there is room for improvement. During the last three years, the total usage of the South China Consortia has increased but the usage of the member libraries in the consortia is unbalanced and there are big gaps among the member libraries. The single download/search cost of the e‐resources has been gradually decreasing but the cost of the e‐resources purchased by the South China region consortia is higher than that of the national consortia; hence, there is a need for further reductions.

The study is the first of its kind ever conducted in China. The findings of this paper will be helpful in improving electronic resource consortia acquisitions in the South China region.