On Thursday, February 14, Roger Schonfeld is delivering a plenary address on “The Role of Library Consortia in the Transition to Cloud-based Infrastructure and Open Access Publishing” at the NFAIS Annual Conference in Alexandria, Virginia. His session will run from 10:45 am to noon, and registration is now open on the NFAIS website.

Abstract

Library consortia and systems have played a major role in the development of collaborations to expand the availability of collections and licensed content and reduce duplicative expenditures. Today, the transition towards open access, and new generations of library systems platforms, are among the factors that are changing the nature of library collaborations. Shifts in the nature of the collaboration sometimes involve pressures on strategy, membership, and governance. This has implications not only for consortia themselves and their member libraries, but also for the publisher and vendor communities. In addition to a basic overview of some of the most important shifts in the environment and among consortia, this talk will examine some of the key trends to watch, and to get ahead of, in the years to come.