Core Consortium Management Interest Group

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About this Group

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Purpose: Focuses on consortial funding, advocacy, services, etc., and discusses topics of interest to statewide library cooperatives, multi-state, national cooperatives, and multi-type library systems.

This group is part of Core's Leadership & Management Section.

 

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  • 1.  Introductions

    Posted Oct 21, 2011 11:27 AM

    Hello everyone,

    I notice that there are now 20 members of this group. But no discussion. Maybe a good way to get started would be for members to introduce themselves, and list/describe the consortia with which they are involved. Anyway, I'm happy to begin:

    I'm Will Stuivenga, Cooperative Projects Manager for the Washington State Library, an LSTA funded position in the Library Development Program at WSL.

    Currently I manage one formal consortium, the Washington Digital Library Consortium (WDLC) which was formed for the purpose of sharing the resources of the Washington Anytime Library, an OverDrive collection. This consortium was formed in 2008, and was founded by a couple of Washington public libraries. The collection provides both eAudiobooks and eBooks to its members and their patrons.

    The WDLC initially had 7 members. When the State Library assumed management of the consortium in 2010, there were 9 members. Since that time we have expanded to 26 members, and are still growing. All but one of the public library members serve populations under 100,000, and most under 50K, with 11 members under 10K population served.

    This consortium is part of our LSTA funded "Off the Page: Downloadable Audiobooks for Washington" project which I manage. In addition to the OverDrive consortium, we have a contract--originally with OCLC NetLibrary, then EBSCO--to provide subscriptions to several collections of unlimited use eAudiobooks from Recorded Books. Currently that contract is moving to Recorded Books. This is not a formal consortium, but is managed as a project of the State Library partially funded with LSTA resources. Over 40 public libraries, a handful of academic libraries, and over 300 schools or school districts currently participate.

    I also manage the Statewide Database Licensing project, which provides an aggregated periodical database, Washington and national newspapers, and a collection of resources for children and students to most libraries in the state, including public libraries, private academic, community and technical colleges, K-12 schools, and special (research, hospital, and gov't agency) libraries. This project is not organized as a formal consortium, but functions much like one. Half the annual cost of our contract is paid with LSTA funds; the remainder is contributed by the participating libraries.

    I also manage our statewide catalog project, which provides Wayfinder: The Catalog of Washington Libraries to the state. Wayfinder is a subset of OCLC's WorldCat database, and is the product of Washington Group Services, a significant pool of WA libraries that joined together to purchase their basic OCLC services: cataloging, resource sharing (ILL), and WorldCat subscriptions. Again, not a formal consortium, but with some consortia-like activities. Wayfinder itself is funded with LSTA funds, but all partner libraries pay their own individual OCLC costs, with the exception of a handful of small libraries that are having some or all of their startup OCLC costs subsidized with LSTA funds for a limited period to help them get started, and to assist in getting their holdings into WorldCat.

    Well there you have it. That's what I do, and frankly, any one of these projects could easily provide full-time job security, but I do my best to keep all of them running as smoothly as possible.

    Now I'd love to hear from some of the rest of you!