International
and local speakers outlined their experiences with consortium,
and commented on those aspects that work well, and areas in
which consortium fail to deliver. Conference delegates were
involved in workshop activity during the two days that
focussed on various aspects of the current and perceived
future of
consortia:
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The key opportunities
and challenges for consortia over the next 5
years
|
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Their relevance,
value, purpose and key outcomes to be
achieved
|
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The scope and
strategic focus for future
consortia
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What consortia will
look like - their characteristics and mode of
operation.
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One of the key
outputs from delegates was that the present mode of operation
with volunteers devoting time and energy to the growth of
consortia, is itself unsustainable. This is due to available
time, and an ensuing large change of key personnel over the
next five to ten years, who are intimately involved in current
consortia activity - they will be retiring or moving on.
It is therefore
timely to provide this current review and to begin the process
of describing what the future characteristics of consortia
ought to be.
 Key
Conference Outputs from the 2003 conference
With the wealth
of expertise and experience at the conference, the following
broad issues were identified:
Opportunities for
Consortia
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To motivate libraries
to remain relevant to patrons and
users |
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To leverage off
vendor experiences
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To influence
government and funding bodies
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To purchase well
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To go beyond the
sharing of resources and content
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To create commercial
ideas and concepts
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To develop library
staff and information professionals
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To better understand
users' needs and expectations
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To help libraries
deliver their primary goal (for their parent
organisations)
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To establish
"guerrilla" consortia - specific needs in time
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Sustainability |
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Chasing the very big
deals
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Fracturing the market
with too many consortia
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Duplication of effort
and resource utilisation
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Keeping fresh - not
fading nor lurching
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Maintaining
flexibility
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Resources required
for consortia operation
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Roles and
responsibilities of consortia member
organisations
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Volunteer nature of
participation - sustainable?
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Scope, strategic focus,
characteristics and mode of operation for future Australian
consortia:
The scope and strategic focus of
future consortia will be centred on sector specific needs e.g.
for public libraries, university and government
libraries.
These needs might address government
lobbying, the development of information professionals,
digitisation, creation of aggregated data and information,
access to electronic resources, and the creation of virtual
libraries.
Consortia will be flexible,
self-funding, with specific needs at a point in time,
relationship oriented with vendors and other key stakeholders
in the information chain, and will require trust between
participating libraries and their managers.
Future Directions
CAVAL will now be conducting a
strictly invitation only focussed two-day Future
Consortium workshop with progressive library and
information industry vendor leaders. This will be held on
August 8 and 9, 2004. The output from this workshop, outlining
key design and operational features of Future
Consortium, will be made available to both the Asian,
Australasian and wider international markets. This information
will ideally assist and facilitate further workshops and
conference presentations to take place, impacting on the
future design and operation of various consortia.
Enquiries can be directed to Steve
O'Connor (CEO, CAVAL Collaborative Solutions) at steveo@caval.edu.au.
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