Cross-Consortial Collaboration: Expanding Capacity for Law Libraries.

Thompson, Tracy L.; Maes, Margaret K.; Dugas, Corie

In our digital information era, libraries have increasingly joined forces to act cooperatively through library consortia. Through membership in a consortium, a library can capitalize on programs like advocacy, joint purchasing, e-resource licensing, shared discovery platforms, etc. Resources saved through such efforts, including staff time and money, can then be deployed back into the library for other, mission-critical activities. Following the economic collapse of 2008, libraries needed more than ever to maximize exceedingly scarce budgets. In response, consortia began to push the envelope, exploring even deeper collaborations in an effort to minimize redundancies and maximize efficiencies. This article will look at some examples of cross-consortial collaboration and focus specifically on the ongoing efforts among the Legal Information Preservation Alliance (LIPA), the Mid-America Law Library Consortium (MALLCO), and the NELLCO Law Library Consortium (NELLCO) to achieve more robust cooperation across the three organizations. The authors are the three executive directors of the named organizations.

ELECTRONIC information resources; LAW libraries; LIBRARY cooperation; LEGAL literature; LIBRARY conferences

Serials Review, 2017, Vol 43, Issue 1, p9

0098-7913

Academic Journal

10.1080/00987913.2016.1247634