The Virtual Consortium

Tim Bucknall describes how a group of Carolina libraries came together to expand dramatically their journal content

by Tim Bucknall -- netConnect, 4/15/2005

The Carolina Consortium came into being for one purpose: to conclude deals that would allow us to share both the costs and the content of a large number of academic journals from three major publishers—Wiley, Springer, and Blackwell. In just a few months—and without any central authority, funding, or administrative overhead—librarians from 38 schools forged a resource-sharing arrangement that was mutually beneficial to both the libraries and the publishers. The deals we got provided each library with greatly expanded journal access at little or no extra cost.

The catalyst for the establishment of the Carolina Consortium was simple. There were several attractive publisher packages that would allow consortia members to expand greatly their academic journal offerings with only a nominal increase in costs, or, in some instances, with actual savings. (For more on the serials picture, see "Choosing Sides," LJ 4/15/05, p. 43.)

Wiley and Springer offered shared-title deals, while Blackwell proffered its complete online title list. With the two shared-title deals, all of the subscribed titles at each school become accessible online to each of the participating schools in the consortium. Wiley charges a modest five percent premium for this enhanced access. Springer's plan is even more appealing. It not only forgoes a surcharge but also provides a credit for duplicate subscriptions within the consortium. This credit can then be used to add other Springer titles to consortium access. Both the Springer and Wiley deals include a six- to eight-year back file for most titles. Both are multiyear deals that impose a reasonable inflationary price cap on subscription costs and allow any institution to withdraw from the consortium in the case of dire fiscal emergency. In return for the price caps and the ability to share titles, each institution promises to maintain its current level of expenditure with that publisher for the duration of the contract period.

The Blackwell deal does not involve sharing titles but does involve some sharing of fees. Each participating school pays a share of Blackwell's administrative fee, as well as an additional amount based on its institution's size. The schools also promise not to cancel any current Blackwell subscriptions. In return, the schools receive access to all of Blackwell's online titles (along with back files to 1997 or 1998 for most journals). They also gain ownership of all those titles for the current publication year.

The three publisher deals share several commonalities that helped determine the composition of the Carolina Consortium. The content is highly respected journals with a subject bias toward the sciences, which appeals primarily to academic institutions. The requirement that each school maintain current subscriptions made the deals less enticing to schools with declining enrollment or severe budget problems. Perhaps most important, all three of the deals got better and better as more participants agreed to join. More members mean more Wiley and Springer titles to be shared and a greater duplicate title allowance to be used for sharing even more Springer titles. More members would also mean that the fixed Blackwell administrative fee could be divided among more schools.

Unfortunately, the state of North Carolina lacked a mechanism that would allow a large number of schools to take advantage of these deals. The statewide consortium, NC LIVE, has a laudable and egalitarian philosophy toward shared resources: all NC LIVE resources must be accessible to, and paid for by, all of the state's community colleges, public libraries, independent universities and colleges, and the University of North Carolina (UNC) system. So NC LIVE wasn't an appropriate venue to pursue these highly scholarly resources. Other possible consortium options, such as a North Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities agreement or a UNC system consortium agreement, offered their own challenges and, even if successful, would have excluded significant numbers of interested schools.

To allow the broadest participation—and reap the greatest benefits—a new consortium had to be created. Unfortunately, no one had any funding to create a consortium of the type we were accustomed to—with a director, an office, legal counsel, a computer, and a copy machine.

We were also under intense time pressure. We became aware of the deals in the late spring but needed to act on them by September, EBSCO's serials renewal deadline (and the serials vendor for most of the libraries). Using spreadsheets provided by the publishers, schools with existing Wiley, Springer, and Blackwell subscriptions were readily identified. Calls indicated significant interest in exploring the deals, and representatives from the publishers and nearly 20 institutions met in July.

The librarians included a broad mix of serials librarians, reference librarians, collection management librarians, and administrators. The schools ranged from small, private, liberal arts colleges to large, public, research universities. All decisions were made by consensus. Although such a meeting could easily have been chaotic and unproductive, this widely diverse group worked collegially and cooperatively to make decisions for the common good.

What we ended up creating can be described as a "virtual" consortium. Trust holds the group together, not a legal agreement. No one entity is empowered to speak for all—or sign an agreement for all. The consortium has no offices or officers. There is no centralized billing. Each school signs its own separate contract with each publisher, although to simplify matters for the publisher we all agree on identical contracts.

After intense discussion with the publisher representatives at the meeting, the newly created Carolina Consortium made two decisions. First, following careful examination of the details of the three deals, we determined there was sufficient interest to pursue them all. Second, we agreed that each publisher would have to make certain specific concessions to do business with us.

Having laid the framework for a consortium, we urged South Carolina schools to join and further improve our three deals, even as our negotiations with the three vendors ensued. Throughout the license negotiation process, both the librarians and the publishers worked in good faith and refrained from making unrealistic or confrontational demands that could potentially sour the deals.

Ultimately, the publishers proved both willing and able to accommodate the consortium's needs. In fact, in some important ways the publishers exceeded their contractual responsibilities. For example, although the contracts stipulated a start date of January 1, 2005, all three publishers allowed the consortium to access their materials several weeks earlier.

As of January, the Carolina Consortium's deals have all been implemented. Thirty-eight schools currently have online access to as many as 2,175 academic journals from Wiley, Springer, and Blackwell. The actual number of titles available to each institution varies, because each school has made its own decisions about whether or not to participate in each of the three deals. The two title-sharing plans proved to be the most popular, with 36 schools opting to share access to 290 Wiley titles and 35 choosing to share access to all of Springer's 1,171 online journals. By contrast, only nine schools chose Blackwell's 714 titles. This is because, of the three deals, Blackwell's required the greatest expenditure of new money for most participants.

Overall, the consortium has found these deals to be highly cost-effective. "By acquiring Wiley InterScience through the Carolina Consortium, our faculty and students now access more Wiley titles than their counterparts at some ARL institutions," says Don Beagle, director of library service at Belmont Abbey College. "We plan to increase our participation in coming years."

When the list prices of all the available journals at each participating school are totaled, the value of the titles across the entire consortium reaches nearly $70 million. The total cost to the whole group for all three deals for 2005 is only about $2.5 million. That is a tremendous cost avoidance—especially when the bulk of our actual costs are going toward the renewal of journal subscriptions that most schools likely would have maintained anyway. And it was done without increasing any administrative expenses. (For greater understanding of the consortium's impact, see "Case Studies: Meredith College and UNC-Greensboro," p. 17.)

The advantages for publishers are perhaps less immediate but no less compelling. By locking institutions into their current levels of subscription expenditures, publishers guarantee their income stream during a time of high volatility in the academic journal market. This buys time for these companies to evaluate and respond to emerging trends, such as open access. It also makes it much less likely that their journals will be eliminated if budget problems continue.

The publishers' requirement that all shared consortium titles be in electronic format (with the option to purchase a print copy at additional cost) has greatly hastened the migration from print to electronic, a move that will allow publishers to trim distribution costs.

At a time when new journal subscriptions from libraries can be hard to come by, the publishers' minimum participation fees have created new journal sales and even entirely new customers. One school that was considering joining the consortium found that its subscription total fell $1400 short of the amount the publisher required for participation. With online access to hundreds of academic journals in the balance, the school worked with campus funding agencies to find the requisite dollars to initiate the new subscriptions and gain access to the consortium's shared titles. Other schools with no Wiley or Springer subscriptions whatsoever started enough new subscriptions to meet the minimums and thus gain eligibility for shared access. These new sales represent revenue that the publishers clearly would not have received had it not been for the consortium.

The consortium also expands the potential customer base for new, allied publisher services, such as ebooks that integrate with a publisher's web site. Perhaps most important for the long term, the publishers are increasing customer satisfaction at a time when library and academic journal publisher interactions have become increasingly hostile—and at little cost to themselves because of the electronic environment. After all, from a publisher perspective, increasing the number of titles that a school can access through a publisher web site is fairly inexpensive and painless, especially compared with what would have been required to print and ship those same titles to an institution.

Now that we've successfully implemented large journal deals with Blackwell, Springer, and Wiley, we're considering future options. We're investigating 24 deals from 19 publishers. Given the composition of the group, the focus will remain academic, but the scope may expand to encompass new types of resources such as databases and ebooks and federated search engines. New memberships will also be encouraged, and we are inviting other academic libraries in the Carolinas.

In many ways, the Carolina Consortium has implications for libraries nationwide. Its success shows that institutions with shared interests can band together on short notice to create ad hoc consortia for specific needs. Moreover, even libraries with differing missions and backgrounds can gain considerably expanded journal access at little extra cost by working together.

Through the Carolina Consortium, libraries are able to share thousands of journal subscriptions with faculty, staff, students, and visitors at dozens of libraries throughout North and South Carolina. Suddenly, a large collection of major academic journals that would typically be accessible only at elite research institutions can be accessed online from small colleges, historically underfunded institutions, and community colleges. Working to provide more information to more people in more places is a goal of most libraries. The Carolina Consortium has done just that.