EIFL-Consortium Management

Building library consortia

Library consortia are groups of libraries that share common goals.

A consortium is able to speak with one voice to stakeholders, policymakers and funders. Shared resources and jointly planned activities enable member libraries to provide more services, more effectively.

Our unique approach is to build and support national library consortia and, through the power of collaboration, we are able to reach millions of people.

EIFL-Consortium Management in action…

Providing training, expertise, consultancy, and mentoring
Offering a range of resources on consortium building Learn more
Facilitating knowledge flow among EIFL partner consortia to share best practices
Reaching out to countries most in need of support due to their dire economic circumstances

Consortium building in the Maghreb

Through the EC-Tempus funded project, ISTeMAG, whose goal is to increase access to scientific and technical information in higher education in the Maghreb, EIFL conducted consortium management training with librarians from across Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.

Celebrating successes

EIFL now works with consortia in more than 45 countries - from Albania to Zimbabwe - many of whom received start-up grants to establish the consortium and expand access to electronic resources in support of science, research and education.

Three former grantees -- Electronic Resources for Moldova; Serbian Library Consortium for Coordinated Acquisition (KoBSON); and Lithuanian Research Library Consortium (LMBA) -- celebrated their tenth anniversaries in 2011, and can look back with pride on a decade that has seen the transformation of library services in societies that have experienced dramatic change. Read more.

Our achievements

EIFL Consortium Management has worked with over 45 of consortia; most of them we supported right from the initial stages of forming a consortium
Our Consortium Management Road Map document is useful to help consortia get started, as well as support existing consortia to develop and ensure their sustainability
EIFL is continually responding to requests for membership by new countries; our latest members include: Uganda and The Maldives.
We work with country consortia on a continuous basis to strengthen and sustain the consortia, for example by giving ‘trouble-shooting’ advice, or adding our voice to their advocacy campaign

Join EIFL

If you are interested in joining EIFL, please contact us at info[at]eifl.net. You will also be required to fill out our application form (Word document). Learn more about EIFL Consortium Management and joining EIFL.