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CONSORTIA THINKING Consortia and Their Discontents by Thomas A. Peters I never became involved in formal debating in high school and college, but I have always believed that it is wise and prudent to try to understand competing argu- ments. Of course, it always is good to understand the argu- ments behind the position you support, but equally important to understand the arguments behind the position(s) you do not support. In that spirit, we should examine what people have to say against library consortia and their activities. I firmly believe that collaboration involving libraries is crucial to the continued success of libraries. This is not a bold pre- diction, because libraries have been collaborating success- fully for decades. Perhaps the question is not whether or not to collaborate, but how to collaborate and with whom. We should explore—and attempt to make some sense of—the criticisms and discontents consortia confront or should con- front. With “discontents,” an allusion is made to Sigmund Freud’s little book, Civilization and Its Discontents, pub- lished late in his career. 1 He wrote about the inherent ten- sion between the demands of instinct (primarily sex and ag- gression—the usual suspects) and the constraints of civilization and the guilt it engenders. Civilization exists within the context of this irresolvable tension born of com- promise. To reap the benefits of a civilized existence, we need to curb certain natural tendencies. Library consortial activities, the half-acre of civilization we tend, also embody and reveal several irresolvable tensions. Thankfully, sex and aggression are not the principal culprits. To have libraries engage in civilized consortial behavior is a delicate, tense process. Consortial discontents compre- hend not only the criticisms directed at library consortia by naysayers and those who are openly hostile toward consortia, but also—and more importantly—the inherent tensions, com- promises, sublimations, and deferrals that make consortial activity possible. Those who are most active in collaborative efforts may feel the discontents the most. Over the years, I have been able to understand these in- herent consortial discontents in terms of paired good Cs and bad Cs. 1. Consortia versus cartels or cabals: Cartels and cabals are nefarious consortia 2. Collaboration versus competition or collusion: Collusion is collaboration gone bad, and competition is a bit of a conundrum for collaborators 3. Cooperation versus command and control: Cajoling is involved here somehow 4. Civilization versus chaos CONSORTIAL DISCONTENTS At least 12 discontents engendered by consortia and consor- tial activities can be identified. 1. Too many meetings Collaborative efforts often involve too much talk and pre- cious little action. Conversation usually is a “good C” and the precursor to action, but action often is much more de- sired and valued than mere conversation. In terms of travel and staff time, meetings are expensive, and for most consor- tia these costs are borne by the member libraries. 2. Time delays Consortial collaboration takes too long. Although the wheels of academe turn slowly, incredibly, the wheels of consortia turn even slower. It once took a consortium I worked with an entire year to consummate an agreement with an e-jour- nal publisher, and six months to renew an existing agree- ment with an e-content supplier. Add to this the fact that we often underestimate the length of time it will take to com- plete a consortial project, and you have a recipe for disgrun- tlement. As a result, often the more enthusiastic member libraries about a particular initiative or imminent deal be- come disenchanted. Is it worth waiting another six months to get an additional 10% percent off? 3. Inefficient Consortial collaboration is too inefficient. For many projects, attempting to do them consortially is just about the most inefficient means of achieving the outputs and outcomes you want and need. We all should remember that the lure of con- sortial activity is not efficiency, but cost avoidance and capi- talizing on opportunities that would be difficult or impossi- ble to realize if libraries acted unilaterally. 4. Ineffective Consortial efforts have a high failure rate. Many whither on the development vine, rather than rot and fall fully devel- oped. People who participate in consortial activities are dedi- cated, busy professionals. Maintaining the interest, energy, and momentum of a disparate group of people is difficult, especially when the activity is not their day job. 5. Ineffable Sometimes the outputs and outcomes of consortial collabora- tion are too difficult and complex to express. The payoff, The Journal of Academic Librarianship, Volume 29, Number 2, pages 111–114 March 2003 111

Consortia and their discontents

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CONSORTIA THINKING● Consortia and Their Discontents

by Thomas A. Peters

I never became involved in formal debating in highschool and college, but I have always believed that it iswise and prudent to try to understand competing argu-

ments. Of course, it always is good to understand the argu-ments behind the position you support, but equally importantto understand the arguments behind the position(s) you donot support. In that spirit, we should examine what peoplehave to say against library consortia and their activities. Ifirmly believe that collaboration involving libraries is crucialto the continued success of libraries. This is not a bold pre-diction, because libraries have been collaborating success-fully for decades. Perhaps the question is not whether or notto collaborate, but how to collaborate and with whom. Weshould explore—and attempt to make some sense of—thecriticisms and discontents consortia confront or should con-front.

With “discontents,” an allusion is made to SigmundFreud’s little book, Civilization and Its Discontents, pub-lished late in his career.1 He wrote about the inherent ten-sion between the demands of instinct (primarily sex and ag-gression—the usual suspects) and the constraints ofcivilization and the guilt it engenders. Civilization existswithin the context of this irresolvable tension born of com-promise. To reap the benefits of a civilized existence, weneed to curb certain natural tendencies. Library consortialactivities, the half-acre of civilization we tend, also embodyand reveal several irresolvable tensions. Thankfully, sex andaggression are not the principal culprits.

To have libraries engage in civilized consortial behavioris a delicate, tense process. Consortial discontents compre-hend not only the criticisms directed at library consortia bynaysayers and those who are openly hostile toward consortia,but also—and more importantly—the inherent tensions, com-promises, sublimations, and deferrals that make consortialactivity possible. Those who are most active in collaborativeefforts may feel the discontents the most.

Over the years, I have been able to understand these in-herent consortial discontents in terms of paired good Cs andbad Cs.

1. Consortia versus cartels or cabals: Cartels and cabals arenefarious consortia

2. Collaboration versus competition or collusion: Collusionis collaboration gone bad, and competition is a bit of aconundrum for collaborators

3. Cooperation versus command and control: Cajoling isinvolved here somehow

4. Civilization versus chaos

CONSORTIAL DISCONTENTS

At least 12 discontents engendered by consortia and consor-tial activities can be identified.

1. Too many meetings

Collaborative efforts often involve too much talk and pre-cious little action. Conversation usually is a “good C” andthe precursor to action, but action often is much more de-sired and valued than mere conversation. In terms of traveland staff time, meetings are expensive, and for most consor-tia these costs are borne by the member libraries.

2. Time delays

Consortial collaboration takes too long. Although the wheelsof academe turn slowly, incredibly, the wheels of consortiaturn even slower. It once took a consortium I worked withan entire year to consummate an agreement with an e-jour-nal publisher, and six months to renew an existing agree-ment with an e-content supplier. Add to this the fact that weoften underestimate the length of time it will take to com-plete a consortial project, and you have a recipe for disgrun-tlement. As a result, often the more enthusiastic memberlibraries about a particular initiative or imminent deal be-come disenchanted. Is it worth waiting another six months toget an additional 10% percent off?

3. Inefficient

Consortial collaboration is too inefficient. For many projects,attempting to do them consortially is just about the mostinefficient means of achieving the outputs and outcomes youwant and need. We all should remember that the lure of con-sortial activity is not efficiency, but cost avoidance and capi-talizing on opportunities that would be difficult or impossi-ble to realize if libraries acted unilaterally.

4. Ineffective

Consortial efforts have a high failure rate. Many whither onthe development vine, rather than rot and fall fully devel-oped. People who participate in consortial activities are dedi-cated, busy professionals. Maintaining the interest, energy,and momentum of a disparate group of people is difficult,especially when the activity is not their day job.

5. Ineffable

Sometimes the outputs and outcomes of consortial collabora-tion are too difficult and complex to express. The payoff,

The Journal of Academic Librarianship, Volume 29, Number 2, pages 111–114 March 2003 111

even when it is identifiable, may occur years after the initialeffort.

6. Sustainability Issues

Sustaining any consortial initiative is difficult. Enduring re-source commitments to consortial programs are rare. When itcomes to consortial license agreements for e-resources—oneof the consortial success stories of the last 10 years—renew-als are the ashes that eventually may choke the consortialfire. In his Sonnet 73, Shakespeare expressed the situationquite well:

In me thou see’st the glowing of such fireThat on the ashes of his youth doth lie,As the death-bed whereon it must expireConsumed with that which it was nourish’d by.

7. Scalability Issues

The CIC, the academic consortium of 12 Midwestern re-search universities, currently has approximately 40 activee-resource agreements. The labor-intensive, time-consumingnegotiation process by which these agreements are consum-mated and renewed provides no realistic opportunity to in-crease that number to 400 or 4,000. The need for widelyaccepted standard licensing terms, standard business prac-tices for e-resource agreements, and a better way to manageconsortial agreements, including all the attendant communi-cation, is self-evident.In the print-based world, selecting,receiving, and processing the printed works were the com-plex, labor-intensive processes. In the world of consortiale-resource deals, consummating the agreement is the labor-intensive, time-consuming process. Once the agreement hasbeen signed, access to the e-resource begins almost immedi-ately. To address the scalability challenges confronting con-sortial activity, we need to focus on the consummation pro-cess.

8. Too Many

Kaufman2 states that there are now too many consortia.From the institutional perspective, participating in so manyconsortia requires significant amounts of staff time and ef-fort to sustain. Consortia may be like lawyers in this regard.Although the work done by any individual lawyer may besatisfactory and needful, there are just too many of them.Have consortia become ambulance chasers on the informa-tion superhighway?

9. Too Ossified

Consortia tend to be younger and more nimble than theirmember libraries. Member libraries can exploit this to theiradvantage, but it also can be a source of jealousy betweenthe consortium staff and the member libraries. Like all orga-nizations, however, consortia age and ossify. When it comesto organizations, I subscribe to the “wound clock” theory.Something winds up the clock of an organization and ener-gizes it. Over time that energy winds down. In the 1970s,resource sharing and union online catalogs seemed to be theforces that wound up library consortia. In the 1990s, consor-tial agreements for e-resources provided the energy. Do li-brary consortia need to be re-wound? If so, what will re-energize them?

10. Idea and Reality Out of Whack

Collaboration always begins as a vision or idea. The place-ment of collaboration on an ideal pedestal appears to have

occurred within the last 50 years, perhaps as recently as thelast 20 years. It is rare to hear anyone argue that the abstractidea of collaboration is ridiculous. Socially and culturally,collaboration has become a good thing to do. Collaborativeideas currently have high social and cultural value. Organi-zations (nation-states, college and universities, academic li-braries, and funding agencies) extol the virtue of collabora-tion. Most grant funding agencies for libraries now placegreat value on projects that involve collaboration. Recently Iwas examining some IMLS grant guidelines, and the firstparagraph of a 47-page document stated, “IMLS encouragesbroad-scale partnerships, including statewide and regionalcollaborations.” No explanation was offered concerning whyIMLS encourages collaboration. Because collaboration cur-rently is socially and institutionally acceptable, it is naturalto assume that no explanation is necessary.

Collaborative efforts attract individuals primarily based onthe idea of collaborating and the general principles to beupheld. People are attracted to collaboration because of anidea, and they leave—often disgruntled—because of the re-ality. The lived experience of trying to collaborate usually isnothing like what we imagine collaborating will be like.There is a tremendous tension between collaboration as anideal and as a lived experience. Collaborating is difficult,frustrating work. The Latin root of the word collaborationmeans to labor together. This can lead to disaffection andlow recidivism rates among those who volunteer to work onconsortial projects.

11. Competition Trumps Collaboration

Compared to collaboration, competition is the stronger, morenatural human drive. In the realm of scarce resources, com-petition makes sense. Collaboration and cooperation appealto our higher nature. Appealing to the higher nature of hu-mans in order to obtain sustained, often thankless, effortfrom them is fraught with danger.

12. Surly Alexandrians

We are all surly Alexandrians. The Alexandrian ideal—tohave all information held locally at our fingertips—burns inour hearts. As humans, not only do we want to compete, butalso to gather resources close to us. Hording is part of ournature. Possession is nine-tenths of the flaw. Because wecannot—economically or physically—achieve the Alexan-drian ideal in reality, we are surly. “Alexandrian repression”could be the phrase we use to designate the inherent discon-tent that produces this surliness.The Alexandrian impulsemanifests itself in several ways. In fact, the digital revo-lution may have rekindled the Alexandrian fires burningin our breasts. In his October 1999 speech at the reopen-ing of the Bing Wing of the Stanford University Library,President Casper noted that “ . . . the new digital mediummay finally help us secure the Alexandrian ideal, if in a ver-sion that incorporates misaligned miscellanies of a numbingvariety, a kaleidoscopic virtual marketplace of goods, ser-vices and ideas.”3 Brewster Kahle’s attempts to archive theentire web and the quest for larger hard drives may be pecu-liarly digital manifestations of the Alexandrian impulse.

WAYS TO ADDRESS THESE INHERENT DISCONTENTS

We do not need to take these inherent consortial discontentslying down. Existing consortial programs and projects can berevitalized, some can be discontinued, and new service initi-atives can be developed. When an existing program isspruced up, a tension often surfaces between the idealistsand realists. The idealists recall the idea and goal that

112 The Journal of Academic Librarianship

brought the existing program into existence, while the real-ists comprehend the program primarily through its frumpycurrent incamation. When attempting to kill a few programs,projects, or working groups, consortia may find it as difficultas their member libraries to accomplish. The danger withstarting new consortial services is that consortia may spreadthemselves too thin. Consortia also can dissipate their vimby growing too rapidly.

Another way consortia can revitalize themselves isthrough strategic inter-consortial partnerships that may even-tually lead to consolidation. Kaufman4 predicted that in thefuture there will be fewer consortia, but that the remainingconsortia will be larger and more powerful. By late 2002 herprediction had started to come true, with the merger of theOrbis and Cascade consortia in Oregon and Washington.Both were less than 10 years old. For Illinois academic li-braries, the recently formed Council of Academic Libraries(CAL) (http://www.ilcso/uiuc.edu/cal/ accessed December 9,2002) will result in better communication and collabora-tion—and perhaps eventually some consolidation—amongthe various academic library consortia active in that state.

Perhaps conditions are right for the development of othertypes of consortia and consortial relationships. Historically,library consortia have been comprised of “birds of a feather”defined by geography (e.g., regional multi-types), by geogra-phy and type (e.g., statewide academic library consortia), or,curiously, by athletic conference. Davis5 seems to argue thatlibrary consortia have become too loose and diffuse. He sug-gests that, based on his analysis of the usage of the IDEALe-journal cluster by NERL member libraries, consortiashould be made more homogeneous. “The results of theanalysis challenge the composition of geographic-based con-sortia and argue in favor of consortia based on homogeneousmembership.” Lougee6 advocates having libraries work moreclosely with other campus units. Field librarians will enablea college or university library to reach out to students, fac-ulty, and staff. Kaufman7 suggests that libraries should beactively cultivating vertical partnership and collaborations.

Money and politics are essential to civilizations and con-sortia. The three Ps (politics, personalities, and pecunia) can-not be avoided. We need to do a better job of calculating thecosts and benefits of consortial activities. If library consortiaare to be integral to information delivery and scholarly com-munication in higher education, we need to develop bettermethods for calculating the costs and benefits of consortialactivities.

The politics of the provision of information and informa-tion services are changing. Castells describes realpolitick asthe traditional method by which institutions (nation states,academic libraries, etc.) use their powers to influence thebroader environment. Realpolitick has not disappeared in theinformation age, but it has been joined by Noopolitick,which “ . . . refers to the political issues arising from theformation of a ‘noosphere,’ or global information environ-ment, which includes cyberspace and all other informationsystems . . . .”8 Libraries in general, not just library consor-tia, need to address the implications of the political, eco-nomic, and service issues arising from the formation of thenoosphere.

We also are witnessing a long-term shifting balance ofpower and value between institutional collections, metacol-lections, and personal collections. The academic library, the

embodiment of the institutional collection, is losing marketshare to metacollections and personal collections. Consortiacan help their member libraries explore how to survive andthrive in this new emerging information order. One possibleoutcome of this general historical trend: the value of select-ing materials at the title level to add to institutional collec-tions probably will decline into the foreseeable future. Bigdeals of one type or another (wherein large quantities ofcontent will be purchased at one time) will gain in popular-ity until such time that “nano-deals” become feasible for thecontent creators, aggregators, and vendors.

CONCLUSION

Our social contracts with civilization and consortia containescape clauses. Whenever my college roommate complainedabout the stresses and injustices of college life, I would re-mind him that he could always drop out. When it comes tocivilization and consortia, we also should keep the alterna-tives before us. One alternative to civilization is the state ofnature, which Thomas Hobbes reminds us is nasty, brutish,and short. The alternatives to consortial collaboration in-clude: unilateral activity by a library, bilateral agreementsbetween libraries and publishers, aggregators, vendors, andservice suppliers, unnecessary redundancy, and missed op-portunities.

Returning briefly to the “good C/bad C” duality, we havefailed to consider consensus versus conflict. Actually, I donot see library consortia as clearly in the consensus camp,where conflict always is something to be avoided. Often thebest collaborative efforts occur when there is lively disagree-ment and debate, not consensus. Consortial initiatives, inter-library collaboration, and cooperation do not mean that weall must “make nice” and avoid confrontation, conflict, andfriendly disagreements.

Consortial collaboration involves a leap of trust. It is aunique type of leap, too, in that it involves long-term institu-tional commitments. Reilly notes, “ . . .associations based onmutual trust act as a check on the otherwise uninhibitedworkings of market forces and individual self-interest.”9

Now is the winter of our discontent, the immortally ashenShakespeare declares. Consortia, like civilization, cannotsolve or explain away their inherent discontents. We have tolive and struggle with them forever. Although consortia dealin content, consortial participants never will be content. Likealcoholics, we always will be recovering competitors. Col-laboration is particularly well suited to librarianship, not be-cause librarians queue so well, but because information is aninfinite resource.

Acknowledgments: Note: Some of the ideas contained inthis column were expressed during a speech by the author atthe Annual Meeting of the Illinois Cooperative CollectionManagement Program, Chicago, Illinois, December 6, 2002.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents. Translated intoEnglish and edited by James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton,1930, 1961).

2. Paula A. Kaufman, “Whose good old days are these? A dozenpredictions for the digital age,” Journal of Library Administration35 (2001): 5–19.

March 2003 113

3. Gerhard Casper. 1999. Who needs a library, anyway? The reopen-ing of the Bing Wing. Available online at http://www.stanford.edu/dept/pres-provost/president/speeches/991013libtext.html (accessedOctober 12, 1999).

4. Ibid., Kaufman.5. Philip M. Davis, “Patterns in Electronic Journal Usage: Challeng-

ing the Composition of Geographic Consortia,” College & Re-search Libraries 63 (6) 2002: 484–497.

6. Wendy Pradt Lougee. Diffuse Libraries: Emergent Roles for theResearch Library in the Digital Age. Washington, D.C. Council on

Library and Information Resources. Available online at http://www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/pub108abst.html (accessed December 9, 2002).

7. Ibid., Kaufman.8. Manuel Castells. The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet,

Business, and Society (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press,2001), p. 160.

9. Bernard F. Reilly. Cooperation and Trust. FOCUS on The Centerfor Research Libraries 22 (1): 1–3. Available only online at http://www.crl.edu/info/focus/XXIIv1/Fall02Focus.pdf (accessed De-cember 9, 2002).

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