Consortial Licensing - Goals

Big Ten Academic Alliance member libraries are counted among the largest and most progressive in the U.S.  Collectively, they manage resource acquisition budgets in excess of $125 million.  Historically, these great university libraries have collaborated through the Big Ten Academic Alliance to extend individual purchasing power, minimize the costs of acquisition and licensing, and reinforce their programs for resource sharing.   With the rapid expansion of electronic access to library materials, member libraries have increasingly turned to the Big Ten Academic Alliance to pursue the collective licensing of content.  By developing a robust collaboration around content licensing, our libraries expect to realize cost savings, operational efficiencies, and to exert influence over the scholarly publishing market.

Goals for collaborative licensing include:

• Extend the breadth and depth of resources available to all students, faculty, and staff at the Big Ten Academic Alliance member universities.
• Foster higher levels of collection coordination across Big Ten Academic Alliance member libraries to realize greater predictability for users about the availability of certain core holdings, and at the same time enabling each of our libraries to allocate greater staff time and funding to the development of more specialized and unique resources.
• Use the collection funds of Big Ten Academic Alliance universities to advance the individual and collective strategic and operational objectives of our libraries and campuses.
• Make the acquisition and licensing of electronic resources as efficient and timely as possible, but without compromising the opportunity for member libraries to adequately review and consider proposals.
• Influence the underlying terms being offered by commercial publishers and transform the direction of scholarly communication.
• Secure archival rights and protections for licensed content as appropriate.
• Seek transparency and accountability for Big Ten Academic Alliance agreements so members clearly understand the principles by which costs and benefits are allocated among member institutions.