Confronting/Managing the Crisis of Indian Libraries

Abstract

Consortia-based initiatives have been launched for pooling electronic information resources on cost-beneficial platforms. The ever-increasing diversified needs of the user community in the face of diminishing budget and increasing cost of resources, consortia based subscription is key to survive for the academic libraries. Consortia are need of the hour for the Indian libraries, as the situation in India is compounded by the devaluation of rupee against the major foreign currencies, resulting in steep decline in procurement of international scholarly journals. As a result, a number of cooperative initiatives have surfaced covering different disciplines and institutions. In view of the importance and mushrooming of consortia, the chapter tries to explore the various initiatives in India for providing access to knowledge under the purview of consortia to the end users.