Development of E-Resource Consortia for University and Institutional Libraries in India in Changing Environments : An Overview

ICT has brought the revolutionary changes in the functioning of libraries and information centres. The impact of ICT including WWW and Internet is visible in every walk of life. The libraries are not the exception. Due to electronic publishing, many e-resources in the form of e-journals, e-books and on-line/off-line databases are being published. The academic libraries especially colleges and universities libraries have been procuring these resources for their libraries. Due to escalation in the cost of learning resources both printed and e-resources and financial problems the academic libraries are facing, the consortia models are being adopted and experimented for the procurement and access to e-resources by the colleges and universities.UGC-INFONET Digital Library consortium is one of such initiatives of UGC which has been executed by the INFLIBNET Centre, Gandhinagar, Gujarat for the procurement of e-resources for the member libraries and their utilisation by the academic communities across India. Therefore, it is essential to study and understand the various issues and challenges for managing e-resources in consortia environment and also to examine the usage pattern of the e-resources available under this consortium to evaluate its utility for the university community.In the changing scenario, libraries and librarians will have to play a crucial role in handling conventional and electronic resources. Thus the era of electronic publishing has begun affecting producers, distributors, library and information centres and users community.The first part of paper describes about the e-resources, its characteristics, advantages, formats and issues for managing e-resources in the university and institutional libraries whereas the second part deals with a brief account of UGC-INFONET E-Journals Consortium, INDEST, FORSA, and other consortia for providing access to scholarly journals to the end users of universities and institutions of higher learning for their R& D activities. All universities which are under the purview of UGC have been provided UGC-INFONET Connectivity and access to scholarly e-Journals and Databases. At the end of the paper some suggestions have also been given for the optimum utilisation of e-resources