INFONET CONSORTIUM


       Consortium is described as a 'a group of people, countries, companies etc.. who are working together on a particular project.
                   A library consortium is a group of libraries who are joined together and agree on the basis of legal terms and conditions to share their information resources to satisfy the needs of information seekers of that participating libraries.
         The UGC INFONET e-journal consortium has been setup for promoting the use of electronic databases and access to full text e-journal by the student, faculty members, research scholars of higher learning institutions under affiliation of UGC are the primary beneficiaries and ultimately this opportunity will go up to college level in near future.
               The UGC INFONET consortium was indicated in 2003 .It is the Gateway to scholarly information available globally. The program is wholly funded by the UGC and monitored by INFLIBNET center Ahmadabad. INFLIBNET center is Autonomous inter inter-university center(IUC) of UGC involved in creating infrastructure for sharing of library and information resources and services among Academic and Research institutions. INFLIBNET works collaboratively with Indian university libraries to shape the future of the academic libraries in the evolving information environment.
                Under the consortium there are about 4600 plus Full text scholarly electronic journals besides indexing and abstracting databases and Gateway portals from 25 publishers across the globe can be accessed. The whole program has been implemented in different phases, so far 100 universities out 171 Indian universities ,which come under the purview of UGC, have been provided access to these journals and it will gradually be extended to affiliated colleges as well.
ADVANTAGES
The consortial approach to electronic journals access plays an important role in facilitating access to electronic journals through co-operative purchase options. Advantages include minimizing acquisition cost of international scientific periodicals, consequently increasing user satisfaction.
CONCLUTION
The consortia are increasingly negotiating (primarily cost and facilities) with publishers for access by their users to e-journal, e-book and up-date-databases etc. The concept of consortium is now shifted from sharing of information resources of libraries to sharing of expertise and also explore the information needs for libraries to make the most effective use of their funds collectively and efficiently.