Recent trends in statewide academic library consortia - consortia discussed include Georgia's GALILEO, Louisiana Library Network, OhioLINK, TexShare, and Virginia's VIVA - Resource Sharing in a Changing Environment

Library Trends, Wntr, 1997 by William Gray Potter

Participating Libraries

GALILEO originated with the thirty-four institutions in the University System of Georgia. These include four doctoral institutions, two regional universities, thirteen comprehensive colleges or universities, and fifteen two-year colleges. Funding was provided early in 1996 to add the headquarters libraries of the fifty-six regional public libraries. A grant was secured to add ten private academic libraries in the Atlanta area beginning in duly 1996 and twenty-one other private academic libraries in the state also elected to join. In addition, funding was provided by the state to add the libraries of the thirty-two vocational-technical institutes in the state. Funding is being sought to add more public libraries and to add school libraries in the future.

Core Programs

The central activity of GALILEO is to offer a set of databases, including full text of core undergraduate journals, and to provide these databases from a common site on the World Wide Web. Using SiteSearch software from OCLC, several databases are maintained on platforms at the University of Georgia and Georgia State University, including many databases from UMI and Current Contents. In addition, access is provided to other services, including databases on OCLC FirstSearch, the online version of the Encyclopedia Britannica, reference databases maintained by Gale Research, databases maintained by Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, and the full text of journals published by Academic Press. An important service of GALILEO is to ensure that participating libraries have access to the Internet and the World Wide Web through PeachNet.

While GALILEO does provide some assistance in the sharing of collections through the facilitation of interlibrary lending, its signature function is the provision of an electronic library of databases and full-text resources.

Reason for Formation

GALILEO was formed because the leadership of the University System of Georgia was interested in cooperative projects that benefited all students and faculty and in projects that might be extended to the rest of the state. The library directors and one of the vice chancellors had been considering ways to improve cooperation using advanced technology and were able to respond to the University System with a proposal that emphasized the need to offer a common set of resources to all students in the system. This proposal was well received and recommended for funding.

Funding

Initial funding for GALILEO was provided by the state with about $10 million in start-up funds coming from the state lottery and ongoing funds of about $2 million per year being appropriated from both the lottery and general revenues. The private academic libraries are supported to a large extent by a grant from a private foundation. The public libraries and the vocational-technical institutions are covered by direct funding from the state.

Involvement of Large Libraries

The University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, and Georgia State University, the largest libraries in the University System, were actively involved in the formation and operation of GALILEO. If participation of the largest libraries is critical to the success of a statewide cooperative project, GALILEO enjoyed this participation.