Concept of Eritrean Academic-Public Library Consortia: A Step toward the Information Society of an African Nation

The increasing price of electronic journals, indexing and abstracting database along with the traditional published print subscriptions has forced library community to explore alternative means of subscription. This is information era, no library, however big it may be, is able to satisfy all the needs of its users due to various constraints. It is because of this phenomenon that the concept of library consortium has developed. Consortium of libraries is well known for sharing of resources all over the world. The trend of consortia or group of libraries maintaining information resources together has become very common these days. The Advent of E-publishing has brought a revolution in journal’s publication, subscription and access to scholarly literature and the age of library consortia is at the doorsteps to prove cooperation locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. This study aims to explore the concepts, issues and facilities offered by the library consortium and shows how the (Indian) library consortium is making resources available among the member libraries. Eritrea has few of libraries but the concept is still at a nascent stage in library. It believes that establishment of Academic-Public library consortium will make Eritrean libraries more productive and effective to their user community.