Concept of Ethiopian University Library Consortia: A Step toward the Information Society

The increasing price of electronic journals, indexing and ing database along with the traditional published print subscriptions has forced library community to explore alternative means of subscription. This is an age of information explosion. No library, whatever size 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. Information explosion, emergence of internet and particularly World Wide Web as a new medium of information storage makes the concept more come into sight than earlier arena. 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 journals 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. Ethiopia has many of University libraries but the concept is still at a nascent stage in library. It believes that establishment of University Library Consortium will make Ethiopian University libraries more productive and effective to their user community.