About the Consortium
The National & State Libraries Australasia (NSLA) Consortium (formerly the CASL Consortium) was established by the peak body representing national, state and territory libraries in Australia. These libraries have a major responsibility for collecting and preserving national, state and territory documentary heritage materails, providing quality reference and research services and assisting in the provision of public library services to the people of Australasia.
The purpose of the NSLA Consortium is to secure access to commercial electronic information resources for its members. The NSLA Consortium aims to simplify licensing arrangements, improve cost benefits for member libraries, and to explore opportunities for making electronic products more widely available to all Australians, regardless of where they live.
Administration
The work of the Consortium is monitored, evaluated and reviewed by NSLA Executive. The National Library of Australia is the appointed lead negotiator and will negotiate and sign agreements on behalf of members.
The Consortium secretariat operates out of the National Library of Australia's Resource Sharing Division.
Convenor, NSLA Consortium
c/- Resource Sharing and Innovation Division
National Library of Australia
Parkes Place
CANBERRA ACT 2600
Australia
phone: +61 (0)2 6262 1549
fax: +61 (0)2 6273 1180
email: nslaconsortium@nla.gov.au
Legal framework
The legal relationships between members and the National Library of Australia are defined in a Deed that is signed between the NLA and each member institution. The deed authorises the NLA to sign licence agreements on behalf of other members and establishes the Consortium's operating principles and procedures.
Our ultimate vision ...
The ultimate vision for the NSLA Executive is an Australian consortium comprising all public, State, Territory and National libraries to enable access to a core set of electronic resources to all Australians, from their public sector library of choice and from their homes.
This may take some time to accomplish but in the meantime, read the FAQs for Australian library access to electronic resources through the National Licensing Proposal (NLP), and explore EPIC to gain an insight into New Zealand's successes in this area.
License principles
The Consortium has a Statement of Principles Guiding Licence Negotiation against which vendors' licence agreements are checked before signing. Vendors are encouraged to review and comment on this document.
Historical note
In October 1999, CASL established a Consortia and Licensing Working Group (CLWG) to investigate the feasibility of establishing a consortium. Their principal terms of reference were:
- To identify issues and options for implementing consortial arrangements between State and Territory libraries and the National Library;
- To develop suggestions, strategies and action to support the implementation of consortial arrangements;
- To recommend electronic products that may be of interest to the National, State and Territory libraries;
- To identify issues in negotiating licences for electronic products.
As a result of this work, the CLWG submitted a series of recommendations to CASL, the implementation of which would establish a framework for a consortium suitable to the needs of the broad Australian public library sector.
Approval was given for an initial 12 month trial to commence in February 2001, while the organisational complexities of a larger consortium were addressed. CASL established the Consortium at the July 2002 CASL meeting and the Consortium has since extended to service national, state/territory and public libraries.
As CASL changed its name to National & State Libraries Australasia (NSLA) in July 2006, so too did the Consortium.
