Albuquerque, NM
May 14 -16, 1997
Barbara McFadden Allen, Director
Center for Library Initiatives and
Assistant Director
Committee on Institutional Cooperation
I was over in the United Kingdom last week talking to some research librarians, and at an evening reception one of the librarians came up to me and expressed amazement at the proliferation of consortia in the United States. This person asked me, “How do you handle these dueling consortia?” I was astounded by the perception that consortia would be dueling, yet it occurs to me that it may be a perception you all share, which is, in fact, the reason I have been invited to speak with you today. I will address how the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) operates as a consortium, and I hope to leave you with the understanding that it is not only possible, but is often desirable to participate in multiple collaborative ventures. You need to only look as far as Bill Studer or Sharon Hogan in the audience to know that that is true, that participation in one consortium does not preclude participation in another.
My talk will progress roughly in the following fashion: I’ll describe the CIC and the CIC Center for Library Initiatives for those of you who have not heard about it before. I will then discuss some of the guiding principles and operating vision of the consortium. Finally, I will speak about the challenges we face and how we have overcome them, and about challenges our library staffs have faced, including these obligations to multiple consortia.
The Committee on Institutional Cooperation is headquartered at the University of Illinois in Champaign, Illinois. The CIC is an academic consortium of 12 research universities; within these 12 universities, there are 13 ARL member libraries. Our universities employ some 30,000 full-time faculty members and enroll nearly one-half million graduate, undergraduate, and professional students on these principal campuses. They also confer ten percent of all master’s degrees and 15 percent of Ph.D.s awarded in the United States annually. It’s a considerable enterprise.
The CIC was founded in 1958, and is organized both horizontally and vertically. That’s to say, the members of the Board of Directors are the chief academic officers at these institutions. They are appointed by the President and meet twice annually to discuss consortium matters. Over the years, nearly every academic and administrative unit within each of these 12 institutions has been involved in one sort of CIC program or another. For instance, our purchasing directors meet together to discuss combined purchases, which can dramatically reduce the costs of supplies and services, and the Graduate Deans meet to coordinate a variety of activities, including minority recruitment and retention.
Our programs range from no-cost student and faculty exchanges to multimillion-dollar research and development projects in areas as diverse as international agriculture to student aid. The CIC programs clearly demonstrate that these institutions have developed mechanisms that enable them to accomplish more than they could have by acting alone.
The CIC is governed by three founding principles:
- No single institution can or should attempt to be all things to all people.
- Inter-institutional cooperation permits aggressive educational and experimental programs on a scale beyond the capabilities of any one of those institutions.
- Voluntary cooperation fosters effective concerted action while preserving institution autonomy and diversity.
The beginnings of what ultimately became the CIC Center for Library Initiatives—which sounds like a busy and dynamic organization, but really consists of myself and two half-time assistants—can be traced back to when the CIC provosts called for overall unifying strategies to address the new crises facing academic libraries. The provosts met with the library directors in October 1992, at which time it was agreed that the libraries would collaborate in a strategic planning process to provide a framework for understanding these issues and, most importantly, for addressing them. That plan, developed by the library directors and endorsed by the provosts, called for greatly expanding levels of interdependence among our university libraries. The essence of this plan is summarized in the following statement, which I’m happy to point out was co-authored by Jim Neal, “By the beginning of the 21st century, the CIC libraries will have a cohesive consortial organization guided by a vision of the information resources in the CIC as a seamless whole, whether those resources are developed or owned individually or collectively.” This is a very bold vision statement.
After adopting this plan, which can be found in its entirety at http://ntx2.cso.uiuc.edu/cic/cli/strat96.html (link no longer available), the CIC’s presidents, chancellors, and provosts made a commitment to implement that strategic plan by creating and staffing the Center for Library Initiatives. It’s important to note that, while all of the member universities support CIC’s central office costs, all of the provosts have set for themselves an annual fee for the Center for Library Initiatives office operations. Each CIC university makes a decision about what particular activities it will be involved in and support, so our projects are not all-or-nothing deals. Together, the CIC libraries are working to establish the research library of tomorrow, a future that cannot yet be defined. But it does seem clear that the foundation will lie in networked access to and collaborative development of data and digital information, of both traditional and digital resources, through shared decision making and collaborative action.
Our university libraries are engaged in activities that cover those areas. In short, this future will engage our universities in interdependent relationships, some of them driven by or supported by technology, but all of them founded upon a deep and abiding level of inter-institutional commitment to meeting faculty and student research needs.
In the brief time allotted to me it’s not possible to go back and review all of the many excellent reasons for starting the CIC back in 1958, but I can review for you those opportunities that I have seen our library staff and, indeed, our faculty and administrative groups identify time and again in their work. The first of these opportunities is to enhance user service, whether it’s the library user, the students, or an administrator using the information. That’s the first and foremost opportunity presented.
Second, there is the opportunity to leverage investments in personnel, in resources—for instance, the same energy that is required to serve up one data resource can be used to serve the data to many people, saving efforts, if not money. Thirdly, there is an opportunity to manage change proactively. In our case, at each step on the university food chain, starting with the president, there is a great demand for change of one kind or another. I am sure you feel these pressures, professionally and personally, as well. Within the CIC, I often hear discussions where people turn and say, “How can we use the CIC and our partnership with respect to this particular change or to respond to this particular change?” Collaboration allows one, I have seen, to participate in a group examination of opportunities and challenges, and offers a way to address those in a fairly safe environment.
Finally, there is the opportunity to experience professional development. This is, I feel, one of the most important opportunities presented, as it allows experimentation and exploration, often, again, in a safe environment with peers, people who otherwise would be your subordinates, superiors, etc. It takes the participants out of their own organization and puts them on a different level of thinking—outside the constraints of a particular environment, particular budget, and particular staff.
Now, behind every good opportunity there lurks many challenges, and in my work I have found that people are very happy to share with me what those challenges are. I’ve been in meetings where we have filled pages upon pages with lists of challenges, but these, as far as I can see, can be narrowed down to just a few that you should be aware of as you think about collaboration and developing consortium.
First, there is the need to identify and articulate a clear vision. But this task can be enormously difficult. We didn’t become the directors of, in this case, research libraries by being shy and retiring. Blending the needs, desires, goals, and personalities of a diverse group of strong-willed individuals is very challenging. In fact, at every level of our staff, this is the case. Blending these together requires tremendous energy, will, and persuasiveness, not necessarily from the consortium headquarters, mind you, but from everybody in the chain of the decision-making. Each person must understand what it is they want to get out of the consortium. The members of the consortium must clearly understand and articulate their visions so that the collaborative effort supports those local needs or so that they can guide the collaborative efforts in a way that is more productive for them. Consortia may, and do, develop for many reasons. As a member, it’s incumbent upon you to use the consortium to your advantage and help change the consortium’s course so that it meets your needs. As directors and leaders of consortia, we have to remain flexible and adaptable and avoid suggesting monolithic approaches to problems that are enormously complex. This whole environment, then, can appear very chaotic because you have to be very agile and respond very quickly to problems, challenges, and changes. Finally, if you get this vision and juggle all of the partners successfully, you have to continually keep the momentum going. You have to seek new and better ways of working together to meet, for instance, the needs of information users.
Through trial and error and, in fact, through momentous achievement and dismal failure, we have established what I think are commonly held, but not necessarily codified, principles that govern our work together in the CIC. I will share these with you, I hope for your edification, if not amusement. I want to thank my good friend and colleague, Bill Gosling, who worked with me long and hard on a soon to be published article on the guiding principles that we looked to and that, I think, cause us to be successful.1 These principles are, then, first, that every partner in the enterprise must perceive some benefit from cooperation. That doesn’t necessarily mean that everybody gets something every time; there simply has to be a perceived benefit at some level. Second, a central administration is a visible symbol of inter-institutional commitment, vision, and action. I have worked in a number of consortia, and know this to be a very important point. Whether the central administration is housed in one of your libraries and is made up of part of your staff or not, it is certainly essential. Someone has to be accountable and responsible for moving projects along. It just makes good sense. Third, the focus has to be on enhanced access to and delivery of the right information to the users. Otherwise, there is really no reason to be engaged in the project. Fourth, all of the programs you develop have to allow for varying levels of participation. For example, Bill Studer has many obligations and opportunities in OhioLINK that supercede participation in particular CIC programs, and that’s okay. I would encourage you to follow the same path.
Fifth, a trusted peer relationship is an essential. The human interaction that takes place cannot be overstated as an important factor in developing strong good relationships.
Sixth, there has to be accountability. In our case, the provosts and presidents want to know what we’re doing. Good communication is essential at every step of the way. I have to communicate well and strongly with the library directors, and they must do the same with me. We have to interpret things and communicate with staffs in libraries that have external partners. And, finally, face-to-face interaction is a necessary and vital component of any collaborative effort.
To the extent that we are successful, and I believe there are many areas in which we are, there are some very apparent and obvious reasons. First, our consortial vision is larger than the individual activities. That is, if one of our activities fails, the consortium itself does not fail.
Two, the CIC members have support for collaborative ventures from the highest levels of our university administration. Three, our universities are true peer institutions.
Four, ours is a truly federated model of collaboration in which each partner determines to what extent and in how much depth they will participate in any particular venture.
Finally, and obviously, we are successful due to the richness and depth of our human resources. I can’t tell you how energizing it is to be in a meeting with our member librarians, people with wonderful ideas whom I have admired and respected for years.
We truly believe that collaboration can transform the way we serve the research and scholarly community. In the CIC, we hope to validate that belief and provide the greatest educational experience possible for our students and the strongest research facilities possible for our faculty and staff. I urge you to do the same.
Thank you very much.
1 Allen, Barbara McFadden, and William Gosling. “Facing Change and Challenge Through Collaborative Action: The CIC Libraries’ Experience.” In Restructuring Academic Libraries: Organizational Development in the Wake of Technological Change. Edited by Charles A. Schwartz. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, 1997.
Copyright � 1998 by Barbara McFadden Allen