Better Mousetraps in Turbulent Times? The Global Resources Network as a Vehicle for Library Cooperation

Straitened budgets can provoke very dissimilar responses among institutions sharing the same broad goals. Cooperative efforts to pool resources, identify efficiencies, and exploit economies of scale comprise one strategy. An opposed but also common reaction, however, shrinks each player's focus to local programs and core constituencies. Academic libraries show the same range of response as any other institution when the times get tough: some seek cooperative means to sustain or even expand their coverage; others hunker down to focus only on the most urgent local demands. This paper probes the historical and contextual considerations that have made collections cooperation so difficult to achieve, in good times as well as bad, before looking yet again at our current opportunities for successful joint endeavors. The AAU/ARL "Global Resources Network" is one emerging initiative that, on its own terms and also in conjunction with other efforts, may prove more enduring. (C) 2005 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.