Consortium Director's Report

By James Wiser, Consortium Director

What a difference two months can make! In my last Outlook column, I wrote about how smoothly the library consortium’s transitions over the past year have gone. Today we are all working from home and traveling through a situation that is without precedent for all of us.

The library consortium is here to help. I don’t think we’ve ever been busier adding electronic resources than we have during the last month, and as a reminder, colleges can add new resources at any time. We likely will need to prorate them to align with our existing contracts, so most new orders placed right now will be prorated 15 or so months (April 2020-June 2021). Don’t hesitate to ask me if you need help adding anything new.

Knowing that there may be a lot of uncertainty surrounding our July renewals, I have worked with our vendors to extend the renewal deadline from May 8th to May 29th for subscriptions that renew on July 1. Hopefully these additional three weeks will be of help. If you need additional time, please let me know ASAP so I can inform your vendors. As always, we can invoice you now or after July 1 for any subscription or purchase.

All the best during this stressful time.

Stay healthy, 
James