A New Consortial Model for Building Digital Libraries.

The libraries in U.S. research universities are being systematically depopulated of current subscriptions to scholarly journals. Annual increases in subscription costs are consistently outpacing the growth in library budgets; this has become a chronic problem for academic libraries which collect in the fields of science, engineering, and medicine. Case Western Reserve University has built a novel digital library distribution system and focused collections in the chemical sciences to investigate a new approach to solving a significant portion of this problem. By collaborating with another research library which has a strong chemical sciences collection, they have developed a methodology to control costs of scholarly journals and have planted the seeds of a new consortial model for building digital libraries. This paper summarizes Case Western Reserve University's progress to date and indicates areas in which the University is continuing its research and development. The University's rights management system, consortial and equipment standards, scanning and workflow, and technical justification for a digitization for the consortium are described in appendices. (Author/AEF)