The number of consortia to which the respondents belong ranges from 0 to 24, but the mean and median is 2. The comments indicate that consortia's primary role is to negotiate discounted prices, and the individual library chooses whether to participate in the purchase decision. In sum, reference librarians and collection development bibliographers tend to dominate the entire process. Branch, regional, or departmental librarians have a large degree of autonomous responsibility in all five steps of the process, except the purchase decision. Circulation and cataloging librarians are underutilized, especially since networked information resources tend to be put into the library's OPAC, and acquisitions librarians are underutilized as well, perhaps because their responsibilities are rarely as standardized or as formalized as the duties of reference librarians and collection development bibliographers.
Teams are an important component in the process of acquiring and keeping networked resources.
Because the teams tend to be large, it is apparent that many people want or need to be involved in the process. Consortia play a major role in identifying new resources and negotiating price, but are less significant in other steps in the process. This development is an example of libraries' more fluid and responsive organizational structures. This SPEC Kit was prepared by Richard Bleiler and Terry Plum, University of Connecticut, as part of the OLMS Collaborative Research and Writing Program.