Collaborating for the Future: A Consortial Approach to Next Generation Library Systems

The Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) is undertaking the development of a shared vision of the future of library management systems in Ontario\u27s academic libraries - a vision that presents new possibilities and builds on an established history of collaboration and cooperation. This vision is defined by a distributed and shared collaborative approach to print and electronic/digital resource management. A multi-phase project is underway to accomplish this. At the end of the first phase OCUL has identified three potential models of collaboration. We will discuss these models and how we got to them. We\u27ll also look at what we discovered about the next generation library systems market, what this could mean for library workflows in a consortium and lessons learned from our members and other libraries and consortia