The Boston Library Consortium (BLC) is a

library consortium A library consortium is any cooperative association of libraries that coordinates resources and/or activities on behalf of its members, whether they are academic, public, school or special libraries, and/or information centers. Library consortia h ...

based in the

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

area with 26 member institutions across

New England New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...

Membership and governance

The Boston Library Consortium is a consortium of twenty-six institutions: sixteen in Massachusetts, five in Connecticut, one in New Hampshire, one in Rhode Island, and two in Vermont. The

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

is an affiliate member. Member institutions represent a mixture of

liberal arts college A liberal arts college or liberal arts institution of higher education is a college with an emphasis on Undergraduate education, undergraduate study in the Liberal arts education, liberal arts of humanities and science. Such colleges aim to impart ...

research universities A research university or a research-intensive university is a university that is committed to research as a central part of its mission. They are "the key sites of knowledge production", along with "intergenerational knowledge transfer and the ...

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociology, sociological concept of the ''Öf ...

and

private Private or privates may refer to: Music * "In Private", by Dusty Springfield from the 1990 album ''Reputation'' * Private (band), a Denmark-based band * "Private" (Ryōko Hirosue song), from the 1999 album ''Private'', written and also recorded ...

higher education institutions, special libraries, and

public libraries ''Public Libraries'' is the official publication of the Public Library Association (PLA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA). It is devoted exclusively to public libraries. The print edition is published six times a year and i ...

. New members may join the BLC if they are based in the northeastern United States and if their application is approved by a two-thirds vote of the board of directors. The BLC is funded through membership dues. The BLC is administered by an Executive Director and governed by a board of directors. Each member institution of the BLC is represented on the Board by the chief librarian of its principal library. According to its bylaws, the consortium's purpose is "to share human and information resources so that the collective strengths support and advance the research and learning of the members’ constituents."

Members

Current members include the following institutions:

History

The BLC was founded in 1970 and officially incorporated in 1977, consisting originally of five institutions. It had grown to twelve institutions by 1993, seventeen by 2014, and nineteen by 2019. Former members include

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

and

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

(MIT). The BLC partnered with the Faxon Company to launch development of a union list of serials in 1982. BLC executive directors have included Hannah Stevens as of 2000, Barbara Preece as of 2002, Melissa Trevvett as of 2010, Susan Stearns from 2014 to 2020, and Charlie Barlow since 2020.

Activities

Major BLC areas of activity include resource sharing and professional development. The BLC runs a "BLC Leads" program to foster leadership development among member library staff, a reciprocal borrowing agreement through which faculty and other patrons affiliated with any member library can borrow materials for free from other member libraries, a shared virtual catalog and rapid delivery of materials between libraries to fulfill patron requests, cooperative purchasing of scholarly resources, and hosting of communities of interest to foster discussion and collaboration among member libraries. Past activities included cooperative collecting and sharing of materials in select subject areas, such as women's studies. In 2007, the BLC partnered with the Open Content Alliance (OCA) to digitize BLC member libraries' out-of-copyright print collections and make them freely available online through the

. To fund this initiative, the BLC and its members pledged more than $845,000 over two years. This partnership made the BLC the first large-scale consortium to embark on a self-funded digitization project with the OCA. In 2014, the BLC, along with the Orbis Cascade Alliance and other groups, advocated against a publisher price increase on

e-book An ebook (short for electronic book), also spelled as e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in electronic form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Al ...

s, which they feared would negatively impact academic library budgets. From 2014 to 2023, the BLC administered the Eastern Academic Scholars' Trust (EAST), a

collective collection A collective collection, shared collection, collaborative collection, or shared print program is a joint effort by multiple Academic library, academic or Research library, research Library, libraries to house, manage, and provide access to their c ...

initiative across more than one hundred academic libraries throughout the eastern United States. EAST member libraries have committed to retaining over six million volumes. EAST's purpose is "preserving the print scholarly record and ensuring its availability for scholars, students and faculty." Under BLC auspices, the EAST initiative received startup grants totaling $1.5 million from the

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, commonly known as the Mellon Foundation, is a New York City-based private foundation with wealth accumulated by Andrew Mellon of the Mellon family of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is the product of the 1969 merger ...

and the Davis Educational Foundation in 2014–2015. The BLC provided EAST with staffing and administrative support, technical infrastructure, financial services, and general oversight. By 2018, EAST had become self-supporting through institutional membership fees. In June 2023, EAST became an independent nonprofit organization. Since 2021, the BLC has pursued a program for

controlled digital lending Controlled digital lending (CDL) is a model by which libraries digitize materials in their collection and make them available for lending. It is based on interpretations of the United States copyright principles of fair use and copyright exhau ...

. In 2022, the Davis Educational Foundation awarded the BLC a grant of $215,000 to "accelerate the implementation of controlled digital lending as a mechanism for interlibrary loan." In 2023, the

Institute of Museum and Library Services The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is an Independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the United States federal government established in 1996. It is the main source of federal support for librar ...

(IMLS), a U.S. federal government agency, awarded the BLC a National Leadership Grant for Libraries totaling $249,221 to "support and scale a reusable and sustainable solution enabling controlled digital lending as a component of libraries’ interlibrary loan services." In October 2023, the BLC became the new fiscal sponsor of Project ReShare, a community of libraries, consortia, information organizations, and developers that has been developing and implementing

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...

for library resource sharing since 2018.

References

External links

*
Eastern Academic Scholars' Trust
{{Authority control Organizations established in 1970 Library consortia in Massachusetts Library consortia in Connecticut Library consortia in New Hampshire Library consortia in Rhode Island Library consortia in Vermont Library consortia with members in multiple states Organizations based in Boston Cooperatives based in Massachusetts