About the Library Consortium
Bangladesh INASP-PERI Consortium
How it started?
During the ICSU 28th General Meeting held in Sozohu, China 16-22 October 2005, the President, Prof. M. Shamsher Ali, and Secretary, Professor Naiyyum Choudhury of the Bangladesh Academy of Sciences had a talk with Ms. Carol Priestly, the then Director of International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) and Ms. Sara Gwynn, Coordinator (was the Director of Programmes) of the Program for Enhancement of Research Information (PERI), of INASP regarding possibility of initiating INASP on line journal facilties in Bangladesh. This was done because of the chronic scarcity problem of hard copy journals in Bangladesh, faced by the scientists. INASP is a UK based Charity Organization funded by international organizations like UNDP, ICSU, etc. Bangladesh Academy of Sciences is the focal point of the ICSU in Bangladesh A discussion on the introduction of the Program in Bangladesh took place between BAS & INASP. The BAS recognized and realized the benefit of developing a network through on-lines for making journals, scientific literatures, and other information available to the teachers, students, researchers and scientists of universities, research institutes, laboratories and other academic institutes of the country. With this end in view, Ms. Carol Priestly and Ms. Sara Gwynn were invited by the President, BAS to visit the Bangladesh Academy of Sciences at any convenient time to discuss the possibility of introducing the INASP program in Bangladesh.
Participatory BAS-INASP Workshop, 2006
A Participatory Discussion Meeting (workshop) on exploring activities and services of INASP that may be useful to possible stakeholders like policy makers, managers, teachers, students, researchers, library staff, journal publishers, and journal editors was arranged on 13 May 2006 by the Academy in collaboration with INASP in the Conference Room of the Academy at NMST Bhaban, Agargaon, Dhaka-1207. Ms Carol Priestly could not make time to come Ms. Sara Gwynn, the Coordinator of PERI, INASP was the facilitator of the workshop, and representatives of public and private universities, research institutions & laboratories participated in the day-long workshop. The workshop made some important recommendations to the Academy to take the initiative for the INASP programme in Bangladesh.
MoU between BAS and INASP, 2006
As a first step a MoU was signed between the BAS & INASP and Bangladesh became a member of the network. Through this network, a large number of journals of world-renowned publishers are made available to Bangladesh stakeholders who can download all these information at their work places at any time.
Later on, all the public and private universities, research institutes, laboratories in the country were informed of this services & benefit of the network and they were invited to join the network. Consequently, a good number of universities & research organizations participated the network.
Bangladesh-INASP-PERI Consortium(BIPC), 2007
Consequently, Bangladesh INASP-PERI Consortium (BIPC) was formed with the Primary Contact Officers of the participating organizations. The BIPC is being operated by a National Coordination Committee with Dr. M A Mazed, Director, BAS, as coordinator with all Primary Contact Officers as members. An Advisory Committee was formed during a meeting when the Vice Chancellors of the public and private universities, Chairman/Director Generals/ Directors of R&D organizations were present. Prof. Dr. M Shamsher Ali, President, BAS, became Chairman of the Advisory Committee and Prof. Dr. Naiyyum Choudhury, Secretary, BAS became the Member-Secretary of the Advisory Committee for BIPC in Bangladesh. An on-line journal network under the Program for Enhancement of Research Information (PERI) started in 2006, on trial basis free of subscription. From January 2007, Bangladesh started subscribing PERI/INASP and 13 organizations paid subscriptions for the network for an amount of US$ 67,000. In 2008, the number of members rose to 22 and the network paid US$ 87000 to INASP. More than 30 organizations joined the network and more organizations are showing interest to join because of the immense benefit received in a cost-effective way. The subscription paid to INASP by now is in the tune of US$ 1,60,000. Under this program, three training programs of the IT staff, librarians, and Primary Contact Officers have been offered and more are being organized with international and national resource persons.
Every year a Steering Committee Meeting is held with the Country Coordinators and the INASP officials. The Bangladesh Academy of Sciences is hosting a Meeting on 11-14 May 2009. The Meeting was held at the BRAC Centre Inn, Mohakhali. Thirty-three representative from 23 Member countries participated in the SC Meeting and discussed issues like country-specific needs, sustainability, understanding users need, effective proposal writing, monitoring and evaluation etc.
About Library Consortium of Bangladesh (LiCoB)
The Library Consortium of Bangladesh (LiCoB) is one of Bangladesh Academy of Sciences (BAS’s) flagship efforts to support high quality research and education in Bangladesh. BAS has been running this consortium for around 16 years. Under this arrangement, academic libraries of Bangladesh come together to negotiate and obtain access to journals as well as some ebooks and databases. BAS makes the agreements with the publishers, collects the subscription from the institutions and makes the payments to the publishers. Support is also provided on technical issues related to access of the e-resources.
Every year LiCoB is providing access to journals from SpringerNature (including Palgrave-Macmillan and Scientific American), CUP, OUP, EBSCO (a collection of mostly archival access), ProjectMuse, AIP, APS, ASABE, ASCE, ASME, De Gruyter, IndianJournals, Intl Forestry Review, RSC and ebooks from ProjectMuse. It may be noted that OUP and RSC have been added this year, while ASME was added. Around 35 active institutions including the leading public and private universities, and research organisations, are members of this consortium. About a dozen more are somewhat irregular. The sudden hike in the dollar exchange rate is posing a big challenge for us last year (in 2022). Despite many challenges in collecting the subscriptions and making the foreign currency payments, it has been possible to make all the payments due upto July to all the publishers.
Objectives of the Library Consortium of Bangladesh (LiCoB)
- To act as a collaborative forum for innovation, partnership, and mutual support, exchange of experience, the transmission of expertise, and professional development;
- To promote and facilitate the sharing of library and information resources among member institutions in order to support teaching, learning, and research activities through acquiring, developing, and archiving information in print and electronic format;
- To facilitate access to a diverse range of library resources for learners and researchers through collaborative services;
- To increase the scope and accessibility of information resources to member libraries;
- To optimize the shared use of the resources of member institutions and exchange library and information services on a more formal basis within the network;
- To develop and use integrated and compatible computer-based systems with reciprocal user access;
- To encourage cooperative collection building in both electronic and non-electronic resources in order to avoid unnecessary duplication;
- To achieve cost-effectiveness for member institutions by providing a wide variety of useful information resources at a reduced cost;
- To promote the digitization of local resources;
- To ensure that member institutions contribute meaningfully towards sustaining the Consortium;
- To seek additional funding from sources other than the member institutions;
- To improve and enhance service delivery in the new ICT environment;
- To promote interlibrary lending and document delivery among member libraries and elsewhere;
- To promote sustainable staff development programs among member libraries;
- To make available ICT and related expertise and promote the use of appropriate ICT technologies in member libraries;
- To establish Union Catalogues and a website in order to provide access to collections of member libraries;
- To establish and maintain links with organizations and agencies with similar objectives worldwide; and
- To take all necessary and reasonable actions in order to accomplish the objectives set forth in this article and those ancillaries to them.
