The Situation in the Sphere of Consortia and Licensing of Information Sources in the Czech Republic

Abstract

The primary reason for founding „consortia“ (open associations) of information services in the Czech Republic seems to be the possibility of obtaining access to extensive and highly expensive information sources under more convenient conditions than if each of the participating institutions had to organise this access separately.

Licensing the access to information sources within special purpose association of information services is a relatively recent innovation in the Czech republic practice. It has started at the end of the nineties (except for the CrossFire and Chemical Abstracts system users). Therefore, there has not been created any methodology of selecting „suitable“ members for forming a consortium nor for selection of partners, information source producers yet.