Library consortia in the Federal Republic of Germany

Abstract

Acquisition communíties called in Anglo-American terminology consortia have been formed for scientific library issues of the FRD in the nineties. Their primary goal is to respond by unified efforts to the challenges of financial difficulties caused by the growing number and prices of journals available also ín electronic format, though consortia have some other duties, too. German consortia are listed and descnbed that have been formed to buy journals, bibliographic and factual databases. Some problems to be solved include the preparation of detailed usage statistics, new principles of price calculation, archiving, identical taxation of printed and electronic sources.