The Benefits of Diverse Preferences in Library Consortia

Résumé

This paper identifies strategies to build a library consortium from a long term point of view. Contrary to the conventional wisdom to build a consortium around groups of homogenous institutions (Davis, 2002), we find that libraries with similar preferences are likely to lose from building a consortium while libraries with opposite preferences almost always gain from it. Our results suggest a strong tension between a short-term strategy and a long-term strategy as long as the former dictates forming a consortium around libraries with homogenous preferences in order to gain from quantity discounts. This tension might create a "library consortium trap".