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 school, public, academic, special libraries and/or information centers. Consortia exist on a v ...

based in the

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

area with 23 member institutions across

New England New England is a region comprising 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 to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...

Membership

The Boston Library Consortium is an academic consortium of twenty-three institutions: sixteen in Massachusetts, three in Connecticut, one in New Hampshire, one in Rhode Island, and one in Vermont. The

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

is an affiliate member. Member institutions represent a mix of

liberal arts college A liberal arts college or liberal arts institution of higher education is a college with an emphasis on undergraduate study in liberal arts and sciences. Such colleges aim to impart a broad general knowledge and develop general intellectual capac ...

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 most important sites at which knowledge production occurs, along with "intergenerational know ...

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 sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...

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 recorde ...

institutions, and

special libraries A special library is a library that provides specialized information resources on a particular subject, serves a specialized and limited clientele, and delivers specialized services to that clientele. Special libraries include corporate librari ...

. New members may join the BLC if they are based in the northeastern United States and their application is approved by a two-thirds vote of the board of directors. The BLC is funded through membership assessments.

Members

Current members include the following institutions: *

Bentley University Bentley University is a private university focused on business, accountancy, and finance and located in Waltham, Massachusetts. Founded in 1917 as a school of accounting and finance in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood, Bentley moved to Waltham in ...

Boston College Boston College (BC) is a private Jesuit research university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Founded in 1863, the university has more than 9,300 full-time undergraduates and nearly 5,000 graduate students. Although Boston College is classifie ...

Boston Public Library The Boston Public Library is a municipal public library system in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, founded in 1848. The Boston Public Library is also the Library for the Commonwealth (formerly ''library of last recourse'') of the Commonweal ...

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original campu ...

Brandeis University , mottoeng = "Truth even unto its innermost parts" , established = , type = Private research university , accreditation = NECHE , president = Ronald D. Liebowitz , pro ...

Marine Biological Laboratory The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is an international center for research and education in biological and environmental science. Founded in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, in 1888, the MBL is a private, nonprofit institution that was independent ...

and

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI, acronym pronounced ) is a private, nonprofit research and higher education facility dedicated to the study of marine science and engineering. Established in 1930 in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, it i ...

Northeastern University Northeastern University (NU) is a private university, private research university with its main campus in Boston. Established in 1898, the university offers undergraduate and graduate programs on its main campus as well as satellite campuses in ...

State Library of Massachusetts The State Library of Massachusetts in Boston, Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachuse ...

Tufts University Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...

University of Connecticut The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university in Storrs, Connecticut, a village in the town of Mansfield. The primary 4,400-acre (17.8 km2) campus is in Storrs, approximately a half hour's drive from Hart ...

University of Hartford The University of Hartford (UHart) is a private university in West Hartford, Connecticut. Its main campus extends into neighboring Hartford and Bloomfield. The university attracts students from 48 states and 43 countries. The university and it ...

University of Massachusetts Amherst The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, it ...

University of Massachusetts Boston The University of Massachusetts Boston (stylized as UMass Boston) is a Public university, public research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the only public research university in Boston and the third-largest campus in the five-campus Un ...

University of Massachusetts Dartmouth The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (UMass Dartmouth or UMassD) is a public research university in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. It is the southernmost campus of the University of Massachusetts system. Formerly Southeastern Massachusetts Un ...

University of Massachusetts Lowell The University of Massachusetts Lowell (UMass Lowell and UML) is a public research university in Lowell, Massachusetts, with a satellite campus in Haverhill, Massachusetts. It is the northernmost member of the University of Massachusetts public u ...

University of Massachusetts Medical School The University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School is a public medical school in Worcester, Massachusetts. It is part of the University of Massachusetts system. It is home to three schools: the T.H. Chan School of Medicine, the Morningside Grad ...

University of New Hampshire The University of New Hampshire (UNH) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Durham, New Hampshire. It was founded and incorporated in 1866 as a land grant college in Hanover in connection with Dartmouth College, mo ...

University of Rhode Island The University of Rhode Island (URI) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Kingston, Rhode Island, United States. It is the flagship public research as well as the land-grant university of the state of Rhode Island ...

University of Vermont The University of Vermont (UVM), officially the University of Vermont and State Agricultural College, is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Burlington, Vermont. It was founded in 1791 and is amon ...

Wellesley College Wellesley College is a private women's liberal arts college in Wellesley, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1870 by Henry and Pauline Durant as a female seminary, it is a member of the original Seven Sisters Colleges, an unofficial g ...

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a Private university, private liberal arts college, liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a Men's colleges in the United States, men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Epis ...

Williams College Williams College is a Private college, private liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams, a col ...

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 research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

and

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

(MIT). 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. Per its bylaws, the BLC'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."

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 The Open Content Alliance (OCA) was a consortium of organizations contributing to a permanent, publicly accessible archive of digitized texts. Its creation was announced in October 2005 by Yahoo!, the Internet Archive, the University of California ...

(OCA) to digitize BLC member libraries' out-of-copyright print collections and make them freely available online via the

. To fund the effort, the BLC 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 __NOTOC__ The Orbis Cascade Alliance is a library consortium serving academic libraries in the Northwestern United States. The consortium was formed through the 2003 merger of two previous consortia, Orbis and Cascade, which incorporated librarie ...

and other groups, pushed back against a publisher price increase on

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

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

collective collections A shared print program is a collective collection, defined by Lorcan Dempsey as an approach to "collective development, management, and disclosure of collections across groups of libraries at different levels", that consists mostly of academic o ...

initiative across sixty-five academic libraries throughout the eastern United States. EAST member libraries have committed to retaining over six million volumes. EAST's goal 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 of New York City in the United States, simply known as Mellon Foundation, is a private foundation with five core areas of interest, and endowed with wealth accumulated by Andrew Mellon of the Mellon family of Pitts ...

and the Davis Educational Foundation in 2014–2015. As of 2018, EAST is self-supporting through institutional membership fees.

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 in the United States