About COSEC

Mission

COSEC’s mission is to connect, lead and assist Slovenian libraries by the acquisition of electronic resources. It strives to provide nation-wide and affordable access to electronic information.

Goal

COSEC aims to ensure co-ordinated and cost-effective acquisitions of electronic resources in order to support education, research and development of the society in general.

Access to information through co-operation

The COSEC`s strategy for maintaining the acquisition of resources gives priority to those titles which are selected together with EIFL members or recommended by the majority of Slovene libraries on the basis of the analyses of their needs.
Background:
In 2002, National and University Library started to build the Slovenian consortium, as an initiative of eIFL Direct, and with the financial support of Open Society Institute. Other participants in the project were: National Council of Librarianship, Maribor University Library, Central Technological Library, State Centre for Library Development at National and University Library, The Institute of Information Science, Association of Public Libraries and Library Association of Slovenia.
One year later, the agreement on the foundation and operation of the Slovenian library consortium was signed by Central Technological Library, Josef Stefan Institute, National and University Library, University of Ljubljana, University of Maribor and its University Library, University of Primorska, Association of Public Libraries and Library Association of Slovenia.

The benefits of membership

COSEC will

• save time and funds of Slovenian libraries by encouraging co-operation between national and foreign experts and exchange of their knowledge and experience, and thus minimizing the acquisition work,

• provide sustainable access to information in accordance with the needs of library users,

• provide strong leadership and claim a more prominent role for Slovenian library community in negotiations and fund-raising for electronic resources,

• foster participation of Slovenian libraries in the new business model of EIFL, where libraries play an active role in order to become partners to publishers,

• ensure affordable conditions and favourable costing models with the assistance of an experienced international negotiation group,

• ensure successful negotiations with vendors and producers through close collaboration with SPARC (http://www.arl.org/sparc/),

• organize training and a range of workshops on the use of electronic resources,

• manage statistics of usage of electronic resources on behalf of participating libraries,

• encourage and promote the increased usage of electronic databases,

• improve the image of Slovenian libraries and increase the professional awareness of librarians,

• ensure active membership in International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC),

• provide access to full-text e-journals,

• provide access to e-books.