PALCI offers a variety of ways for its members to work together in creating cost-effective and equitable access to a vast array of academic information resources and services for students, faculty, and researchers across the PALCI region.

Each year, PALCI staff work with its committees and working groups to survey the PALCI membership, host online “water cooler-style” meetings, and facilitate conversations among libraries that aim to identify shared needs and prioritize opportunities that guide the work of the PALCI team. The approach that PALCI takes to creating offerings and working with publishers and vendors is flexible, and depends largely on the desired outcomes and impact of the program.

Experts in designing distinctive collaborative licensing programs, the centralized consortium staff bring to bear their deep experience, shared expertise, and continuously earned trust as skilled negotiators, along with members’ size, collective resources, and negotiation power to create exciting and often highly innovative approaches to library acquisitions at-scale.

PALCI members appreciate offerings that are responsive to member needs with efficient centralized contracts, transparent cost sharing formulas, and flexible invoicing, along with full insight into their institution’s participation and billing for PALCI licensing programs via our ConsortiaManager online portal.

PALCI members choose to optionally participate at stated costs in any of our opt-in/optional programs, including:

1. Group discount programs on convenience-focused electronic resources subscriptions, renewals, and services available via two licensing cycles (annual and fiscal year calendar)
2. Strategic participation programs and collaborative purchasing opportunities, typically with 1-3x offerings per year, depending on identified needs

Please contact PALCI staff at support@palci.org for a list of the latest subscription and purchasing opportunities.

Working with PALCI

Publishers and service providers enjoy working with the PALCI team in designing distinctive opportunities to provide information resources and services at-scale. While many consortia act as buying clubs for a la carte group discounting, PALCI offers its vendor and publisher partners a unique chance to solve problems, test ideas and approaches, and achieve their goals in a trust-centric collaboration.

PALCI’s approach focuses on identifying the Win-Win-Win scenarios, which simultaneously provide benefits to the vendor/publisher, the consortium, and the libraries individually, with a focus on strategic innovation in business models, licensing terms, technology, and equitable and affordable access. PALCI represents more than 75 not-for-profit institutions of higher education and research, and acts as a microcosm of the higher education library landscape in the United States, with a range of four-year + and research intensive institutions, including six Association of Research Library members, many large and medium-sized four-year universities, and a long-tail of smaller public and private liberal arts institutions, along with several specialized and research libraries.

Publishers and vendors appreciate PALCI’s member reach, the organization’s streamlined and straightforward contracting process, and its thoughtful and creative problem-solving staff who work hard to ensure each opportunity is given its best chance at success.

To work with PALCI, contact support@palci.org.