Satisfying Engineering communities through consortia based System: A conceptual framework for regional cooperation in India Maitrayee Ghosh Librarian, S.P. College of Engineering, University of Mumbai, Andheri (West),Mumbai, India. [E-mail: mrghose@vsnl.com; maita_02@yahoo.co.in ] fax: 91-022-26237819 Abstract: This article summarizes the salient issues related to strategic cooperation and library consortia in an Indian context with a particular focus on the current situation in Maharashtra state. Library partnership aims to carry out projects that an individual library cannot do by itself such as providing consortial access to e-journals is becoming very popular in India. In this paper author examines the political, financial and technical factors that led to the formation of statewide consortia.The new parameters, advantages and problems of consortia today are elaborated here.The purpose is to investigate ways in which libraries housing printed and electronic resources of technical literatures can form a consortium and develop policies that could be put forward as a model for statewide collaborative collection development. Key words: Library Consortia, Collection development, Strategic cooperation 1.Background: India is a land of contrast- traditional yet innovative. It is the second populous country in the world after China to cross the one billion mark. Status of libraries in developing countries like India is not so encouraging especially in the context of developed world where user friendly methods and models with lot of flexibility functioning very effectively. The willingness for cooperation in collection development, resource management and in the delivery of services to readers have marked the course of Indian library history since the time of Padmashree Dr S.R. Ranganathan. Timid, vague attempts were made with regional efforts in union cataloguing and were strengthened with development in metropolitan city networks(MAN) established by NISSAT and other similar agencies. The availability of networked information resources encouraged libraries to streamline their cooperative collection development effort. Furthermore electronic information facilitated to set up library consortia to provide more and varied electronic resources through the networks and to increase their bargaining power against publishers. There is tremendous potential for information Technology enabled information access and services in the country as it administers one of the largest telecom networks in Asia. The Telecom Commission has been set up by Govt. of India for the development of network infrastructure and services. The basic thrust is on providing accessibility to cater to urban and rural masses with facilities like ISDN, video-conferencing, access to international data networks, facsimiles and e- mails are available. Internet was started in India in 1994, only in 1998 it was thrown open for private Internet service providers (ISPs). Inter library cooperation and coordination of resource sharing is facilitated in the network environment as it is easier for libraries to form various consortia and share electronic resources. There is a growing trend towards joint purchasing, consortia-based subscription agreements, collaboration and partnerships. There is a paradigm shift in the process of resource sharing from print to electronic media, and libraries in India are coping up with the dynamics of changing technology driven work process. The change is necessitated by evolving consciousness of users about their demand, new information format and the ability of Information and Communication technologies (ICTs) to serve them efficiently. Despite much rhetoric and effort in favour of planned co- operative collection development, results are disappointing. One could point to a very few significant shifts in collection development based on planned dependency and to even fewer formal written agreements. Groupings of libraries with similar purposes, interests or need and consortia formation are reinvented and reinvigorated by the opportunities and challenges of ICT. Libraries in India once again are finding that institutions working together can accomplish far more than they can individually. 2.Consortial efforts - a brief look at happenings in the country: Spectacular advances in communication techniques and Information Technology and the growth of Electronic materials have led to a change in thinking about how libraries cooperate and the growth of formal cooperative entities: library consortia. Library consortium is “a generic term to indicate any group of libraries that are working together toward a common goal, whether to expend cooperation on traditional library services (such as collection development) or electronic information services.”[3] Consortia may be loosely affiliated "buying clubs" or highly- organized virtual