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Boston Library Consortium

Information for the Trinity community regarding our membership in the Boston Library Consortium

[3/8/23]

Trinity College will join the Boston Library Consortium (BLC), effective June 1, 2023. The BLC is a group of 22 academic and research libraries across New England that collaborate to provide greater access to resources and services for their member institutions. We join existing members and peers such as Williams, Wellesley, Wesleyan, and Tufts, among others. In June, Trinity, Middlebury, and Connecticut College will become the 23rd, 24th, and 25th members of this prestigious group of libraries.

Why are we joining the BLC?

LITS is committed to providing faculty and students with the best possible resources and services. Consortia play a strategic role in fulfilling our mission, through shared resources, negotiated pricing, research collaboration, and expanded professional development for our librarians. By joining the Boston Library Consortium, we are able to provide access to a much wider range of resources in support of the academic mission, including digital collections, shared electronic resources, and interlibrary loan services. In addition, we receive lower contract pricing on several applications and services we use, negotiated by the BLC on our behalf. Membership also includes on-site visitor access and borrowing privileges at most member institutions. You can read more about those privileges here.

This decision represents an evolution for all three institutions under the CTW (Connecticut College, Trinity College, and Wesleyan University) consortium. With all of us joining the BLC, we will begin to close the chapter on CTW, and move from a consortial network of just 3 institutions to 25, which can give us greater leverage in controlling the costs of digital subscriptions and fees. We are looking forward to expanded access for faculty, librarians, and students while maintaining the advantages we’ve enjoyed over the years with CTW.

What changes should we expect over the next year?

We will not see any changes to access between now and the end of the 2022-23 academic year. Over the summer and during the 2023-24 academic year, we will make improvements to the library’s online search and discovery interface that will assist the Trinity community with access to BLC resources.