2. Collaborative Partnership Structure and Practice: A Scan of the Literature

Collaboration is a part of a continuum of connection between two or more organizations or individuals working on a task of mutual interest and benefit. The least connected part of the continuum is that of cooperation, in which organizations or individuals work in parallel ways on tasks. There is little visible change in organizational structure in cooperation. Collaboration involves structural changes in organizations, including financial and personnel allocations (Doan, 1995). Partnership might best be viewed as an intense form of collaboration.

One of the most comprehensive reviews of literature on collaboration (Mattessich and Monsey, 1992) synthesized existing studies of collaborative ventures across government, academic, and business sectors and extracted factors that "makes it work". Prominent among these factors are the following factors and sub-factors:

• "Environment (History of collaboration or cooperation in the community, collaborative group seen as leader in the community, political/social climate seen as favorable)

• Membership: (Mutual respect, appropriate cross-section of members, members see collaboration as being in their self-interest, ability to compromise)

• Process/Structure: (Members share a stake in both process and outcome, multiple levels of decision making, flexibility, development of clear roles and policy guidelines, adaptability)

• Communications: (Open and frequent communication, established informal and formal communication links,)

• Purpose: (Concrete, attainable goals and objectives, shared vision, unique purpose) and

• Resources: (Sufficient funds, skilled convener) "(From Mattessich and Monsey, pp.14-15).

These six main factors need to be kept clearly in sight as the USEIN translates goals and objectives into a tangible organizational model. One method to ensure more visibility of such factors is to follow the evaluations of similar initiatives and examine findings and recommendations (Moen and McClure, 1997, to be described in a later section).

Partnership as an area of interest has emerged in the late 1980's and 1990's for a number of pragmatic reasons. Social conditions of resource management and allocation, together with factors of mutuality of interest have been a part of the attention now being paid to "partnering" seen in many efforts (Clarke and Lacey, 1997; Nicholls, 1997, Doen, 1995).

Partnerships as social entities, studied for their structure, dynamics, and outcomes, evolved from the field of Group Dynamics, popularized in the 1960's and 1970's. Research findings concerning the interactions of dyads and groups led to an interest across academic, business, and government sectors in management. The characteristics of the literature on partnership features strategy in planning ( Bergquist et al., 1995) strategic partnerships, and effects of partnership on the use of resources. The very essential points of a partnership in business include: efficiency, flexibility, expanded resources, expanded markets, a sense of interdependence, and an opportunity for personal gratification (Bergquist et al., 1995).

Within the Library sector, "partnerships" have been a focus in the literature for more than a decade. An inspection of the Wilson database "Library Literature" yielded 130 + discrete entries that used the term "partnership" in the title or subtitle. The search was restricted to United States libraries, and excluded book reviews. An examination of the kinds of relationships described in this literature yielded several categories, with most titles revealing the connections of persons and organizations:

The largest segment of the literature was on partnerships formed at a local level: within-library (such as technical services-library), within an institution ( librarian-faculty or school media specialist-teacher partnerships), or community liaisons (public libraries-school libraries, public libraries-community). Literature that focused on academic libraries covered consortium collaborations, partnerships with corporations, partnerships within national and state library associations, and government-library initiatives.

The literature on partnerships also included associated management styles. Perhaps the most visible management model in the literature that is considered to nurture collaborative ways of operating is that of Total Quality Management (TQM). The TQM process emphasized the need to rethink the traditional hierarchy-based organizational structures, and has been described in applications in the library sector (Koval-Jarboe,1996). The kinds of collaboration seen in ACRL's 1997 Conference in Nashville involved resource sharing, task sharing (Carr, 1997), and collection development (Shabb, 1997). Another organizational structural component reflected in recent literature is that of "Structuralization for digital information in organizations" (Rosenbaum, 1997), which takes into account the kinds of social relationships, rules, protocols, and methodologies that arise from a consideration of the commodity being developed, in this case, digitized information.

Nervins (1997) noted that the library culture has always been a collaborative culture. Noting that "collaboration" takes differing shades of meaning in different cultures is important---business is conducted differently by libraries, government, industry, foundations, and academia. An example of these differences can be seen in articles in the Harvard Business Review that stress the rewards of collaborating with competitors. Since USEIN is, presumably to be a government-supported operation, the kinds of organizational structures that are in place to do business, government-style, need to be known (Osborne and Gaebler, 1992). Encompassing views of collaboration , commodity as organizer, and subsequent management structures will be a major challenge for USEIN's planners.
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[1. Education Information]

[3. Participants in USEIN]