The Boston Library Consortium [BLC], founded in 1970, works with its member libraries to provide services for librarians as well as for the students, scholars, and researchers affiliated with those libraries. Primary among these is support for cost-effective and efficient sharing of  print, electronic, and digital content across the BLC member libraries, consortial licensing of electronic resources for the members, and digitization services. The BLC supports initiatives focused on issues of importance to academic and research libraries in the realm of scholarly communication, open access, collection development, and assessment. As an active advocate for its members and the challenges they face, the BLC fosters communities of interest around such issues and works with other consortia, vendors and partner institutions to provide professional development and programming that furthers the interests of its members.