The eLib (Electronic Libraries) Program in United Kingdom higher education began in the spring of 1995, as a result of the Follett Report (Joint Funding Councils' Libraries Review Group, 1993) that emphasized the need for higher education libraries to be involved in the development of information and communication technologies. A "clump" is a term that was coined at the third MODELS (Moving to Distributed Environments for Library Services) Workshop to describe an aggregation of library catalogs. The clump may be physical, in traditional terminology a union catalog, or it may be virtual, being created at the time of searching. The eLib clump projects are utilizing the Z39.50 bibliographic retrieval protocol to build gateways to library OPACs in the UK, creating virtual catalogs of university, national, and public libraries. The technology underlies increased collaborative activities between institutions in the clump consortia, and will open up the resources of the libraries to far greater numbers than at present. The different approaches to the issues of collaboration and cooperation taken by each clump are outlined. (Contains 15 references.) (Author/AEF)