My personal adaptation of the 'Big Girls Play with Monoliths' deck, I've switched around to fit my playstyle. You can read more about some of the basics and inspiration here: http://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/808/big-girls-play-with-monoliths
So the big question is, what does monolith do that other consoles don't and is it worth the credits? I would say most definitely yes, but you certainly need to have a deck that can bring it out efficiently. Two major things monolith does: it can surprise the corp by bringing out programs from your hand mid-run (via Personal Workshop, explained more below), it gives you enough program memory to have almost every situation covered, and lastly it let's you choose what goes if you're hit by damage while you're running. If you have a hand full of programs (and you will). You're not invincible, you're still discarding cards but this way you don't leave it up to chance and you don't have to worry about permanent brain damage.
This version uses Personal Workshop to get the Monolith out, along with other hardware. Why Personal Workshop? Two reasons: one is bad publicity is being generated often by corps these days (three bad pub means 12c off PW for a turn, even if you're slamming into a wall), and second is you often need to let is simmer on PW to get all the needed programs in your hand. This let's you bring monolith off mid run and surprise the hell out of the corp when after rezzing that archer you monolith out a sharpshooter and crescentus.
I didn't publish version one, but this version introduces capstones to help with the card draw. Any comments or suggestions are welcome!