Academic & Special Libraries Section Annual Seminar View from the Coalface: experiences of digital collection management Arlene Healy Sub-Librarian, Electronic Resources Trinity College Library Dublin
TCD Overview 55,000 E-journals 266,600 E-books 1.23 million full text articles downloaded 2008/2009 (up 4% on previous year) 11,276 E-book chapters accessed in 2008/2009 Trinity College Library Dublin
Staff Structure Readers Services Readers Services Collection Management Evolved Distributed Collaborative Trinity College Library Dublin
Increasing % of information resources budget spent on e-resources despite budget cuts Budget
Budget Issues Journal price inflation 7.6% Vs Retail Price Index at 3.3% High VAT 21% (highest VAT Rate) Reducing budgets Budgets reduced at institutional level Government funding for consortial initiatives cut Variety of Financial Models to contend with Currency Fluctuations Trinity College Library Dublin
Financial Models Big Deal + High-use and low-use journal titles from a single publisher are bundled together Difficult to compare bundled deals Typically the publisher charges the library for the titles subscribed to historically + an e-access fee for the full or aggregated digital collection Licence terms prohibit libraries from cancelling the historic print spend The Big Deal provides library users with a huge corpus of material Studies show usage is high and good value for money is provided In the area of STM scholarly publishing it is estimated that there are 1.5 billion full-text downloads globally and the average cost per articles is less than 2/ 2.22
Big Deal - Big Deal high cost means library budgets are constrained No flexibility for purchasing new digital content Niche or specialist journals could be squeezed out Other option is to retreat from the Big Deal and subscribe only to titles required Pay more per title but only pay for what is needed Access to subscribed titles possibly provided by subscription agents through platforms such as SwetsWise or Ebscohost Can this model continue with the global economic downturn?
Financial models Lease Only Lease only (e.g. Academic Search Premier, Wilson Omnifile) Typically applies to large collections of aggregated full text, images or datasets Can provide low cost access to a large corpus of highly used material All subscribed content lost if a subscription is cancelled Embargos High level of title duplication across collections
Financial Models Lease with archival rights Lease with archival rights (e.g. ScienceDirect, Wiley/Blackwell) Predominant model for journal content Licence grants perpetual rights to subscribed content (usually only to subscribed titles ) Ongoing access may involve payment of an access fee
Financial Models Outright Purchase Outright Purchase Model offered for static digital archives. Often also for e-books collections A one-off capital purchase secures content in perpetuity Licence terms allow purchaser to take the data for local hosting Are institutions prepared for local hosting; costs, skills involved?
Assessing Databases and VFM Subscription prices for databases and digital datasets are rarely published It can be difficult but necessary to discover exactly what content is included in a database and to compare one publisher s offer with another - Essential to obtain and compare title lists covered by the major bibliographic databases Few benchmarks available and final price depends on the skill of library negotiators or consortia (Confidentiality clauses in licence agreements)
Getting the best deal Negotiating criteria Perpetual access to e-journal content Transfer Code of Practice Version 2.0 Multi-year deals or not? Advantageous business terms (fixed pricing etc) Part of the acquisition budget tied up Currency fluctuations make the financial commitment of multi-year deals volatile. E-only not tied to print Deep Discount for print COUNTER compliancy
Perpetual Access Perpetual access rights good in theory but the reality is problematic. What if the title transfers to another publisher? In what format is the publisher offering perpetual access? CD-ROM, sever/hosting fees, support issues? IReL experience Perpetual access to subscribed content only Perpetual access and databases
Preserving Access Portico (IReL Membership) Mellon Foundation funding and now selffunding through library and publisher membership fees Content collected from participating publishers converted to archive digital format Access made available to the Portico content on trigger event e.g. publisher ceases operation, publisher ceases publishing the title, or catastrophic failure of the publisher platform Disadvantage reliance on single organisation to safeguard access. Trinity College Library Dublin
Preserving Access LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe) A piece of open source software that allows a library to collect, store, preserve and provide access to their own local copy of authorized content. Captures not just the content but the look and feel of the content on its original platform. Advantages - library retains local control of their archive Access not dependent on trigger event Good coverage Disadvantages maintenance of hardware and software Trinity College Library Dublin
Preserving Access CLOCKSS (Controlled LOCKSS) A distributed dark archive Plans to have a number of secure nodes CLOCKSS content is accessible only when a trigger event occurs Portico triggered content on CLOCKSS is available to the world, not just to members of CLOCKSS Poor coverage Trinity College Library Dublin
Licensing Evaluation Overall value greatly depends on the terms and conditions of the licence. The licence must allow the institution to fully exploit the resource Benefits of a Model Licence Most important tenets (IReL sample based on JISC/NESLI) authorised users Walk-in users Off campus access Extracts of the resource may be used in teaching and learning materials (electronic or print) and incorporated into academic works (electronic or print) Archival rights (where relevant)
Delivering Access Securing access to authorised users Ezproxy authenticates library users against local authentication systems and provides remote access to licensed content based on the user s authorization Future of Federated Access Management in Ireland HEAnet Pilot Project An alternative to IP access control (IP addresses are running out globally, IP access control makes roaming difficult, and IP addresses can be forged) Brings the benefits of single-sign-on and less usernames and passwords to campus users. Offers an alternative to Athens access Shibboleth (SAML Technology)
Delivering Access Open URL linking Federated Search Engine Impact on usage statistics Next Generation Catalogue ERM Why implement? Implementation process
Trinity College Library Dublin Electronic Resource Management Module (Innovative Interfaces)
Integration with Bibliographic Management Software EndNote, Refworks Compliance with W3C standards for accessibility
Measuring quality and value Impact factor of journals A measure of prestige but not a perfect form of quality measurement Eigenfactor alternative to Impact Factor? Usage Statistics Usage Vs Cost per use Resource could be used intensively in a more specialist research area Frequency of publication impacts on usage Cost per download/search Compare costs across resources, compare with other known costs, for e.g. ILL costs Need to investigate link between e-journal usage and research outcomes
Measuring Quality & Value Usage Statistics No. of downloads Cost per download - Annual Cost No. of downloads/searches
COUNTER code of practice for E-journals, Databases and E-books New challenges federated search engines potential to inflate usage statistics. New database code of practice 3 - search and session activity generated by federated search engines and automated search agents must be reported separately SUSHI (Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative)
SUSHI (Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative) is a standard protocol (XML-based) can be used by electronic resource management (ERM) systems (and other local systems) to automate the transport of COUNTER formatted usage statistics. How does it work? Librarians configure their ERM or other system to generate SUSHI requests. The system (ERM?) submits a SUSHI request to the vendor/content provider which responds by sending an XML formatted file back to the system.
Measuring Value - IReL Experience Impact Survey (Web survey) Usage Report Methodology Gathering publisher usage reports annually (raw data) Usage statistic logins managed centrally Key data entered in excel template Resource cost (including VAT, print costs etc.) No. of full text downloads or No. of searches Cost per download/search No. of journals by usage band Top 10 journals per resource according to number of downloads Number and % of journals per download band
Trinity College Library Dublin E-journal Sample
Trinity College Library Dublin Database Sample
Measuring Value - IReL Experience Usage Report Key findings Increasing usage year on year STM 2008 usage increased by 16.5% on 2007 HSS 2008 usage increased by 46% on 2007 STM Average cost per download/search in 2008 = 1.94 HSS Average cost per download/search in 2008 = 0.54 No. of downloads/searches STM & HSS = 9 million +
Measuring Value - Challenges Labour intensive 1 library estimates - 30 hours to collect usage reports Solution is SUSHI? Mix of COUNTER and non-counter data Management of usage statistic/admin portal logins. Will SUSHI help or will new logins continue to be problematic? Combining data from 3 rd parties (e.g. Swetswise, Ingenta) Establishing correct subscription base excluding trial titles
Usage Statistics Decision Making Cancellation exercise Usage Vs Cost per Use Methodology employed by IReL Resources with highest cost per use identified for cancellation Fair and transparent But Title/resource may be low use or the cost per download high but of critical importance to smaller research team. How do we measure this?
E-books Availability of front list material, publishers covered No. of concurrent users Purchasing Model outright purchase, lease MARC Records Mobile devices and e-readers Supported e-book formats, Word docs, PDF etc. Trinity College Library Dublin
Future - Mobile Technology Mobile Digital Resources Apps (free?) Worldcat, Pubmed, Nature.com - http://www.nature.com/mobileapps/ Ebscohost Mobile http://www.ebscohost.com/thistopic.php?marketid= 1&topicID=1336 Worldcat http://www.worldcat.org/mobile/default.jsp MD Consult Mobile IEEE Explore Issues of authentication
Non-disclosure Agreements Pay-as-you-go model Pricing based on download Cheap subscriptions with usage cap (E.g iphone Apps)
References/Websites LOCKSS http://lockss.stanford.edu/lockss/home Open Source ERM http://researcher.sfu.ca/cufts/erm Portico http://www.portico.org/ Project COUNTER http://www.projectcounter.org/ Transfer Code of Practice http://www.uksg.org/transfer
Thank you for listening Than Trinity College Library Dublin