No Big Splash after dropping the Big Deal

Just read "Leaving the 'Big Deal'... Five Years Later" by Jonathan Nabea & David C. Fowler.

• Via OpenSIUC: http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/morris_articles/63/
• Via Taylor and Francis Online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0361526X.2015.1048037#

This article describes analysis on cancellation of three Big Deals five years later from two institutions.  Here are some of the conclusions with my commentary:

1. Demand for the content is not high enough to return to the Big Deal, since ILL requests for content which would have be covered by the Big Deal is about 10% of the downloads previously recorded.  I think the first part of the conclusion may very well be correct, but I don't think that ILL figures after cancellation of an ejournal collection doesn't map directly to real demand.  In fact, in extreme, the difference between the two could be interpreted in the opposite direction: access has dropped to 10% of what demand was previously.  Neither extremes are correct and the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle since neither number is a good measure of actual demand in my opinion.
2. Savings were significant, particularly considering the size of the overall budgets, annual increases and inflation, and comparing it to the monographs budget.  This is not really an analysis but a statement, but I'm not sure that comparing the money saved with the purchasing power for books is useful.  Journals and books are two separate parts of a library's collection and it's not immediately valuable to say that with all the money we saved buy journals in a specific way, we were able to buy books in a different way.  The article uses this comparison as an illustration only but I'm not sure it's a very useful one.
3. Dropping the Big Deals gives us more flexibility.  Amen.  I think this is one of the best arguments for doing this.  The most dangerous part of the Big Deal is the lack of flexibility and control a library has when participating in it.  I just wish that flexibility and control could be given a dollar value so we could compare.

Not much analysis was done for this but something's better than nothing, I guess.  I would have expected something about any patron feedback that may be lingering, specific collections picked up since cancellation, changes in usage data for other collections or resources, etc.  What do you think?  Have you gone through any Big Deal cancellations?  What impact have you seen or expect to see?

Better electronic resource trials

Just read "Community organizing for database trial buy-in by patrons" by JJ Pionke.

• Via IDEALS (Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship): https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/79049
• Via Taylor and Francis: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1941126X.2015.1059643#

Good article suggesting some tips on running more successful, or rather, more patron-involved trials of electronic resources.  The typical trial process given in the article is basically what I do with a few "flourishes" added, so I learned a few things that I may try for next time and add to my list of steps:

1. Listen to the needs of the potentially affected patrons.  Although this seems obvious, I know we all find it hard to seek out the needs instead of just assuming we know them.  And sometimes the needs mentioned are not actual needs.  But understanding them better should be part of the process.
2. The trial acting as a case study was done in March.  I've tended to have them run whenever the trial requestor suggests or simply as soon as possible.  But there may be some value in running them during either March or November since, at my current institution at least, these are the peak periods of use for electronic resources.  All other things being held equal, this should ensure the most use and therefore the most supported feedback possible.
3. In the case study, the health librarian running the trial made personal contact with the relevant patrons, including the faculty department head.  I've always thought this should happen more but as eResources Librarian, it's not part of my role.  But I could encourage this and try to make it easier for those subject liaisons who would be doing this.
4. The article makes the true point that someone who is "one of us" is more likely to be listened to than otherwise.  Again, this is not my current role, and I'm not sure that it's as simple as that, but some aspects of becoming closer to the relevant patron group might be helpful in this and other situations.
5. The article finally mentions that training, support material, and updating communications followed immediately on the heels of the trial end.  Although this kind of this on my list of things to do, it might be helpful to increase the priority of the timing.

Good article, JJ.  Thanks for the tips!  Anyone else have anything interesting to suggest for running trials?

What I learned at that licensing and collections event I went to

I attended "Thinking OCUL-y: A Licensing and Collections Symposium", a full day conference organized by OCUL (Ontario Council of University Libraries) institution members.  It was held at the beautiful Robarts Library, University of Toronto's main library on campus, in the heart of Toronto, Ontario.

But what did I learn?

1. The first thing I learned was that I wish I knew more about contract law.  I'm reading and implementing the licenses my Library signs for electronic resources all the time as well as supporting the decisions made to sign them in the first place and, although I think of myself as a smart enough cookie, contracts are not straightforward, understandably so.  There were two great presentations on the "anatomy of a license", one from the perspective of contract law, and one from the perspective of librarians signing them and creating model ones.  Lots of good information, both new and now properly labeled in my mind, but it made clear that there's even more to learn.  I should learn it.
2. Specifically, we should be requiring some things in our licenses that are not always getting in there.  For example, every license should have "integration" which basically means that the contract itself makes it clear that this is the entire deal, and that other communications are not to be taken as binding unless they're in this one.  Lots of our big ones do but many don't.  We should also be making it clear which legal jurisdiction will apply in case of having to deal with contract problems in court, particularly since we Canadian libraries are working with so many American information vendors.  Jurisdiction is not necessarily clear unless it's written into the contract.  And while we're at it, we should be insisting on WRITTEN contracts instead of going by verbal agreements as we occasionally do for smaller products with smaller companies.
3. Part of the evaluation process needs to include more consideration of license details.  When asking for information about a potential acquisition, we should ask for a sample license, looking it over to ensure that what we might be paying for is actually in there.  We could also share our licensing requirements and ideals at that point as well, to ensure that the vendor knows what we want right out of the gate.  The more time each party has this information, the easier we can work together.
4. Local loading is increasingly important but the vendors don't always know what it is or why we want it.  To get it, we libraries need to "sell" the concept of local loading to them, and therefore negotiators needs to understand the issues, players and history of local loading.  Also, typically, the usual vendor sales rep isn't going to know much about the topic or the issues involved so negotiations may need to include the people who do.
5. Although it involves more work, it's valuable to invite other non-collections librarians and staff into doing collections related work, such as reading/coding license terms for easier access.  It lightens the load of course, but it also increases the amount of expertise to be called upon when doing similar work in the future and it really helps them in their primary responsibilities, regardless of where in the library they are.

This is just a sample of some of the things I gleaned from the various presentations.  But there are still some questions or thoughts that I had left over:

1. Given those clauses that state that this contract is the "entire agreement", how can addenda be added on to contracts?  This happens all the time with licenses, such as changing or updating the terms of a license at renewal, but I don't think that all these licenses have an "except for addenda" clause.
2. Is the text of contracts under copyright?  A joke was made that many model licenses copy liberally from each other which suggests that they're not, or that at least no one cares.
3. Patrons seem to have contradictory opinions on print versus electronic reading.  On the one hand, they typically say that prefer print to electronic for deep reading and that ebooks, for example, are just not easy to read for long periods of time.  This may be true but then they also tend to say that print books are better for quickly skimming or browsing to find key pieces of information.  This suggests to me that they're not really saying that one format is better than the other but rather that THEY have that preference which, taken together, suggests that there's just a preference for print that's probably based in familiarity.  We've all used print books longer that there have even been ebooks so of course we're going to be more comfortable with the former.  That doesn't mean we really think one is better than the other.
4. Is demand driven acquisition really professional collection development?  The Library's collection is valuable not just because of quantity but because the content has been selected for quality with the particular patron groups in mind.  If we directly link that selection to something outside of the professional work, can we really say that the collection has been professionally selected for quality?  This is more a question of the role of the Librarian in collection development and not a matter of creating the best collection.

There should be a rating system for information resources

The Idea

Someone or some organization should develop and promote a system of "rating" information resources, possibly including anything from databases and full text collections down to individual books and articles, that describe the "quality" of the resource within some framework.  The rating could be applied by different players (and be clearly labelled as such) such as the creator, the publisher, academic societies, libraries or library consortia, or consumers or consumer groups.  This rating could include suggested audience, value to specific audiences, to what degree of analysis the rating was subject to (with reference to documentation of the analysis), and how recently such analysis was completed.

The Inspiration

Reading "Realizing the Value of Non-Purchased Content" (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0361526X.2014.879637), which discusses the value of free resources in a library's collection.  Thinking of my own library's process of dealing with this, my concern is that, because they're free, they don't get as much evaluation before "adding it to the collection" as do paid-for resources.  This might be fine but our patrons don't always understand the work that goes into deciding on whether something goes into a library's collection or not and so may falsely believe that a free resource, linked to on the library's web site is just as good as an index for which tens of thousands of dollars was paid.  Some level of information about how much consideration was made should be included.  But perhaps this can't or shouldn't be done for every single resource, and other perspectives can be just as valuable as the library so this assessment could be made by almost anyone, given a similar procedure.  It brings to mind Cochrane Systematic Reviews that thoroughly provide the "final answer" on a clinical issue and keep that answer up to date.

The Reasoning

There seems to be a dearth of assessment information out there, particularly about information products.  They are already difficult to compare since no two journals, no two books, no two articles, no two collections are really comparable in the same way as, say, a toaster or a car or a banking service is.  Some kind of systematic and therefore more trustworthy method of providing at least some perspective of value should be provided to consumers (meaning libraries or end users).  This would be a complex measurement of course, but something's better than nothing.

The Impact

As mentioned above, this would be a complex and multifaceted measurement and would therefore require a lot of work on the part of whoever's evaluating the product.  Some products might not be suitable for such a system.  But, if done properly, this could streamline the use of information products by everyone in the demand chain (almost the same as the supply chain but from the opposite angle), as well as motivating creators and publishers to meet certain criteria and hopefully tend toward improvement.

Gender as a variable in resource evaluation

In my recent OLA Super Conference presentation (that I didn't actually present due to illness, but my colleague did), I worked on describing a theory of "Constructivist" evaluation of electronic resources, or really any resources in a library collection.  My colleague's counterpoint position was one of Deconstruction and although we had a bit of a disconnect in terms of actual counterpoints, I tried to talk about the construction of "value" not only in and of itself but in contrast and partnership with deconstruction of sorts.  Part of my colleagues position was that Deconstruction of the typical evaluation motivations, goals, and assumptions allowed for the potential awareness of hidden biases and faults, not the least of which was gender bias.

As a father of a teenage girl, amateur philosopher, and Tumblr user, I'm both aware of ethical issues such as gender bias (among other biases) and motivated to do something about it.  Although it's a little down the rabbit hole from an overall framework for normalizing and systematizing evaluation of library acquisitions, the idea of gender ethics consideration in resource evaluation struck me as interesting.

There can be no doubt that information resources -- monographs, journals, indexes, multimedia collections, newspapers, etc. -- are not only filled with gender bias in the content (since they are records society is making and we are far from being free from sexism), but the production system creating them and packaging them for consumption is gender biased as well.  As a librarian, it is my job to ensure that what's going in the collection is valuable and gender balance is certainly a valuable if rare commodity.

But how do you measure it?  Just in terms of authorship?  Is there an appropriate mix of male and female authors?  What about content?  Can you even check for gender bias on a large scale in scholarly works?  How is that even possible?  What about gender bias in the creation of the particular tool or collection being evaluated?  What would that look like?  What about LGBTQ issues?  And how much value can these considerations have if the society in which these resources are created still has problems so you're going to have to let some imbalanced information through otherwise the library would be empty.  How do you label this stuff properly?  Even our labelling systems are corrupt, with horrifying holdovers like the MeSH term "Monsters" that are slowly being replaced.

Perhaps baby steps is the best way to start:  gathering information on resources in the collection such as male-female ration of authorship, details about indexing practices and maybe even hiring practices of the companies building these tools.  I'm certainly no expert in the field of gender studies or feminism but there have got to be some basic concepts that can be molded into evaluation criteria even if it's just to help identify key problem areas in the industry and resources as they are now.

The connection between evolution and library science

Is there a connection?  I've been thinking about the possibility for probably the past year year now and reading chapter 10, "Life's Own Code" from Glieck's "The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood" has suggested it to me.  (The following chapter -- "Into the Meme Pool" -- would have done it if I had been a little slower.)

In a way, libraries could be thought of as "anti-evolution".  Not "anti-evolutionary theory" but rather working against the force of evolution.  As it is in meme theory, ideas have a life of their own, literally not figuratively.  Concepts, plans, images, theories, etc. have "survivability" and replicate themselves and can be thought of as surviving, or better yet, thriving the more copies there are of them and the more they are replicating themselves.  The idea of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a particularly successful.  My grocery list from last week, not so much.  So what do libraries collect?  Ideas encased in containers, in a way, frozen in time.  The librarian's job is typically two-fold:  preservation and access.  We collection valuable resources to "save" them from the wilds of the information wilderness, but then also house them in such a way as to allow people to look at them and use them as they see fit.  The analogy to genetic evolution could be something like a zoo, animal conservation area, or even cryogenic lab.  We house books, journals, videos, etc. in a safe place, away from the damage that could be done to them while in the hands of the users, publishers, society in general.  And then we provide a controlled environment for the ideas inside those "idea-holders" to come out and play, or more accurately, reproduce.  When patrons read a journal article, skim through a textbook, watch a video, practice a piece of music, what they are doing is producing an inexact copy inside their mind, in effect, allowing the meme(s) to multiply and escape the confines of the collection.

So libraries are both anti-evolution, in that the organisms are stored away to ensure non-replication (or rather non-imperfect-replication) and pro-evolution, in that the organisms are allowed to reproduce, and in fact, the storage is done for the express purpose of continued and "appropriate" reproduction.

Our job as library workers is made easier and more difficult by the differences in reproduction of ideas as compared to living organisms.  Pure replication is easier of course, so that maintenance of content is made possible by the practice of perfect replication (e.g. LOCKSS).  On the other hand, any replication is easier so that more control and therefore more work is necessary to ensure that unwanted replication doesn't happen (e.g. loss of "old versions" that some shareholders such as publishers may consider valueless but may have value to others).  It's easier to "freeze" content in containers unlike cryogenically storing animals or plants (e.g. archiving old electronic journals).  On the other hand, extended storage without active involvement can involve loss of content as well (e.g. unsupported formats and/or technological failure).

What does this mean for librarians?  I'm not sure.  Perhaps thinking about the work of librarianship in this way can help us prepare for the inevitable disintegration and/or substantial alterative of content.  If we consider the ultimate goal of librarianship is to ensure a certain kind of "idea mutation" then it puts preservation and access assurance into a slightly difference light, doesn't it?

E-Resource licensing and negotiations

Summary of and reactions to "Licensing Electronic Resources and Contract Negotiation" by Ryan O. Weir, chapter four of "Managing Electronic Resources: A LITA Guide" edited by Ryan O. Weir.

Things to remember when acquiring electronic resources

Summary of and reactions to "Acquiring Electronic Resources" by Denise Pan, chapter three of "Managing Electronic Resources: A LITA Guide" edited by Ryan O. Weir.

How to survive the clash between e-resources and budgets

Summary of and reactions to "Coping with Economic Issues and a Paradign Shift in Collections" by Regina Koury, chapter two of "Managing Electronic Resources: a LITA Guide" edited by Ryan O. Weir.

ERM basics

Read chapter one of Managing Electronic Resources: A LITA Guide edited by Ryan O. Weir, "Learning the Basics of Electronic Resource Management" also by Ryan O. Weir.

Upon reading this chapter, I've tried to describe the actual life cycle (since, in my opinion, the life cycle(s) described in the chapter are a little out of date or at least impractical) and the key requirements in ERM in this way:

1. Consideration:  This will involve details such as overlap, license terms, possible access points/issues, pricing, potential audience, trials, quote requests, feedback (from librarians, staff and/or patrons), negotiation, and how the final decision will be made.  Regardless of the decision, ideally, all factors that went into the decision as well as the final result should be recorded.
2. Acquisition:  This will involve ordering, receiving, paying, documentation of resource and transaction details (e.g. quantity, rights, license terms, payment, etc.)
3. Processing & Maintenance (initial or renewal):  This will involve providing and ensuring access to the resource (e.g. activation, cataloguing, etc.) as well as checking on and updating all records kept about the resource and the deal(s) (including usage statistics).  This will also involve as-needed troubleshooting and updating of access and functionality of the resource.
4. Evaluation:  This will involve the compilation of details (most importantly usage and cost) about the resource and deal(s) on a regular basis, either at renewal time or simply after a set amount of time, to reconsider keeping the product in the collection.
5. Removal:  Although rarely mentioned in the literature (this chapter included), it is always suggested that, given the need for renewal evaluation, there is the possibility that the resource will NOT be renewed.  There are also resources that cease to exist, or change to such a degree that it is no longer the same resource.  For these cases, actions must be taken to remove the resource from the collection involving the catalog, records kept, website references, etc.

Some of these may be standardized or may be unique to the specific resource or subject.

There is also the issue of promotion of electronic resources.  I have not included it (although I was very close to doing so) since, although vital, it is not truly necessary and is often left undone or at least done by librarians or staff other than those involved in ERM.

Also mentioned in the chapter:

• Electronic resource management challenges and changes:  Mentioned only in very general terms with references to two other chapters.
• Personal organizational skills:  Certainly very important but I'm torn as to the real meaning of this information being included here.  In a way, all librarians need good time management skills and project management methods, etc.  One of the things that I enjoy about librarianship is also a disadvantage:  flexibility.  Librarians, regardless of actual role, can do a wide variety of things, and have a lot of leeway in judging what really counts as their responsibility.  This means that we can and do take responsibility for plenty of different functions, which makes it difficult to manage our workload.  On the other hand, if electronic resources librarians have more than their fair share of work, then this suggests an imbalance in our institutions and the need for restructuring.
• Education and professional development:  Good quick introduction to some of the key issues.  I like the list of conferences:  I tend to go to regional conferences but I really should attend ER&L and maybe even Charleston.  And I've been thinking about how to help build a network of other professionals as it suggests.

Some things I disagree with in this chapter:

• On page 7, it states, "Once the decision is made that the library wishes to acquire an electronic resource, the task of negotiating the licensing and pricing of the resource begins."  Although it does say that the library merely "wishes" to acquire the product before negotiation, too often we find ourselves in the situation of deciding to obtain the product and then negotiating terms.  Details such as pricing, access rights, support agreements, etc. are crucial to determining the value of the resource and therefore should go into the decision to acquire it or not.  This is why I've put negotiation into the consideration process.  Initial negotation MUST take place before the decision is made to acquire.  The acquisition process can only take place once the decision has been made.
• The lack of consideration for "removal" of resources, as I've included above.
• There is no mention or consideration of purchased, or perpetual access resources.  In the "Review and Renewal of Resource", the assumption is that the only motivation for evaluation is for renewal or cancellation.  But eResources are increasingly purchased and although they do not take up "shelf space" they do fill up staff and librarian time, and can often come with slowly rising access fees.  Evaluation MUST take place to ensure that keeping it in the collection is still worth the time and money.

Good intro to the book.

Reader survey results and responses

Just read Reader survey results by Joseph Esposito (via a Scholarly Kitchen entry).

This is the summary of the results of a reader survey conducted by the author and Joe Wikert.  These are my own professional librarian take-aways:

1. So there are plenty of readers directly purchasing books from the publisher?  Perhaps, as libraries, with our role firmly between the publisher and our readers, we could facilitate those transactions.  I WANT my patrons to get the information/entertainment they want and it doesn't have to always be through something actually IN our collection.  If a student wants to buy the book, I'd like to help her get the right one.  Maybe we could even convince the publisher/provider to give them a discount since the library helped out.
2. It's suggested that while readers tend to like to purchase books online, they still like to browse in print.  Great!  The library is still purchasing plenty of print, so perhaps we should be showcasing it more/better?  More displays and sprinkled liberally around our buildings, not just at the front door.  Public library tend to do it better than academic, but we could all do it more.  Of course it has to be controlled better:  searching readers need to be able to find it, not just browsing readers.  We could also make our stacks a little more browser-friendly with labels, maps, signs, etc.
3. It's mixed as to what format is more popular:  print or electronic.  There are still big numbers on both sides and plenty of overlap.  This suggests that our collection development policy of collecting either or both as appropriate seems right on the money.  I'd like to have more firm data on what "appropriate" really is but lacking that, subject expertise like we tend to have in academic libraries will do.  Not much for libraries to really improve on.
4. Finally, the author seems to bemoan the decreasing value of certain traditional sources of book reviews and opinion information.  I'm not so sure.  This kind of information has always been useful and desired but limited to the "experts".  But reviews are more important as the provider is deemed more similar to the reader.  A doctor may say a certain book is great but a librarian saying the same thing will be more influential to me.  Therefore, the more open collections of reviews are, the more likely I'll find someone that has an opinion about the book I think I may want and who is "like me" enough for me to be moved by their opinion.  Also, the more opinion info there is out there, the more options the library has for obtaining this data and adding it to the collection to help OUR readers.  We're doing this more and more, but we have to keep going.

Anything I missed?

Ethics of Vendors Having Direct Communications with Patrons

I was sitting in a meeting with a sales rep from a library information resource vendor when he mentioned that his sales visits were quite different in the past.  He would spend all day on campus, talking with faculty, handing out brochures, giving demos of his products, etc.  He went on to say how he could help us with promoting his products within our institution, with premade emails with links, graphics, brochures, etc.

This made me think:  academic libraries, and particularly mine, I think, have a hard time "getting the word" out about the products that we add to our collection.  It always difficult to know which resources to promote and how exactly to do so.  We want them to know and appreciate the value of the collection but we don't want to overstep our bounds and become pushy sales staff in the minds of our faculty and students.  Even if we knew which and how, it's a question of time and staffing:  there are so many things that we all have to do, promotion tends to get put to the bottom.

But it's always in the best interest of the company that we acquired the products from that our patrons use them more.  We collection statistics and how and how often these resources are used and these numbers tend to inform our decisions on whether to renew, cancel or change our subscriptions, and even if we should get more products from the same vendor.  Why don't we allow vendors to provide training to our patrons?  Why don't we want vendors to communicate with faculty, pushing new and old products?  Why don't we let them take some of the work of letting our patrons know what we have and what we could have?

Some of the answers are obvious:  vendors are biased.  Librarians like to think that we're a little more objective when it comes to the various products that are available.  Allowing vendors to promote directly to the users would be the difference between deciding on a car by reading Consumer Reports or by watching car commercials.  Yes, the producers may know more about their products but they don't always say it all.  They will always fib a little.  But is this such a bad thing?  We all know salespeople lie, so maybe the value of the increased information would outweigh the hopefully slight misrepresentations.

Also, vendors want to sell new products.  This is fine and good when they are talking with the people who have control of the money that will be spent on them and are experienced in managing similar products.  But librarians find that when faculty know about new products, however they find out about them, they tend to pester us with requests for products that we can't afford, can't use, or are not going to be valuable to anyone else.  This wastes our time and harms our relationship with our patrons.  But again, maybe this shouldn't be the end of the discussion.  Perhaps by having to deal with these issues, faculty and other users on campus can learn more about the nature of acquisition of these resources, that immediately perceived use isn't the end of the analysis, and that things are much more complicated in the library than they may think.  And maybe "waste of time" is the price we pay to have a more involved faculty.

Finally, I think one of the reasons we don't let vendors train users directly is a bit of fear for our own jobs.  If a ProQuest-paid instructor can teach how to use ABI/INFORM Complete, what's left for the info lit librarian to do?  Well, actually I think we SHOULDN'T be teaching how to use interfaces, but rather general search strategies regardless of interface, judging quality of sources, etc.  Just as staff are short when it comes to promotion efforts, many libraries don't have enough instructors to teach all the students frequently enough. Why not let the vendors lighten the load where they can?  There is plenty of instruction to go around.

Perhaps there are other reasons why we should or should not allow vendors direct communicative access to our users.  What do you think?

Are "Big eBook Deals" worth it?

Just read "The 'big deal' approach to acquiring e-books: a usage-based study' by Terry Bucknell, from Serials 23(2), July 2010.  This article is an evaluation of a "big ebook deal" based on usage, specifically a Springer collection deal by the University of Liverpool.  Here are some of the conclusions in interesting points:

• eBook chapter use was comparable and connected to ejournal use on the same platform.
• A good number of titles were used per subject area (40-60%) except for Math and Stats (not surprisingly).
• There was a reverse correlation between ebook and print book versions of titles, suggesting that there are clear preferences per title.
• Most titles were used at least once within two years.
• Past usage is not always a good predictor of future usage:  high-use titles in one period were not so in another.
• Mostly long-tail usage.  There were no clear "winners" dominating usage.
• Cost per chapter were good compared to available benchmarks and ejournals.
• Overall, this was a good deal, even for STM subjects for which ejournals are often stated as preferred.  (This suggests difficult budget issues.)

This makes me want to do the same kind of analysis for the collections in my library to see if the numbers are similar, especially since this kind of acquisition in only growing and many of the conclusions are contrary to our intuitions.  For example, this suggests that:

1. We should avoid overlap between ebooks and print books.
2. PDA programs are not as useful as they may seem, at least in large collections.
3. We need to push for better budgets to accommodate ebook collection acquisitions.

You need a collection retention policy and you need it now.

Here are my notes from the OLA 2012 session #319: "Developing a Collection Evaluation & Retention Policy" (February 2, 2012 from 9:05 AM - 10:20 AM, in the Ontario Room of the ICTC) (handout / info) by Annie Bélanger and Ben Robinson from U of Waterloo.

• Think of it as a "retention" not "weeding".
• Almost to the extreme of "One book in, one book out".
• Need buy-in from all people involved.
• There are many methods/tools for evaluation.
• Check out http://subjectguides.uwaterloo.ca/evaluation for the toolkit.
• eResources need to be 'weeded' just as much as print (or rather will be).
• Need continuous communication with people involved.
• Use your current collection development policy as the starting point of your retention policy.
• Evaluation depends on the person evaluating.
• Listen to faculty to some degree.
• Hesitation tends to be due to lack of clear priority.
• Identification of what must be kept is the identification of what must not be kept.
• This kind of project can help make faculty and VP Research aware of library space issues.

This was an interesting and well done session but I guess I expected more in terms of detail about what evaluation criteria and retention criteria are viable for certain situations.  The most important take-away from this was that weeding (or rather retention-related activities) must be done and done systematically.  I completely agree which is standard practice when dealing with subscription-based electronic resources given the regular costs involved.  But print resources and purchased electronic resources have regular costs too whether they are obvious or not and such costs must be controlled.

Canadian publishers want two paychecks

I would like to get a complete list of the publishers represented by Access Copyright.

It seems to me that, from my perspective as a collection development librarian, the take-away from the fact that there are so many publishers voluntarily working with Access Copyright (over 600) is that they want to get revenue every way they can.  This is only natural and I can hardly blame for-profit companies (or even non-profit society publishers and university presses who need to justify their existence to administration or membership) from trying to get an extra buck.  But on the other hand, they can't blame us for wanting to both pay less and to pay in a more straightforward way.  Getting paid directly for use via with often complex license agreements and then getting paid again for something that could have easily been negotiated through those original license agreements seems a little underhanded, particularly because the second payment has not typically come out of the library's budget (but certainly has an impact on it eventually).  This not only is like "double dipping" but undermines the library's reputation with university administration since it suggests that we are not capable of managing all resource use and cannot be trusted with copyright issues.

My recommendation is that we merely take this into consideration.  For those publishers that are affiliates of Access Copyright and therefore bring in revenue that way, such a relationship should be considered a negative when evaluating their resources.  Reputation and cooperation are considered and this is just an aspect of both.  It should not be an over-riding variable since there are plenty of other things to take into consideration but it must be a variable.

"Directory of Open Access Books" (DOAB) review

From the press release for the launch of DOAB, the "Directory of Open Access Books" or "DOAB" is:

a discovery service for peer reviewed books published under an Open Access license. DOAB provides a searchable index to the information about these books, with links to the full texts of the publications at the publisher’s website or repository. 

CONTENT

The site claims to contain "854 academic peer-reviewed books" as of April 26, 2012 but my check found only 841 (by counting the number of titles under each letter in the alphabetical browse by title list).  Perhaps I missed a number or two when adding?  Perhaps there are titles not listed in that browse by list?  Not sure.  Regardless, although this is a relatively small number for a useful collection of ebooks, the Open Access (OA) book 'industry' (if you can call it that) is still new and the resource was only launched two weeks ago so the low number is understandable.

Looking through the browse by publisher list, there are some recognizable publishers (e.g. Taylor & Francis) plus several university presses (e.g. University of Michigan Press).  And there's already a pretty wide subject coverage (pure and applied sciences, arts and humanities, social sciences, etc.).

NAVIGATION

As is common with new resources now, DOAB has a very simple navigation and interface.  The pages are very clean, being mostly white with really no clutter.  There's a Google-like single keyword-search box on the front page (which seems to search all fields except "pages").  This search does not auto-wildcard meaning that it will not find the text string entered as a part of the meta-data.  For example, it did not find a book with "Donation" in the title when searching "donati".  It also includes an advanced search which allow the combination of search boxes with a Boolean connector searching specific fields, plus date range specification.

Some search related odds and ends:

• Not all entries have subject headings which is odd.  The database does include cover images for the books, which is nice (and probably almost mandatory for today's users).
• Search results display include faceted search functionality on the right.
• Subjects (at least in the browse by subject list) are quite limited and rather high level.  This ok with only 800-900 titles but it will be increasingly painful as the directory grows.
• No author browse function.
• Not a target in the SFX Link Resolver yet.  (This is understandable.)

CONCLUSION

This is a good showing for such a new resource.  And it's certainly good for the OA book movement which needs more promotion and supporting resources.  This is made by the makers of the "Directory of Open Access Journals" (or DOAJ) which has done well so far.  Many libraries appreciate the DOAJ data and add the "collection" to their list of accessible ejournals.  Books are a different kettle of fish than journals but it's probably safe to assume a possible similar trajectory for DOAB.  IMHO, I would add this to a small-medium sized library's "collection" of eresources.

What's the big deal with the "Big Deal"?

Right now, in the Canadian academic library world (and beyond to some degree as well), there's an ongoing discussion regarding the value of the Big Deal.  What's the Big Deal?  It's basically bulk purchasing of electronic journals from a specific vendor which saves time, money (per title at least), and workload processing these resources.  The concern is whether this deal is actually such a deal in the end and when does it stop being so.

My opinion about this is that the problem rests not with the vendor or the deal but with both budget stagnation in academic libraries and with our failure to truly evaluate value on resources like ejournal packages.  The former issue seems primarily a problem with the thought on the part of university administration, government agencies and the public that, because "everything is online now", why should we be paying more for information?  We should be paying less, right?  That's not true obviously.  The latter issue comes from the complexity of assigning value to these resources individually by journal title say, or even moreso, as a huge package of thousands or tens of thousands of titles.  There are too many variables (list price, usage, differing usage style by subject discipline, non-transparency of past and future pricing, variable industry pricing, institution size, etc.) to be able to put it all together into one figure that can then be compared to the value figure for other resources/packages or even to be used to signal when (and why) to cancel, acquire, renew or resubscribe later on.

An idea concerning moving library collections from 'ownership' to pure 'access'

Just read through the slides from a 2011 presentation by Colin Koproske entitled "Redefining the academic library: managing the migration to digital information services, part I: planning for transformation and the future of ebooks" and I have to say something:  I am convinced.  I don't know whether it was the slide or just the ideas rolling around in my head finally falling into place, but I think I am sold on patron driven access (PDA) (which was basically what the slides were about).

I had a lot of the usual concerns about PDA:  controlling cost, ensuring a good collection, preventing gaming of the system.  But the one slide about moving from an ownership model to an access model is probably what brought me over to the dark side.  Having read a Rick Anderson article on Scholarly Kitchen a while ago, which was effectively about PDA, the idea of moving from "just in case" to "just in time" has been brewing in my head.  Although I don't agree that librarians are particularly bad at judging future quality (in fact I think we are uniquely qualified, more so than any other professional), the fact of the matter is that there is too much change and uncertainty nowadays to be able to do effectively and sustainably.

You may notice that I actually wrote patron driven "access" instead of acquisition.  Well, I'm not sure I'm sold on the acquisition part.  I mean, if the point of PDA is to provide a resource when demand is there and to not be building a "legacy" collection, why purchase the item?  Perhaps a pattern of patron use does predict future value better than a devoted selector (arguable) but there will be an end to that value.  Even great present patron use can't predict future use far into the future and with the information universe exploding as it is and will be, this will be increasingly true.  If use is required now, then provide access now.

What I'm suggesting is the 'pay per use' model basically.  I have not read much about the effectiveness of this model (more additions to my reading list) but I do see one big straight off:  control of budget.  If you give access to resources to your patrons and are billed per use by them without vetting that use in some way, who knows how much you will be spending per year?  This could be controlled by having an account with the vendor from which fees are withdrawn.  Access is provided (and displayed) when there is sufficient funds in the account and removed when insufficient.  Perhaps, once a certain level of usage of the contents of a package were reached, access would be guaranteed for the rest of the year?  Who knows.

Financials could easily get out of control in this model or at least stay quite unpredictable and difficult to react to (e.g. what to do if your patrons surprise you and use up all the money in the account early in the year?) so some experimenting would have to be done.  The vendors' resources could also be called upon since, because their revenue would be based on usage, they would be motivated to increase usage by your patrons as much as possible.  I am never happy with the idea of injecting advertising into the scholarly environment (ethical considerations here) but the fact is that advertising is already strewn through the information universe and trying to keep companies out of campus seems increasingly futile.  Why not harness their motivation and resources and allow them to sponsor programs, services, staff, etc. on campus and allow them to drum up usage?  Librarians are always bemoaning how hard it is to get the faculty and students to listen to us when we say how useful these expensive resources are...  perhaps we could use some help.

This is just a blast of an idea that I had while eating lunch today, so perhaps I've missed something obviously flawed with my thinking.  Feel free to blast back.

The serials crisis is over, and other fairy tales

From "Not Looking for Sympathy", an interview With Derk Haank, CEO, Springer Science+Business Media, by Richard Poynder:

"...the serials crisis, which [Derk Haank] says was resolved in the 1990s, after publishers introduced the Big Deal. Librarians will surely disagree. Haank responds by pointing out that the number of papers published each year continues to grow at 6% to 7%. Consequently, he says prices must inevitably rise a little each year. And he is confident the research community will eventually agree, since "scientists have to have sufficient funding to keep abreast of new developments." As such, he says the current difficulties are cyclical, not structural. He adds that librarians' current fad for publicly berating publishers overpricing is simply a canny negotiating strategy intended to put pressure on publishers. While this makes life more difficult, he says he is not looking for sympathy. Here then is our conversation, which has been edited for style."

Problems:

1. As supply increases, price typically falls.  This is a pretty standard economic concept, but perhaps the economics of scholarly communication works in a completely different way.  It would have been great to have a little more exploration of this idea instead of it just being presented as obvious fact.
2. The "papers published" number is controlled by the publishers.  They are not at the mercy of this number.  So even if the increase in supply requires an increase in price, it is still artificial since the publishers do not have to publish more just because there are more submissions.
3. Scientists (or academics, researches, professionals) need to keep abreast of new developments.  But they are not able to take in 6-7% more content each year.  They have a limit.  And at some point in a mature academic's life, it certainly decreases each year.  Perhaps publishers need to do a better job of "culling the herd", of reducing the numbers of publications, to keep only the best work, to help academics be able to focus on what they need.
4. Librarians are not typically canny negotiators.  We have too much work to do, dealing with crappy budgets, changing technologies, and needy patrons.  lol  But honestly, "negotiating" with vendors is not as subtle as this suggests.  And besides, reading through the entire interview, this seems to be his response to anything that librarians (and others) state:  it's just a negotiating ploy.  Translation:  we're liars just trying to get a lower price.

When I first started reading this, I was hoping to get an entertaining and informative view of the issue from the other side (especially considering the glowing introduction in the article) but there was not that much information and, I suppose, the charm didn't translate into text.  Perhaps I did get a view from the other side but it appears to have been the biased, profit-oriented side that cynical librarians tend to see the publishers on.

But perhaps I'm a little biased myself...  I'm not NOT involved in all this.  What do you think?

About HathiTrust

Thanks, Library Journal...  Just read "Unlocking HathiTrust: Inside the Librarians' Digital Library" an interview with some of those knowledgeable about the HathiTrust which is something, as a Canadian electronic resources librarian, I've heard about many times but not had the chance to really learn much about directly.

The HathiTrust is primarily about preserving the "cultural record" digitally and providing access to it as much as is legally allowed.  Most is not accessible to everyone, or even almost anyone, but the point is that it is preserved and ready, format-wise, to be accessible given the correct environment and technology in the future.

I've only had a chance to browse the collection briefly but the navigation looks simple and the design is clean.

I am interested in understanding more about the scope of the collection:  every "about" statement seems to be rather general in terms of what they are looking to add to the collection.  This is a collaboration of U.S. institutions so I'm assuming there is a bit of an American bias.  Perhaps there is a Canadian effort that is similar.  I haven't heard of such a thing but I am not all-knowing.  lol

Check out HathiTrust.