Consortia the Big Deal for Academic Libraries A Critical Investigation in the Economic Models and Co

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Consortia the Big Deal for Academic
Libraries?A Critical Investigation in the
Economic Models and Conditions for Consortia
Helmut HartmannGraz University Library

•  Unica Seminar
• F_at_ir Publishing and F_at_ir Reading
• Vienna, Nov. 25 26, 2004

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Tackling the problem (radically)
Struggling under- Budget constraints-
Increasing expenses- Inflation of resources-
Users demands for more- Consortia squeezing
library budgets

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Tackling the problem (reasonably)

• BMJ  200432868 (10 January), doi10.1136/bmj.328
  .7431.68
• US universities review subscriptions to journal
  "package deals" as costs rise
• Cancelling consortial package-deal
  subscriptions
• Purchasing journals on a title by title basis
• Negotiations to agree more flexible licensing
  terms
• Early cancellation of rarely used journals
• Regaining control of journal subscriptions

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Memories of starting out 1

• Original purpose of consortia
• Building a community of libraries entering into a
  cooperative agreement to share information or
  provide services that benefit students
• Pooling their individual fiscal, human, and
  material resources to take advantage of more
  favourable agreements with publishers, or arrange
  to share staff technical expertise
• Making up for local cancellations by Cross Access
  Agreements

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Memories of starting out 2
Characteristics of successful consortia (nach
Hirshon, A. International Library Consortia How
Did We Get Here? Where are We Going?)

• Valuable programs and services
• Clear sponsorship and ownership
• Committed membership
• Strong leadership
• Effective committees
• Continuous communication
• Sustainable organization
• Adequate staffing (Usually not only volunteers)
• Agile organizations

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Promissing beginningsSaving money by online
access
Cancellations of duplicates at Graz University
Library in ATS1998 1999
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Promissing beginningsSaving money by online
access
GUL Expenses in 1999 on e-duplicates in ATS
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Promissing beginningsSaving money by online
access
GUL net savings 1998 1999 in ATS
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Promissing beginningsSaving money by online
access

• Original idea Transferring this model from
  within the holdings of one library to the
  holdings of a whole region / country

• Libraries agree on cancelling their print
  subscriptions but one in the consortium making
  use of Cross Access

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The Empire lashing backPublishers ignoring
cancellations
Total 3.303.533
Total 2.924.564
73.505 plus !
50.000 plus
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The Empire lashing backPublishers fixing
turnover
Beginning
Terminating

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The Empire lashing back Unique Title List
replacing Cross Access
Medical Library96 ZSS
Unique Title List
10 Journals
10 Journals
Universal Universiy Library344 ZSS
10 Journals
30 x used in common x number of duplicate
journals
Special Lib.15 ZSS
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Imperfection creeping in

• Loss of Cross Access ? Loss of common
  administration
• Publishers seem to be increasingly unable to
  handle the operative side of affairs delayed
  access to various journals or none at all
• Inconvinience of data migration to new servers ?
  Changing URLs in records
• Loss of journals out of packages due to transfer
  to other publishers

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Nevertheless...Some assets left

• Small libraries can share journals they could
  never afford
• Multi-year agreements offer substantial capping
  of annual increase
• Comparatively low or no additional charge at all
  for Cross Access or UTL Access
• Enclosure of new journals into existing packages
  for free one year trials
• Consortia deals still save a lot of money
  GUL 2004 savings at Springer 94.236 (Cross
  Access compared to Single Site Subscriptions)

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Nevertheless...Even at Elsevier it makes sense 1

• E-fee
• local subs. 10
• plus 2 - 6 on UTL

• E-fee
• local subs. CA 10

• E-fee
• local subs. ONLY
• 25 !

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Nevertheless...Even at Elsevier it makes sense 2
The Consortia Curve But Even at less than 50
downloads/year UTL-access is cheaper than
pay-per-view!
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Assets for innovationCollection development

• Consistency of holdings can no longer be granted
  due to budget constraints
• Swiftly changing relevance of holdings because
  of
• New subject fields
• Establishing new departments
• Temporary research projects
• New journals
• Splitting of journals
• Just-in-time supply instead of Just-in-case
• Consortia (particularly if they go e-only) help
  libraries to react dynamically to their users
  demands as (even in packages) titles can usually
  be substituted by others

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Assets for innovationAdministration

• Simplifying orders One order for hundreds of
  titles
• Joint cataloguing
• For e-only-titles (local ones as well as CA or
  UTL ones)
• no issue admin
• no claims
• no binding
• no shelving
• Controlling made easy Hundreds of journals
  bundled in one file of stats

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Prooved successful by statisticsInstead of a
summary
Sessions via EZB at Graz University Library
Blackwell Kluwer Nature Science
142.907
95.395
56.449
ACS LWW Springer Thieme
20.785
Wiley
Elsevier
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Thank you for your attention!

• helmut.hartmann_at_uni-graz.at