Consortia, Libraries, and Managing in the Downturn

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Consortia, Libraries, andManaging in the Downturn

• Ann Okerson
• Electronic Resources Consortia
• 11 November 2009
• ann.okerson_at_yale.edu

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Outline for todays talk

• I. Overview of consortia
• History purpose
• Types, services, issues, priorities
• II. The downturn
• Review ICOLC Statement on the Global Economic
  Crisis and Its Impact on Consortial Licenses
  (January 2009)
• NERL in the downturn
• Actions
• III. Yale Situation a case study
• Collaborations
• IV. Other collaborative initiatives

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I. Consortia Overview

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Definition of a library consortium

• "A library consortium is any local, regional,
  or national cooperative association of libraries
  that provides for the systematic and effective
  coordination of the resources of schools, public,
  academic, and special libraries and information
  centers, for improving services to the clientele
  of such libraries.
• (US Federal Communications Commission)

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Many different shapes sizes

• Some very large, complex (such as JISC) tiny
  (LALC)
• Some have broad programs others mainly license
  electronic resources
• Can be restricted
• to specific library types (special libraries,
  academic libraries, etc.) or government agencies
• Can be open
• To all local, or regional, or country wide group
  libraries some consortia include all libraries
  in their region including elementary school and
  public
• Libraries often belong to several at once!

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Types of consortia a continuum
From decentralized
To centralized

• Tightly affiliated
• Permanent staff
• Formal organization
• Ambitious programs

• Loosely affiliated
• Volunteer staff
• No formal organization
• Small range of programs

Central organization
Tightly knit federations
Loose federations
Source Arnold Hirshon
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Funding consortia a continuum
From centrally funded
To self-funded

• Institutional funds
• Individualized menus
• Customized resources

• Typically state funding
• Consultative governance
• Consortium decides for all

And everything in between!
All from contributions, distributed
decisions
Hybrid of membership types
Hybrid of central and contributory
Central and decisions
Source Arnold Hirshon
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How many consortia?

• ICOLC http//www.library.yale.edu/consortia
• In 2000 135 consortia listed
• 90 in USA
• 45 in 21 other countries
• In 2009 211 consortia listed
• 129 in North America
• 82 in 41 other countries
• American Library Directory lists 407 US
  Networks, Consortia, and Other Cooperative
  Library Organizations
• ALA 2007 Survey lists about 200 in US

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211 Consortia in ICOLC in 2009
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129
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3
3 multinational
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Consortia timelines

• Library Cooperation in the US since 1876?
• Consortia in the U.S. have been around since the
  1930s (North Carolina)
• 1960s and 70s Shared cataloging through OCLC
  and RLG was born
• 1980s Focus moved to fast delivery for books
  and articles, requested by libraries end-users
• 1990s Large-scale licensing of electronic
  resources began, launched by publishers such as
  Encyclopedia Britannica and Academic Press
• NOTE The availability of electronic online
  information resources expanded immensely the role
  and presence of library consortia

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Adding services over time OhioLINK
Off-site Digital Media Center
Electronic Journals
On-site E-Journal Center
Vendor images
Ebsco Databases
Vendor videos
Inst. images
On-Site Central Catalog
Chat Reference
Inst. AV
On-site E-books full text literature
E- Theses Diss.
Subject Clusters
ISI WoS
Web DBs vendor systems
E-books vendor systems
Journal Citation DBs
Electronic Books
Reference Research Databases
Source Tom Sanville, OhioLINK
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ICOLC survey top priorities(March 2009)

• 80
• 61.5
• 60.7
• 57.6
• 54.5
• 45.8
• 42.9
• 40.
• 39.1
• 35.0

• Budget Management
• Licensing re-negotiation
• Digital initiatives digital preservation
• Next generation catalog
• Interlibrary lending
• Print shared storage
• Scholarly Communications/ OA
• Union Catalog
• Training
• Etc.

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II. DownturnICOLC and NERL

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International Coalition of Library Consortia
http//www.library.yale.edu/consortia
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ICOLC statement

• January 2009 Global Economic Crisis
• There are will be significant cuts, prolonged
  cuts, a permanent reduction in base budgets (a
  lower plateau)
• Two principles
• 1  Flexible pricing that offers customers real
  options, including the ability to reduce
  expenditures without disproportionate loss of
  content, will be the most successful. 
• 2  It is in the best interest of both publishers
  and consortia to seek creative solutions that
  allow licenses to remain as intact as possible,
  without major content or access reductions. 

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ICOLC statement (2)

• Purchasers will trade features for price that
  is, we can do without costly new interfaces and
  features.  This is not a time for new products. 
• Putting price first will help all parties,
  because budget pressures will drive decisions in
  a way never seen before.  Real price reductions
  will be welcomed and can help to sustain
  relationships through the hard times.
• Multi-year contracts will be possible only with
  clear opt-out and/or reduction clauses. 
• Options will be needed for semi-annual or
  quarterly payment schedules, in combination with
  more flexible opt-out/reduction clauses and
  renewal cycles. 

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Example NERL

• Membership
• Full members 27 large academic research
  libraries
• Affiliates 70 smaller academic
• Organization Governance
• Voluntary consortium with shared goals
  non-bureaucratic
• Letter of agreement, with decisions made by full
  members
• Review organization every 3 years (founded 1996)
• Staff of 2 annual dues-funded operations of
  120,000
• Each contract is optional for each and every
  member
• Yale the organizational and fiscal home
• Programs
• Focus on access to expensive (over 10K)
  scholarly e-resources of importance to research
  institutions
• Billing turnover of 30M annually

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NERL situation

• Makes available over 10,000 Journal titles
• Makes available nearly 300 databases
• Members can pick and choose from the databases
  and packages
• Works with over 60 publishers
• Collects numerous data regarding usage and cost
  per use for publisher packages
• Generates annual Savings Reports for members
• Payments for 2009 centrally made 23M
• Total payments including members 35M
• Estimated savings off list 29

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NERL situation (2)

• For 2010 - 3 with moderate increases 2 are
  flat rest cut for 2009-2010 fiscal year
• April 2009 letter sent re. e-resources contracts
  with 60 publishers/providers
• http//www.library.yale.edu/NERLpublic/ 2009
  NERL Budget Letter to Vendors
• Cuts range from 1 - 15 (5-20 in actual
  dollars)
• Average dollar cuts around 4-5
• Average buying power cuts around 8-10
• Not able to sustain payments at previous levels
• Reviewing contracts with major suppliers
• Looking for partnerships and stability
• Can we strike new pricing models?

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NERL situation (3)

• Responses to NERL letter so far - 53
• Not-for-profits are trying to hold prices flat
  for 1 2 years a few reductions
• Creators of large historical databases are
  increasing incentives (more customers price
  reductions) know that sales will be way down
  also capping or eliminating annual access fees
• A few for-profits (Lexis-Nexis) also freezing
  prices for general subscription products
• For-profit journal publishers appear to expect to
  reduce content, treat different consortial
  members differently (divide conquer), make
  reduction terms conditional upon buying back up
  in future years to pre-downturn spends

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Yale a case study

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Yale case study

• December 2008 Presidents letter 5 reduction
• January 2009 raised to 6.75
• February 2009 raised to 7.5
• March 2009 library must further reduce
• 65 staff positions (38 vacancies eliminated)
• 1.93M collections
• Travel and operations slashed
• April 2009 no carryovers to new FY
• June 2009 expect further cuts in the fall and
  in next fiscal year
• 44 of Yale income from endowments sliding
  further?
• 5 additional collections cuts mandated 11/09
• Flat pricing will take us only so far (not very)

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Yale case study (2)

• Yale has 20 libraries in different discipline
  areas choices will vary in 2009-2010 FY
• Limited or zero new subscriptions
• Reduce print book purchases (foreign exchange
  factor)
• Cancel less-used, more specialized, or somewhat
  overlapping databases
• Downsize reference collections
• Significantly reduce retrospective database
  purchases (backfiles, historical collections)
• Begin systematic serials cancellations
• Future of journal packages rigorously examined
• 2010-2011 Strategy
• Retain staff as much as possible
• More of the above cuts PLUS
• Systematically un-do high-spend journal packages

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Yale case study (3)

• We buy most major resources through NERL
• Savings for Yale around 20 off list price
• Journal package analysis shows
• Cost per use ranges from .65 to 2.94 per
  download (discipline dependent)
• Packages based on historic spend
• Historic titles still account for 2/3 80 of
  actual use
• Paretos Law applies 1 of journals 10 of
  use 2-3 account for 20 of use about 25-30
  account for 80 of use and about 40 account for
  90 of use
• Lots of high use resources

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BorrowDirect a regional collaboration

• What Enables partner university students,
  faculty, and staff to borrow books directly from
  the libraries of Brown University, Columbia
  University, Cornell University, Dartmouth
  College, the University of Pennsylvania,
  Princeton University, and Yale.
• Scope  All printed books (monographs) and music
  scores that are lent by the owning library with
  the following exceptions
• Books that are non-circulating, or on reserve
• Books assigned to reference, or rare book
  collections by the owning library
• Bound journals or journal articles
• Response Time  Within 4 business days after
  requested.
• Notification  Email notice sent when requested
  book arrives.
• Pick-Up Location  Can be specified, during
  scheduled library hours.
• Loan Period  6 weeks. Recalled books within 3
  days.
• Cost Effective Automated via special software.
  Handled as a circulation rather than ILL
  transaction costs around 8/transaction

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BorrowDirect collective collection

• 50 Million Volumes
• 500,000 Monographs Added Annually
• 40 Million Microforms
• 125,000 Videos
• 715,000 Audio Files
• 120M in Library Material Expenditures
• 40M for Monographs

Source Estimated from 2006-07 ARL Statistics
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BorrowDirect people programs

• 95,000 students
• 42,000 graduate students
• 9,000 faculty
• 2,500 Ph.Ds awarded
• 425 Ph.D fields
• Source Estimated from 2006-07 ARL Statistics

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BorrowDirect collections officers

• We are exploring opportunities in a time of
  constraint (and plenty of materials to buy)
• ADs for Collections met at 3 ALA conferences
• 3 conference calls (recently on October 30th)
• Brainstorming and exploration
• Re-energeize old agreements (film studies)
• Create new ones (perhaps e-book approval plan
  sharing one day?)
• Identify dead ends (little more can be done
  example)
• Are there new downstream opportunities (new
  disciplines)

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YBP BorrowDirect consortial view, 2008-2009

• Trade Presses

• University Presses

• YBP treated 10,057 discrete titles.
• BD institutions purchased 79.4 of YBPs
  inventory or 7,981 titles of which 1,367 were
  unique, single institution purchases.
• BD acquired 25,291 copies with an overlap of
  17,310 copies.
• This constitutes an estimated 3.7 copies per
  title.
• Given that BD members also acquire their own
  university press titles outside of YBP,
  redundancy is even higher.

• YBP treated 43,836 discrete titles.
• BD institutions purchased 55 of YBPs inventory
  or 24,144 titles of which 9,814 were unique,
  single institution purchases.
• BD acquired 52,701 copies with an overlap of
  28,557 copies.
• This constitutes an estimated 3 copies per title.

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Ways to divide responsibility?

• Identify which schools have earmarked funds for
  substantial disciplines and let them carry
  heavier load
• Document current subjects programmatic shifts
  at the BD institutions
• Steady-state
• Renewed interest
• Interdisciplinary growth
• Areas for exploration

• Music (recent-ish)
• German Studies (Cornell and Princeton will
  explore)
• Environmental (Dartmouth leading)
• Nanotechology (Brown leading)
• Native Americans (Brown and Dartmouth will
  explore)
• Korean Studies (Yale investigation)
• Small press contemporary poetry (Columbia Yale)

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Ways to divide responsibility

• P-books could we agree to think of our printed
  books as a BD community resource?
• E-books could we acquire as a consortium for
  sharing?
• Alternative (possible) Scenarios
• When 4 of 7 BD members own an e-book title, it
  becomes available to other members.
• After a title is requested via BD for the 3rd
  time, another copy is purchased for the system.
• Agree to share (reduce) purchase of print copies
  as we transition to more e-books.

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The next generation?

• Can we augment the formats available to include
  videos, audio recordings, and microforms?
• Can we open collections currently closed for
  borrowing, through flexible loan periods,
  digitizal delivery, or other methods?
• Do we need a more formalized approach to our
  agreements?
• How can we foster closer communication and
  productive networking among our subject
  specialists? Our faculty?
• Are there other research libraries which we would
  recommend as BD partners?

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Discussion?

• When does BorrowDirect make sense as a
  collections strategy? When not?
• How to hold conversations?
• Any differences in potential for sharing between
  undergraduate and professional materials?
• To what extent can group collection agreements
  override local needs?
• How do we stay with changing priorities,
  landscape?
• How do patron-driven requests fit here?
• How to think about inequities among collections
  budgets of different libraries?

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IV. Other collaborations

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Some other (ambitious) sharing strategies

• Inter-institutional Mandates
• 2CUL http//www.library.cornell.edu/news/091012/
  2cul
• The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded
  385,000 to support the development of an
  innovative partnership dubbed 2CUL. This new
  relationship has the potential to become the most
  expansive collaboration to date between major
  research libraries.
• Starting this fall, Cornell and Columbia will
  plan significant partnerships in collaborative
  collection development, acquisitions and
  processing.
• The two universities will form a separate service
  entity to facilitate the collaboration.
• Initial work will focus on several global
  collecting areas, as well as collaborative
  funding and support of technical infrastructure
  in various areas.

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Connecting, reproducing, linking . . .
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Building the global library
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Well keep dancingHappy Feet