Coordinating Committees

Collections and Resource Sharing Coordinating Committee

Progress Report, May 4, 2009

Since February the Collections and Resource Sharing Coordinating Committee has had two conference calls and organized a joint meeting with the Collection Development Committee which was held on May 1st in Madison. The major accomplishments and discussion topics during the past three months are summarized in this spring report.  

Shared Electronic Collection:  The CDC and CRS committees are recommending that six resources scheduled to expire between mid-May and the end of July be renewed for FY10:  Gale’s trio of reference resources, i.e., Associations Unlimited, Biography and Genealogy Master Index, Contemporary Authors; Oxford English Dictionary; Oxford Music Online; and, PsycArticles. Both Gale and OUP offered renewals at 0% increase with reference to FY09 prices, while APA set the renewal for PsycArticles 3% above the 2008/09 price. The Gale renewal will be paid out of this year’s budget; the other continuations will be charged to FY10. 

Although the decision to cancel Criminal Justice Abstracts in Dec. 2008 eliminated a projected deficit for the current FY, unfortunately the problem returns already in next year’s budget. The SEC spreadsheet indicates that if all the currently funded resources are renewed next year, we will be facing a nearly $90K deficit.  Even if the best imaginable scenario were to transpire--that none of the vendors increased their prices for FY09/10--there would still be a projected deficit of $36K. The CRS and CDC see three options for averting deficit spending: 1) cancellation(s) totaling at least $90K, 2) increasing campus’ cost sharing contributions, or 3) a combination of these two approaches. 

In an attempt to reduce next year’s spending an ad hoc committee has been formed to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the two primary business full-text journal databases from ProQuest (ABI/Inform) and Ebsco (Business Source Complete). UWS has licensed ABI/Inform for a number of years, but now plans to take another look at Ebsco’s product which if selected, could save $30K for the SEC budget.

UWS’ Commercial Document Delivery Budget for FY10:  The CRSCC recommends a new cost-sharing model for the multiple document delivery services currently supported by UWS. This would result in consolidating the budget for British Library and CISTI with the more recently established fund for Science Direct, Wiley-Blackwell and the P-cards, and implementing a 25% contribution for all document delivery participating campuses. The full details are found in attachment A of this report.

ERM Assessment Working Group:  After conducting a systemwide survey eliciting disparate responses and virtually no consensus, this group, chaired by Kirsten Houtman (WiLS), is seeking direction from CUWL on the possible timeline for an electronic resource management system (ERMS) and the probability of funding support. The full details are found in attachment B of this report.

CDC Periodical Procurement Review Task Force:  Chaired by Judy Wurtzler (Platteville), the Task Force reviewed the vendors’ responses to requests for bids and determined the following have met the basic terms and conditions established by the group including financial stability:  Avanti Enterprises, Inc.; Casalini Libri; Ebsco Information Services; Harrassowitz; W.T. Cox Subscriptions; and Swets. These vendors will be awarded contracts by the UWS Office of Procurement. 

Marquette University’s  interest in closer cooperation with UW Libraries:  Marquette’s Library Director, Janice Welburn, would like to resume regular communications with the UW campuses and has expressed interest in participating in UW consortial purchases. The CRS and CDC members have endorsed pursuing such discussions with MU and finding opportunities in this partnership which benefit UW libraries. This proposal is being forwarded to CUWL for consideration with the suggestion that a borrowing agreement with lower fees be part of the negotiation.   

Emerald Publishing:  Negotiations with Emerald Publishing on the renewal of a systemwide license to either a packaged group of journals or a smaller, customized list of titles is moving along at a painfully slow pace. Careful attention is being paid to costs and usage, while a number of options including non-renewal are being considered.

CRS/CDC documents available through the wiki:  Documents and spreadsheets uploaded to the Collections and Resource Sharing webspace have been reorganized to promote its utility for both the CRS and the Collection Development Committee. An important addition this quarter, thanks to the WiLS staff, is the availability of usage statistics for SEC-funded resources.

Submitted by Richard Reeb (Madison), CRSCC chair

Other CRS members are Ewa Barczyk (Milwaukee) Ron Hardy (Oshkosh), Karen Jander (Milwaukee), John Jax (La Crosse), Lisa Jewell (System), Dina Kaye (Parkside), Lee Konrad (Madison), Lisa Pillow (River Falls), Tom Reich (Stevens Point), Mary Rieder (Colleges), and Kathy Schneider (WiLS)

 

Attachment A 

Recommendations for Commercial Document Delivery Services Provided by UW System

The CRSCC (Collections and Resource Sharing Coordinating Committee) recommends that action is taken to merge the funding now in place to support commercial document delivery and provide a uniform funding model to address the inequities between the fully subsidized British Library & CISTI resources and the matching funds requirements for Science Direct, Wiley and the P-Card program.

The present arrangement of one pool of resources fully subsidized and the other requiring matching funds will continue to deter use of the faster, higher quality, and less expensive options in favor of the slower and more expensive British Library & CISTI. The attached summary of use of commercial document delivery resources subsidized by UW System shows that 75% - 80% of the use is for the fully subsidized resources. Once matching funds are implemented for the P-Card & Science Direct program we are concerned that its use will decline further.

Therefore we recommend the following:

  • Merge the $50,000 budgeted to fully fund the British Library and CISTI commercial document delivery options with the $80,000 budgeted to support commercial document delivery for faculty research at comprehensives and the Milwaukee campus into a single pool of money supporting commercial document delivery ($130,000);
  • Beginning July 1, 2009 implement a 75% - 25% cost sharing arrangement for the use of all of the commercial document delivery resources being provided, including British Library & CISTI, with campuses being charged back for 25% of their use;
  • Renegotiate with Wiley Interscience to establish per campus accounts where needed so as to accurately measure and track usage per campus;
  • Explore adding additional group accounts for other frequently used services such as Ingenta and Informaworld if demand remains high following the implementation of matching fund requirements;

Based on the use of all of these services we can estimate that the amount of commercial document delivery need throughout system (excluding Madison) is between $75,000 and $100,000 annually. Implementing cost sharing for the resources, including CISTI and the British Library, may or may not result in a decrease in use.

Use of Commercial Document Delivery Services Provided by System

Two attached documents provide detailed information on the use of commercial document delivery resources provided by UW System. The first is a summary of ‘year to date’ totals for British Library (BLDSC), CISTI, Science Direct, Wiley and the P-card. The second is a detailed report on the use of the P-card by vendor and institution.

The first report indicates that while there has been a significant increase in the use of the P-card, BLDSC & CISTI are still the most commonly used of these resources. It also indicates that there is an imbalance in the use of commercial document delivery, with three institutions (Oshkosh, LaCrosse, Green Bay) making up approximately 2/3 of the use. Seven institutions have used at least 4 of the 5 options, all of the comprehensives have at least some use of Wiley, Science Direct or the P-card, and two comprehensives (Platteville, Parkside) are not using BLDS or CISTI but are using the other resources. The Colleges have the least amount of use but over half have used at least one of the commercial document delivery options.

The second report shows that a very wide range of vendors and publishers have been used by ILL staff using P-cards to purchase articles directly. The four most commonly used vendors used with P-cards were Wiley, Metapress (Springer, etc.), Informaworld (Taylor & Francis, etc.) and Ingenta. Most of the Wiley use was during the period when we were negotiating with the publisher for better reporting data.

We have purchased additional tokens with Wiley Interscience, however we still have no way to determine how much each campus is using Wiley. Self-reported use of Wiley by ILL departments is significantly lower than the use reported by Wiley, suggesting that there is possible un-mediated access to Wiley Interscience full-text articles on campuses. Once matching funds are required we will have no way of knowing which campuses are using Wiley unless we create unique accounts for each campus.

Survey of ILL Staff

As part of our evaluation of the current programs in place supporting commercial document delivery for UW System, the Working Group on Commercial Document Delivery prepared and sent out a short survey to ILL staff across system. 12 ILL staff responded to the survey from a range of small, medium and large institutions.

We asked them to evaluate the five resources currently being subsidized by UW System: British Library, CISTI, Science Direct, Wiley, and the P-card. We asked them to evaluate the resources based on ease of use, speed, quality, and cost. In terms of “ease of use”, as expected the British Library and CISTI received high marks, however Science Direct also received very good marks, while the P-Card received the lowest ratings. However in terms of “quality”, the P-Card, Wiley and Science Direct were scored higher than the others, with the British Library receiving the lowest marks. The same was true for “speed”, as the immediate downloading of articles through the P-Card, Science Direct & Wiley gave them the edge for speed, with CISTI following and the British Library the slowest. “Cost” was less discernable with no resource clearly viewed as less expensive or more expensive than others despite significant differences in cost. This may have been due to varying interpretations of the question (cost to us, cost per article, etc.)

We asked if patrons had commented about these services, and most staff indicated that patrons appreciated the speed of delivery, if they noticed anything at all.

We asked if staff were generally satisfied with this group of resources, 41.7% were “very satisfied”, 58.3% were “satisfied”.  None were “dissatisfied”.

We tried to get some idea of how different libraries were using the commercial document delivery resources, and most indicated that they used a commercial supplier 1-5 times per week on average. The most common reason for turning to commercial document delivery was as a last resort when all other resources were exhausted, with several comments indicating they used it when over copyright limits. Other common reasons were for faculty requests and for ILL research related requests that required a fast turnaround time. Less than half of the responding staff indicated that they used it for any research related ILL requests.

75% of the responding staff indicated that they occasionally chose not to use commercial document delivery even though they could. The most common reason cited for choosing not to use it was when the cost per article was too high, however half the staff also noted that it was too time consuming, and half noted that they didn’t feel they should spend the money, even if there was no direct charge to their library. A few provided additional reasons, such as determining if the faculty member needed the research quickly or not, or determining if they could get the article quickly (within 2 days) through standard ILL instead of purchasing the article.

11 of the 12 respondents indicated that their administration encourages or supports their use of commercial document delivery to supplement ILL. One stated that their budget doesn’t support commercial document delivery, and one stated that they disagreed with their administration’s support for commercial document delivery.

We asked about when it becomes necessary for libraries to pay matching funds if it would affect their use. 50% said yes, they would be using it less, 33% said no, they would use it the same, and the remaining 17% didn’t know.

In the comments of the survey, ILL staff seemed generally satisfied with this group of resources, but also felt that we could expand them into other needed areas such as education, social science, and foreign published materials. ILL staffs generally seem committed to providing needed research for faculty and appreciate these added commercial resources that system is providing.

 

Attachment B

Report of the ERM Assessment Working Group April, 2009

The ERM Working Group has been charged with conducting a needs assessment for an electronic resource management system (ERMS) and determining to what extent our needs can be met either by one of the primary vendor based systems in the marketplace or by a less elaborate, locally developed database.  The advantages or disadvantages of System-wide vs. campus-level ERM solutions were also to be examined.

After completing an exhaustive review of the literature (ERM Bibliography attached), the ERM group identified questions to be used in a survey of UW System campus representatives to identify the features that they most needed or wanted in an ERMS.  These questions became the basis for the online survey which was sent out to 35 people who had been identified by CUWL to participate as survey representatives. (Some campuses listed as many as four people as contacts.) We had a total of 22 responses to our survey, although some institutions used a team approach to complete the survey, which may have decreased the total number of responses.  (Survey questions and results attached.) 

The working group made the following observations after reviewing the survey results:

  • Responses were all over the board and there was little consensus. It was hard to draw any conclusions based on the responses to the questions. Was this the case of people not being familiar enough with ERM, not knowing what was being asked in the questions, not understanding the complexity of the electronic resource process, or survey fatigue?

  • It seemed most important to respondents that a new ERMS be as functionally capable as the management tools currently used for electronic resource management. The answers to question number 8 (How much is your institution willing to pay for an ERMS?) impacted the working group’s direction as it seemed to indicate that respondents were aware that funding is not available to support an ERM purchase.  Six respondents were not willing to pay anything for an ERMS, and four would purchase only if it were less than $500.  It would be hard to justify further work in researching and comparing ERMS if we do not have money available to purchase a system.  Even open source systems will require an investment in time and labor. 

The ERM group also consulted a vendor spreadsheet put together by Eric Robinson and Angela Millock of WiLS, and discussed it in relation to the survey results. How would an Open Source ERMS like CUFTS be implemented? Would it be possible to have a small group of libraries pilot it or one of the other Open Source ERMS?  Work is needed to delve further into these systems, get purchase costs, and look at the possibilities of trials which would be needed to clearly evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. The amount of work this would require combined with the uncertainties of system-wide and individual campus funding have created hesitancy in this process. The Working Group would like a clear mandate from CUWL on the timeline for an ERMS and the likelihood of budgetary support.