Collection Development In Times Of Shrinking Budgets When Diana Cunningham asked me to speak to you today, she told me your theme, “Capital Ideas: Surviving & Thriving in Uncertain Times.” She indicated that my expertise in collection development would fit in well with the theme. Shortly after I agreed to speak, I had to submit a brief blurb for your conference brochure. I had been mulling over some topics, but they hadn’t jelled just yet, so I panicked for a few minutes. Trying to think of a catchy angle, I thought of the parallels between reducing a library’s acquisitions budget and actually going on a diet. So I wrote a couple of sentences, and submitted them, which is what appears in your program. But after I started to work on this presentation, I realized that the analogy really doesn’t work that well. To lose weight, there are two basic activities: eat less and exercise more. Sure, eating less corresponds to reduced spending on acquisitions, but exercising more just doesn’t translate into a library activity. You can’t get a library to exercise. Another problem with the analogy is that for many Americans, dieting is necessary because they are overweight. In order to stay healthy, many of us are voluntarily reducing our intake of food. The reduced spending in our libraries is hardly voluntary, and besides, I would hardly call our libraries overweight in information. I’ve never heard of anybody complaining that a library had too much information. So after I finished putting this presentation together, I’ve given it a more appropriate title: “Collection Development in Times of Shrinking Budgets.” Since we’re talking about collection development, who here is actually called a collection development librarian? Not that many. I want to be sure we’re all on the same page, and talking about the same things. So, what exactly is collection development? I started to make a list of what people know about collection development: Everybody generally knows how to do it Everybody does it differently But you really don’t know how anybody else does it …unless you do it with them But, most people do it by themselves After staring at these points for a while, I realized I had actually discovered why collection development is like sex. Now, while I think that is a very important discovery, and I hope to someday win a prize for this, it really isn’t relevant to what we’re here for today. Let’s just say that if you have responsibility for selecting and acquiring resources for a library, you’re involved in collection development.
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I wanted this to be more than just a typical “how I do it good” presentation. While I have 29 years of experience in collection development, all of those have been at medical schools. I needed ideas that could work in libraries of different sizes, budgets, and clientele. Like a zombie, I needed more brains. So I posted a request for ideas and tips on my blog, on medlib‐l, on the Hospital Library Section list, and the Collection Development Section list. I received over 35 replies, and I supplemented those with other suggestions I found on the Internet. In many of the responses, people told me that they had been told to “Do more with less.” How many of you have had that told to you? I really dislike this facile statement. It’s a lame attempt to put a positive spin on a negative reality. I find it not only patronizing, it also implies that we’ve not been wise in our choices up to now. This says, “OK, now you’re going to have to work.” In actuality, you can’t do more with less. What we’re really faced with is “Doing less with less.” This is a realistic description of our situation, without the sugarcoating of a platitude. I don’t think we should hide this reality from our users. If we are forced to make cuts, and our users never feel any pain, this just reinforces the administration’s view that our budget can be cut again and again, and no one will notice. When you let your users know that you are doing less with less, they will realize that when the library is affected by budget reductions, they are affected. I call this the “grumble factor.” Without a grumble factor, your users won’t know that services and resources are being reduced, and they won’t fight for you. However, this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t optimize our selection and acquisition procedures. So let’s jump in to our tips. I’ve placed them into four broad themes: Partners B(u)y the numbers Buy less Buy smarter Partners • Joining consortia was by far the most popular suggestion I received from my inquiry. Libraries both large and small are able to get more resources, and spend less money, when they join a consortium. Not all consortia are huge, like NERL. Many consortia I heard about were small. Some of these were local consortium where libraries at different hospitals organized themselves; some were statewide; some were organized by their NN/LM; and some were libraries at different locations of a single hospital system. Kitty Wrigley works at one hospital in a 13‐hospital system. She lobbied the system to purchase Micromedex for all of its members, resulting in a savings of tens of thousands of dollars. She is also constantly looking out for new buying groups. While she works in Illinois, she was able to use the Michigan Library Consortium to purchase Serials Solutions for her library.
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State library. Right here in New York we have the great example of NOVELNY: http://www.novelnewyork.org/health.php Free to any NY state resident, using the number from your New York State Drivers License or New York State DMV Non‐Driver Photo ID Card. You can get access to ProQuest Platinum and the Health and Wellness Resource Center at no charge. Departments. Many librarians reported they were able to partner with departments in their institution to share costs on big‐ticket items. This works particularly well for specialized tools or expensive e‐books that would only be used by a certain department. Jonathan Lord reported he was able to negotiate 50% shared funding for several specialized resources such as: Natural Standard, AccessSurgery, Psychiatry Online, and others. Individual users. Mary Pat Harnegie reports that at the Cleveland Clinic, professional staff members are required to donate a copy of their newly published books to the library. Over the past 5 years, the library has received over $28,000 worth of books. (Mary Pat is reporting on her success with a poster at the 2009 Midwest Chapter meeting.) The library also sends out a request in the staff newsletter for staff physicians to donate their “gently used” books to the library. When residents are leaving in June, they may be more than willing to donate books they don’t need anymore, and don’t want to move.
B(u)y the numbers. Use statistical data to guide your buying and retention. • Track usage. One thing that electronic publishing does very well for librarians is to track usage of our purchased resources. All of the major journal publishers can supply COUNTER statistics, and most of the society publishers as well, particularly if they’re on HireWire Press. Launched in 2002, COUNTER is an “international initiative serving librarians, publishers and intermediaries by setting standards that facilitate the recording and reporting of online usage statistics in a consistent, credible and compatible way.” Go to projectcounter.org/ to find which publishers are COUNTER‐compliant. Like journals, most database providers can also provide usage stats. When faced with cost cuts, I always prefer to cancel databases to journals. There are now many resources, including free Google Scholar, to let you discover journal articles. And, when times get better, you can always reinstate a database subscription, with no loss of years. With journal cancellations, you’ll usually have to buy the years when you had no subscription. • Cost/use. Once you have your usage statistics, it’s fairly easy to calculate the cost per use with a spreadsheet. Determining cost per use can help you make better, objective decisions on possible resource cancellations. • When you’re tracking usage and calculating cost/use, you are lead to this inevitable conclusion: use it or lose it. We shouldn’t be buying resources that aren’t being used. • Big deal cancellation allotments. Many academic libraries participate in so‐called big deal purchases with the giant medical publishers. While the deals are beneficial in keeping price caps at a barely tolerable maximum, 3
they have severe limitations in cancellations, often around 1% of the total spend per license year. Big deal! They’re so small, you may have forgotten about them, so dig up your license and read the details. In most cases, you can probably use your total contractual cancellations in one year. For example, if you have a $100,000 big deal license with only a 1% annual cancellation over three years, you can usually use the entire three years of cancellations in one year, giving you an instant $3,000 savings now, in a bad year.
Our next theme is Buy less. • Reduce “on spec” purchases. Scott Plutchak has rightly said: “Buying a lot of stuff just in case somebody needs it sometime really isn’t a viable option anymore.” [June 16, 2009; liblicense‐l] Before you buy something, make sure it’s absolutely needed. • Reconsider your approval plan. I’ve managed an approval plan for 29 years. It was always an integral part of collection development for the medical school libraries I’ve worked in. Overall, about 85‐90% of the books I purchased over those 29 years came through approval plans. I believed in them because I was able to get books that fit the educational, research, and clinical needs of our users relatively quickly after they were published. This June, I canceled our approval plan, directly as a result of our decreased budget. I’m still getting weekly notifications of newly published books that fit our approval profile, but they’re not sent to me automatically. Instead, I review them online, and I’m now purchasing only two or three titles a week. Most of the titles I do purchase are proven winners—previous editions have circulated heavily, and I’m confident the new editions will also be used heavily. Several librarians mentioned not purchasing a new edition just because it’s on the Brandon‐Hill or the Doody Core list—verify that previous editions were actually used at your library by your customers. • Reduce overlap. How many clinical decision tools do you need? Rajia Tobia said that her library at The University of Texas at San Antonio has DynaMed, UpToDate, eMedicine, Essential Evidence Plus, and DxPlain. They’re using a combination of usage stats and faculty opinion to decide which to eliminate. This is a problem I’d actually like to have, but it does remind us to look at resources that may have high degrees of overlap with each other, and consider cancelling the least used or the highest cost per use. • Fewer concurrent seats; reduce site license to concurrent seats. Check the turn away reports on your concurrent seat subscriptions, and determine how many seats you can reduce. If you have a site license to a resource with unlimited users, inquire about dropping your site license down to concurrent seats. You will probably meet with resistance from the producer, but if it’s a choice between getting less money from your library or no money from your library, they will probably agree. Yes, more people will get turned away, but this only reinforces the grumble factor, 4
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which allows you to explain how library budget reductions cause inconvenience. Use alternative, free versions. Rather than pay for access to AGRICOLA, use the free version available from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Likewise, ERIC is free from the U.S. Department of Education. Link to all the free e‐books at the NCBI Bookshelf. Last week, there were over 100 titles available. www.snipr.com/ncbibooks Move from Print to E‐only (but only if this saves money) While 10 years ago many publishers added electronic access to their print subscriptions, it’s just fairly recently that even small society publishers are now offering e‐only versions, allowing you to drop the print copy, and save money. Journal vendors can produce reports of your current subscriptions that are available in e‐only versions. Ask for this report several months before your renewal next year. Look to see where you can save money on going e‐only. Keep in mind you will need to psychologically prepare your users for this change. Be prepared to keep some titles as print plus electronic, especially for popular browsing journals such as JAMA, NEJM, and the top specialty journals. The Krafty Librarian pointed out that even if electronic access costs a little more than print, you will be saving in other ways by going electronic: no checking‐in of issues, no claiming of issues, no binding, and no circulation or re‐shelving. Keep in mind that switching to e‐only will not always reduce your costs. This is particularly true for items such as the “Clinics in…” titles, which cost three or more times as much for electronic access over the print. Some publishers, particularly societies, use tier pricing, and your tier’s price may be too expensive for a seldom‐used journal. For example, the British Journal of Hospital Medicine costs us $1247 in print, expensive for a little used journal. Our tier pricing for e‐only access is $4134, which means this journal will remain in print. Tom Craig at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler reports that they are going back to print only subscriptions for some journals whose electronic prices cost substantially more than the print. So keep in mind the print and e‐only option can be a two‐way street. Don’t buy every year. Many of us have standing orders for directories that come out annually. Take a look at how often these are used. If they’re not frequently consulted, or the information you need isn’t updated that often, cancel your standing order. You can probably get by with purchasing these directories every other year, or maybe even every three years. When you do this, be sure to stagger your purchases to even out your budget—determine to buy some directories in even years, others in odd years. Most book vendors can either supply you with a slip service for directories you cancelled, notifying you when new editions come out, or they can change your standing order to reflect every other year purchases. Michele Shipley reported that her library canceled 50% of their printed reference standing orders. Usage had decreased
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dramatically, because so much information is now easily found through Google. Stop binding. If you’re getting the combo version of a journal, consider discontinuing binding the print copies. Most licenses now allow libraries to retain the archival rights to the years they subscribed to. So even if you cancel that journal, you will still be able to access those years online. This saves not only the bindery costs, but also the time and labor involved in the whole binding process. Pay‐per‐view. This is an interesting, developing response from Nicole Mitchell and Liz Lorbeer at the University of Alabama–Birmingham. They’ve had a dramatic decrease in their budget. In 2006, their library had a $2.4 million budget for serials, and lots of journal bundles through big deals. Today, their serials budget is half of what it was four years ago. They’ve canceled all their bundles, cutting over 4,500 titles. With the library charging $15 per ILL, many users could not afford to get the information they needed. As an experiment, in 2010 they will be investing $100,000 of their journals budget into deposit accounts with publishers to subsidize pay‐per‐view access, controlled by the library. According to Liz, all ILL requests will be subsidized by $12, so a regular $15 ILL will cost a patron $3, and a rush request will vary from $13 to $18. They calculate they can serve over 8,000 ILLs for this $100,000. It will be fascinating to find out if this type of approach can work, without breaking the bank. Nicole and Liz hope to report preliminary results on this experiment at the MLA annual meeting next year.
Our last category is Buy smarter. • Question all increases, and ask for a reduction. This was something most of us would not have considered before these times. Several librarians reported they successfully asked vendors to drop or lower their price increases for their renewal. (Note that’s a drop in the increase, not a drop in the price…) Most publishers know about our financial situation, and many are willing to lower their increases rather than lose an account. It might be handy to have the statements put out by the International Coalition of Library Consortia and the Association of Research Libraries ready to show your rep. These statements, which came out last winter, bluntly describe the financial difficulties of libraries, and ask information producers and suppliers to work with their customers to set realistic pricing goals. You can download them at snipr.com/icolcstatement and snipr.com/arlstatement. • Review tier price quotes. I mentioned earlier how some journal publishers use tier pricing. Some tiers are based on size, where the tiers may be specific ranges of FTE, or sometimes as vague descriptions of small, medium, or large institutions. Other tiers may be based on the type of institution, such as a community hospital or teaching hospital, or the types of degrees granted by your institution. When you receive your journal renewal list, go to the publisher’s web site and verify that you are 6
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in the correct tier. Many times the journal vendor has had to make an assumption about your institution, and you may have been placed in too expensive a tier. Vendor specials. Several librarians mentioned taking advantage of special savings that many medical book vendors have. I can’t name all of the vendors’ specials, but here are a few examples: Matthews Medical Books has a 20% price reduction on their stock publishers every March and November. Rittenhouse has an annual Oktoberfest sale, with extra discounts. This year Majors has a 22% discount on a single order placed between July and October. If you don’t need the books right now, save up your orders and place them during these specials. Get on the email lists of the medical book vendors to stay notified of these specials. Some vendors can offer higher discounts if you maintain a deposit account with them. It may be difficult to convince your accounts payable office to send a vendor money prior to an actual purchase, but if you can realize some extra savings, it’s worth the effort. Amazon.com. Our library has started using Amazon a lot this past year. My department has a credit card to charge purchases, but Amazon makes it easy to set up an institutional account, so you can order what you want, and get billed once a month. Most times their prices are below the publisher’s list price, and sometimes they’re even below a vendor’s discount. They also have quite speedy delivery times on their regular shipping, but if an order isn’t required quickly, you can opt for the free super saver shipping. Any order over $25 is eligible for free shipping, although it does add an additional 3 to 5 days to the shipping time.
I want to thank all of our colleagues who sent in their tips. I couldn’t use every one submitted, and many were duplicated, but I read them all and tried to incorporate as many as possible. I hope they will prove useful to you, but I will be the first to admit that my presentation today will only help a little. While stretching your budget is very important in collection development, there are other factors involved in getting the “best bang for your buck,” which is ultimately what we’re trying to do. There are three guiding principles, or commandments, in achieving this. I have carved them in stone for you to help you remember: Stretch your budget, which is what I talked about today Buy what your customers need This has a very important corollary: Don’t buy what your customers don’t need And make resources easy to find All three of these principles must be in place to get the best bang for your buck. It doesn’t matter how great a price you got on the American Journal of Potato Research if very few people at your institution need information on spuds. Likewise, if a wonderful electronic resource needs more than 2 or 3 clicks to get to, your customers won’t find it, and they won’t use it. Getting customers to use our resources is vital. 7
Most of you have probably never heard of John Gilmore, an American computer scientist, Internet activist, and one of the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. But you’ve probably heard of his famous quote: “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” He said that in 1993, when web browsing was in its infancy, and even considered exotic. Today, our customers consider using the Internet as natural as reading. When our customers need biomedical information, it should be a quick, direct, and easy route through the library, with little or no delays or obstructions. This is good. When our customers can’t easily get information through the library, either because we don’t have it, or we made it too difficult to find or use, they regard us as damaged, and they will go around us. This is bad. It’s bad for our reputation, bad for our budgets, and ultimately bad for our job security. So please, think beyond merely meeting this year’s budget reductions. While painful, the current economic situation will pass. But the other principles – getting the right resources and making them easily discoverable, will always remain. Keep the library as the main source of quality information, and avoid our users re‐routing around us. For now, here’s to better times and a speedy calm to the storms of life. Thank you, and good luck. http://leavesamark.wordpress.com/ Oct. 1, 2009
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