Transcript A library for the 21st Century – is e

A library for the 21st Century
- is e-only finally a possibility?
Monica Crump & Neil O’Brien
James Hardiman Library
One library’s attempt to go e-only
• Evolution of e-journals at NUI Galway
• Budgetary, storage and staffing drivers
• Print to Electronic Journal Project
 How we did it
 What we achieved
James Hardiman Library
NUI Galway
• University Mission:
“Learning and Leadership for Life and Work”
• Strategic focus on excellence in both research and teaching
• Almost 17,000 students (12,500 FTEs)
• Broad range of subjects
• Sunday Times University of the Year 2009
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• Collections:
 500,000 printed books
 30,000 journal titles
 350,000 electronic books
 Special Collections and Archives
• Tradition of being early adopters of new technologies:
 Online A/I services
 E-journals
 Link Resolver & Federated Search Engine - SFX/Metalib
 Primo
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Evolution of E-journals Availability
• Starting Point (2000):
 JSTOR, Science Direct, Business Source Premier, 311 ejournals
• Gradual Increase (2002-):
 Print + Electronic combined subscriptions
 Full-text publisher bundles
• IReL (2004-)
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IReL – Irish Research eLibrary
• Research a key strategic priority for the Irish Government
• Science Foundation Ireland founded in 2000
 first substantial State source of funding for research.
• Lack of information resources soon identified as an issue.
• Senior Researchers and the University Librarians lobbied
successfully for funding for an e-Library to support research.
• IReL was born!
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IReL – Irish Research eLibrary
• IReL delivers quality, peer-reviewed, online research
publications direct to the desktop of University researchers.
• Range and quality of publications comparable to leading
research libraries, incl. MIT, Columbia University and
Imperial College London.
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IReL – Progressive Development
2004
Funding of Science, Technology and Medicine eLibrary
(particular focus on Biotechnology and I.T.)
2005
Expansion of eLibrary to other areas of STM
2006
Funding of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
No. of IReL e-jrls
03/04
04/05
05/06
06/07
08/09
2904
4765
15903
22481
24086
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Increasing number of IReL e-journals
No. of IReL e-journals
30000
25000
20000
15000
10000
5000
0
03/04
04/05
05/06
06/07
07/08
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Impact on Journals accessible to NUI Galway
NUI Galway Journal Holdings
35000
30000
25000
20000
print journals
15000
e-journals
10000
5000
0
02/03
03/04
04/05
05/06
06/07
07/08
08/09
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Evolution of Attitudes to e-Journals
• Critical mass of e-journal availability
 very positive affect on acceptance of e-journals as a
reliable alternative to print and attitudes towards them.
• Collection Management Policy has grown ever more certain
in its direction
 preference for electronic vs. print journals.
• Surveys have shown a concomitant shift in attitude towards ejournals amongst academic staff and researchers.
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Changing Policy - 2003
• Collection Management Policy February 2003:
 “The Library will purchase and retain an item in only one format
unless there is a particularly strong case to do otherwise.”
• However, the same policy also stated:
 “Electronic journals provide possibilities for wider access; the
Library aims to supplement existing print subscriptions by
making available the online version where possible. The viability of
completely online access is explored on a case-by-case basis, a key
factor being the publisher’s commitment to online archiving.”
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Changing Policy - 2004
• Revision to Collection Management Policy November 2004:
 “A subscription to any title should only encompass one
publication format…. Electronic journals provide
possibilities for wider access and reduced overheads.
The viability of completely online access is explored on a
case-by-case basis, key factors being the publisher’s
commitment to online archiving and proposed conditions
of access.”
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Changing Policy - 2009
• Collection Management Policy – Jan. 2009
 “The Library recommends online subscription over
print where available, because of the improved
accessibility offered by electronic journals both on and off
campus, the speedier availability of latest issues, and the
reduced storage and handling costs involved. The viability
of completely online access is explored on a case-by-case
basis, key factors being the publisher’s commitment to
online archiving and proposed conditions of access.”
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Changing Attitudes – Surveys
• Cycle of surveys of NUI Galway researchers
 academic staff, researchers, research and taught
postgraduates
• 2003, 2005 and 2008 surveys show a marked change of
attitude towards online information generally and journals
specifically.
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Change in how library services are accessed
Visits to the Library
45.00%
40.00%
35.00%
30.00%
25.00%
Daily online visit
20.00%
15.00%
10.00%
5.00%
0.00%
Daily physical visit
2003
2005
2008
2003
2005
2008
Daily online visit
25.90%
36.10%
42.00%
Daily physical visit
8.50%
6.50%
4.00%
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Change in frequent use of journals
Frequent Use of Journals
100.00%
80.00%
60.00%
Online Journals
40.00%
Printed Journals
20.00%
0.00%
2003
2005
2008
2003
2005
2008
Online Journals
77.20%
80.80%
89.10%
Printed Journals
45.40%
41.90%
36.60%
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Increase in Satisfaction with Journals
Satisfied with Journals
90.00%
80.00%
70.00%
60.00%
50.00%
Online Journals
40.00%
Printed Journals
30.00%
20.00%
10.00%
0.00%
2003
2005
2008
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Online Information Makes Physical Collections less
Important
Online information makes physical collections less
important
80.00%
70.00%
60.00%
50.00%
Agree
40.00%
Disagree
30.00%
20.00%
10.00%
0.00%
2003
2005
2008
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Different Trend in Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences
Online information makes physical collections less
important - AHSS responses
80%
70%
60%
50%
Agree
40%
Disagree
30%
20%
10%
0%
2003
2005
2008
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Drivers to take the e-only plunge
• Staffing issues
• E-journal management issues
• Budgetary restrictions
• Storage space restrictions
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Staffing Issues
2004 Journals Staffing
• Print: 3 FTE Library Assistants
• Electronic: 1 Assistant Librarian Electronic Resources
2009 Journals Staffing
• Print: 2.6 FTE Library Assistants
• Electronic: 1 Assistant Librarian Electronic Resources with assistance
from AL Collection Management and AL Cataloguing
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E-Journal Management
• Insufficient staff numbers to ensure full accuracy of e-journal
linking and holdings information
• Reactive – errors corrected as they are reported by staff and
students
• No ‘check-in’ equivalent
• Given level of investment, this is no longer satisfactory
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But, print still required work
Year
No. of Print
Subs
No. of
Issues
Received
% Change % Change
no. of
no. of
Subs
Issues
2003/2004
2170
13543
2004/2005
2016
12844
-7%
-5%
2005/2006
1936
12643
-4%
-2%
2006/2007
1672
7293
-14%
-42%
2007/2008
1622
10661
-3%
46%
2008/2009
1438
8943
-11%
-16%
-25%
-21%
Change 2003 - 2008
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Budgetary Restrictions
• National Economic Situation:
 Public Finances in deficit
 Cuts in University Budgets
 Public Sector Moratorium on Recruitment
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NUI Galway Response
• Significant cut in non-pay budgets, two years running
• Guidelines to Schools and Units include:
 Eliminate duplication of content between print and online
formats
 Develop a policy towards use of online journals only,
which reduce the need to bind, cost less and do not require
expensive storage space
 Optimize use of existing resources, i.e. best use to be made
of existing staff and space
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Storage Space Restrictions
• James Hardiman Library and off site storage now officially
full!
• Essential to rationalise what we hold in print so as to allow
room for new acquisitions
• JSTOR print holdings have now been discarded, further
similar projects planned
• Can we justify continuing to add print journal issues?
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Time was ripe!
• Increased acceptance of and satisfaction with e-journals
• Increasing dissatisfaction internally with how we managed ejournals
• Journals staff resource not being put to best use
• Storage space a critical issue
 The time was ripe for a move to e-only ….
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Situation leading up to the project
Year
No. of
Subscriptions
% E-Only
2007
1616
7%
2009
1618
17.36%
Increasing proportion of e-only
The percentage of electronic only titles increased because of a
number of factors:• an increasing number of publishers began to decouple and
remove free electronic access with a print subscription
• Swets notices alerted us to titles which could be renewed as
electronic only and decoupled from print
• New subscriptions from 2007 were taken out as electronic
only. In the budget year 2007-2008 of the 46 titles added to
the collection 30 were purchased as online only
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Extent of e-only prior to 2009
Breakdown of Faculties:
• Law 8.9% electronic only;
• Arts 13.3% electronic only;
• Business and Economics 27.45% electronic only;
• Engineering 27.45% electronic only;
• Medicine 16.9% electronic only;
• Science 19.87% electronic only;
• General Library 29.84% electronic only;
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Pilot Print to Electronic Project 2007
• Publishers increasingly adopting a flexible approach to
decoupling print and electronic
• In 2007 we attempted to look at moving titles to e only
• Two academic departments were piloted, one STM and one
AHSS
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Pilot Print to Electronic Project 2007
• STM Dept.:
 24 journal subscriptions
 9 available as e-only
 But only 3 had guaranteed post-cancellation access
• AHSS Dept.:
 57 journal subscriptions
 14 available as e-only
 But again only 3 had guaranteed post-cancellation access
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Developments in 2009
• Elsevier
 Consortial agreement for Science Direct Freedom
Collection due for renegotiation
 Up to 2009 under the terms of agreement 96 titles were
required to be kept as part of a maintain spend
 Under the new agreement titles could be renewed as
electronic only with full post cancellation archival access
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Developments in 2009
• LWW
 33 LWW print and electronic subscriptions renewed as eonly directly with Ovid/Wolters Kluwer in Summer 2009
• UKSG 2009
 Discussions with publishers re decoupling print and
electronic and post-cancellation access
 Vast majority had policies allowing both
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IReL Deduplication
• 155 print subscriptions still held to titles available
electronically through IReL
• In some cases we had failed to spot the duplications due to the
out of date publisher information in our catalogue
• The IReL model license had a clause covering post
cancellation access
• These 155 titles were cancelled in print
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Print to Electronic Project
• In total 284 titles had moved to electronic only by the
beginning of the Summer of 2009
• This left 1334 titles left to be considered of whom some were
already electronic only
• The feedback from UKSG in 2009 seemed to indicate that
publisher’s policies were changing in regard to post
cancellation access and allowing the decoupling of P&E
• We decided to directly survey all publishers directly
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Criteria for moving to e-only
• Based on our experience up to that point, we decided that the
most important criteria would be : Perpetual post cancellation access
 Involvement in dark archiving initiatives such as
LOCKKS and Portico
 Technical considerations (e.g. IP authentication)
 Cost
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Perpetual Post-Cancellation Access
• During 2007 pilot academics had voiced concerns about
cancelling print and whether e-only subscriptions would allow
long term (including post cancellation) access to titles
• According to research by Stemper and Barribeau this is not a
concern unique to us.
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Perpetual Post-Cancellation Access
• 2003 survey of 7,400 US university faculty members
• 75% said a journal should ensure that its archives be
preserved indefinitely.
• 84% of respondents said that the archiving of electronic
resources was important to them
Jim Stemper and Susan Barribeau
Perpetual Access to Electronic Journals – a survey taken of one Academic
Library’s licenses, 52 (2) LRTS
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Perpetual post-Cancellation access
• The Digital Library Federation (DLF) Electronic Resource
Management Initiative (ERMI) defines a perpetual access
right as ‘the right to permanently access the licensed materials
paid for during the period of the licence agreement’
• This was set as our primary criterion
• The publisher should also state their policy in regard dark
archiving such as Portico, LOCKSS & CLOCKSS
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Technical Criteria
• Full IP authentication
• Off campus access via Proxy server
• Open URL compliant
• Subscription provided through our agent Swets
Other Criteria
• E-access via an aggregator was not considered sufficiently
secure to enable print cancellation
• Titles should be published on a dedicated publisher platform
or a tried and tested hosting platform such as Ingenta or
Metapress.
• We decided early in the project that difference in cost
between print and electronic should not be a significant factor
in our decision to change format.
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Communicating with the Publishers
• Didn’t use Swets for bulk of the project as we thought direct
access to the publisher would result in a prompt reply to all of
our queries.
• Model email was drawn up and sent directly to each of the
publishers - very time consuming.
• Swets could not provide us with a contact name in the
publishing houses due to data protection.
• Contacts and publisher information were found on Ulrich's
International Periodicals Directory and on Google – very time
consuming.
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Communicating with the Publishers
• Replies very slow.
• Regular reminders and follow up emails needed.
• By late July called in Swets to help with any non-responding
publishers
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Communicating with the Academic Community
• IReL experience of academic reactions to proposals to cancel print
duplication.
• We based our arguments on the savings made to the University in terms of
space, staff time, binding and management
• Support from the University Management Team and the Library Senior
Management Team to bring this electronic Journals project to the fore.
• Vested ourselves with armour to protect ourselves from undue criticism of
the project from Faculties and Departments. Most of academics were
receptive to these arguments however a number of issues emerged during
the consultation process.
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Communicating with the Academic Community
• Academic community informed of planned print cancellations
and given time to submit any pleas for retention.
• Collection Management Committee considered any issues
raised by academics and made final decision
• Overall the responses sent to the Committee were very
positive and few objections were made. Those that were
presented made strong arguments and these were accepted
where a good case was made.
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Issues raised by the Academic Community
• A prestigious and old collection
• Accreditation
• Image Quality
• Core Titles
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A prestigious and old collection
• Some academics bemoaned the cancellation of a print collection which
stretched back to the foundation of the University in the middle of the 19th
Century.
• In the JSTOR discarding project the Collection Management Committee
agreed to retain some back-runs that were considered important to the
history of the University.
• However, our policy now is that our preference for current journal access
is electronic.
• Therefore, no title for moving to electronic qualified under this heading
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Accreditation
• Academics argued that external accreditation bodies (in
particular for professional qualifications such as Nursing or
Law) require print holdings of key professional journals
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Accreditation
• “One issue bothers me - a number of programmes … have the
benefit of - and indeed market - the fact that they are
accredited by outside bodies. In some cases accreditation is
dependent on adequate Library stocks, and I doubt if general
e-access in itself would be sufficient. … As our Law
programmes will be up for accreditation again soon, I would
feel happier if re-assured that what is proposed will not hinder
the retention of accreditation.”
One Law Lecturer’s response to proposal to cancel print
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Accreditation
• After taking this on board we researched the policies laid
down by the UK accreditation bodies for Law and found that
there was no objection to replacing traditional print with
electronic only
• Extract from Society of Legal Scholars Indicative list of
sources for Law Libraries:
“In only a few selected instances is a particular format for a title
specified. The choice of the format in which legal materials are
provided in universities and colleges is left to individual law
schools and law libraries to decide, in the light of local
circumstances.”
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Accreditation
•
International research appears to justify our approach.
•
E-Serials and accreditation was considered at the University of Oklahoma by
Cheryl MaCain and Karen Rupp-Serrano (see Gwen M. Gregory Getting a
Grip on Electronic Journals Information today – April 2004)
•
They surveyed six United States regional accrediting agencies to find out how
the Boards accounted for electronic journals in their evaluations.
•
This research revealed that the move to qualitative and output measures made
the number of titles in an institution less important regardless of format.
•
Most agencies did not appear to have specific standards for e-journals and
authors tended to recommend that Libraries stay focused on demonstrating
quality improvement in the light of their institution’s mission and goals
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Image Quality
• It was our view that graphics would have higher definition
online and that e-journals provided great advantage in terms
of both text and graphics as they could be enlarged.
• However, the Dept. of Archaeology voiced some concerns
about particular journals that contained a significant amount
of original archaeological illustration, plans, maps, drawings
etc. that did not reproduce well electronically.
• Investigation and a comparison of the print and online
journals showed those concerns to be well-founded!
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Image Quality
• Research in other Libraries shows that discrepancies arise in
electronic journals in regard to color and graphics.
• One survey found that whilst few online journals did not
contain graphics:
 some did not display the graphics due to incorrect URLs
for the images.
 Some color images in print were displayed as black and
white images online, rendering the content useless
 the quality of color varied among journals
Carolyn Henebry, Ellen Safley, Sarah E. George
'Before You Cancel the Paper,
Beware',
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Library
The Serials Librarian, 42: 3, 267 — 273
Image Quality
• We agreed that we would accept this as a criteria for
exempting a title from going e-only
• Of course it should be noted that most leading journal
providers are not only supplying high quality graphics in their
e-journal equivalents, but providing added-value online by
offering 3D quality images and indeed multimedia add-ons to
articles that could never be delivered in print.
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Core titles
• The Medical Library voiced concerns about removing print
versions of core titles such as JAMA, the Lancet, the BMJ
and the New England Journal of Medicine.
• This was considered a valid consideration and was duly
accepted.
• No other Faculty made an argument for retention based on the
grounds of core titles.
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Situation prior to the project
• Our total number of serial subscriptions at the beginning of
2009 was 1618
• 1337 (82.63%) titles were print only or print & electronic
• 281 (17.36%) of our total journal subscriptions were e-only
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Stage 1 of the Project
• 155 IReL duplicates cancelled
• 96 Elsevier titles moved to e-only
• 33 LWW titles moved to e-only
• Total 284 e-only titles following Stage 1
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Stage 2 of the Project
• 1053 titles remained for consideration and emails were sent directly to the
publishers
• 617 publisher replies were received
• 380 titles not available as e-only, couldn’t be decoupled from print or did
not meet the set criteria
• 237 titles were converted to e-only at this stage
• No answers were received for 436 titles
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Results
• Excluding the 155 IReL cancellations 366 titles were shifted to e-only
• In total we now have 683 electronic only subscriptions from various
providers
• An additional 36 e titles were added by breaking up former print group
subscriptions
• In total we now have 1510 subscriptions from various providers
• 436 subscription titles will be surveyed again prior to our next renewal in
the Summer of 2010
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Results
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Situation prior to the project
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Situation after the project
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Results
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Results
• In all 521 (35.61%) of the total Serials collection were
affected by the project
• Slightly less than 50% of AHSS titles are now electronic only
• 65% of STM titles are now e-only, with Medicine performing
the best
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Cost Implications
• Many big publishers offer e-only at 100% and print at 110%,
so in some cases the publishers price was reduced!
• In Ireland the cost for electronic only is amplified by VAT
rates however:
 Print 13.5%
 Electronic 21%
• Therefore in most cases the cost of e-only will be higher than
print.
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Cost Implications
• Some electronic titles are more expensive than print. Some
examples with the increase in price to go e-only follow: Mosby’s Journal of Paediatrics + 79%
 American Economic Review + 71%
 American Historical Review (University of Chicago) +
61%
 Journal of Health Services Research & Policy (RSC) +
28%
 Public Archaeology (Maney Publishers) + 7%
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Cost implications
• No significant trends emerge to demonstrate a divergence
between STM and AHSS titles in terms of difference in price
• We decided from a philosophical perspective that cost would
not be a consideration and the project was seen as a long term
investment which would deliver far more ultimate cost
savings with regard to environment and staff work practices.
• The costs associated with print far outweigh electronic in
terms of shelf space, staff time in claiming, checking in, and
finally binding.
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Follow up work
• Old print (or print + electronic) order records had to be closed
and new orders created reflecting new format.
• Holdings statements had to be updated to show end of print
run.
• The third phase involved updating the records with the new
access URL, entering correct 856 fields in Marc and
activating the titles on the appropriate SFX portfolio
• Difficulty of up-skilling print oriented staff to work in the eenvironment cannot be underestimated.
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A word of caution
• Because our renewal process was so complex this year it took
Swets a good deal of time to finish our renewals and this is
still a work in progress but nearly complete.
• Changes of this scale were difficult for Swets and renewals
were not actioned as quickly as we might have liked and some
of our renewals are still outstanding.
• Libraries considering a similar move should be aware of the
need to allow sufficient time for their agent to make changes.
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Conclusion
• This project is a legacy project in so far as it will change
utterly the emphasis of our serials collection. Our collections
have been carefully built up over the last 150 years and the
emphasis for this period was on print. However after the
projects completion at the end of this Summer it is hoped that
we will have changed over 75% of our journal titles to
electronic only. From this perspective we are essentially
starting again, moving away from practices which began in
the 19th century and creating a library for the 21st Century.
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Contact Details
• Monica Crump,
Head of Information Access and Learning Services,
James Hardiman Library, NUI Galway
[email protected]
• Neil O’Brien,
Collection Management Librarian,
James Hardiman Library, NUI Galway
[email protected]