Creating the Service of Your Patrons' Dreams: A Short History of Scan & Deliver

Creating the Service of Your Patrons’ Dreams

(a short history of Scan & Deliver)

Tom Bruno and Sarah TudescoHarvard College Library

6/8/12

The Simpsons On Patron ExpectationsAgnes: And you, start over. I want everything in one bag.

Pimple Faced Kid: Yes, ma'am!

Agnes: But I don't want the bag to be heavy.

Pimple Faced Kid: I don't think that's possible!

Agnes: What are you, the possible police? Just do it!

Simpson Safari, Season 12 Episode 17 (Airdate: April 1, 2001)

Homer’s ILLiad

(Beware of Greeks bearing PDFs)

Guess What?

• WE ARE THE POSSIBLE POLICE!

• Your job: figure out how to Make It Happen without breaking the law or your budget

• User engagement + data assessment + continuous improvement = making yourself indispensable, therefore Awesome

JP Porcaro, Patron Saint of Making It Happen(LJ 2012 Mover & shaker)

Overview

• History of the service – Project Planning, Launch, Growing Pains, Assessment, Future

• How is Scan & Deliver like Angry Birds?

Overview Part 2- Meet The Data

Disclaimer: Sarah is not an android, but she is a wizard

• Sarah Tudesco-(Re)building the reporting workflows

• Meeting stakeholder data needs

• Prioritizing & Building reports

• Presenting the data

Scan & Deliver Basic Facts

• Launched April 22nd, 2009

• 9 “Hub” libraries + 6 additional participating collections

• Dumbarton Oaks added in 2011, new collections TBA

• Open to current faculty, students, and staff

• No charge- 2 request/patron/business day

• 4 business-day turnaround

Discovery

Request (1:35pm Wednesday)

Delivery (8:21pm Wednesday)

Timeline

65 million years ago

1636 2008 2009 2010 2011 2015

Dinosaursroam Earth

HarvardFounded

ULC authorizesS&D service

Launch! 1st

AssessmentDDOadded

Hoverboards

NOTE:

Time axis should be read

from left to right only,

unless you own a TARDIS

or a DeLorean

Origins

• Before, ILL units used OCLC as mechanism for requesting/fulfilling article requests

• Cumbersome, negatively impacted ILL operations, patron confusion about what items/collections were eligible, what were not

• Short-lived scanning pilot at HD proved too costly to implement permanently

A New Mandate

• University Library Council authorized the formation of an Electronic Document Delivery project in 2008

• Each school would be represented, ensuring 100% coverage of eligible Harvard Library patrons

• Harvard Library’s first “shared service,” requiring unprecedented coordination and cooperation across previously independent entities (a.k.a. “tubs”)

• Before S&D, think of Harvard Libraries as a consortium of 70+ libraries

Project Planning Phase

SAVE A TREE

SCAN A BOOK

• All participating units would adopt ILLiad for resource sharing operations

• Existing ILLiad units (i.e., HMS, HVL, HLS) would be merged into shared hosted server

• New units would be brought online at staggered intervals of 1-2 weeks

• Scan & Deliver links would go live in OPAC on April 22, 2009 – Earth Day

Flies in the Ointment- #1

• In Fall 2008 many universities lost significant amounts on their endowments, including Harvard

• Questions arose about wisdom of adding an ambitious new library service at this time

• Mandate was sent back to ULC and was reaffirmed unanimously

“Brother, can you spare a billion?”

Flies in the Ointment- #2

• In February 2009 (less than two months before launch!), we realized our workflow would not work as proposed

• A staff-mediated workaround was developed, documented, and communicated

• Lesson Learned: Make sure your project has the right combination of stakeholders!

LAUNCH!

• First request received was from the BibliotecaBerenson in Florence, Italy

• Enabling remote access to Harvard Library patrons overseas has been a huge selling point for the service

• One graduate student in China was able to complete her dissertation without having to return to the United States to access the library collection

Growing Pains

• Every year has seen double-digit growth in request volume over previous year

• At HCL, request volume exceeded capacity of our resource sharing unit

• New cross-divisional workflow established to meet demand

• Service Level Agreement defined each division’s responsibilities and expectations

User Assessment

• In Fall 2010 Scan & Deliver conducted extensive user assessment of service

• Short survey sent to all recent users via an email link

• Focus Groups asked patrons from four select groups (Faculty, Grad Students, Undergrads, Staff) to share impressions of service

Assessment Findings

• Scan & Deliver had quickly been incorporated into curriculum support role

• Service worked well with “just in time” research methods

• Patrons wanted more microform eligibility, OCR-ready PDFs

• Wide misunderstanding of how copyright operated

Listening to the Patron #1

• Initially 2 request/patron/day was a “hard” limit – 3rd+ requests were queued for processing next day

• Managing this quickly became a nightmare

• Our solution: treat request limits as “Service Minimums” – process them if there was capacity

• Hypothetical abuse was impacting actual service

Listening to the Patron #2

• Patrons were routinely asking for Tables of Contents, Index, Bibliography, Accompanying Images/Plates, and Title & Verso pages – no standard form of entry

• Modified request forms so that these “menu options” could be selected via checkboxes, appear in unused CitedIn fields

• Less cut & paste for staff, more transparent and reliable for patrons!

Have It Your Way

Listening to the Patron #3

• Resends often unwittingly reproduced original error, leading to patron frustration

• New workflow where resend requests went to different scanning unit, staff mediation if needed – 24-hour turnaround on resends

• The Takeaway: If you’re going to adopt a high-performance workflow, you need to adopt a “high touch” troubleshooting workflow to keep your patrons happy

The Dreaded “C”-Word

• When service was launched, our OGC said to use Section 108 guidelines

• Poor fit when scanning our material for our own patrons

• Closest analogy= Reserves, but that’s for entire classes, not individuals

• Using S&D scans for curriculum support further complicates this

Fair Use, Anyone?

• Bottom Line: We could probably fill a lot more than we currently do

• Huge potential benefit to distance students, faculty abroad, preservation of originals

• Anyone want to get sued so we know exactly how much?

• Our solution: central oversight removes burden from local units

Assessment

• Per unit cost studies suggested economies of scale made service feasible

• Ongoing problems of cost at smaller units and HD, where labor primarily performed by staff, not students

• Development of “success metrics” to evaluate services

Library Science Dog

(Don’t Try This At Home!)

“We’re not doing it for the money…”

Your Mind. Blown.

Ask yourself:

1. HOW DO MY STATS IMPACT MY WORKFLOW?

2. HOW DOES MY WORKFLOW IMPACT MY STATS?

3. RINSE & REPEAT

Continuous Improvment Improvement

• Keeps users happy

• Keeps service relevant

• Empowers staff

• Encourages buy-in

Scan & Deliver vs. Angry Birds

• Launched in 2009

• Wildly successful beyond expectation

• Fulfilled previously unacknowledged need

• Iterative development-new features, new levels (i.e., collections) being added

• Totally addictive

Today the world…

…tomorrow the universe!

Forward the Future

• HD ILL article scanning pilot, Borrow Direct

• Campus book delivery

• Adding more collections, automation

• Better integration with e-reserves, Ares?

• Collaboration with preservation to save public domain scans

Questions? Comments?

Tom BrunoHead of Resource SharingHarvard College Library617-496-7364tbruno@fas.harvard.edu

IM: tcbruno2@yahoo.comtom.bruno@gmail.com

Scan and Deliver Statistics

• Step 1 – Asking Questions

• Step 2 – Setting Priorities

• Step 3 – Analyzing & Building

• Step 4 – Presenting the Data

• Step 5 – Feedback & Continuous Improvement

5 steps to creating a robust program of assessment and analysis.

Step 1 – Asking Questions

• How many requests?• Who is making requests?• How much gets filled?• What's the turnaround from request to delivery?• Are we meeting the service agreements?• How many requests are unfilled?• How many requests get routed to ILL?• Who is filling the requests?• How are people using the service?• Are people satisfied with the service?

Step 2 – Setting Priorities

• Patrons:– How many patrons use the service?

– Which faculty or school are they associated with (Law, Medicine, Faculty of Arts & Sciences)?

– What is their role at the University (student –undergraduate and graduate, faculty, staff, other)?

• Requests:– How many Scan & Deliver requests placed daily,

weekly, monthly?

– How many requests were filled? By which school?

Step 3 – Analyzing and Building

Step 3 – Analyzing and Building

Core Data Set: Data Table with all Scan&DeliverRequests Placed by Patrons

• Document Type = “Scan&Deliver” (Transactions)

• ChangedTo = “Submitted by Customer” (Tracking)

Step 3 – Analyzing and Building

Core Data Set: Data Table with all Scan&DeliverRequests Filled by Participating Libraries

• Document Type = “Scan&Deliver” (Transactions)

• ChangedTo = “Delivered to Web”(Tracking)

Step 3 – Analyzing and Building

Access Form: Input Dates –

when ‘Run Reports’ is

clicked, an Access Macro

runs in the background and

builds reporting tables.

Access Form: Download

Report Data, form displays the

dates in the current available

reporting table and user can

download data for requests,

users, and cancellations.

Step 4 – Presenting the DataWho? How much do they want? What did they get?

[Screen Shots from Excel Spreadsheet]

FY2012 Report: Requests Submitted 7/1/11 – 2/29/12

Step 4 – Presenting the DataFY2012 Report: Requests Submitted 7/1/11 – 2/29/12 (Patron Group)

Scan & Deliver User Stats

• 15,860 unique patrons since service began in 2009

• Average Requests Per User: 9

• Most Requests: 1,807 by a Graduate Student

• 36% of our patrons make a single request

• Graduate Students are our biggest customer (42% of all requests placed).

Scan & Deliver: Request Stats

• Requests: 141,797 / Deliveries: 107,685• Biggest Month (So Far): April 2011 – 5,532 Requests,

4,393 Deliveries

Step 5 – Feedback & Process Improvement

• New workflows– Do they impact the reporting data?

• New questions– Can the existing reporting data answer the

question?

– What about other resource sharing services (Borrow Direct? Interlibrary Loan?)

• Improving existing data– Make the data clear to a wider audience

Questions? Comments?

Sarah Tudesco

Collection Management Analyst and Reporting Librarian for Harvard College Library

617-495-2855

studesco@fas.harvard.edu

IM: studesco (Yahoo, Google Chat)