Www.bournemouth.ac.uk Session 2: Procurement and E- Books David Ball.

www.bournemouth.ac.uk

Session 2:Procurement and

E-Books

David Ball

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Summary

• Consortia• Procurement cycle• E-books tender

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Advantages of Consortia

• Aggregation of spending power:• Discounts• Suppliers will invest to develop new

services, e.g. shelf-ready books• Savings:

• Competitive tendering process and contract management

• Monitoring and improving quality: • Pool spend and knowledge about

suppliers

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UK Library Purchasing Consortia

7 regional consortia covering all UK HEIs

Procurement for Libraries – umbrella group; forum for determining appropriate level of procurement

Funded by subscription and staff resources of members

General university consortia – stationery, IT, laboratory supplies

Concentrated on hard copy: exploit competition between aggregators

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Southern Universities Purchasing Consortium

(SUPC)• Largest of the regional consortia• 47 members – small to very

large• All areas of university

purchasing• Contracts worth over £100m

p.a. (US$187m)• Framework agreements not

central purchasing

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SUPC Library Group

• Library contracts worth £33m p.a. (US$62m)

• Books, including campus bookshops:• 4 suppliers• Discounts average 15% of list price• Pioneered fully shelf-ready books

• Hard-copy journals – 2 suppliers• E-books

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Higher Education Agents

• Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)• Non-commercial, funded by top-slice• NESLi2, JISC Collections

• Eduserv/CHEST• Owned by HE sector, BUT funded by

percentage of sales revenue• Collections of e-journals and databases

• Both concentrate on e-resources: negotiate with publishers (monopolists)

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Differences from Turkey?

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Procurement Cycle

• Identify the need• Prepare the specification• Tender to find suppliers• Award contract• Measure and monitor

performance

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Identify the Need

• Determine precisely what is required

• On what basis – bought outright (hard copy), access (electronic), leased (LMS)

• Consult users and librarians

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Prepare the Specification

• Fundamental to any procurement• Informs suppliers of what is

required, when, how, to what standards

• Basis on which to evaluate and choose suppliers, and judge quality of service

• Specify requirements, not detailed processes – allow for creativity by suppliers

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Find the Supplier

• Tender evaluation• Measurable requirements from

specification• Quality – accreditation, references, site

visits• Ability to meet specification -

functionality• Cost – comparable, whole life of contract

• Weight each requirement according to importance

• Award contract

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Measure and Monitor Performance

• Essential to keep suppliers engaged

• Contract management meetings – 2-4 per year

• Performance measures from specification• Discounts• Supply times• Errors

• Feedback from members

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Questions?

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E-Books

• Existing heavy use of e-journals by undergraduates

• Electronic medium the norm for students’ social and leisure pursuits

• Electronic medium becoming primary in HE

• Need for e-books

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E-Books: Problems and Obstacles

• Lack of a clear open standard for operating systems;

• Fears about the protection of content and the rights of the content owner in the context of giving users flexibility;

• Lack of appropriate content in suitable quantities;

• Pricing of titles, software and hardware;

• Lack of integration into the general market for books. (Herther)

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E-Books: Current Developments

• Google Book Project:• California, Complutense of Madrid,

Harvard, Michigan, New York Public Library, Oxford, Stanford

• Scan and digitise 16m volumes

• MSN and BL – 100,000 volumes• Apple:

• iPod book reader• Agreement on content with

publisher

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E-books: Identifying the Need

• Developing market place• Fluid business models

• Mimic hard-copy business models• Trend towards bundling/Big Deal

• Avoid what happened with e-journals – publishers determine business models; price tied to historical spend on hard-copy

• Virtual learning environments

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Preparing the Specification 1

• Aim to provide agreements that:• Are innovative and flexible• Exploit the electronic medium fully• Focus on users’ needs not libraries’• Encourage the addition of library-

defined content

• Agreements available to all UK HEIs, not just SUPC

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Preparing the Specification 2

Two distinct requirements:Requirement A – a hosted e-book service from which institutions can purchase or subscribe to individual titles

Requirement B – a hosted e-book service of content that is specified by the institutions

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Selection Criteria

Academic nature of content Satisfactory authentication Demonstrable benefits for

consortium purchase Customer and technical

support 4 suppliers selected out of 8:

3 general aggregators, 1 specialist

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List Price?

• The 3 general aggregators offer pricing based on publisher’s list price

• 1190 common titles from 4 publishers were compared

• Many titles have no common list price in e-form

• Average e-book price for the common titles varied from $99.9 to $102.2, a spread of 2.3%

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Prices: Hard Copy vs. E

• One aggregator, offering outright purchase and only 1 simultaneous user, allowing for discounts and tax:• E-book: 155% of list price• Hard copy: 85% of list price

• E-book is 82% more expensive• Book budget buys 45% less e-

books than hard-copy books

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Price Comparison Year 1

$$ Co. Abuy

Co. A1500

subscribe

Co. B - buy

Co. B -subscriptio

nCo. C

100 books 11738 11741 18613 12021 12456

500 books 58691 11741 93066 60106 66782

1000 books 117383 11741 186132 120213 129064

1500 books 176074 11741 279198 180319 191345

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Price Comparison Year 3

$$ 

Co. Abuy

Co. A1500

subscribe Co. B -

buy

Co. Bsubscriptio

nCo. C

100 books 11738 35224 18613 15624 13356

500 books 58691 35224 93066 78119 67682

1000 books 117383 35224 186132 156238 129964

1500 books 176074 35224 279198 234357 192245

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Relative Pricing

• Purchase of 1500 titles:• Co. C 69% of Co. B• Co. A 63% of Co. B

• Subscription over 3 years to 1500 titles:• Co. A 15% of Co. B

• Over 10 years:• Co. A subscription 42% of Co. B

purchase

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Bespoke Subject Collections

• 2 aggregators expressed an interest

• First subject – nursing; other subjects to be determined

• Core list of 200 titles prepared by 4 universities, the Royal College of Nursing A maximum of 13% currently available

• Aggregators have agreements with some of main publishers

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E-Textbooks?

• Obvious advantages for libraries – no more multiple copies or short-loan collections; save on staff costs

• However 80% of publishers’ textbook revenue is from students – not available

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Contract Award

• Requirement A – ProQuest/Safari and Ebrary• Offer innovative models; value for

money; flexibility• Exploit electronic medium in

terms of granularity and multi-user access

• Requirement B – Ebrary• Show flexibility and willingness to

work openly• Investigate textbook models

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Lessons

• Strong message to the market place• Flexible and innovative pricing models• Value for money• Reject the strait-jacket of hard-copy

model• Exploit electronic medium• Libraries influence and select the

content to be provided• E-textbooks move us closer to

completely electronic provision

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Questions?

dball@bournemouth.ac.uk

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References

D. Ball. Managing Suppliers and Partners for the Academic Library, London, Facet Publishing, (2005).

R. Everett. MLEs and VLEs explained, London, JISC, (2002). Available at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=mle_briefings_1.

N.K. Herther. “The E-book Industry Today: a bumpy road becomes an evolutionary path to market maturity”, The Electronic Library, 23(1), pp. 45-53, (2005).

D. Nicholas and P. Huntington, ‘Big deals: results and analysis from a pilot analysis of web log data: report for the Ingenta Institute’, in The consortium site licence: is it a sustainable model? Edited proceedings of a meeting held on 24th September 2002 at the Royal Society, London, Oxford: Ingenta, 2002 (Ingenta Institute, 2002), pp121-159, pp149, 151.

C. Tenopir. Use and Users of Electronic Library Resources: an overview and analysis of recent research studies, Washington, Council on Library and Information Resources, (2003). Available at: http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub120/pub120.pdf.

dball@bournemouth.ac.uk