A New paradigm for “getting” A proposal to improve access to the information resources of libraries Kent Fitch, NLA
Dec 19, 2015
A New paradigm for “getting” A proposal to improve access to the information resources of libraries
Kent Fitch, NLA
Topics Background
NLA Direction Statement Wake-up calls: statistics and commentary
Increasing the "gravitational pull" of library hosted resources
– Better content, searching, exposure– Better delivery
The Rethinking Resource Sharing Initiative (USA) Analysis of current fulfilment Proposals for better delivery Becoming a parasite on the rump of e-commerce
BackgroundNLA Direction Statement, 2003-2005:
“Our major undertaking in 2003–2005 will be to provide rapid and easy access to the wealth of information resources that reside in libraries and other cultural institutions and to break down barriers that work against this. Services supporting access to library information will be simplified and made more user-friendly, and will be widely promoted.”
2006-2008:– explore technologies that aid interrogation of our collections
and simplify and improve processes for requesting and receiving resources
– enable the collections of Australian libraries and cultural institutions to be searched online and easily obtained
BackgroundWake-up calls: statistics and commentary
Lorcan Dempsey's ILL stats– ILLs account for 1.7% of overall circulations
“What this suggests is that we are not doing a very good job of aggregating supply (making it easy to find and obtain materials of interest wherever they are). The flow of materials from one library to another is very low when compared to the overall flow of materials within libraries.”blog
Australian ILL stats– 2002-3 loans: ~200m (Public Lib & CAUL)– ILL: ~800k in total
of these CAUL supplied 93K original items, 212K photocopy/electronic items
– ILLs account for 0.4% of overall circulationsexcluding school libraries
BackgroundWake-up calls: statistics and commentary
“The concept of self-sufficiency has long been abandoned by University libraries.”
– Schmidt, National Interlending and Document Delivery Summit in 1995
Dempsey: “We have done some work looking at circulation data in two
research libraries across several years. In each case, about 20% of books (we limited the investigation to English books) accounted for about 90% of circulations. What does this say about the aggregation of demand. Materials are not being united with users who might be interested in them. 'Just-in-case' collection development policies, at individual institutions, do not lead to optimal system wide allocation of resources.”blog
BackgroundWake-up calls: statistics and commentary
Dempsey, again: “So, Netflix, for example, aggregates supply as discussed here.
It makes the long tail available for inspection. However, importantly, it also aggregates demand: a larger pool of potential users is available to inspect any particular item, increasing the chances that it will be borrowed by somebody.”blog
Aggregation of supply– Transaction costs– Consolidated statistics, intentional data– Consolidated and distributed “inventory”
Aggregation of demand– “gravitational pull” of Google, ITunes, Amazon
Increasing the "gravitational pull" of library hosted resources
Better content– subject guides– journal articles
Better searching– Relevance ranking– Clustering– Expert and community help– User interface
Better exposure– LA Results on Google– “insertion” of LA contents on Amazon
Better delivery– Seamless– Faster, cheaper
Rethinking Resource Sharing InitiativeGET-IT
“There has been a shift of models in the resource sharing world from “discover, locate, request and deliver” to “find and get”. We are herewith proposing a further shift to a very simple “get” model.”
A browser plugin which annotates web pages with links to “getting” options for published resources held by libraries
Analysis of current fulfilment Search, Find then… “Resource sharing”?
– Little used outside university and specialist libraries and local arrangements
– Each ILL: “charged” $13.20 “total cost” $49 (2001 study) 2001 benchmark study: 11.5 days from request to receive 2006 follow up: 83 of 157 respondents recorded requesting
turnaround time; of these: 58% reported 5 or fewer days from request to receive
– greater proportion of copy requests (average loan ILL transactions supplied per library fell from 2909 (2001) to 737 (2006), copy requests from 3703 (2001) to 2395 (2006) (see also Question 25 b)
Analysis of current fulfilment
ILL: Strong disincentives to participate– Expensive– Slow– Loss of control of assets
ILL: Strong disincentives to use– Expensive– Slow– Inconvenient / impossible
For the lucky few
“Borrow Direct: impact of an innovative reader-initiated borrowing mechanism on service quality”, Nitecki and Jones http://www.nla.gov.au/ilds/abstracts/NiteckiD.pdf
Fulfilment
FulfilmentBorrow Direct
Columbia, Pennsylvania, Yale, Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Princeton
Before BD
(1995-96)
Mediated ILL
(2001-02)
Borrow Direct
Days 29 11 4
Cost $40 $42 $15
Fulfilment
Making “Search, find, get” seamless
Not just “Unmediated ILL”, not “ILL” at all Lend direct from library to reader
– mediated by a NLA system layered on top of the NBD– Readers request– Libraries bid to fulfil– Resources delivered to reader by post, returned in
reply-paid envelope
Fulfilment
How can a library trust the reader?– 50% of Australians are a member of a pubic library
• what extra % are members of Uni/TAFE/school library?
– Legal infrastructure provides the mechanisms enabling commerce: parties don’t have to trust each other
Fulfilment
NetBooks, operationally modelled on NetFlix– Lend direct from library to reader (credit-card holder)– Mediated by NLA system built on top of the NBD– Readers request, libraries bid to fulfil– Resources delivered to reader by post, returned in
reply-paid envelope– $? per item - $5? $10?– Security:
$50 bond per item
– System running costs funded by income from targeted advertising from booksellers on website and inserts in envelopes
Fulfilment Costs:
– Credit card processing ~ $0.50?– Postal costs (inbound/outbound) ~ $2.00?– Library handling (bid to loan, pick, checkout, package then
unpackage, checkin, reshelve) ~ $2.50 - $5?
Library handling costs– NLA estimate $5 to round-trip book from stacks to reading room– Hennen's American Public Library Ratings analyses
performance of 9000 public libraries in the US http://www.haplr-index.com/
Operating expenditure per circulation: 50th percentile: ~$4 95th percentile: ~$2
(all operating costs, not marginal cost of a circulation)
Fulfilment
Benefits– For readers
the convenience of home/office deliveryespecially time-poor families, students
– For librariessome income (borrowing charge plus late fees)
– For the nationbetter utilisation of library assets, smarter, better
informed, happier people
Fulfilment $5 - $10 for a book?
– Woolies Home-shop deliver 10 bags of groceries to most of Sydney for $7.95
– Wine retailers/couriers Dispatch/deliver a dozen bottles (~12kg) nationwide for $10
– NetFlix $9.99/month, unlimited DVD’s/month (1 at a time) $5.99/month, 2 DVD’s/month (1 at a time) covers 2-way postage, handling, royalties 5 million subscribers, ship 1.4M disks per day
– BooksFree $8.49/month, unlimited paperbacks (2 at a time) Covers 2-way postage, handling
Can libraries make money from $2.50-$5 per book?– How many books can a $16/hr casual collect from a shelf and put
into an envelope per hour?– How much do they make from currrent circulations?
Is a $50 bond reasonable?– What about people without credit cards?
Conclusion The ultimate motivation for using a discovery
service is “getting”
Without efficient “getting” there is little point in providing even the best discovery service
Libraries, through the NBD, are in an ideal position to aggregate reader demand and book supply
Exploring new ways to better utilize the resources of Australian libraries is ofbenefit to all