Expanding%20the%20borrowing%20options%20for%20Australians%20A%20proposal%20to%20provide%20rapid%20and%20easy%20access%20to%20the%20wealth%20of%20information%20resources%20that%20reside%20in%20libraries

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Expanding the borrowing options for
AustraliansA proposal to provide rapid and easy
access to the wealth of information resources
that reside in libraries

• Resource Sharing Consultation Forum, NLA
• Kent FitchMay 2006

Version 4 18 May 845pm
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Topics

• Background
• Increasing the "gravitational pull" of library
  hosted resources
• Delivery via LA - analysis of current fulfilment
• Proposals for better delivery
• Becoming a parasite on the rump of e-commerce

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Background

• Wake-up calls statistics and commentary
• Lorcan Dempsey's ILL stats
• ILLs account for 1.7 of overall
  circulationsWhat 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

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Background

• Wake-up calls statistics and commentary
• Dempsey, again
• It is not enough for materials to be present
  within the system they have to be readily
  accessible ('every reader his or her book', in
  Ranganathan's terms), potentially interested
  readers have to be aware of them ('every book its
  reader'), and the system for matching supply and
  demand has to be efficient ('save the time of the
  user').Dlib April 2006

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Background

• Wake-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
• Navigation
• Aggregation of demand
• gravitational pull of Google, ITunes, Amazon

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Increasing the "gravitational pull" of library
hosted resources

• Principle of least effort people do not just
  use information that is easy to find they use
  information they know to be of poor quality and
  less reliable so long as it requires little
  effort to findLC Task Force Improving User
  Access to Library Catalog, Marcia Bates, 2003
• 1 of Americans (and 2 of College students)
  start an electronic information search at Library
  web site Perceptions of libraries and
  information resources, Cathy De Rosa, OCLC 2005,
  Appendix A
• When Elsevier researchers asked librarians and
  scientists to namethe top three most reliable
  online services, librarians named ScienceDirect,
  ISI's Web of Science, and Medline. Scientists,on
  the other hand, named Google, Yahoo!, and
  PubMed.LibraryJournal.com, Is Google the
  Competition? by Carol Tenopir, April 2004

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Delivery via LA Analysis of current fulfilment

• Search, Find then
• Resource sharing?
• Little used outside university and specialist
  libraries and local arrangements (eg SA Public
  libraries)
• Each ILL
• charged 13.20
• total cost 49
• 11.5 days from request to receive

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Fulfilment

• 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
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Fulfilment
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Fulfilment

• Borrow 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
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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

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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 dont have to trust
  each other

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Fulfilment
MORE

Bidding system
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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
• 4.95 per item
• Security
• 50 bond per item

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Delivering information
(inc GST)
Credit card processing 0.50
Postal costs (outbound, inbound) 2.00
Library handling (bid to loan, off self, checkout/package, unpackage/checkin, on shelf) 2.45
4.95

• For readers, the convenience of home/office
  delivery
• For libraries, 2.45 plus late fees
• System funded by income from targeted advertising
  from booksellers on web site and inserts in
  envelopes

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Fulfilment

• 4.95 for a book?
• Convenience
• Students and families are Time poor
• Woolies Home-shop
• deliver 10 bags of groceries to most of Sydney
  for 7.95
• NetFlix
• 9.99/month, unlimited DVDs/month (1 at a time)
• covers 2-way postage, handling, royalties
• 4 million subscribers
• BooksFree
• 8.49/month, unlimited paperbacks (2 at a time)
• Covers 2-way postage, handling
• Can libraries make money from 2.45 per book?
• How many books can a 15/hr casual collect from a
  shelf and put into an envelope per hour?
• Is a 50 bond reasonable?
• What about people without credit cards?

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Becoming a parasite on the rump of e-commerce
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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 of benefit
  to all