A New paradigm for getting

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A New paradigm for  getting

• A proposal to improve access to the information
  resources of librariesKent Fitch, NLA

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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

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Background

• NLA Direction Statement, 2003-2005Our major
  undertaking in 20032005 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

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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
• 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

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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
• Aggregation of demand
• gravitational pull of Google, ITunes, Amazon

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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

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Rethinking Resource Sharing Initiative (USA)

• Our Vision Create a new global service framework
  that allows individuals to obtain what they want
  based on factors such as cost, time, format, and
  delivery. This framework will encompass promoting
  and exposing library services in a variety of
  environments.
• The Rethinking group strongly endorses a user
  (individual) focus for services. Traditional
  resource sharing services are built around staff
  needs, institutions, and technological
  limitations. Todays users expect self-service
  and are confident that their results are of the
  same or higher quality than those of library
  staff. Whether this is objectively true is
  irrelevantto their perceptions. A major shift
  will be requiredin the ways in which services
  are provided.

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Rethinking Resource Sharing Initiative

• We believe that the individual should be able to
  get whatever s/he wants, whenever and wherever it
  is globally, however s/he wants to receive it.
  Our policies shall present the lowest possible
  barrier to this with the ideal being a no barrier
  transaction. Rethinking Resource Sharing
  Cultural Policy Issues

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Rethinking Resource Sharing Initiative

• It is this principle of user centric services
  that prompts a discussion of policies and
  cultural barriers to providing the highest level
  of library services possible. We are fast
  approaching a time in resource sharing where
  providing services without being attuned to user
  needs is tantamount to forcing users to find
  alternative sources to fill their information
  needs. We need to open our thinking to new ways
  of delivering information, alternative methods of
  communicating with our users, and embracing
  resource sharing as a core service in our
  libraries.

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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

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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)

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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

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Great at Finding..But getting needs work!
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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

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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
• ? 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

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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)

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Fulfilment

• Benefits
• For readers
• the convenience of home/office delivery
• especially time-poor families, students
• For libraries
• some income (borrowing charge plus late fees)
• For the nation
• better utilisation of library assets, smarter,
  better informed, happier people

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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 DVDs/month (1 at a time)
• 5.99/month, 2 DVDs/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?

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Becoming a parasite on the rump of e-commerce
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Rethinking Resource Sharing Reference Group

• An outcome of the May 2006 Resource Sharing
  Consultation Forum
• Members
• Roxanne Missingham Association of Parliamentary
  Libraries
• Lynn Fletcher TAFE Libraries
  Australia
• Christine Cother University of South
  Australia
• Alison Sutherland National State
  Libraries Australasia
• Margaret Hyland Public Libraries
  Australia
• Tony Boston, Margarita Moreno, Kent Fitch NLA
• Terms of reference
• Develop high-level requirements for and
  investigate the feasibility of an end user
  focussed service for easy access to loans and
  copies in Australian Library Collections.
• Investigate the potential for contribution to the
  Rethinking resource sharing discussions
  occurring mainly in theUnited States

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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 ofbenefit
  to all

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• Libraries Throw off your practices!
  And expose your holdings!

Most memorable slogan from Rethinking Resource
Sharing Forum II Denver, Colorado, February 28
March 1, 2006