OCUL, Scholars Portal and eresources

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OCUL, Scholars Portal and e-resources

• Kathy Scardellato
• OCUL Executive Director
• kathy.scardellato_at_ocul.on.ca

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Outline

• About OCUL structure, governance, goals, budgets
• About Scholars Portal what it is, projects
• How do we do this successes and challenges
• Digital content purchasing
• E-Books Project
• OCUL Future Plans

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FTE (students, faculty, staff) c. 383,000

• Algoma University
• Brock University
• Carleton University
• Guelph, University of
• Lakehead University
• Laurentian University
• McMaster University
• Nipissing University
• Ontario College of Art Design
• Ontario Institute of Technology, University of

• 925
• 15,053
• 20,540
• 19,379
• 7,172
• 8,556
• 22,798
• 5,211
• 2,886
• 2,880

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FTE (students, faculty, staff) c. 383,000

• Ottawa, University of
• Queens University
• Royal Military College
• Ryerson University
• Toronto, University of
• Trent University
• Waterloo, University of
• Western Ontario, University of
• Wilfrid Laurier University
• Windsor, University of
• York University

• 29,986
• 19,743
• 1,941
• 23,596
• 64,831
• 7,474
• 24,102
• 32,743
• 12,907
• 15,215
• 44,918

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OCUL Governance

• Established in 1967
• The member libraries cooperate to enhance
  information services through resource sharing,
  collective purchasing, document delivery and many
  other similar activities.
• Council of Ontario Universities (COU) affiliate

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Active Working Groups and Ad Hoc Committees

• OCUL-IR (Information Resources)
• Map Group
• OCUL Data Group (DINO)
• Consortium of Ontario Academic Health Libraries
  (COAHL)
• Groups for current projects ODESI, E-books
  implementation

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OCUL Vision

• To be a recognized leader in provincial, national
  and international post-secondary communities for
  the collaborative development delivery of
  outstanding and innovative library services that
  are critical to the success of Ontarios
  universities

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OCUL Goals

• Effective practices and strategies for advocacy,
  collaboration, and organizational development
• A robust, sustainable and innovative access and
  delivery service
• Comprehensive and integrated digital collections

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Ontario university libraries spend in FY
2006-07
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Digital v. Print in 2006-07
Estimated Spend on Digital in 07-08 is 60
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Budget

• 2.9 M / year for OCUL and Scholars Portal
• 1.5 M over 3 years for 2 projects
• OCUL manages about 11M / year for consortial
  purchases of digital resources
• OCUL members also spend about 39M / year through
  CRKN consortial purchases

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Scholars Portal is

• A suite of information resources and services on
  a shared infrastructure
• Resources seamlessly integrate with the library
  and campus information systems
• Acquired and managed centrally by our consortium
• An infrastructure that truly supports archiving
  for perpetuity
• Co-operative decision making

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Scholars Portal is

• Scholars Portal Search
• About 190M searchable citations
• About 11.5M searches /year
• E-Journals
• About 13.5M full-text articles
• About 4.2M downloads/year

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3. RefWorks 65 sites
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4. RACER ILL / document delivery

• Common system for all Ontario universities
• Active user accounts registered for use is over
  300,000
• Searches 41 library catalogues
• More than 250,000 requests in 2007
• 14 schools use auto-mediation

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Also, behind the scenes

• SFX (url resolver) is managed centrally so that
  our members do not have to manage it locally
• Shibboleth (Authentication) implementation
• Verde (Electronic Resource Management)
• Ozone D-Space institutional repository /archive
  for learning objects, Ontario govt documents,
  DLI training materials

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Scholars Portal projects

• ODESI
• social sciences datasets in one central
  repository system (StatsCan, Gallup, IPSOS-Reid)
• best practices and standards for data mark up and
  management
• accessible to OCUL member institutions
• NOW IN USE in 2008/09 academic year

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Scholars Portal projects

• E-Books
• Software platform and storage implementation
• Consortial purchases of c. 50,000 commercial
  e-books
• Open Content Alliance Internet Archive Canadian
  Collection (150,000 digitized books)
• IN DEVELOPMENT 2008/09 academic year

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Scholars Portal projects

• New generation e-journals management system (Mark
  Logic)
• Data loaders development - DONE
• User interface development UNDERWAY
• IN DEVELOPMENT 2008/09 academic year

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OCUL project

• Internet Archive digitization for Ontario
  government documents
• Getting underway this fall
• Space savings
• Improved access
• Collection management savings
• Agreement to retain last print copies of journals

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What makes us different?

• We control our destiny!
• Majority of resources are centrally loaded and
  archived (negotiated with vendors)
• A serious commitment to archiving of e-journals
  that no jurisdiction anywhere in the world can
  match
• Single search engine can be used to search all
  resources
• Services are supported and managed centrally

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Advantages

• Access to the high quality of IT management,
  equally available to all OCUL  schools regardless
  of size and local staffing
• Share a great negotiator in our Projects Officer
• Each school has input into decisions regarding
  purchases and is able to opt out

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What does it mean to our users?

• Scholars Portal provides a single point of entry
  into an integrated and inter-connecting
  environment of high quality scholarly resources
  and sophisticated user focused services that
  enables
• rapid access to resources, services and tools
• long term stewardship and archiving

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Challenges

• Difficult to find software that can manage our
  archive because of its size
• Find out what our users want - MINES survey
  methodology used to get feedback
• All publishers dont ship their metadata in the
  same format
• Consortial buying isnt always easy
• Being on the bleeding edge is not comfortable

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Its not perfect
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Decision-making

• Committees, task groups, ad hoc committees
• Organization, re-organization
• Discussion, education, think and re-think
• Mostly done by a combination of volunteers (or
  voluntolds) and central staff

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E-resources / digital content

• Libraries need to re-gain control for purchasing,
  collection management, access and delivery
• Challenges for researchers

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How we buy a few details

• OCUL negotiates when its members ask it to do so
• Rule of thumb 3 or more members for a consortial
  deal
• When publishers approach OCUL, we send them back
  to the members to make their pitch
• Small OCUL committees evaluate offers

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How we buy a few details

• When possible, we buy for all of OCUL and apply
  our own formula for cost share (rare)
• We share similar values, problems and structures
  with other Canadian consortia and this is really
  helpful for working out deals together
• Largest libraries have been the anchor schools
  for the big deals

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Great successes?

• So much to do with timing great opportunities
  in the past
• Members make provisions in their own individual
  contracts to convert to an OCUL license in the
  reasonably near future
• Member-run organization the members make the
  decisions
• Opportunities to let your feelings be heard

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Great successes?

• Try to work with the publishing industry, not to
  be at odds with them
• Look for innovative ways for both sides to
  succeed
• Prefer multi-year contracts because license
  negotiations take a long time
• Try to ensure caps on future years
• Try to find ways to include as many members as
  possible

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Product payments

• Each is different
• Tiers
• Flat rates for all
• Single price and cost formula
• FTE-based
• Unlimited and simultaneous users

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Savings?

• List price vs real price (we do our research
  first)
• The real price is what is agreed
• Typically, we see 5-10 but sometimes much more
  (up to 30)
• Costs to do this Full-time negotiator .3 FTE
  clerk COU accounts payable receivable

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Pros and cons

• 21 bright, experienced people who bring their
  insight to the table
• We have more expertise than the vendors
• People volunteer for negotiations
• TRUST amongst the group cannot be over-valued. We
  work on this all the time.
• _______________________________________
• BUT, the lapse time is slower than doing this
  individually at each school (communications,
  decision-making)

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E-books Project Goals

• Libraries have been buying e-books as one-offs
  and from some aggregators
• Need to acquire a critical mass and bring the
  prices in line by doing this together
• Wanted a common user interface and back-end
  system
• Wanted to load locally in our repository

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E-books Project Challenges

• MARC records for local catalogues are a challenge
  still availability, quality, loading
• Have to plan for persistence always able to
  locate the book when you link to it
• Local budgets for e-books vary because of size
  and make it difficult to get good deals for all
  members
• Developing our own user interface on Scholars
  Portal

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E-Book Project how we succeed

• Try hard to find solutions
• Acknowledge that we cant get everyone into all
  agreements
• Work with other consortia

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OCUL Future Plans

• Expand ODESI to include other kinds of data
• Support researchers by providing various tools to
  help them to collaborate and use library
  resources
• Consortial purchasing for print materials pilot

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Thanks

• kathy.scardellato_at_ocul.on.ca