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

Great at Finding..But “getting” needs work!

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

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

^

MORE

Bidding system

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?

Becoming a parasite on the rump of e-commerce

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

“Libraries – Throw off your practices! And expose your holdings!”

“Most memorable slogan” fromRethinking Resource Sharing Forum IIDenver, Colorado, February 28 – March 1, 2006