The British Library Document Supply Service An on-demand service for a demanding world

Andy Appleyard

Head, Document Supply, Imaging and Customer Services

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British Library locations

Boston Spa Yorkshire

St Pancras London

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British Library Strategy Living Knowledge – 6 core purposes

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We make our intellectual heritage accessible to everyone for research,

inspiration and enjoyment

The British Library – our role

National library of the UK Serves researchers, business, libraries, education and the general public

Collecting Collects under Legal Deposit, plus £14m worth of material per year

Preserving Rare literature, published print collections and sound

Providing Access

Onsite via Reading Rooms

Information Services Providing just-in-time copies and loans to organisations across the world via Document Supply

Exhibitions Programmes of exhibitions, events and learning activities attracting thousands of visitors

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British Library Information Services

Services

Document Supply (by digitisation on demand)

Inter Library Loan

Collaborative storage

EThOS (PhD theses online)

Higher Education course packs

Support to Reading Rooms

Mass digitisation

Audiences

UK Higher Education

Global commercial

UK National Health Service

UK Government

General public

Overseas Higher Education

Niche subject audiences Major user

User New opportunity

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Document Supply Demand Profile

• Long track record, peaked in the late 90’s, little investment

• Customer base includes UK and international markets and public sector and commercial organisations

• Decline brought on by digital innovation (the internet/Google/pay-per-view) and publisher big deals

Change Programme

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2008 Change Programme Reduce cost and rebalance

• Continuous Improvement

• Commercial operations management

• Customer First campaign

• Investment in platform technology

Current challenges…

• Internal acquisition cuts

• Customer expectations and technology change

• Competition including alternative (free) digital access

• Open Access

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Technology

Partnerships

BL Brand (trust & compliance)

Continuous Improvement Customer Service

Designing a Sustainable Strategy

• How do our customers see us?

• What are our strengths and USPs?

• How do we meet customers’ needs?

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• 3 million monographs

• Over 48 million journal articles

• 0.5 million Doctoral theses and dissertations

• 5 million research reports and official publications

• Over 12.5 million digital items, available to download immediately

A vast, described collection in various formats

But how to keep relevant and up-to-date? ?

All available on demand

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Document Supply demand profile by age of publication

In 1997 80% of demand was for journals up to 10 years old

By 2014 80% of demand was for journals up to 25 years old

Changing behaviour and budgets cuts pushing BL document supply into the “long tail”

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Document Supply Requests supplied by age of journal

1997 2014

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167 143 117 89 63 52

877

704

565

454 411 241

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Document Supply requests supplied

Purchased digital Third-party Purchased print

Collect and connect • Year on year (c14%) decline

• Subscribed content reducing due to budget cuts

• Use of licensed third-party content from publishers’ websites started in December 2014. Supply from these sources is increasing rapidly...

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From the archives

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B2B Content and technology partnerships

BL designed an xml based Application Programming Interface (API). Machine to machine communication. Ability to build in customer workflows. Enables it to act as a hub in a growing network of information providers through partnership.

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B2C Consumer experience

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What do researchers want?

• A One-stop-shop

• Print and Digital

• Federated searching

• “Whizzy” technology

.. and of course

• Value for money

• Speed

• Quality

How do we do it?

• Connect and Collect

• Partnerships

• Customer Service

• Continuous Improvement

An on-demand service for a demanding world

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BLDSS British Library On Demand Supporting the Living Knowledge Strategy

VISION: To unify British Library online information services to enable greater awareness, understanding, access and use of the British Library’s collections

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Thank you Merci beaucoup