roi or bust: a glimpse into how librarians, publishers, and agents create value for survival

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The Serials Librarian, 64:216–223, 2013 Copyright © The North American Serials Interest Group, Inc. ISSN: 0361-526X print/1541-1095 online DOI: 10.1080/0361526X.2013.761064 ROI or Bust: A Glimpse into How Librarians, Publishers, and Agents Create Value for Survival GRACEMARY SMULEWITZ, DAVID CELANO, and JOSÉ LUIS ANDRADE Presenters MARCELLA LESHER Recorder Economic survival and the relationships between librarians, pub- lishers, and subscription agents were the themes of this presentation exploring the related needs and goals of the library community. Each of the presenters contributed a perspective on how organi- zations are dealing with the opportunities and challenges to add value for their patrons and customers. KEYWORDS return on investment (ROI), usage statistics, alter- native metrics, subscription agents, serials vendors, COUNTER, altmetrics INTRODUCTION Return on investment (ROI) has different meanings for libraries and infor- mation services. The panelists demonstrated that there are opportunities for libraries, publishers, and subscription agents, using data collection capabili- ties and other value-added services, to show that the resources they supply to their customers or patrons can be analyzed, customized, and improved. The library community also faces great pressures generated by the ways in which information is now sought and used and the changing expectations of users. Valid evidence that the library or library vendor is generating the necessary economic returns is complex. The speakers provided the audi- ence with a glimpse at the efforts that they are making within their shared environment to provide the very best services possible. A GLIMPSE FROM A LIBRARIAN Gracemary Smulewitz, Head of Distributed Technical Services at Rutgers University Libraries, opened the session with an overview of the quantitative 216

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Page 1: ROI or Bust: A Glimpse into How Librarians, Publishers, and Agents Create Value for Survival

The Serials Librarian, 64:216–223, 2013Copyright © The North American Serials Interest Group, Inc.ISSN: 0361-526X print/1541-1095 onlineDOI: 10.1080/0361526X.2013.761064

ROI or Bust: A Glimpse into How Librarians,Publishers, and Agents Create Value for Survival

GRACEMARY SMULEWITZ, DAVID CELANO,and JOSÉ LUIS ANDRADE

Presenters

MARCELLA LESHERRecorder

Economic survival and the relationships between librarians, pub-lishers, and subscription agents were the themes of this presentationexploring the related needs and goals of the library community.Each of the presenters contributed a perspective on how organi-zations are dealing with the opportunities and challenges to addvalue for their patrons and customers.

KEYWORDS return on investment (ROI), usage statistics, alter-native metrics, subscription agents, serials vendors, COUNTER,altmetrics

INTRODUCTION

Return on investment (ROI) has different meanings for libraries and infor-mation services. The panelists demonstrated that there are opportunities forlibraries, publishers, and subscription agents, using data collection capabili-ties and other value-added services, to show that the resources they supplyto their customers or patrons can be analyzed, customized, and improved.The library community also faces great pressures generated by the ways inwhich information is now sought and used and the changing expectationsof users. Valid evidence that the library or library vendor is generating thenecessary economic returns is complex. The speakers provided the audi-ence with a glimpse at the efforts that they are making within their sharedenvironment to provide the very best services possible.

A GLIMPSE FROM A LIBRARIAN

Gracemary Smulewitz, Head of Distributed Technical Services at RutgersUniversity Libraries, opened the session with an overview of the quantitative

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data that Rutgers Libraries collect in order to try and place a value on pur-chased material. Significant growth in distance education programs (39%enrollment increase since 2008) has fueled much of their acquisition ofe-resources and has also allowed them to quantify the use of theire-resources more easily. Smulewitz emphasized the step-by-step process ofanalyzing the data. To survive a very large budget reduction, Rutgers selec-tors began by finding encumbrances for items that had not been receivedor paid for and deciding whether to pursue or cancel those items from theiracquisition plans. Duplicate subscriptions were also identified. Usage datawere then gathered both for print and electronic titles.

With more than 85,000 e-journals (many of those titles in publisherpackages) and seventeen e-book packages, selectors at Rutgers felt theywere becoming marginally involved in collection development. In the pro-cess of making budget cuts, the library wanted to provide as much dataas possible to enable the selectors to make informed decisions. A tool wasdeveloped to allow selectors to analyze data across subscription packagesas well as analyze print usage. Titles within packages were divided byfund codes. Usage data and the most recent cost-per-use information werealso made available as well as impact factors and Eigenfactors (Figures 1and 2).

For titles included in packages, cancellations could not be made thataffected the value of the package. However, Smulewitz’s department madesure to tell selectors when the licensing agreement for the package per-mitted swapping out titles for other titles that the selectors felt would bemore appropriate to their disciplines. For print copies, usage was capturedby marking a “used” statistic during re-shelving and selectors were givenadditional information including holdings and online availability. With theinformation provided for the print titles, 864 such titles were cancelled and472 titles were changed to online only. Similar spreadsheets were made fordatabases with notations of such variables as access restrictions and the typesof usage reports that could be generated.

Smulewitz discussed methods of analyzing subscriptions that go beyondtraditional usage measures. Another useful data tool, she suggested, is anal-ysis of how marketing of resources to patrons impacts the use of highlighteddatabases. Rutgers is considering Google analytics to isolate usage thathas been generated by patrons accessing the databases through LibGuides(Figure 3).

A GLIMPSE FROM A PUBLISHER

David Celano, Vice President for Library Sales, Springer, Northern UnitedStates, continued the theme by looking at how a large publisher can pro-vide the kind of product values to their customers that help to ensure

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218 Program Sessions

FIGURE 1 Rutgers data tool example sorted by package name.

continuing relationships. He showed a series of slides that demonstratedhow Springer provides traditional metrics such as the number of downloads.He also showed alternative metrics, including examples that demonstratedusage by type of access (subscribed by library, subscribed by consortium,and unsubscribed), e-book usage and comparisons showing usage versuscost of journal titles within a package. Figure 4 shows an example of usagedata where less used titles were a fraction of the cost of titles that wereheavily used in this particular library.

Celano suggested that both publishers and libraries can use availableusage metrics as a negotiating tool to find appropriate price points that pro-vide revenue for the publisher as well as appropriate products for the library.Publishers who want to continue to sell to their library clients will work toprovide value after the sale is concluded. Celano noted that Springer consultswith their Library Advisory Board when exploring new business models. Hestated that, “everything we do without consulting the library community isusually a failure.” Post sale value can also be added through such services astraining events, alerting services, conference participation, and so on.

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FIGURE 2 Rutgers data tool example sorted by fund code.

A GLIMPSE FROM AN AGENT

Agents, or more properly in today’s environment, information solutionproviders (ISPs), provide the middle ground, as explained by José LuisAndrade, President for the Americas, Swets. They partner with libraries toprovide intrinsic value to the educational process. In order for ISPs to stayviable, they need to take on libraries’ imperatives. One of these imperativesis helping libraries show ROI.

To demonstrate why ROI is essential to libraries, Andrade cited PresidentObama’s 2012 State of the Union Address in which the President put universi-ties receiving federal funding on notice that he will cut funding if universitiescannot keep tuitions down.1 Therefore, it is more vital than ever to show thatevery dollar a university gets makes an impact. The library, for its part, willneed to justify the value it brings to the educational process.

Andrade went on to refer to Tenopir’s 2009 presentation to NorthAmerican Serials Interest Group (NASIG) on measuring the value of librariesto grant-funded research.2 Tenopir discussed the concept of “value gap”—“when the cost of library collections and services increases over time, whilethe perceived value declines.”3 ROI is one approach to demonstrating value.With these two lessons in mind, Andrade laid out how ISPs can help supportthe imperatives of colleges and universities to continue to offer students

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FIGURE 3 Use of Google analytics to measure LibGuide activities.

a quality education and to offer faculty the resources to continue theirimportant research.

A valuable service that ISPs offer is harvesting and analyzing CountingOnline Usage of Networked Electronic Resources (COUNTER) compliantusage statistics for both e-journals, and now, e-books. With each releaseof COUNTER, these reports become more comprehensive and more precise.Andrade pointed out that a new version of COUNTER, COUNTER 4, waspublished this past April and will become the standard in December 2013.

Not used0%

More than5000 times

14%

Up to 100times4%

Up to 500times17%

Up to 1000times18%

Up to 5000times47%

FIGURE 4 Titles by number of times downloaded and percentage dollar value within package(2011).

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COUNTER 4 reports will cover journals, databases, books, reference works,and multimedia content. This new version will also offer reports on GoldOpen Access Journals (those that authors pay to have their articles pub-lished), archival packages, multimedia packages, usage of mobile devicesand much more. In addition to COUNTER compliant usage statistics, someISPs also provide cost-per-use and journal impact factors to give libraries afuller picture of the usage of their collections.

However, ROI analyses should go much further to restore the value ofthe library to the academic community. Andrade cited ITHAKA’s 2010 LibrarySurvey that provided data showing that the library was losing its place as theprimary gateway for scholarly research.4 Quantitative analysis can providedocumentation for strategies that can reinvigorate the library as the center ofresearch. As the center of research, the library is valued as a contributor tofaculty research productivity and the university’s ability to bring in researchdollars.

Andrade pointed out that ISPs are offering federated search and discov-ery services in order to assist libraries with this imperative. These servicesallow users to use a single search to query not only the library catalog butalso databases, special collections, electronic platforms, and so on. Why isthis important? Many researchers and students today are nomadic. Many fac-ulty travel extensively and need access to information for twenty-four hours,seven days a week, from many types of devices. Many students take classesonline and never walk into the library. All these users need to be able to doa single search and come up with relevant results as quickly as possible.

Readership cannot be measured by citations and impact alone, Andradestated, and went on to say that libraries are being left out of a very importantway in which people research—through social media. Libraries will needto position themselves within the social media research environment. Forquite a while, scholars have been using collaborative platforms to shareresults with fellow researchers globally. Alternative metrics (“altmetrics”) seekto reach scholarly activity across the Internet and through social media topaint a more vivid picture of the scholarly landscape. These new metrics arecomplementary with other more established usage statistics.

In order to facilitate these new metrics, ISPs are joining forces with socialcollaboration sites like Mendeley.5 On Mendeley and other sites, researchersshare links, articles, and findings, generating usage that is not captured bylibrary statistics. Also, on these sites researchers keep track of the grantsthey receive and keep bibliographies of articles they have published. All thisinformation can be data-mined with alternative metrics for gauging ROI bythe library and university.

Andrade ended his presentation by telling attendees that the goals oflibrarians, publishers, and agencies are essentially the same. Using their ownunique strengths and methods, they try to facilitate efficient and cost effectiveresearch and maximize ROI to both the producers and users of their services.

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DISCUSSION

As evident throughout the Nashville conference, audience members hadinteresting comments and questions about how to provide economicallyviable alternatives to current purchasing practices. In response to a ques-tion about correlating usage data with impact factors, Celano explained thatSpringer has received requests to look at different business models, includ-ing one that would reward journals whose impact factors increase, and viceversa. However, the implementation of such a model would be quite chal-lenging because it would require industry-wide buy-in. Smulewitz noted thatEigenfactor rankings had not been helpful in her analysis.

Continuing the discussion about business models, Celano noted that insome disciplines, usage is higher than in others and that fact would workagainst using traditional usage measures alone as a sufficient model. A fewaudience members indicated their libraries had been purchasing tokens frompublishers for individual downloads instead of subscribing, and that hadbeen working for them. Smulewitz said that Rutgers would like to see pricingmodels being based on size and features of particular disciplines and studentenrollment in them, rather than full-time equivalent (FTE) student counts orCarnegie classification.

The discussion then moved to the ramifications of purchases at thearticle level rather than whole journal contents. Consortia, for example, arestarting to look at this model. Purchasing the material for a short term loanin lieu of actual ownership was also suggested.

Pay-per-use is currently about the only alternative model but it is pro-hibitively expensive for most libraries. An audience member also suggestedthe music industry’s sale of single song downloads as an appropriate anal-ogy to what might have to happen in the publishing industry. However, thetransition to purchasing by article would be difficult. Some publishers wouldnot survive. Smulewitz also pointed out that purchase by article might affectthe research process. Traditional methods of library selection, acquisition,organization, and access would go away. The ideas presented during thissession triggered a big question to end the session: How will changing theways in which people access information change the image of the libraryand the traditional tasks of libraries?

NOTES

1. President Barak Obama, State of the Union Address, 2012, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/01/24/remarks-president-state-union-address (accessed November 26, 2012).

2. Carol Tenopir, “Measuring the Value of the Academic Library: Return on Investment and OtherValue Measures,” The Serials Librarian 58, nos. 1–4 (2010): 39–48. doi: 10.1080/03615261003623005

3. Ibid., 40.

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4. Matthew P. Long and Roger C. Schonfeld, Ithaka S+R Library Survey 2010: Insights from U.S.Library Directors, last modified 2010, http://www.sr.ithaka.org/research-publications/library-survey-2010(accessed November 26, 2012).

5. Mendeley, http://www.mendeley.com (accessed November 26, 2012).

CONTRIBUTOR NOTES

Gracemary Smulewitz is Head of Distributed Technical Services at RutgersUniversity Libraries.

David Celano is Vice President for Library Sales, Springer, Northern UnitedStates.

José Luis Andrade is President of Swets Information Services, The Americas.

Marcella Lesher is Periodicals Librarian, Blume Library, St. Mary’s University,San Antonio, Texas.