Measuring the value of the British Library

Slovenian Library Association

Librarians and Libraries: Added Value to the Environment

6th October 2009

Ann Clarke

Strategic Planning Manager, The British Library

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The British Library holds unsurpassed collections and offers a great range of services based on them

3 main funding streams:•DCMS grant-in-aid (£107m) •Annual trading income (£24m)•Voluntary income (£8m)

Serves researchers, businesses, libraries, learners and the general public

Our Purpose -

Advancing the world’s knowledge

National library of the UK

Collection includes over 100m items

The largest document supply service in the world. Secure e-delivery and ‘just in time’ digitisation enables desktop delivery within 2 hours

Over 250 years of collecting. Beneficiary of legal deposit, and £18m annual acquisitions budget

2 main sites in London and 1 in Yorkshire.

Nearly 2,000 staff

Collection fills over 650 lin km of shelving and grows at 11 km per year

1.25 Tb of digital material through voluntary deposit

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What do we know about the value of the British Library?

We have an incredible range of information resources and we know that they add value (culturally, socially, economically)

And we have very considerable staff expertise and we know that this adds value

But just how much value does the British Library add?

How do we go about demonstrating our value, and communicating that value in a meaningful way?

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Contents

Inputs and Outputs

Anecdotes and case studies

Outcomes

Broad approach

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Traditionally we have measured value through measures of input and output

Inputs

We created over 15 million digital images

We created over 400,000 catalogue records

We preserved 69,000 collection items

Outputs

We delivered 65% of items electronically

We received over 77 million page hits on our web site

We received over 500,000 visits to reading rooms

Source: British Library Annual Report and Accounts 2008/09

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We refined our input and output measures as we developed a Corporate Balanced Scorecard

Strategy

Customer

Whom do we define as our customer?

How do we create value for our customer?

Financial

How do we add value for our customers while controlling

costs?

Internal processes

To satisfy customers while meeting budgetary constraints, at which business processes must

we excel?

Employee Learning &

GrowthHow do we enable ourselves to grow and change, meeting

ongoing demands?

Stakeholder

Whom do we define as our stakeholders?

How do we create value for our stakeholders?

Source: Balanced Scorecard Step-by-step Maximising Performance and Maintaining Results, Paul R Niven. Balanced Scorecard Step-by-Step for Government and Nonprofit Agencies, Paul R Niven

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Stakeholder

Face-to-face interactions with key stakeholders

Strengthen

relations with

stakeholders

Increase public

support for BL

Increase volume of

use

Improve user

experience

Increase users’

positive outcomes

Annual survey to show awareness of BL and support

No of items supplied remotely

Satisfaction ratings from reading room users

Impact of BL on user research

Customer

FinancialIncrease efficiency

Effectively manage

resources

Increase contribution

Trading contribution Total operating expenditure (against plan)Unit cost of operating

reading rooms

Internal Processes Use effective

processes to develop the collection

Use effective processes to manage the collection

% items processed against total items received

Use effective processes to

deliver/enhance services (incl. new services)

% Doc Supply standard service requests responded to within 48 hours

Use effective

processes to deliver projects

/programmes

Employee Learning & Growth

Strengthen values

Develop relevant skills

Sickness absence Training programme evaluations

UK voluntary deposit e-publications received

% of key projects/programmes failing to meet budgets and timescales

Most of the metrics in our Corporate Balanced Scorecard are operational metrics – here are some examples

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We are now working on the development of some strategic metrics

Desired future

Differentiating activities

What we must measure in order to implement our strategy

Vision, Purpose, Values

Strategic Priorities

Scorecard Objectives and

Metrics

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Our 7 strategic priorities provide the place to start

SP1 Provide researchers with a critical mass of digital content by extending our collection of UK digital publications

SP2 Connect researchers with content in our collection and other resources in innovative ways

SP3 Transform our service for researchers who need access to our unrivalled newspaper collections by implementing our newspaper strategy

SP4 Support research by developing innovative products and services

SP5 Secure our e-collection for future researchers by building robust systems to underpin our digital library.

SP6 Preserve our physical collection for future researchers by taking an holistic view of storage, security and preservation needs.

SP7 Develop our staff to ensure they have the skills they need to deliver the strategy

http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/stratpolprog/strategy0811/

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Contents

Inputs and Outputs

Anecdotes and case studies

Outcomes

Broad approach

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“I used the British Library’s patent collection for searching when I was developing my products…I found the staff to be very helpful in pointing me in the right direction”Mandy HabermanEntrepreneur and British Female Inventor of the Year 2000

“invaluable in helping me to get information on the size of the global market for diving equipment, as well as listings of retailers and distributors. Patent advice was also offered to look at similar patent applications and possible pitfalls in the patent process”Matthew LewisFounder & MD Funkyfins

“The Library’s staff are a great help for the new inventor… The Library inspires confidence and empowers the lone entrepreneur”

Mark SheahanInvention of the Year Award 2001/2, Grand Prix at Inpex 2003

We have much anecdotal evidence to demonstrate the value of the British Library

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We decided to obtain a composite measure to reflect the total value of the British Library to the UK economy

… TO OUTCOMES

How much value, in monetary terms, does the Library add to the nation as a whole?

What benefit does the Library bring relative to the funding it receives?

What would be the economic impact if the Library ceased to exist?

FROM INPUTS AND OUTPUTS …

550,000 items received through legal deposit

8,300,000 items supplied remotely & consulted in Reading Rooms

FROM ANECDOTES …

‘ Contemporary publishing depends upon the research and scholarship of the past. Both publishers and authors rely on the British Library’s unrivalled collections …’

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Contents

Inputs and Outputs

Anecdotes and case studies

Outcomes

Broad approach

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We undertook a quantitative assessment of the value generated by the Library to the UK economy

An independent assessment of the value of the British Library to the UK economy

Contingent valuation survey methodology was used

Enables value to be measured in cases where not all services have market prices

Typically asks: ‘How much would people be willing to pay (or willing to accept) to maintain the existence of (or be compensated for the loss of) a service?’

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What would be the most you would be

willing to pay through taxes to maintain the

BL?

How much would you be prepared to sell your

reader pass for, assuming you could not then replace

it?

How much do you invest, in terms of time and money, to make use of the Library?

How much would you have to pay to use alternatives to the

Library, if such alternatives could be

found?

How much would your usage change if the

price went up by 50%?

Willingness to pay

Willingness to accept

Investment in access

Price elasticity

Cost of alternatives

We derived estimates of the value of the Library through five main types of question

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Our aim was to place a monetary value on the British Library

Objective was to derive total value of the Library – use value, option value and existence value

But not all the Library’s services could be valued. We focused on

Reading room access to collections (over 200 users surveyed)

Remote document supply and bibliographic services (100 users)

Public exhibitions and events (benchmark survey)

Indirect value of existence and option to use the Library to wider society (over 2000 members of the public)

We did not include

Emerging products and services

Products and services generating low value

Overseas users (wanted value to UK citizen)

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WTP WTA Investment in access

Price elasticity

Alternatives Approach

Reading room users

£116 £273 £263 £555 Survey

Remote document supply users

√ √ √ √ √ Survey

Exhibition visitors

£7.30 Bench mark

Indirect value to society

£6.30 Survey

Different techniques were applied to derive values for these different components of the study

√ Numbers for remote users withheld for reasons of commercial interest

Selected most realistic value – in blue Scaled up to represent total population Aggregated the 4 values This gave value generated by BL

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The study showed that the British Library generates value around 4.4 times the level of its public funding

Note (1) £83m was base Grant in Aid in 2003/04

For every £1 of public funding the British Library receives each year, £4.40 is generated for the economy

If public funding of the Library were to end, the UK would lose £280m per annum

Excludes value generated for non-UK registered users which is considerable

£83m

£363m

Total Public funding(1)

Benefitcost ratio4.4:1

Total value relative to Grant-in-Aid

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Of the £363m of value generated by the Library each year:

£59m comes directly from users of the services we tested

£304m comes from wider society

In other words, a key part of the British Library’s value:

Reflects ‘existence’ and ‘option to use’ value for wider UK society

Reflects a wide range of positive impacts that the Library generates for society and that society recognises

A significant part of our value is indirect value to the wider UK society

‘It’s irreplaceable

and it’s a memory of mankind’

‘It’s very important that what’s there should not

be lost’

‘Everyone can benefit

from it’

‘It’s for education’

‘It’s an important cultural

centre for the country’

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Contents

Inputs and Outputs

Anecdotes and case studies

Outcomes

Broad approach

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The study forms part of a broader approach to repositioning the British Library

We have derived many benefits from this study:

First extensive evaluation of benefits of the British Library to the UK economy

Sound investment for money

Public accountability

Mandate for continued investment

We need to redouble our efforts in demonstrating value in next Spending Review by focusing on our support for major political issues

Value for money

Transformation and innovation

Knowledge economy

Digital Britain

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Value for money

The British Library uses the Kaizen Continuous Improvement Programme in nearly 80 projects to improve customer services and efficiencies practice. One project that benefited from this approach was document supply productivity: the programme has led to 14% productivity gains, salary savings of £121k per year, and the creation of an extra 850 linear metres of shelving space

£4.9m efficiencies achieved in 2008/09 – 28% above the Government efficiency savings target

Reduction in staff numbers by 363 fte, from 2,340 to 1977, between 2000 and 2009

Overall sickness absence managed down from 9.3 days in 2002/03 to 6.3 days in 2008/09

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Transformation and innovation

The UK Research Reserve, located at the BL, provides a central store of low use journals for universities, freeing up shelf space and resources at HE institutions around the UK. UKRR allows more efficient use of resources across the sector, saving £37m over 5 years.

£33.5m revenue generated in 2008/09 to supplement our public funding

Estimated £1.7m worth of value from strategic partnerships, e.g:

£0.5m value in kind from our Business and IP Centre partnerships

Document supply to top 50 pharmaceutical companies

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Knowledge economy

The Library’s Business & IP Centre supports entrepreneurs from their first inspiration to growth of their business. With no background in the food industry, Adam Pritchard developed a juice drink from pomegranates. He researched the fruit in our science reading rooms, and the viability of the business idea in our BIPC.

Adam’s fruit juice is now sold throughout the UK and his company has an annual turnover of £10m.

We host UK PubMed Central which provides free access to a permanent online archive of peer-reviewed research papers in the medical and life sciences

We contribute to International Development through our £10m Endangered Archives programme and the £3m World Collections Programme

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Digital Britain

The British Library 2012 Olympic legacy website will be going live in September 2009 and will remain live for at least 6 months after the Olympics has ended, when it will be archived for future researchers

The Codex Sinaiticus is one of the earliest Christian Bibles. A collaboration led by the BL has succeeded in reuniting virtually 800 pages and fragments from this treasure. People around the world can now explore high resolution digital images of the 4th century book

We aim to create a critical mass of digital content by exploring a range of sustainable business models, involving commercial and public sector partners

We have worked with a number of partners so far to digitise:

100,000 19th century books

2 m pages of 19th century newspapers

4,000 hours of archival sound recordings

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Conclusion

Demonstrating value is about effective delivery of core purpose and vision

Effectiveness depends on adequate resourcing of the core tasks

Finite resources will increasingly impose choices and priority decisions

We need to be clear about our priorities in terms of what constitutes value

Or else….

Value will be eroded and impact lost