The Eternal To-Do List: Making Ebooks work in Libraries

DDA: How best practices lead to a healthy bottom line

Steve Bosch , University of Arizona

Presentation Topics• An overview of NISO RP-20-2014, Demand Driven

Acquisition of Monographs, Recommended Practices

• Case study, how the University of Arizona implemented a broad DDA program for print and ebooks

• Outcomes seen from the program and how best practices led to positive results

• In May 2014, NISO released Demand Driven Acquisition of Monographs, a set of recommended practices. http://www.niso.org/workrooms/dda/

• Libraries have been implementing various forms of DDA programs for the past several years. Until the NISO project, there wasn’t a codified set of practices for the marketplace.

• This document was the result of two years’ work by the

Working Group and is a concise summary of practices that support sustainable models of DDA that work for libraries, vendors, aggregators, and publishers.

NISO DDA – Recommended Practices

Key Aspects:DDA models must be sustainableDDA models must support free discovery

DDA models must support temporary lease of the content

DDA models must support purchase

Define the breadth and scope

Define budget constraints E / print or both Access compared to purchase

Set the Goals and Objectives for the DDA program

Operationalize the Goals and Objectives by Establishing Parameters for the DDA Program:

Discovery trigger STL and loan periods Managing financial transactions

Supplier selection

ProfilingSupplies a selection pool that meets the scope of the program

Content meets needs of user community

Current only or retrospective

The work processes associated with DDA programs are all processes driven by metadata management. It is critical to get this right!!!

Managing the Selection Pool•Add / remove to insure the content meets the scope of the program•Criteria to manage the pool, age of content, subject, use, etc•Availability of content from supplier

The DDA program needs to be assessed

To test assumptions To manage expenditures To insure that the program is

meeting the goals To insure that work processes

are meeting program needs

Case study: how the University of Arizona implemented a broad DDA program for print and ebooks

The UA has had many DDA programs over the years. The early programs showed the problems with DDA and were learning experiences. What is described in the next few slides was a very broad program that started in 2010 and continues today.

The NISO RP was not around when this started but I was a member of the Working Group and provided input based on the UA experience and also reviewed our program based on the information shared from others.

Goal Plan Process

The UA had a clear picture of what we wanted to achieve through a DDA program: To provide broader access to monographs than could be provided through traditional channels

To purchase content for the permanent collection with a high ROI

To reduce processing costs

PLAN:• In 2010 Blackwell had been our primary book supplier. • When they were acquired by Baker and Taylor we had

to make drastic changes so It was decided that that RFI for book services would focus on DDA and not approval plans.• The RFI was very specific so this became our plan for

implementing DDA.• As DDA impacts many areas of the organization an

implementation team was convened including members of all public and technical service groups impacted.

• In order to meet our goal of increased access, the DDA program included print and ebooks.• The profile that was used was the former approval

plan profile including all “form selections” - we were exposing far more content to users than before.• Since selection of ebooks had been spotty for many

years and there were gaps in print books as well, a set of historical records going back 2 years was also included (deduped against current holdings).

Process:

A focus for the DDA program was on ownership so no STL was included in the plan.

We desired a robust discovery experience so the trigger event was defined to allow a great deal of exploration before a purchase was made.

The use reporting needs were defined and implemented.

The technical processes around loading discovery and purchase records as well as automating the placement of print orders for DDA items took considerable efforts and lots of TESTING, TESTING, and MORE TESTING!This is a not a static process and we have made many changes to our technical spec profiles

A project team was formed to develop metrics and implement data gathering processes that would make the assessment data easily available

Data gathered included:• Costs of items purchased / cost per

use, $ expend per title exposed, overall level of purchases by subject, by publisher, by LC, by published date

• What savings did the institution experience? Including book costs, staff costs, ILL costs. Amount ($) of approval plan cost vs. DDA costs

• Print PDA. What is the level of customer satisfaction?

• Was there a difference in patron activity or library response based on patron type: faculty, grad, undergrad, dept. affiliation, trends, etc.

• Track print PDA delivery to be sure fulfillment and speed of delivery meet the established quality standard

• % of items selected to available titles - by subject, by publisher, by LC, by published date (both print and eBook PDA) What % of added PDA titles were selected by customers?

• % of items purchased that were print vs. electronic vs. titles exposed

• Measure the time between placement of orders and the original ingest date for the selection record and records that have never been requested

• Circulation/use of all items: approval, print PDA, e PDA: especially subsequent use after purchase

• Comparing collection circulation stats between now, a year ago, 5 years ago by LC classification

The data required for all these metrics was MASSIVE.Gathering and analyzing this data was like trying to drink from a fire hydrant!

The data was compiled and placed into a system that provided a dashboard of reports that summarized results.

Overall the demand driven program was extremely effective.When compared to previous purchasing programs it now supplies 3 times the content, at 1/3 the cost with 5 times the use of purchased materials.

Although the overall goal of the assessment project was achieved (validating success of the program) much of the data gathered and the dashboard reports were quickly discarded as they just were not ever really used. DO NOT continue to gather data when it is not being used!

Since 2011, 124,000 selection records have been added to the catalog and 18,121 titles were purchased at a cost of $1,743,146. The purchased books have seen over 124,000 uses. By comparison, the last year that the Library had an approval plan (2010), $1,116,803 was spent for 13,723 approval books. The approval plan supplied about 275 new books per week, the DDA program now adds over 700 new records per week.

DDA RESULTS

DDA PROGRAM OUTCOMESActivity through December 2014.

Selection Records Purchased ExpendedPrint: 52,535 2,640 $127,457E-books: 71,507 3,675 $625,134Totals: 124,042 6,315 $752,591

Activity through December 2013.Selection Records Purchased Expended

Print: 46,033 2,790 $142,746E-books: 59,073 1,631 $275,043Totals: 105,106 4,421 $417,789

Activity through December 2012Selection Records Purchased Expended

Print: 33,720 3,231 $148,205E-books: 39,998 2,731 $322,151Totals: 73,718 5,962 $470,356

Activity through December 2011.Selection Records Purchased Expended

Print: 14,128 723 $33,666E-books: 28,786 700 $68,745Totals: 42,914 1,423 $102,410

Use of the 8,737 ebooks purchased by the program is now over 93,000 unique uses. (over 1,182,952 uses in the Counter reports)

Use of the 9,384 print books purchased: 19,950 check outs with 11,547 renewals. The former approval plan averaged about a 52% circulation rate after 4 years.

DDA RESULTS

Goal Plan Process

Conclusion: By following sound practices as outlined in the NISO RP-20-2014 the UA managed to meet our goals•Provides broader access to monographs•Purchases content for the permanent collection with a high ROI•Reduces processing costs

Stephen Bosch University of Arizona Library 1510 East University PO Box 210055 Tucson, AZ 85721-0055 520-621-6452 520-621-8276 fax boschs@email.arizona.edu