[Mla-cds] Managing Costs for Point-Of-Need Information Service Model

Tue Jan 18 20:09:23 CST 2011

Hello Everyone:

In the post below on January 14th, Liz Lorbeer inquired, "I'd be interested if anyone has updated their collection development policy to reflect upon patron driven access or a change in collecting activities due to budgetary restraints."  I'm breaking a long, work-overload imposed vow of silence with ALL listservs to answer Liz's query.  I wish to contribute my ideas on this important issue for hospital library collection development.

I recently wrote a policy/procedure statement about the online resources purchasing strategy for Bon Secours eLibrary.  I prepared this document for our corporate materials management director and contracts manager, because I needed to justify our approach to purchasing online resources for the entire health system.  The statement is necessarily under one page long, with three more pages for figures and endnotes.   Therefore, the statement focuses on the main points and omits many details.   

The statement seems to have done the job.  I've received no objections from our corporate office about the purchasing strategy, and we are implementing the strategy.   I realize that publishers may read this statement by my posting it on mla-cds.  I don't object because publishers need to realize that increase in spend must be based on more than wishful thinking - by both librarians and publishers.  I strongly believe that the best way to convince healthcare senior leadership to increase spend with publishers is with usage data, because the evidence speaks volumes.   I offer the following statement to mla-cds as a logical and cost-effective collection development policy that addresses the current service and economic realities facing corporate healthcare system libraries.

Bon Secours eLibrary
Managing Costs for Point-Of-Need Information Service Model

The mission for Bon Secours eLibrary is to empower clinicians with immediate access to quality knowledge-based information (KBI) to support world class evidence-based practice.  A primary objective is to integrate KBI directly into the patient care workflow for immediate use at the point-of-care (see two figures below).1   A secondary objective is to provide easy, immediate and convenient self-service access to comprehensive and high quality online KBI resources.  This point-of-need information service model is user-centric, demand-driven, and removes major obstacles to accessing and using KBI and evidence that confront our busy clinicians.  

Managing costs of this point-of-need model requires careful planning and implementation. The general strategy is to unify the purchasing of shared online information resources relevant to users' needs.2    Details of the strategy involve careful monitoring and control of two basic types of costs.  The first type of cost is borrowing, i.e., interlibrary loans.  Interlibrary loan is used when an item is not available locally, but it isn't meant to replace ownership or leasing of essential KBI resources.  Interlibrary loan is also inconvenient because the item is not available immediately, and the transaction requires handling by intermediaries.  Requests are processed with the Docline interlibrary loan system.  Docline usage is reviewed annually to identify high use titles that require copyright royalty fees, and transactional full-text access or subscription (explained below).  The estimated average cost of $26.00 is used for an interlibrary loan.3

The second type of cost for online information is leasing, i.e., transactional full-text access and subscriptions.  Both of these are prepaid expenses.  Transactional full-text access is a cost-effective approach for leasing that provides high user satisfaction because it is demand-driven.  This leasing approach provides immediate access to many titles from a single publisher at a flat fee per transaction for a full-text journal article or book chapter.  Costs range from [$ Amount] (Publisher X) to [$ Amount] (Publisher Y) per transaction.4   Transactional full-text access enables effective cost control.  It pays for what is actually used rather than what might be used, and lets increase in spend with a vendor depend on increase in use.  The goal is to negotiate a fair and reasonable transactional access cost.  Transaction usage is monitored to determine when it is more cost-effective on a cost-per-use basis to subscribe to a title.

The other approach to leasing information is subscriptions.  Managing annual subscriptions is labor-intensive and expensive because much information must be collected and thoroughly evaluated to do it well.5   Bon Secours eLibrary has a draft collection development policy, but it hasn't been finalized and implemented for the reason above.6   Prior use of an online resource is also no guarantee of future use.   Leasing information by subscription is preferred when it is the only leasing option, or for titles with high subscriber circulation base and high impact factor, or when the past cost-per-use is lower than the cost for transactional full-text access.7

In summary, the point-of-need information service model for Bon Secours eLibrary is based on a purchasing strategy that always seeks to buy more for less.   The overall purchasing strategy is to minimize costs and maximize access to online KBI resources by leasing information with either transactional full-text access or subscription (whichever is available and offers more for less), and borrowing what isn't immediately available.  The benefits from this strategy are customer satisfaction, eliminating waste, optimizing budgets, economy of scale, cost-effectiveness and efficient integration with other Bon Secours services and resources.  

Figure 1 - Bon Secours eLibrary Integration into ZynxOrder

Figure 2 - Bon Secours eLibrary Integration into Isabel Healthcare

Endnotes

1 For example, eLibrary resources have been integrated into the clinical decision support systems: ZynxHealth and Isabel (see two figures attached).   Another example is DynaMed, an eLibrary evidence-based resource with an external link in ConnectCare. DynaMed will almost certainly be integrated into ConnectCare at the contextual level in the near future.  The ongoing development of ways to provide KBI at the point-of-care supports excellence in clinical decisions and optimal use of patient care resources.  

2 The details for unified purchasing of shared resources is available in the following document: FY11 Planned Expenses for Bon Secours Virginia. Available on IRIS at: [corporate intranet page]
Note: The purchase of information in print format is excluded from the purchasing strategy because Bon Secours eLibrary is exclusively an online service.  

3 The cost estimate for an interlibrary request is based on the 1992 ARL cost study that found research libraries spent on average $18.62 to borrow (ranging from $9.84 to $30.27):  ARL/RLG Interlibrary Loan Cost Study: A Joint Effort by the Association of Research Libraries and the Research Libraries Group. Marilyn M. Roche, Research Libraries Group. June 1993. 
http://books.google.com/books?id=k9LgAAAAMAAJ&lpg=PP9&ots=tsYSE_ql1W&dq=%20%22interlibrary%20loan%20cost%20study%22&lr&pg=PP9#v=onepage&q&f=false 

Note: The cost estimate is adjusted for inflation to $26.00 based on a 40% increase in the CPI between 1994 and 2009. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Consumer Price Index  http://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables.htm 

4 See above, FY11 Planned Expenses for Bon Secours Virginia. ("FY11 Planned Expenses" worksheet, "Cost per Unit of Service" column S, "Publisher X Pre-paid transactions" row 30, and "Publisher Y" row 32).

5 For example, see the research article by the writer on hospital library journal collection development: Colglazier ML Jr. The causal relationship between clinical activity and journal use in a hospital library as analyzed by multiple regression. Bull Med Libr Assoc. 1996 Oct;84(4):569-71. PubMed PMID: 8913561; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC226198.  
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8913561  

6 Bon Secours Health System Inc. Library Network Collection Development Policy (Draft 04/03/2006). Available on IRIS at: [corporate intranet address]

7 "Journal Impact Factor" is a quantitative value of the relative importance of a journal within a subject field that is based on the number of reference citations to the journal.  An explanation is on the Web at: http://www.sciencegateway.org/impact/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor .

Best regards,

Merle Colglazier
Bon Secours eLibrary
Bon Secours Virginia Health System

________________________________________
From: mla-cds-bounces at colldev.mlanet.org [mailto:mla-cds-bounces at colldev.mlanet.org] On Behalf Of Elizabeth R Lorbeer
Sent: Friday, January 14, 2011 3:07 PM
To: CDSection
Subject: [Mla-cds] Collection Development in a Changing Environment: Policies and Organization for College and University Libraries" (CLIP Note #42)

Hello Members:

You may be interested in ACRL's latest CLIP Note "Collection Development in a Changing Environment: Policies and Organization for College and University Libraries."  Lately, I've been thinking about my library's collection development policy.   We're migrating to a patron driven and mediated access, and with budgetary reductions our current policy doesn't reflect what's really going on.    I'd be interested if anyone has updated their collection development policy to reflect upon patron driven access or a change in collecting activities due to budgetary restraints.  

The blurb from  the book reads:

"Collection Development in a Changing Environment" highlights collection development and management policies for college and university libraries. For each collection development policy element, the authors provide examples of traditional policy language along with examination of unique, forward thinking and strategic language. The topical organization of the work will be useful for a wide variety of large and small college and university libraries, and will facilitate creation of new collections policies or inform revisions and updates of existing policies. "Collection Development in a Changing Environment" is the first digital publication in the ClipNote series. The digital format allows the authors to feature hyperlinked excerpts of policies from more than 60 libraries. Available in PDF e-book format, "Collection Development in a Changing Environment" (CLIP Note #42) is available for purchase by credit card only through the ALA Online Store. ISBN-13: 978-0-8389-8553-3"

If you purchased access to this title, let me know your thoughts if the work truly embodies "forward thinking and strategic language." 

This may be a good topic to discuss for our annual CDS business meeting.

Liz Lorbeer
Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences
University of Alabama at Birmingham

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