Advanced Math (don’t worry, not too complicated) for Library Cooperation By Kati Radics Librarian for the West European Collections, UCLA

HIGH PRICES OF ONLINE RESOURCES Pressing need to find methods to evaluate value Pressing need to find methods to decrease price Value Based Pricing (University of California) Cooperating Consortia (UC, GNARP, etc.)

PRINT MATERIALS - METRICS, CALCULATIONS FOR COOPERATION? Cooperations on print often rely on vague principles (e.g. X collects A topics, Y collects B topics) Necessity to foresee the outcome of cooperation in volume (copy) or title numbers Necessity to plan the financial consequences (or prerequisites) of cooperation

TARGET OF COOPERATION Possibilities: topics, types of publications (serials vs monos, microform vs. print, etc.) Target duplication level – which range? Dups? Triplets? Quadruplets? Quintuplets? “Our collections are redundant,” “we collect the same materials, ” “high level of duplications” – NOT ALWAYS PROBLEMATIC!! Research concentrates on specific areas, specific key works and problems (See T. Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962) Major standard works, authors – each library should have them

TARGET OF COOPERATION

Reality will be a mixture of duplicates, triplets, quadruplets. Tendency: decrease the number of copies if expected use is low or not so high.

TARGET LOW USE MATERIALS Buy less copies of low use materials, INCREASE THE PROPORTION OF UNIQUE MATERIALS (books of which the cooperative partners buy only one copy across the consortium) ENHANCE ILL

EARMARK PERCENTAGE OF BUDGET FOR UNIQUE In each institution of the Consortium:

DECREASE THE NUMBER OF DUPS, TRIPLETS, QUADRUPLETS… The purple line (Decrease Mixed Dups, Triplets, Quadruples) represents the most probable version

IMAGINARY COOPERATION Imaginary consortium of 5 University Libraries Same Budget Earmarked 20% of their budgets spent for unique materials (or any other percentage that is bigger than existing proportion of unique titles) Prerequisite: ability to see the other institutions’ selections!!

OUTCOME OF COOPERATION By selecting more unique materials than before, the summary of the titles in the 5 institutions will GROW BROADER COVERAGE FORMULA: Pre-cooperation % of unique titles = a Earmarked % of budget for cooperation = b

% Increase of title holdings in cooperative group = >(b-a) and < 2(b-a) Average extra need of shelf space = (Z : 100 x (2(b-a)-(b-a))) : 35 Where Z is the pre-cooperation number of books in the collections of the consortium; A shelf is 35” An average book spine is 1”

BUDGET CUT VERSION At decreasing budget – increase proportion of unique titles Keep title coverage across consortium

MAIN ADVANTAGES Goal of cooperation fully controllable Key players: librarians Result helps main function of libraries: PRESERVATION OF HUMAN CULTURE BY BROADER COLLECTIONS