1 CONCERT 2004 Power to the Librarian Delivering Transparency in the Serials Market Doug McMillan Managing Director Bowker UK Ltd

2 Towards Librarian control  Significant changes in Subscription models and journal access over recent years  Usage Statistics provide a degree of library control  Aggregated collections sometimes offer quantity at value  Consortia key in delivering price benefits  Growth of Open Access

3 Delivering Transparency Fundamental issues remain in:  Analytical assessment of holdings  Objective comparison and evaluation of offerings

4 Transparency from two perspectives Internal Library holdings – quality, depth, coverage and specialisation External Publisher and aggregator journals and packages – quality, price, coverage,

5 Internal Transparency central knowledge base  Need to bring together and maintain a central knowledge base about the institution’s collections  Establish and maintain a core journal collection base knowledge quality  Retain an in-depth knowledge of their collection’s quality for accreditation and curriculum support  Very often a time- consuming, manual process  How does an Institution define core?  What Industry standards define journal quality?

6 External Transparency  Need to understand what research sources are available, relative to the institution’s own collection evaluate offerings  Compare publisher data to evaluate offerings, prices, availability, scope, etc.  Compare Aggregated collections (600) for subject coverage, quality etc  Research and Time intensive  Manual process  No single tool that enables comprehensive comparative analysis of collections by Industry standards?

7 Challenges for the Serials Librarian  Increasing serials costs  Increasing serials costs and shrinking budgets quality research material  Need to meet demand from end-users for quality research material  Need to make tough selection/de-selection decisions  How can this be achieved while maintaining a core collection that is both high in established quality and relevant to Institution specialisation?

8 Criteria for Serials Selection and De-selection  Faculty requests  Student requests  Holdings of peer libraries  Publisher  Electronic availability  Cost  Peer reviewed  ISI Impact Factor  Usage  Abstracted/Indexed

9 Same Criteria apply for analysis and evaluation  Electronic availability  Cost  Peer reviewed?  ISI Impact Factor?  Usage  Abstracted/Indexed  Holdings of peer libraries

10 How Bowker is helping  Bowker has traditionally provided objective information for librarians  Long involvement in the serials world with Ulrich’s  Identify and address some of the problems faced by serials librarians in developing and maintaining journal collections  Create objective tools that save time, money and effort

11 What If You Could  Quickly identify gaps in core disciplines?  Identify potential journals to drop?  Compare publisher offerings?  Compare your collection to a peer group?  Improve your negotiating position with publishers and aggregators?  Quickly generate reports to demonstrate strengths for accreditation and weaknesses for budget justifications?

12 What Are We Providing?  A web-based analytical service which enables:  A new view of holdings  Enhanced analysis capability  Better communications ability combined with  A comprehensive, high-quality reference database – Ulrichsweb.com

13 Solutions Provided  Merging “internal” and “external” data  Library catalog data  Library catalog data for journals and other material usage statistics  Locally-created databases of usage statistics  Institution-specific contact information  Electronic subscriptions  Electronic subscriptions to databases and services held by other institutions  Resources held by other institutions  Quantitative data on publishers and their publications  Industry benchmarking  Industry benchmarking standards  Detailed information on specific serials titles  Links toweb-based resources  Links to free and fee web-based resources

14 Solutions Provided bjective, quantitativedata  Objective, quantitative data that can be used to make decisions: Collection development Deselection (weeding)  Identifies gaps and redundancies  Identifies gaps and redundancies in coverage  Improves negotiating power of institution for publisher and aggregator offerings Facilitates effective collection decision-making

15 Product Overview  Components of the product:  Analytical reporting tools Ulrichs  Site-wide access to Ulrichsweb.com  Publisher reporting module  Collection “audit” report  Options  Analyze a single library’s collection  Analyze multiple collections within a library or research center consortium  Evaluate peer groups  Evaluate and compare Aggregated collections of Journals  Evaluate the offerings of serials publishers

16 Ulrich’s Serials Analysis System Ulrich’s  Evaluate the library’s serials collection against Ulrich’s in over 900 subject areas  Ulrich’s Universe = 189,000 active titles  Ulrich’s Core = 52,000 academic/scholarly  Filter the library’s collection by  Refereed status  Abstracted/Indexed  Electronic format availability  ISI Impact Factor (for mutual subscribers)  Recommended in Magazines for Libraries  Country of Publication  Language of Publication

17 Multiple tools

18 coverage Identify coverage by subject gaps Identify gaps in your collection by subject

19 View Details in Ulrichsweb.com

20 View Aggregator Details in Ulrichsweb.com

21 currently held View titles currently held for potential de-selection Use various criteria: Usage Cost ISI Impact Factor Electronic Peer Reviewed Abstracted/Indexed Reviews

22 When You Need to Benchmark Comparable Peers like me  What are libraries like me subscribing to? comparable  Is my serials collection of comparable depth and scope? my peers  Am I missing important titles my peers are subscribing to? Aspirational Peers next-tier libraries  What are the next-tier libraries buying? stack up  How does my serials collection stack up? enhance  Are my library’s users getting access to titles that will enhance their research experience?

23 Option 1Compare Your Library to a Peer Group Option 1: Compare Your Library to a Peer Group  Get useful information for benchmarking your serials collection.  Identify how your serials collection is like – or unlike – the collections of libraries with similar demographics.  Learn which titles match – and don’t match – titles held by your peers. Option 2Compare a Peer Group to Ulrich’s Option 2: Compare a Peer Group to Ulrich’s  Evaluate the titles that your peers are subscribing to.  Analyze the aggregate collections of actual and aspirational peer groups. Peer Group Reporting Options

24 Compare Your Library to a Peer Group in common  Titles held in common unique  Titles unique to your library not found  Titles in the Peer Group not found in your library’s collection

25 Compare Your Library to a Peer Group

26 Comparison Reports  Compare any two more lists of ISSN  Improve negotiating position with Publishers and Aggregators

27 Compare List A to List B

28 Comparison of aggregators with ISI filter

29 Library collection vs Aggregator package

30 Comparison download

31 Summary of Benefits  Save time, effort and resources in collection analysis – save money  Implement decisions using a unbiased frame of reference  Improve negotiating position with vendors to save money  Benchmark your holdings versus peers and other institutions  Improve communication of journal resources and availability to faculty, staff and students