1. UKRR and Collaborative Collection Management: from a user perspective
Jane Saunders Head of Collections Services Leeds University Library
I thought I would first set the scene in terms of what we have been doing around management of print in Leeds University Library, but also talk about the place of UKRR in that for us, but also other collaborative, or semi collaborative endeavours.

2. Our Journey 1997 – Expanding print collections
Late 1990s – Stock editing “student texts”
Early 2000s – Stock editing main collections
2007 – UKRR Journals
2009 – Collection categorisation
2011 – Copac CM Tool
2016 – GreenGlass
I have started in 1997, because that is when I joined the Library at Leeds, and at that point conversations were already underway about how we could cope with our print collections. The issue was essentially seen as one of containment (there were clearly preservation issues also, but fitting things in was the major preoccupation). The Library had had in the mid 1990s a new extension, and some shelving in the older part of the building had been taken down to make room for more reader spaces – it was at the very start of the expansion of student numbers – you could see where the shelving had been, So there had been a sense of expanded space, especially for our Special Collections, but that sense of space for collections had evaporated within a couple of years.
Our Journey

3. Do we need all this print?
Metric - Monographs
Leeds Recorded Uses
Leeds % of Holdings / GG Average
Zero recorded uses
713,898
44% / 41%
Greater than 3 recorded uses
606,370
38% / 29%
Publications more than 10 years old
1,436,865
89% / 87%
So the looming question at that time was do we need all this print. These figures are derived from our data on our print monograph holdings held in GreenGlass, so these are obviously current, not historical. What they do show though is that a 44% of our collection has no recorded use, with only 38% having more than 3 recorded uses. Also, nearly 90% of our collection is more than 10 years old. So we were probably right that a lot of our material wasn’t needed for immediate, or even not so immediate, local use. But we had very little to go on back then. Our Library Management System dated from around 1996, so there was little usage data to be had (date label checking was the only real way to do it) – a situation that has improved over the years. There was no easy way to find out what was held elsewhere, other than title by title checking. Again, that situation is very different now.
Data from OCLC’s GreenGlass

4. Our Journey 1997 – Expanding print collections
Late 1990s – Stock editing “student texts”
Early 2000s – Stock editing main collections
2007 – UKRR Journals
2009 – Collection categorisation
2011 – Copac CM Tool
2016 – GreenGlass
What we could do though was to manage our student texts. Since 1975, when we opened the Edward Boyle Library (our largest library on campus) we have at Leeds kept the multiple copies of texts we purchase to support reading lists separate from our main research collections. This has made this collection much easier to manage over the years so since the late 1990s we have had an annual stock editing programme for this collection. Initially academic departments were involved, but over a period of years it became accepted that this was a largely usage stats driven exercise.
It was harder though to develop a strategy for our main collections. We did attempt some stock editing, but our academic colleagues were very uncomfortable – and we were keenly aware that we couldn’t be certain that we were not discarding rare materials. The stock editing we did where discards were concerned was hugely time consuming – every item was individually looked at the shelf – apart from anything else it wasn’t scaleable. Consequently most of our stock editing around this time involved moving lesser used stock to our stores – and this was helped by the fact that in 2011 we opened a new store. However it soon became clear that our collections were still growing – that our new space wouldn’t see us through the 25 years we were hoping it would, and that we would need to do more.
For us therefore UKRR for journals was something we were ready to embrace, and we joined the scheme in 2008.
Our Journey

5. UKRR Journals at Leeds 80% of submitted titles withdrawn 3,057m saved
Dates
Phase / Cycle
Titles Submitted
July - Nov 2009
2 / 1
808
Dec 2009 – May 2010
2 / 2
216
Dec 2011 – May 2012
2 / 6
162
June – Nov 2013
2 / 9
446
Dec 2013 – May 2014
2/ 10 70
July 2016 – Feb 2017
2 / 13
971
Feb ongoing
3 / 2
1888
80% of submitted titles withdrawn
3,057m saved
490 parts sent to BL
This shows you our activity over the years. We did achieve academic buy in. There was concern over reliability of e-journals at the time, and also the quality of e was an issue for some subjects – notably I think maths where there was concern over equations. However, we joined Portico (2011), and consulted with academics. Lists were prepared etc. Also of course our academic colleagues could see the issues we had with space, and also they didn’t particularly like the idea of stock editing monographs. As UKRR was well funded in the beginning we were paid for the work up until cycle 10 (£72,000).
The financial model was different for cycle 13, but we still needed the services of UKRR – we had some 6000 journal titles that we wanted to review. This was too much for UKRR to handle, particularly within the timeframe for us in Leeds (we were working on a building project at the time, so we were organising our collection management activities around the timeline for the building project). So, in agreement with UKRR we agreed that we could submit around 1000 titles, and so we ran our own checks on the 6000 titles - and I’ll say a bit more about that in a moment.
In terms of the titles we are asked to retain, in the earlier cycles we were being asked to retain about 19% of what we submitted. In more recent cycles this has gone to around 21% - so the average is about 20% retention, which is fine with us.
We are now in phase 3. We have about 6,500 titles we would like to put through, and we are sending through about 400 titles a month. In terms of the process, we do find it time consuming to prepare the data in the format required by UKRR – so for that level of throughput we have a third of an fte working on this.

6. Internal Checks – UKRR Phase 2/13
So, in agreement with UKRR we agreed that we could submit around 1000 titles, and so we ran our own checks to submit the most “at risk” titles. This chart shows the checking. The total we started with 5,812.
Protected at the start means those titles we didn’t put through UKRR either because we had already agreed to keep them, or because they formed part of collections that we had decided we were keeping in their entirety (eg. Yorkshire, caving – we already had a few of those ). Current subscriptions, law (we weren’t protecting the whole of law, but did decide to keep the journals), more than 15 held elsewhere – interesting, but we felt that if these were so widespread we should keep them in print (likely to be missed) – only 173 of those, fewer than 3 copies in Russell Group then we would keep as these were rare (2658), 3 or 4 in the Russell Group then put through UKRR (568), then retrieval from store and loans data was looked at. We did put 971 titles through UKRR, so we did include some of those items where we had retrieval/loan data, because some of that data is manual and patchy, and possibly some of the fewer then 3 went through to UKRR.

7. Our Journey 1997 – Expanding print collections
Late 1990s – Stock editing “student texts”
Early 2000s – Stock editing main collections
2007 – UKRR Journals
2009 – Collection categorisation
2011 – Copac CM Tool
2016 – GreenGlass
So UKRR for journals has been critical to our stock management operations at Leeds. However, our print monograph collections were still expanding, including our Special Collections, so we still had an issue of containment, plus also pressure on space for study. We still needed a way to stock edit our main collections.
We felt that it was unlikely that we would need to retain all the print monographs we held – we felt that some of our collections were likely to be more valuable than others, so in 2009 we began to think about categorising our collections, so that we could target resource in terms of retention and preservation. We came up with 4 headings which fall into 2 broad areas. Firstly heritage and legacy collections, which would be collections we would keep (heritage being those we are still developing), and secondly finite and self renewing collections (finite being those not added to, and which could be let go, whereas self renewing would be live, but with insufficient historic breadth to warrant overall retention).
When we first started to look at this we were relying on our own internal documentation and expertise with regard to our collections. However, we realised that at collection level we wanted to understand the breadth of our collections relative those elsewhere, and at item level we wanted to understand relative rarity. We felt that understanding the value of our collections in terms of breadth and uniqueness relative to those held elsewhere, combined with local usage patters, would enable us to categorise our collections.
We have been working with our White Rose partners – the libraries of the universities of York and Sheffield since 2003/4 on collection issues. Over the years consideration has been given to shared storage, but by about 2008/9 we started to think about categorisation together and the need for a tool to help with this. So in 2011 the White Rose libraries worked with Jisc to develop a tool which would enable us to assess our collections through Copac, and so the Copac Collection Management Tool was developed. At Leeds we have been making heavy use of the Copac Collection Management Tool to assess our collections (since about 2014?). To date we have categorised our science and engineering and social sciences collections (into the the 2 broad categories) and are now refining those, and have started work now on our arts and humanities collections.
Our Journey

8. Collection categorisation, the CCM Tool and UKRR
This is an extract from an internal Leeds document. You can see our methodology for categorisation has a number of steps, but there are 2 very mechanistic approaches that rely on the Copac Collection Management Tool (the CCM Tool).
On the back of our categorisation of science and engineering and social sciences collections we have carried out a stock editing programme for our stack sequences. The result of this was that form a total of c. 47,000 monographs (equivalent to 1,300 linear metres of stock) around 50% was retained in open-access, 20% relegated to Stores and 30% of low-use and nationally heavily duplicated titles were discarded; thereby permitting the removal of about 700 linear metres of monographs from the open shelves.
Our approach to journal retention is influenced by our categorisation. We will retain historic print journals in collections which are either in whole, or for the most part, designated as heritage.

9. Our Journey 1997 – Expanding print collections
Late 1990s – Stock editing “student texts”
Early 2000s – Stock editing main collections
2007 – UKRR Journals
2009 – Collection categorisation
2011 – Copac CM Tool
2016 – GreenGlass
As many of you know we in Leeds have been working with our White Rose partner libraries to look at using GreenGlass to support collaborative collection management for monographs. We began the work in 2016, and reacted in disbelief at the results which showed that of the nearly 2 million title sets in GreenGlass (uploaded by the 3 libraries) 83% were held at only one library. We did a lot of testing to check the results, including a comparison with the CCM tool, and we concluded that the Greenglass tool was boardly accurate – possibly underreporting overlap by about 4% - so erring on the side of caution (and this was online with what we found when we checked overlap levels using the CCM tool).
As White Rose libraries we have just completed our second dataload with GreenGlass, and are waiting for the results. Over the coming months we want to experiment with the retention modelling side of GreenGlass. At the moment our thinking is that 3 libraries are not sufficient to generate the level of overlap needed collaboratively manage collections. However, we think it would be very interesting to see results across a much larger dataset. Although within GreenGlass you can compare your holdings to comparator groups (which we do), what you are really comparing against is the Worldcat holdings of those comparator libraries – and those may or may not be an accurate representation of holdings.
Our Journey

10. UKRR – What Next? Value in national retention scheme
Value in BL gap filling
Value in 3 copies
Value in broadening contributing libraries
Local checking
So for UKRR what is next – clearly some interesting discussion to be had today. We certainly at Leeds feel there is great value in a national retention scheme. We are prepared to stand by the commitments we have made and are making. That requires us as a community to maintain trust, and that is critical. The BL element we also think is critical – so using what is offered to UKRR to gap fill seems sensible. We also think there is value in 3 copies being kept – particularly of historic print and rarer titles, it would seem imprudent to go to one copy only. It would also seem wise to include other institutions as contributing libraries, in the spirit of the national good (although this is reliant on the Principal Holding Libraries being prepared to receive copies).
In terms of reshaping how the service operates, our view is that an element of checking can be carried out locally – we have already done elements of this.
However, the crux of the issue will be how retention decisions are made, and who makes them – that would seem to require some form of central decision making.
Retention decisions