Collaborative Collection Management Revived?

Michael JubbRIN

Strategic Management of Monographs Discussion Forum

17 March 2011

We’ve been here before……Parry Committee 1967

lack of evidence on the ‘adequacy of academic library collections to meet the needs of faculty members and research students’

Atkinson Report 1976recommends ‘self-renewing’ libraries, with low-use material being discarded to make way for new materialexplicit assumption that discarded material would be available from BL

Computer Board (John Forty) 1988recommends hub and spoke model of regional research libraries

Follett Report 1993“develop networks and groupings of institutions based on particular centres to support particular subjects….”

Anderson Report 1996avoid unnecessary duplication in acquisition and retentionestablish local and regional cooperative arrangements

Research Support Libraries Programme???

RSLP Projects…….

RSLP Projects…….

Research Support Libraries Group

Evidencea few bilateral agreements voluntary subject-based agreementsshort-term project fundingmost librarians in favour of sharing ‘if appropriately conducted’different attitudes among academics, varying by discipline

Analysis“ So far as collection sharing is concerned…. very little success has been achieved to date… major libraries have been particularly cautious, and few appear willing to 'give up' ownership of material. Even where electronic access to little- used material is guaranteed (for example, through JSTOR) many libraries are still reluctant to dispose of print copies.”“the primary barrier to resource sharing is that no strong case has ever been made to HEIs”potential benefits of deep resource sharing perceived as relatively marginal

ConclusionNothing will happen without funding body leadership and resources

Barriers to Resource Sharing Among Higher Education Libraries, 2002

.

Follett Report 2003national strategy for provisionmuch deeper collaboration between research libraries

RIN established 2005………..

But what has worked, and why?UKRR, engendered out of a sense of crisis

fears of running out of spaceguilt that this was happening when content was increasingly onlinewhat to say to the Vice Chancellor?

CURL/BL report 2005Optimising Storage and Access in UK Research Libraries 350km shortage of shelf space by 2015focus on how to encourage disposals in order to achieve space and cost savingslittle said about co-ordination of decision-making

UKRR established 2008cash to encourage libraries to achieve savings: ‘culture-change’low-use print journals (often associated with online provision) not monographsstructure to co-ordinate decision-making

Why not monographs?large number of individual items to be dealt with to achieve significant savings in space

high process costs

digitisation less advanced than for journals

Optimising Storage and Access in UK Research Libraries, 2005

UKRR target title:metre ratio of 1.0

multiply by 25-40

checking and processing per item likely to be at least as high

E-readers, Google books, Hathi Trust, Project Gutenberg……….

Culture Change?

Library attitudes?

there is sufficient material in the mass-digitized library collection managed by the HathiTrust to duplicate a sizeable (and growing) portion of virtually any academic library in the United States, and there is adequate duplication between the shared digital repository and large-scale print storage facilities to enable a great number of academic libraries to reconsider their

local print management operations

Some Questionsare the perceived benefits strong enough?

savings in space and costscash incentives

are the changes in behaviours and attitudes strong enough?

shifts to online provisiondisciplinary differences

are the risks and the costs low enough?national policy drivers and strategic frameworks?are we ready for ‘strategic management’?

Thank you

Michael Jubb

www.rin.ac.uk