session 2: procurement and e-books

www.bournemouth.ac.uk

Session 2:Procurement and

E-Books

David Ball

www.bournemouth.ac.uk 2

Summary

• Consortia• Procurement cycle• E-books tender


Advantages of Consortia

• Aggregation of spending power:• Discounts• Suppliers will invest to develop new

services, e.g. shelf-ready books• Savings:

• Competitive tendering process and contract management

• Monitoring and improving quality: • Pool spend and knowledge about

suppliers


UK Library Purchasing Consortia

7 regional consortia covering all UK HEIs

Procurement for Libraries – umbrella group; forum for determining appropriate level of procurement

Funded by subscription and staff resources of members

General university consortia – stationery, IT, laboratory supplies

Concentrated on hard copy: exploit competition between aggregators


Southern Universities Purchasing Consortium

(SUPC)• Largest of the regional consortia• 47 members – small to very

large• All areas of university

purchasing• Contracts worth over £100m

p.a. (US$187m)• Framework agreements not

central purchasing


SUPC Library Group

• Library contracts worth £33m p.a. (US$62m)

• Books, including campus bookshops:• 4 suppliers• Discounts average 15% of list price• Pioneered fully shelf-ready books

• Hard-copy journals – 2 suppliers• E-books


Higher Education Agents

• Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)• Non-commercial, funded by top-slice• NESLi2, JISC Collections

• Eduserv/CHEST• Owned by HE sector, BUT funded by

percentage of sales revenue• Collections of e-journals and databases

• Both concentrate on e-resources: negotiate with publishers (monopolists)


Differences from Turkey?


Procurement Cycle

• Identify the need• Prepare the specification• Tender to find suppliers• Award contract• Measure and monitor

performance


Identify the Need

• Determine precisely what is required

• On what basis – bought outright (hard copy), access (electronic), leased (LMS)

• Consult users and librarians


Prepare the Specification

• Fundamental to any procurement• Informs suppliers of what is

required, when, how, to what standards

• Basis on which to evaluate and choose suppliers, and judge quality of service

• Specify requirements, not detailed processes – allow for creativity by suppliers


Find the Supplier

• Tender evaluation• Measurable requirements from

specification• Quality – accreditation, references, site

visits• Ability to meet specification -

functionality• Cost – comparable, whole life of contract

• Weight each requirement according to importance

• Award contract


Measure and Monitor Performance

• Essential to keep suppliers engaged

• Contract management meetings – 2-4 per year

• Performance measures from specification• Discounts• Supply times• Errors

• Feedback from members


Questions?


E-Books

• Existing heavy use of e-journals by undergraduates

• Electronic medium the norm for students’ social and leisure pursuits

• Electronic medium becoming primary in HE

• Need for e-books


E-Books: Problems and Obstacles

• Lack of a clear open standard for operating systems;

• Fears about the protection of content and the rights of the content owner in the context of giving users flexibility;

• Lack of appropriate content in suitable quantities;

• Pricing of titles, software and hardware;

• Lack of integration into the general market for books. (Herther)


E-Books: Current Developments

• Google Book Project:• California, Complutense of Madrid,

Harvard, Michigan, New York Public Library, Oxford, Stanford

• Scan and digitise 16m volumes

• MSN and BL – 100,000 volumes• Apple:

• iPod book reader• Agreement on content with

publisher


E-books: Identifying the Need

• Developing market place• Fluid business models

• Mimic hard-copy business models• Trend towards bundling/Big Deal

• Avoid what happened with e-journals – publishers determine business models; price tied to historical spend on hard-copy

• Virtual learning environments


Preparing the Specification 1

• Aim to provide agreements that:• Are innovative and flexible• Exploit the electronic medium fully• Focus on users’ needs not libraries’• Encourage the addition of library-

defined content

• Agreements available to all UK HEIs, not just SUPC


Preparing the Specification 2

Two distinct requirements:Requirement A – a hosted e-book service from which institutions can purchase or subscribe to individual titles

Requirement B – a hosted e-book service of content that is specified by the institutions


Selection Criteria

Academic nature of content Satisfactory authentication Demonstrable benefits for

consortium purchase Customer and technical

support 4 suppliers selected out of 8:

3 general aggregators, 1 specialist


List Price?

• The 3 general aggregators offer pricing based on publisher’s list price

• 1190 common titles from 4 publishers were compared

• Many titles have no common list price in e-form

• Average e-book price for the common titles varied from $99.9 to $102.2, a spread of 2.3%


Prices: Hard Copy vs. E

• One aggregator, offering outright purchase and only 1 simultaneous user, allowing for discounts and tax:• E-book: 155% of list price• Hard copy: 85% of list price

• E-book is 82% more expensive• Book budget buys 45% less e-

books than hard-copy books


Price Comparison Year 1

$$ Co. Abuy

Co. A1500

subscribe

Co. B - buy

Co. B -subscriptio

nCo. C

100 books 11738 11741 18613 12021 12456

500 books 58691 11741 93066 60106 66782

1000 books 117383 11741 186132 120213 129064

1500 books 176074 11741 279198 180319 191345


Price Comparison Year 3

$$

Co. Abuy

Co. A1500

subscribe Co. B -

buy

Co. Bsubscriptio

nCo. C

100 books 11738 35224 18613 15624 13356

500 books 58691 35224 93066 78119 67682

1000 books 117383 35224 186132 156238 129964

1500 books 176074 35224 279198 234357 192245


Relative Pricing

• Purchase of 1500 titles:• Co. C 69% of Co. B• Co. A 63% of Co. B

• Subscription over 3 years to 1500 titles:• Co. A 15% of Co. B

• Over 10 years:• Co. A subscription 42% of Co. B

purchase


Bespoke Subject Collections

• 2 aggregators expressed an interest

• First subject – nursing; other subjects to be determined

• Core list of 200 titles prepared by 4 universities, the Royal College of Nursing A maximum of 13% currently available

• Aggregators have agreements with some of main publishers


E-Textbooks?

• Obvious advantages for libraries – no more multiple copies or short-loan collections; save on staff costs

• However 80% of publishers’ textbook revenue is from students – not available


Contract Award

• Requirement A – ProQuest/Safari and Ebrary• Offer innovative models; value for

money; flexibility• Exploit electronic medium in

terms of granularity and multi-user access

• Requirement B – Ebrary• Show flexibility and willingness to

work openly• Investigate textbook models


Lessons

• Strong message to the market place• Flexible and innovative pricing models• Value for money• Reject the strait-jacket of hard-copy

model• Exploit electronic medium• Libraries influence and select the

content to be provided• E-textbooks move us closer to

completely electronic provision


Questions?

[email protected]


References

D. Ball. Managing Suppliers and Partners for the Academic Library, London, Facet Publishing, (2005).

R. Everett. MLEs and VLEs explained, London, JISC, (2002). Available at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=mle_briefings_1.

N.K. Herther. “The E-book Industry Today: a bumpy road becomes an evolutionary path to market maturity”, The Electronic Library, 23(1), pp. 45-53, (2005).

D. Nicholas and P. Huntington, ‘Big deals: results and analysis from a pilot analysis of web log data: report for the Ingenta Institute’, in The consortium site licence: is it a sustainable model? Edited proceedings of a meeting held on 24th September 2002 at the Royal Society, London, Oxford: Ingenta, 2002 (Ingenta Institute, 2002), pp121-159, pp149, 151.

C. Tenopir. Use and Users of Electronic Library Resources: an overview and analysis of recent research studies, Washington, Council on Library and Information Resources, (2003). Available at: http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub120/pub120.pdf.

[email protected]

session 2: procurement and e-books

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