Make or Buy the Big Historical
Collections?
Your friendly facilitators:
Ivy Anderson, CDL
Warren Holder, OCUL
Speakers
• Mark Sandler
Committee on Institutional Cooperation
• Ann Okerson
NorthEast Research Library Consortium
• Barbara Preece
Boston Library Consortium
• Discussion
SYSTEMWIDE STRATEGIC DIRECTIONS FOR LIBRARIES AND
SCHOLARLY INFORMATION AT
THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
Progress Report 2005
•
Participation in a large-scale international
digital reformatting activity promises to extend
collection breadth: UC will have free online
access to materials that are not otherwise
available locally while reducing expenditures
on vendor products that are based on out-ofcopyright and other public domain materials.
UC “Factors to Consider”
When evaluating requests for systemwide licensing of new resources that include out-of-copyright
material, the following factors should be considered by each group involved at the various stages
of evaluation:
•
Whether an alternative open access version exists or is planned
•
Whether UC is actively pursuing or considering a digitization opportunity for the same material,
either alone or collaboratively (e.g. CDL-built content through OCA)
•
If a future open access version is anticipated, the value of access to content now vs. open access
at some point in the future. Factors to consider might include, for example, the level or urgency of
user demand and/or potential near-term cost savings through print deduplication and/or remote
storage
•
A careful appraisal of whether there is sufficient added value in the licensed version to justify the
expenditure of scarce collection dollars when an alternative version exists. Factors to critically
evaluate in this light might include:
–
–
–
•
The value derived from a relationship to other currently-licensed material (e.g. backfiles of currently-licensed
journals where access may be integrated
Aggregation of content under a single interface as opposed to independently-created digitized versions that
lack coordinated access
Indexing and presentation of content, or other added features that enhance the end user experience.
Recognizing end users’ increasing preference for ‘single search box’ simplicity in accessing content, careful
judgments should be made about whether an open access resource is adequate to satisfy the bulk of UC
student and faculty needs
The degree to which the licensed resource adheres to UC licensing and technical
requirements. Nonconformity that might be overlooked when alternatives are unavailable may be
less acceptable in the face of open access.
UC Shared Collections in the
Age of…
From Purchasing to Curation
Lewis, David W., “A Model for Academic Libraries 2005 to 2025”
Access Fees
Software licensing, copyright and
legal issues
Storage / hosting costs
E-formatting and technology
development
Search / browse technology
User interface enhancements & new
features
24/7 access to the content
Bandwidth for faster searching
Authentication/LAD and usage
reporting
Technical support / webmaster
queries
Confidential Information – ProQuest CSA
• COST for
ProQuest CSA
• VALUE for
customers
John Johnson Collection of
Printed Ephemera
• Partnership between Oxford University and ProQuest CSA using
grant money from the JISC
– JISC made funding available for projects that digitized collections
important for academic research. This included a funding requirement
for an on-going model to sustain the digital collection in perpetuity
• JISC provided funding for the preservation, creation of meta-data
and digitization
• Oxford provides the expertise to preserve and create the meta-data
• ProQuest CSA provided the digitization services
• ProQuest CSA assumes the costs for the creation of the interface,
search technology and the on-going hosting of the content
• ProQuest CSA provides “free” access to the United Kingdom and
sells the content outside of the UK
• Sales outside of the UK market support the on-going hosting of the
content and pays a royalty back to Oxford.
Confidential Information – ProQuest CSA
Make or Buy?
• Mark Sandler
Committee on Institutional Cooperation
• Ann Okerson
NorthEast Research Library Consortium
• Barbara Preece
Boston Library Consortium
• Discussion