The 5 Trust challenge: the
Hampshire Healthcare Library
Service experience
Andrew Simpson
Starting point
• Newly merged service
• 3 old services with their overlapping
journal subscriptions
• Some online with print being taken
advantage of, most not
• Some Trusts not getting any local online
content
• 5 Trusts served, with 5 Athens Org IDs,
covering the whole county
The challenge
• How to take advantage of the merger to
save on journal spending – eliminate
unnecessary duplication
• How to provide a more consistent service
to Hants PT and HPCT staff across the
county, previously served by a number of
different library services
• How to increase access to content for all
Ideal
• To provide a universal
service to all our core
users
• One set of resources
for everyone
Our approach
• Compiled a journal wish list, of current
subs we want to continue, and some new
subs
• Approached framework agreement
suppliers
• Explained our ideal
• Asked what they could do
Reality bites
• Where we were able to get quotes for all 5
Trusts, prices varied widely
• Comparing to price of one print copy, the
multiple varied from a little over two times
the price to nine times the price, with one
at 30
• Mean Average was 5.2 times a print copy
• Many were 4.7/4.8 times
Justifying expenditure
• How could we justify spending extra
thousands on journals for Trusts not likely
to want them
• Eg Gastro journal for mental health staff –
why pay 4.5 times the print price to make it
available to mental health and primary
care staff across the county?
Aim to reduce journal costs
• Even if we wanted to stick to the ideal, we
simply couldn’t afford to without drastically
reducing the number of subscriptions
• We had to reduce spending due to smaller
journal budget
• We wanted to reduce journal expenditure
to be able to spend in other areas
Changing the approach
• Decided that regional/national purchases
constitute a core collection, and we should focus
on buying journals and further e-resources for
each trust appropriate to them
• Whilst keeping general titles with a decent price
in mind for all 5 Trusts, we divided the wish list
into acute, primary care and mental health titles,
and asked for quotes for 1 or 2 Trusts as
appropriate.
Quotes for 1 or 2 Trusts
• Still varied quite a lot
• Most between 1.5 and 2.5 times print price
for two Trusts
• Easy decisions where we have multiple
subscriptions at present
• Are currently looking at titles case by case
• Still making decisions
Current priorities
• Will go e where it makes financial sense
• Will go e where extra expenditure is
justifiable
• Will rely on Proquest/Cinahl where
possible
• Will maintain some print titles for next
year, to ensure quantity and spread of
titles
• Will consider aggregated packages
Lessons learned
• Suppliers, despite framework agreements, don’t
understand our set-up in terms of NHS or Athens.
• Publishers do not know how to price Trusts or Athens
orgs, they want you to be a single hospital site!
• Most have seemed to equate 1 Athens org = 1 site
• One provider completely changed their model without
warning after a few weeks and sent a new set of quotes
with prices 40% different from before (some up, some
down)
• One publisher started incredibly high, and has come
down after negotiation by Ovid, though still probably not
quite affordable
Tips
• Organise your list as much as possible
beforehand to target those you really want
• We did provide a priority list, but now realise this
could have been more targeted
• I was a bit unfair to suppliers in asking them for
everything
• They will make mistakes – have had quotes for a
few journals I didn’t ask about – if target
suppliers on those most likely, may have worked
better
Do users want more online?
• In 2008 user survey in SW Hants
– 34% wanted more ejournals
– 48% wanted pdf articles by email
– Should we focus on doc delivery more
– What about OA
Problems from our
approach
• Anticipated complications – document
supply. Can register library staff for a
Athens from multiple orgs but could get
complicated
• Complicated message to users in what is
available for them – will we need journal
lists for each Trust?