Business Analytics and Planning:
Digitisation Benchmarking
Project
NIA ELLIS
INFORMATION SERVICES,
ABERYSTWYTH UNIVERSITY
nrj@aber.ac.uk
Why take part?
 Low numbers taking up digitisation
 Charging for digitisation seen as barrier
 Long turnaround times raised issues regarding
capacity for increasing digitisation
 Potential for increasing student satisfaction with
access to materials on reading lists
What do our customers want?
more of the books that
lecturers advise us to
read
Core texts!
More copies of
department
required
reading
E-texts and
online
resources.
Essential
course
books
Digitisation request
received.
M&S produce job sheet, inc £10
admin charge
Request sent to Media and Sales
BL send link to
CLAstaff which is
sent to M&S
Request sent to BL
M&S adds copyright notice
and charges £10
Lending receives BL invoice and
lists digitisation work by dept.
Job sheet sent to Mat Acq
through email
Check whether
payment
directly from
dept
Yes
Lending passes information to
Mat Acq
No
Mat Acq transfers money
out of dept fund to overall
surplus
Check whether
payment
directly from
dept
Yes
Mat Acq creates dummy invoice for
departments
No
Mat Acq invoices department
Mat Acq pays BL by transfersring
money out of dept fund to overall
surplus
Dept pays and money goes to
general book fund
Digitisation Benchmarking Project
 2012-2013
 http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/58472/
Digitisation benchmarking project: initial project
outline
 Identify recording methods used by each institution and
establish a suitable method to adopt for benchmarking
purposes.
 Calculate the volume of digitised texts for each
institution and identify peaks in service.
 Record digitisation activity and process from request
receipt to delivery to establish turnaround times at given
dates throughout the academic year. This will enable
institutions to position themselves in relation to
comparator libraries.
 Compare and share information based on turnaround
times to ensure a customer-focused service.
Data recording spreadsheet
Institution
number
Number of
Requests
Received
Number of
Fulfilled
Requests
Number of
Unfulfilled
Requests
Number of
Renewal
Requests
Number of
New
Requests
Turnaround
time
Fulfilled requests - Aberystwyth
9
8
7
Fulfilled requests
6
5
Aberystwyth
4
3
2
1
0
September
January
May
Sample weeks
July
Average Turnaround Times (days)
14
12
10
Days
8
6
4
2
0
September
January
May
Sample weeks
July
Average Turnaround Times (days) - Aberystwyth
45
40
35
30
Days
25
20
15
10
5
0
September
January
May
Sample weeks
July
Average turnaround times (days)
45
40
35
30
Days
25
Aberystwyth
20
Benchmarking group
15
10
5
0
September
January
May
Sample weeks
July
Project impacts
 Improvement in processes
 Upskilling new staff to deal with peaks
 Employing temporary staff to deal with backlog
 Bringing scanning in-house
 Investing in new scanning equipment
 Researching new software solutions
 Inform SLAs
 Created community of digitisation service
professionals
Number of items digitised at AU
Items digitised by year
400
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
2010-2011
2011-2012
2012-2013
2013-2014
Next?
 Work with Reading List management system for
possible pro-active scanning
 Continue to implement Packtracker and investigate
reporting facility
 SLAs and KPIs
 Increase number of digitised texts
Conclusion
 Achieved project objectives
 Identify suitable recording methods
 Record digitisation activity across academic year
 Establish turnaround time as a comparator benchmark
 Achieved our objectives
 Provided us with information and data to write business cases
for staff/resources
 Improved our capacity to deal with current and future
workload
 Provided us with benchmarks
Acknowledgements
Thanks to:
 12 other institutions who took part and shared data
and experience
 Warwick University for supporting the project
 Sharon Tuersley for leading and coordinating and
writing the final report (as well as quarterly reports)
 All involved in digitisation at Aber for their patience
and hard work.