Date submitted: 21/07/2009
Adapting workflows for acquisition of electronic resources
Karin Grönvall
Head of Acquisitions and Cataloguing
Karolinska Institutet, University Library
Stockholm, Sweden
Meeting:
179. Serials and Other Continuing Resources
WORLD LIBRARY AND INFORMATION CONGRESS: 75TH IFLA GENERAL CONFERENCE AND COUNCIL
23-27 August 2009, Milan, Italy
http://www.ifla.org/annual-conference/ifla75/index.htm
Abstract:
The paper addresses the transition from acquiring print to electronic media and how the Acquisition
Department at Karolinska Institutet Unviersity Library has met this challenge. Three years ago, it became
obvious that while the budget for e-resources had grown very quickly, the staff coping with the e-resources
had not grown at the same pace and the work with e-media was experienced as unstructured and
inefficient. Through carrying out a process analysis of the work with acquiring electronic and print material,
the most problematic areas were spotted and new routines and a new integrated process was created to
ensure flow and quality and to make it easier to introduce new people into the work. To reallocate staff
time, some of the work with print material was reconsidered and focus has been on professional
development for handling e-resources. Although there has been a reallocation of staff time from print
material to an integrated acquisition process, the change is ongoing and the organisation has to be open
for continual development.
The transition in Acquisitions
The transition from acquiring print to acquiring electronic resources, especially journals, occurred
quickly in Karolinska Institutet University Library as in many other libraries. After a short period
of hesitation, the researchers realized how much time and effort they saved from accessing
articles online. In a few years time, the libraries traditional work of buying and making print
material accessible had been challenged and there was a need to adapt the internal organization to
the new situation. In this paper, I will focus on how we coped with this challenge in the
Acquisition Department at Karolinska University Library.
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Media
a budg
get 2003-2006
6
2000
Printt
mediia
1500
Electtronic
mediia
EUR
R
1000
500
0
Yea
ar
2003 2004 2005 2
2006
1 The deveelopment off the media budget in 2003-2006
2
inn Karolinskka Institutet divided
Figure 1:
into the spend for print
p
and eleectronic media respectiively.
Print
Media
4%
Electronic
M
Media
9
96%
o print
Divisionn of the meddia budget on
and elecctronic resources in 20006
Electronic
media
45%
Print
m
media
55%
Division off staff time oon print
and electronnic resourcees in 2006
2 Division of media budget respeectively stafff time in Kaarolinska U
University Liibrary in
Figure 2:
2006.
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Karolinska Institutet, a case study
Karolinska Institutet is a research intensive medical university, and hence journal intensive. The
share of the media budget devoted to electronic media went from 45% in 2003 to almost 96% in
2006. We also had made decisions not to duplicate print and electronic media, for example, we
decided to stop collecting “grey material”, as most of this now was easily found on Internet. The
internal organisation of work did not follow this shift at the same pace. In 2006, the staff in the
Acquisition Department was divided into two groups, one working with print and one working
with electronic resources. The first group was confident in their work and experienced that the
work load had gone down and the second group experienced work overload and frustration about
how to organise their daily tasks. As our end users obviously had chosen e-media, we had to offer
the best service for this. We decided to revise the organisation and the first step was to analyse
the allocation of staff time. We found that 45% of the working time was devoted to working with
e-resources and 55% to print resources. Compared to the share of 96% on e-media in the media
budget and the situation with overload of work, we considered the share of staff time for e-media
too low. To cope with the frustrating situation and to change focus from print to electronic media,
we decided to reallocate staff time. Our aim was to integrate the processes of acquiring print and
electronic media. By doing that, we hoped to get away from the approaching emergence of an A
and a B-team in the department based on the division of staff working with electronic respective
print media. It was also a strategic decision to shift focus from print to electronic media and not
keeping one group out of this shift of focus. There were some obstacles to address though:
• It was difficult to introduce new people in the work with e-media as the work processes
built on personal experiences and habits.
• There was not enough knowledge of e-resources, licensing, pricing models etc amongst
staff.
Process analysis
It was decided to conduct a process analysis of the current work process of acquiring media. The
groups working with electronic respectively print resources mapped out the activities (work
tasks). Activities that were experienced as problematic were spotted. This work resulted in one
process flow diagram of the work connected with acquisition of e-media (Figure 4) and one with
acquisition of print media (Figure 3). The flowcharts give an overall impression of the existing
work flows, although no details can be retrieved from the diagrams below. There are two symbols
in the flowchart,
representing an activity or a task and
representing a junction where a
decision must be made. The arrows represent the flows between the activities. Red- marked
activities were found as problematic. Looking at the flowchart for print media (Figure 3), it gives
an overall impression of a stable process. The arrows are straight and unambiguous and the order
of the activities can be followed step by step as one single arrow at the time connects the
activities. There were some problematic areas, but these could be dealt with right off. Looking at
Figure 4 and the work process connected to electronic media, the overall impression is more
chaotic. The mishmash of arrows going different directions illustrates the perception of the staff
of insecurity about the work process and originates from the fact that different staff had
developed different habits. In addition to an inefficient work process, one obvious consequence
from the lack of an agreed work flow was that tasks were not always solved and sometimes ended
up as access problems that could have been prevented. We needed to deal with the problematic
activities as well as the overall work flow to ensure quality and a good service level towards our
end users.
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Figure 3: The work flow of the acquisition of print media 2006.
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4
1
2
3
Figure 4: The work flow of the acquisition of e-media in 2006.
I have chosen four problematic areas from the flowchart to analyse. These examples illustrate
core activities that are new or changed in connection with the transition to e-media.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Deal with access problems.
Control access to ordered material.
Give access to and archive licenses and approve of click-through licenses.
Inform the Catalogue Department of new packages and new single e-books. Making new
records in the home grown database, activating resources in SFX.
1. Deal with access problems.
Problem: We had a single email address where we handled both support to end users such as
access problems and all other journal administration emails, such as the transfer of titles etc. We
didn’t have a clear strategy for how to deal with each type of problem, everyone had their own
routines.
Solution: We decided to separate the administration and the support functions and made sure
someone always was on duty for the support for end users. We agreed on guidelines about
priorities, how to inform end users of progress and maximum time to wait before reminding
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suppliers. We started to use a case management information system to make it easier to follow
cases and make sure they were ended. We held workshops on frequently asked questions.
2. Control access to ordered material.
Problem: When new e-journals had been ordered, we did not always receive information about
access being set up. It happened that we missed to check and the end users reported access
problems.
Solutions: We made a separate email address for administrative tasks and made sure someone
took care of incoming mails regularly. Routines were formulated and we started to use the case
management system to make sure all orders were followed up. The system made it possible to
take turns and work in functions instead of being dependent on a certain person. We also held
workshops on common problems such as proxy-problems.
3. Give access to and archive licenses and approve of click-through
licenses.
Problem: We had a policy for negotiating licensing terms to make the best for our end users, but
we had no solution to inform about them. We also did not have one place to find the licenses
internally.
Solutions: As for spreading information about the licensing terms, we decided to await the
implementation of the ERM-system. As for the internal information we made sure all licenses
were scanned when signed and stored in the same place. We decided to save a copy of clickthrough-licenses locally.
4. Cataloguing issues
Problem: Inform the Catalogue Department of new packages and new single e-books. Making
new records in the home grown database, activating resources in SFX
Comment: This problematic area contained many different aspects. With print books and
journals the handing over from acquisition to cataloguing was obvious and a separate activity in
the work flow. With electronic books and journals the time to put the information needed together
to the cataloguer seemed to take as much time as the actual cataloguing. The home grown
database was made in MARC-format and both departments handed the same records, first the
acquisition people added title, URL and basic information, then the cataloguers added fields such
as classification (MESH). On the same time, activation in SFX was a new, extra task and was
done by the acquisition people. By double updates, we aimed high as for the bibliographic
quality, but giving the increasing amount of e-journals, it was not realistic to keep up with
manual updates and the holdings were too often not up to date which resulted in problems for
end users.
Solutions: As for the updates in two systems, we decided to use the journal list that comes with
SFX and hence only update holdings through SFX. That also meant a decision that using the
subject headings and the bibliographic information that comes with the journals in SFX was
good enough. We found support for that decision from a log-analysis of the searches done in the
journal list that showed that very few searches were subject searches based on the MESH-terms.
With new routines, the activation in SFX would be done directly when access to a new title was
ensured. By including the cataloguers in the department, we could also take advantage of their
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skills and bibliographic knowledge and reallocate time for e-resources from print books when
possible.
The first three problematic areas are all examples of new activities connected with e-media. They
are activities that demand new skills for librarians, such as technical knowledge and for the
licensing, knowledge of legal matters and negotiation skills. The problems connected with
cataloguing of e-resources can be deduced from us considering them as basically “print resources
in a different format”. Reality showed that the nature of e-resources is so different that they must
be treated just as e-resources. The most important differences are that they come in large
packages, they can be found on many different platforms and they are connected to different
terms of usage. Dealing with e-resources is dealing with a service and not an item.
Integration of the work with print and electronic media
Parallel to the work with finding solutions to the problematic activities, we outlined a theoretical
flow diagram on the acquisition of print and electronic media, looking for possibilities to
integrate the work processes. In Figure 6, the work process from receiving a purchase request
from an end user, order the service/item, and providing access to it, is schematic shown for a
print respectively electronic book or journal. Activities that are in common for print and
electronic resources are shown in the middle row. When the procedure differs from print to
electronic resources the activity is placed in either the upper row (print) or the bottom row
(electronic). The basic activities as choose provider and order are fundamentally the same for
print and electronic media, but to conduct all activities included is far more complex and
demands more choices and other skills for e-media. Choosing provider for an e-resource implies
choosing platform, comparing terms for usage and pricing models in large. When a print resource
is ordered and received, the business with the provider is ended. The relationship with the
provider of an electronic resource may last for many years and all details of the terms and
conditions must be agreed on. The basic idea is that a person acquiring a resource, print or
electronic, should be able to follow the steps in the diagram. To make it possible for new persons
to conduct all steps, the process needs to be more standardized. The licensing part has shown to
be the most demanding and we have chosen to concentrate this part of the process to a smaller
group.
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Figure 6: Part of the acquisition process, the activities that are in common for printed and
electronic media is in the middle.
Knowledge sharing – professional development
The analysis of the work flows showed that shifting focus from buying print material to licensing
electronic media includes new more complex processes, new routines and the need of new skills
such as negotiating and interpreting licensing terms and using new systems. Internal knowledge
sharing formed the basis for training. This proved to be successful and contributed to a pleasant
and open-minded atmosphere. However, the most knowledgeable persons in this area tended to
spend a great part of their time organizing workshops and teaching others. It was important to
make sure these persons had the possibility to participate in conferences etc. to make sure they
follow the development.
Conclusions and challenges
The process analysis of the work of acquiring electronic and print material was time-consuming,
but showed to be an important part of the basis for a changed work flow for acquisition. By
creating a common picture and a common language, it was easier to form new routines and to
introduce new people into the work. By giving up some of the handling of print material, we
managed to reallocate time to electronic media. However, to achieve self-confidence and quality
in work, there is an ongoing need of professional development. The basis for this must be an
open-minded climate and a willingness to share knowledge. To integrate the work processes of
print and electronic media has not been easy in the start-up phase and people adapt at different
pace. However, to build an organization for the future, it is necessary to create a dynamic
atmosphere with staff willing to learn new things and to adapt to new circumstances.
In a larger perspective, the transition to electronic media has lead to a shift of focus for librarians
from “what to buy” to “how to buy”. They selection of media is in many cases done by the end
users or by drawing conclusions from analyzing usage statistics. In combination with the fact that
it is possible to acquire print and electronic media very quickly, there has been a transition from
building collections to giving access to the right material at the right time.
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Author biography:
KARIN GRÖNVALL is since May 2009 Library Director of Södertörn University Library in Stockholm. Karin
used to be Head of Acquisitions and Cataloguing at Karolinska Institutet, University Library between 2006
and 2009. Karolinska Institutet is a research intense medical university, well known for handling the
awarding of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. One focus of Karin's at Karolinska Institutet was
to organise the handling of e-resources. Between 1999 and 2005, Karin worked as a consortia
administrator for the BIBSAM consortium at the National Library of Sweden. She was responsible for
consortia agreements with several publishers and was also involved in the implementation of MetaLib
and SFX for the consortium. Karin is a member of the editorial board for Journal of electronic resources
librarianship.
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