Like Topsy ……….

how CAUL became CEIRC: the rise of the library consortium

Diane Costello

Overview

Why form consortia?AustraliaCAUL/CEIRCGaining consensusThe trendsMulti-national consortiaOther consortial efforts

Why form a Consortium?

Reduce costs - Discount for volumeIncrease access - To all titles owned by

the consortium; to publisher’s list; to aggregator’s packages

Reduce work Information gathering Trial coordination Licence negotiation Price negotiation

Principles

Better price and/or conditions than possible as a single institution

Entry level which allows the largest number to participate

Advantages for larger institutionsInformation gathering

http://www.caul.edu.au/datasets/offers.htm http://www.caul.edu.au/datasets/ip.htm

Simplify administration

… and the Publishers?

Single point for wide distribution of information

Single point of contact for negotiations

Single invoice… butMaintain (or increase) bottom line

Australia

*CAVAL - VictoriaUSLA - South AustraliaQULOC - QueenslandWAGUL - Western Australia*UNILINC - New South WalesACTUAL - Australian Capital Territory*CASL/NLA Consortia and Licensing

Working Group - MoU March 2001

CAUL

38 AVCC member libraries;University/Chief/Principal Librarian;voluntary, subscription-based;1928 - first meeting;1965 - Committee formed;1992 - Council named;1995 - full-time executive officer.

CAUL Environment

Publicly funded HE http://www.detya.gov.au/ …

reducing …. 620,000+ FTE (including 63,000 HD)

Library expenditure $A390m ($US 201m) $A136m on information resources ($US 70m) library staff average 108

Exchange rate October 1996 - AUD 1.0 = USD 0.8055 April 3, 2001 - AUD 1.0 = USD 0.4833 May 9 - AUD 1.0 = USD 0.5198

CAUL Organisation

President - Helen Hayes (elected 1998)Executive Committee (elected)CEIRC Committee (election/nomination)Office staff 2 FTE (5/95, 6/98, 4/01)

Secretariat, Committee Support, Cooperative Activities (Statistics, NBS, Performance Indicators, CISC), Liaison/Representation, Current awareness, Web site, CEIRC program

CEIRC (CAUL Electronic Information Resources Committee)

NPRF funds $2m 1993-1996 for datasets “Trials” of ISI Current Contents, Academic

Press IDEAL, IAC Expanded Academic ASAP, etc

Evolved into consortial purchasing Committee recommends policy to CAUL CAUL Office handles day-to-day

Now includes CSIRO, CONZUL (+14 total)CEIRC Levy

CEIRC (2)

Guidelines for external participantsGuidelines for licences - no strict

modelChecklist for “negotiations”

butNo preferred pricing modelNo minimum participationNo schedule of negotiations

CAUL Office

Instigation via member, publisher or officeDistribution of information re product,

licence, price & trial via email listNegotiation/liaison re price & conditionsMaintenance of details on web site http://

www.caul.edu.au/datasets/ Participation list, IP addresses, contactsInvoicing & payments

Decision-Making

Self-selected consortium vs National Site Licence “Buying club”

Changing environment --> Changing decision-making processes

Each product assessed independently Licence conditions Overlap between products Choice of interfaces

Decision-Making (2)

Datasets Coordinator - coordinates communication & decision by given date! Acquisitions? Discipline-based liaison personnel? Electronic information coordinator? Chief librarian?

Cost-Sharing

Determined by Publisher & passed on to group eg Subscription history (current spend) Carnegie Classification Percentage discount by volume

# Institutions# Databases# Titles

EFTSU / FTE - all or discipline-specific

Cost-Sharing (2)

Determined within Consortium eg Equal share FTE-based Usage-based Resources budget, or … a combination of the above eg 50% equal

share (entry level) + 50% FTE-based … or what it is worth to the institution eg

NAAL (Alabama)

Cost-Sharing (3)

Gaining consensus Current Contents - 50% fixed + 4 tiers

based on FTE (+ choice of interface) MathSciNet - Costs of current

subscribers reducing with added subscribers

ProQuest5000 - Minimum entry cost per institution + Minimum total cost

Product Full-text Contract Dates Local Presence1 Central Billing Participants2

Academic Press IDEAL 1997 - USA 22AccessScience 2000 - USA3 0 (1)ACM Digital Library 2000 - USA 24 (27)ACS e-journals 2000 - UK 20 (23)Australian Bureau of Statistics – AusStats x 1995 - 19994 x 29Australian Bureau of Statistics – Census x 1997 x 30Beilstein CrossFire x 1999- USA x 3Blackwell Science e-journals 2000 - x 34Britannica Online 1996- 2 (3)CAS SciFinder Scholar x 2000 - USA 22 (29)CSA x 1996- USA x 14Current Contents x 1994 - Singapore x 35EBSCO Megafile 2000- 5 x 5 (6)Gale InfoTrac 1996- x 30Grove Macmillan 2000 - x 11IBSS x 1999 - UK 9 (12)IEEE 2000 - USA x 8JBC Online 2000- USA 12Journals@Ovid 1998-6 x 15Lexis Nexis 1996 - 22 (29)License Depot x 2000 - 10LION 1999- x 8MathSciNet x 2000 - USA 19 (25)OCLC FirstSearch x 1995 - USA x 38Poole’s Paratext x 2000 - USA 3Project Muse 1997 - USA 21 (22)ProQuest5000 2001 - x 32 (40)RLG Citadel Files x 1996 - USA 19 (20)Standards Australia 1998- x 20UlrichsWeb x 2001 - USA 23Web of Science x 2001 - Singapore x 8 (12)Wiley InterScience 2001 - x 28 (36)

1 The location of the closest company office, if not in Australia. Many companies have agents in Australia, but their major role is customer support following thecontract negotiations.2 Number of CAUL participants, with total number of participants in parentheses.3 McGraw-Hill’s AccessScience was part of an international mega-consortium sponsored by ICOLC.4 When the service was upgraded from a gopher to a web service, the ABS contracted with the AVCC for all 38 universities to purchase.5 CAUL members are offered a “special CAUL price” which is taken up by individual members independent of the number of CAUL subscribers.6 CAUL members are offered a “special CAUL price” which is taken up by individual members independent of the number of CAUL subscribers.

CAUL Agreements 1996-

32 agreements, 18 full-text, 4 factual databases, the rest bibliographic

Half commenced in 2000 or later burgeoning of available electronic products increasing willingness of publishers to deal with

consortia

Billing handled centrally (15) local office or agent

Average number of participants 20Highest number 40 (ProQuest5000)

Issues

Publishers Site definition (16 Oz single-campus

univ) Bundling print with online Maintaining bottom line Premium for electronic and/or enhanced

product eg WoS Access to “purchased” data & archiving

Issues (2)

Members Variation in size / wealth / research

emphasis / discipline base Cost-sharing parameters

Competition“Subsidy” of less well-resourced institutionsRelative gain, rather than the NAAL ideal

Agreement on priorities

Issues (3)

Subscription Agents Publishers dealing directly Overlap with consortia

Invoicing membersPaying publisher

Finding new rolesAgent for consortiaCollections management and support

Some Approaches

Tender for journal collection eg California State University

Mega-consortium eg SolinetManaging Agent eg NESLI / Swets /

Manchester ComputingICOLC Consortia Advisory Board (BHIL)VADL - usage-based multi-institution

licence

Pause ....

Very similar deals being done by a wide variety of consortia

National Site Licence - an ideal which requires either top-sliced or additional fundingor internal agreement about what is wanted

and how much the individual institutions are prepared to pay for it

… and progress

Cheaper than list pricesAccess to more titlesShift in licence conditions eg ILL,

course packs, etcUnbundling of print from electronicMore trust --> Simpler licences

Cooperative Opportunities

Shared ILMS eg UnilincJoint and/or bulk purchasing/processing eg

WAGULe-TOC (MEADS)Reciprocal borrowing/auto document

delivery (QULOC)Shared development eg JEDDS (Ariel),

LIDDAS, ADT, AEVL, AgriGate, MetaWeb, ALEG

International Opportunities

ICOLC 4, 1998 SoliNet

plusNew ZealandFiji

….