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?