Session 2: Procurement and E- Books David Ball

2 Summary Consortia Procurement cycle E-books tender

3 Advantages of Consortia Aggregation of spending power: Discounts Suppliers will invest to develop new services, e.g. shelf-ready books Savings: Competitive tendering process and contract management Monitoring and improving quality: Pool spend and knowledge about suppliers

4 UK Library Purchasing Consortia  7 regional consortia covering all UK HEIs  Procurement for Libraries – umbrella group; forum for determining appropriate level of procurement  Funded by subscription and staff resources of members  General university consortia – stationery, IT, laboratory supplies  Concentrated on hard copy: exploit competition between aggregators

5 Southern Universities Purchasing Consortium (SUPC) Largest of the regional consortia 47 members – small to very large All areas of university purchasing Contracts worth over £100m p.a. (US$187m) Framework agreements not central purchasing

6 SUPC Library Group Library contracts worth £33m p.a. (US$62m) Books, including campus bookshops: 4 suppliers Discounts average 15% of list price Pioneered fully shelf-ready books Hard-copy journals – 2 suppliers E-books

7 Higher Education Agents Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) Non-commercial, funded by top-slice NESLi2, JISC Collections Eduserv/CHEST Owned by HE sector, BUT funded by percentage of sales revenue Collections of e-journals and databases Both concentrate on e-resources: negotiate with publishers (monopolists)

8 Differences from Turkey?

9 Procurement Cycle Identify the need Prepare the specification Tender to find suppliers Award contract Measure and monitor performance

10 Identify the Need Determine precisely what is required On what basis – bought outright (hard copy), access (electronic), leased (LMS) Consult users and librarians

11 Prepare the Specification Fundamental to any procurement Informs suppliers of what is required, when, how, to what standards Basis on which to evaluate and choose suppliers, and judge quality of service Specify requirements, not detailed processes – allow for creativity by suppliers

12 Find the Supplier Tender evaluation Measurable requirements from specification Quality – accreditation, references, site visits Ability to meet specification - functionality Cost – comparable, whole life of contract Weight each requirement according to importance Award contract

13 Measure and Monitor Performance Essential to keep suppliers engaged Contract management meetings – 2-4 per year Performance measures from specification Discounts Supply times Errors Feedback from members

14 Questions?

15 E-Books Existing heavy use of e-journals by undergraduates Electronic medium the norm for students’ social and leisure pursuits Electronic medium becoming primary in HE Need for e-books

16 E-Books: Problems and Obstacles Lack of a clear open standard for operating systems; Fears about the protection of content and the rights of the content owner in the context of giving users flexibility; Lack of appropriate content in suitable quantities; Pricing of titles, software and hardware; Lack of integration into the general market for books. (Herther)

17 E-Books: Current Developments Google Book Project: California, Complutense of Madrid, Harvard, Michigan, New York Public Library, Oxford, Stanford Scan and digitise 16m volumes MSN and BL – 100,000 volumes Apple: iPod book reader Agreement on content with publisher

18 E-books: Identifying the Need Developing market place Fluid business models Mimic hard-copy business models Trend towards bundling/Big Deal Avoid what happened with e-journals – publishers determine business models; price tied to historical spend on hard-copy Virtual learning environments

19 Preparing the Specification 1 Aim to provide agreements that: Are innovative and flexible Exploit the electronic medium fully Focus on users’ needs not libraries’ Encourage the addition of library- defined content Agreements available to all UK HEIs, not just SUPC

20 Preparing the Specification 2  Two distinct requirements:  Requirement A – a hosted e-book service from which institutions can purchase or subscribe to individual titles  Requirement B – a hosted e-book service of content that is specified by the institutions

21 Selection Criteria  Academic nature of content  Satisfactory authentication  Demonstrable benefits for consortium purchase  Customer and technical support  4 suppliers selected out of 8: 3 general aggregators, 1 specialist

22 List Price? The 3 general aggregators offer pricing based on publisher’s list price 1190 common titles from 4 publishers were compared Many titles have no common list price in e-form Average e-book price for the common titles varied from $99.9 to $102.2, a spread of 2.3%

23 Prices: Hard Copy vs. E One aggregator, offering outright purchase and only 1 simultaneous user, allowing for discounts and tax: E-book: 155% of list price Hard copy:85% of list price E-book is 82% more expensive Book budget buys 45% less e-books than hard-copy books

24 Price Comparison Year 1 $$ Co. A buy Co. A 1500 subscribe Co. B - buy Co. B - subscription Co. C 100 books books books books

25 Price Comparison Year 3 $$ Co. A buy Co. A 1500 subscribe Co. B - buy Co. B subscription Co. C 100 books books books books

26 Relative Pricing Purchase of 1500 titles: Co. C 69% of Co. B Co. A 63% of Co. B Subscription over 3 years to 1500 titles: Co. A 15% of Co. B Over 10 years: Co. A subscription 42% of Co. B purchase

27 Bespoke Subject Collections 2 aggregators expressed an interest First subject – nursing; other subjects to be determined Core list of 200 titles prepared by 4 universities, the Royal College of Nursing A maximum of 13% currently available Aggregators have agreements with some of main publishers

28 E-Textbooks? Obvious advantages for libraries – no more multiple copies or short-loan collections; save on staff costs However 80% of publishers’ textbook revenue is from students – not available

29 Contract Award Requirement A – ProQuest/Safari and Ebrary Offer innovative models; value for money; flexibility Exploit electronic medium in terms of granularity and multi-user access Requirement B – Ebrary Show flexibility and willingness to work openly Investigate textbook models

30 Lessons Strong message to the market place Flexible and innovative pricing models Value for money Reject the strait-jacket of hard-copy model Exploit electronic medium Libraries influence and select the content to be provided E-textbooks move us closer to completely electronic provision

31 Questions?

32 References D. Ball. Managing Suppliers and Partners for the Academic Library, London, Facet Publishing, (2005). R. Everett. MLEs and VLEs explained, London, JISC, (2002). Available at: N.K. Herther. “The E-book Industry Today: a bumpy road becomes an evolutionary path to market maturity”, The Electronic Library, 23(1), pp , (2005). D. Nicholas and P. Huntington, ‘Big deals: results and analysis from a pilot analysis of web log data: report for the Ingenta Institute’, in The consortium site licence: is it a sustainable model? Edited proceedings of a meeting held on 24th September 2002 at the Royal Society, London, Oxford: Ingenta, 2002 (Ingenta Institute, 2002), pp , pp149, 151. C. Tenopir. Use and Users of Electronic Library Resources: an overview and analysis of recent research studies, Washington, Council on Library and Information Resources, (2003). Available at: