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 –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?