2014 Charleston Conference Saturday, November 8, 11:00 AM Presented by Nick Woolley, Northumbria University

1. Digital First in the UK:
Maximizing the promise of DDA by multi-channel
content delivery at Northumbria University
34th Annual Charleston Conference
Saturday 8th November 2014
Nick Woolley
Head of Library Services

2. Sponsored by

3. Outline
 Introduction to Northumbria
 Digital in the UK
– Nationally
– In HE
– In libraries
 Digital First at Northumbria
 Collection development and channels to content
– DDA ebooks
 Discussion

4. Northumbria University
 1894 (Rutherford College of Technology)
 32,000 students from over 130 countries
 3,000 staff
 Four faculties across two campuses
 560 employer-sponsored courses
 60 programmes accredited by professional bodies
 In Britain’s best university city – Newcastle upon Tyne

5. University Library
 Part of Academic Services directorate at Northumbria
 Three sites across two campuses
 24/7 and Customer Service Excellence (CSE)
 3rd highest scoring in the UK - THES Student Experience survey
 Five library departments
– Business Support
– Customer Support
– Learning Support
– Content Services
– Research Support
 Superconverged frontline – ‘Ask4Help’

6. Northumbria’s digital library
 Digital First ‘strategy’
 2,000 study spaces, 900 workstations and 250 self-service laptops
 Diverse library learning spaces
 Online skills and literacy – ‘Skills Plus’
 RFID self-service
 Online library collection:
– Approx. 400,00 ebooks (550,000 print)
– 38,000 ejournals (1,000 print)
 Summon discovery (since 2009)
 Online reading lists
 Institutional repository (Eprints) and publishing via OJS
 Member of UKRR
 Current JISC project involvement includes OA and ORCID
 University Library online – integrated digital platform

7. library.northumbria.ac.uk

8. Digital in the UK – national context
 UK Government strategy
– 2013 - digital by default – aggressive channel shift to digital only across 650
transactional services
– 82% of population online but slow adoption of online government services
– Revolution not evolution
– Digital inclusion and skills
– Big data - National Information Infrastructure (NII) – data.gov.uk
 Changes to UK copyright law
– 2011 Hargreaves ‘Digital opportunity: a review of intellectual property and growth’
– Reforms to copyright law in force from 1st June 2014
– Text and data mining, library preservation, illustration for education, walk-in etc..
– Orphan works licensing

9. Digital in the UK – national context
 British Library
– Electronic deposit (140,000+)
– Archiving .uk online (4.8 million websites)
– Open linked metadata (the BNB – 2.8 million records)
– EThOS (350,000 records)
– BLDSC – digital delivery
 ‘Access to Research’
– Response to the Finch report on OA
– Two year pilot 2014-2016 to provide public access to research
– Publishers Association and Society of Chief Librarians
– 10 million articles available online via walk-in at public libraries
– ProQuest providing Summon as the discovery solution

10. Digital in the UK – academic context
 HE focus on
– MOOCs
– Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL)
– OA and research data
– RCUK big data and energy efficiency computing
– UCL and Elsevier ‘big data institute’
– ‘Digital’ appearing in NSS Q16 from 2017
 JISC et al.
– KB+
– Learning analytics, e.g. ‘LAMP’ with Mimas and Huddersfield
– With the AHRC – OAPEN-UK
– National Monograph Strategy Roadmap 2014
 United Kingdom Research Reserve (UKRR)
– Collaborative distributed national research collection
– Key in transition to e

11. What is digital?
 Binary not analogue sensu stricto
 Shorthand for ‘online’, the ‘web’
 Too narrow a focus in libraries?
– Ebooks
– Digitisation
 Really an umbrella term to encompass all modern
technology and principles
– Cloud, Mobile, Internet of Things, Wearable technology and
quantified self, 3D printing, Big data and analytics
 Not exclusive of the analogue world
– e.g. ‘Embracing Analog: Why Physical is Hot’

12. Digital First at Northumbria

13. Print and e book usage at Northumbria*
* Measures are proxies for both print and e and probably not directly comparable.

14. Print and e book title access

15. Building new channels to ebook content
 Pluralistic collection development
– False dichotomies make for fun debates but the reality needs to be customer-focused
 Northumbria’s multi-channel approach
– Large-scale collection building in partnership with Faculty
– Taught programme driven via online reading lists
– DDA via discovery and ILL
 Enables more targeted and outcome-focused investment
 Need to embed the technology across workflows, points of
need, moments of truth etc..
 Part of our Digital First strategic framework

16. Reading lists and the Library Collection
 UK-centric problem?
– Related to textbook challenge
 Directed resources can run into hundreds of items per module
– Wider self-directed reading still expected
– Items can be ‘advised for student purchase’, ‘essential’, ‘recommended’, ‘further’ etc…
 Crucial to student experience and attainment?
 Not uncommon to achieve only 50% coverage
– Not acceptable given UK student fee regime

17. readinglists.northumbria.ac.uk

18. Northumbria’s reading list service
 Delivered by a multi-skilled library team
– Desk side / email / phone support for Faculty colleagues
– Acquisition of print and e books
– Digitisation and copyright clearance of chapters and other extracts
 Talis Aspire software
 Piloted new service January – May 2014
– Keyed into strategic activity on Distance Learning, TEL, and development of a
London campus
– Targeted background work based on student satisfaction
– Positive student feedback on pilot lists
 Launched University-wide September 2014

19. Activity and usage
 This Semester so far:
– Worked with over 300 Faculty colleagues
– Published over 300 lists live to students
– Driven significant print and e book acquisition
– Provided 1,200 digitsations
– Provided access to thousands of specific ebook titles
 Usage
– 14,894 visits and 81,865 page views of online lists in October*
– 1,800 students registered a personal profile
– Over 8,000 views of digitised extracts
– Longest list so far is 576 items
* 400,000 Summon searches in same period.

20. Plastic ebook – NFC and QR
 Digital connectivity and integration
– At the point of need and moment of truth
– First plastic ebook was used 53 times in first month*
* Multiplier effect – 53 less unhappy students?

21. EBL DDA in response to feedback
 Feedback and performance focused
– Key satisfaction surveys, including UK National Student Survey (NSS)
– Targeted investment that delivers value while controlling spend
 In 2013 added 12,500 EBL DDA titles to catalogue and
Summon
 Subject areas mapped to 38 taught programmes
 2014 satisfaction risen over 8 X above average for these
programmes

22. DDA via ILL
 Simple concept
– Improve ILL experience for end-user
– Deliver ‘article experience’ for books
– Customer can choose
– Maximise ROI on PDA while controlling spend
– Offset via savings against cost of print delivery
– Achieve more meaningful relationship between use and cost
 Offered as part of ILL since Dec 2013
 Data indicates successful so far
– More economic than fulfilment by print
– Delivers on more recent PY

24. Thanks for listening…