2. Different, but the same
Should make fiscal sense.
Should align with our mission and goals.
Has to be good for primary clientele – the students and
faculty of UNCG.
As a state-supported school, we would like initiatives to
provide benefits state-wide.
As a public academic library, we would like initiatives to
provide benefits to other libraries.
4. Creating Journal Finder
At the time of its creation and early
development, there was no entrepreneurial intent
The product was so good, that lots of libraries wanted
it.
We decided to become a service provider for other
libraries.
“It isn’t right to charge”
5. Money Questions
Should we charge at all? Or should it be Open Source?
What is our overall fiscal strategy? Are we going to use
this as a cash cow? Or are we viewing this as a
community service?
How should we structure the fees? FTE? Number of
titles?
What services should we provide?
Should we go national or stay local?
Should we try to sell it to a company?
6. The Balance Sheet
“Why in the world would you run a service that just
breaks even? You should pay someone else to do it.”
Changing numbers
- The equation during development
- The early stage of the service
- The mature stage of the service
- The sale
7. Indirect Benefits
Saved an estimated $150,000 that UNCG would have had to
pay for a link resolver (based on a Serials Solutions quote
for comparable functionality)
Estimated cost avoidance for NC schools of $525,000 (all
that money would have gone out of state)
Estimated UNC System savings of over $240,000
There is also a certain amount of value to
The ability of UNCG faculty and students to use to a resolver two or
three years before most other schools
UNCG’s name and logo displayed for years at 42 schools with
200,000+ students
Raising profile of UNCG nationally through
presentations, consulting, articles, etc
8. Was it worth it?
We were able to
be the first in the country provide our students and
faculty with a research tool available nowhere else
offer a cut-rate, high quality service to historically
underfunded schools
offer a cutting-edge research tool to UNCG patrons
and come out over $400,000 ahead over 5 years, while
other institutions are coming out about $200,000
behind to offer a comparable product over the same 5
year period
9. Journal Finder – Accidental
Entrepreneurship
1. Makes fiscal sense
2. Aligns with library mission and goals
ROI (Money) – High
ROI (Usage) – High
11. Background
Major cancellations at UNCG lead us to implement
wide-scale PPV
PPV was more cost effective than subscriptions, but
use was clustered in a few publishers
It was cheaper to join Big Deals for
Wiley, Blackwell, and Springer but we weren’t eligible
to join any consortiums with access to those deals
Other schools had expressed interest, so we decided to
see if we could achieve critical mass to form a group
12. The Carolina Consortium
Founded in 2005 with 39 academic libraries
participating in up to 3 deals, with a total cost
avoidance of about $70 million
NC and SC partnership
No committees, officers, or staff
A Virtual Consortium
13. Measuring the value of the group
Usage
Number of available titles
Cost per use
Cost per title
Cost avoidance
Economic impact
Actual savings
ROI
14. Small – Meredith College
Enrollment of 2400
In 2004, had 3 Wiley and 11 Springer subscriptions
with a list price of approximately $9950
By participating in the Carolina Consortium Wiley
and Springer deals, they gained access to an
additional 1447 journals
Meredith was able to increase its Wiley and
Springer holdings 1000% and was only required to
pay about 2% more
15. Medium – UNCG
In 2004, we paid $65,886.32 for PPV articles. After the
Big Deals, that expenditure was reduced by
75%, generating a $48,000 savings.
Dropped $10,000/yr Springer Solinet deal
Benefited from inflation caps
Significant actual savings (around $65,000/year), not
just cost avoidance
Paying less, and getting more
16. Large – Clemson and USC
Gained many new titles
Joined the Carolina Consortium so that they could
share their titles state-wide
18. The Carolina Consortium today
130 colleges, universities, and community colleges
72 offers generate 879 deals
Annual aggregate cost avoidance of $230 million
19. Carolina Consortium– Sam’s Club
Entrepreneurship
1. Makes fiscal sense
2. Aligns with library mission and goals
ROI (Money) – High
ROI (Usage) – High
20. NC DOCKS – The “Risk
Management” Entrepreneurial
Model
21. A Shared Need
Multiple UNC-system schools were highly interested
in establishing IR’s
One was poised to pay a commercial vendor over
$20,000 one-time, plus $10,000/yr for an IR product
22. A Shared Solution
UNCG offered to build and host an IR for
UNCG, UNCP, ECU, ASU, and UNCW for $3500/yr per
school
Schools would commit to 3 years
The group would collectively decide on features and
needs
Initial design is fairly low-cost, with the option of
adding features if usage warrants
23. The Money
For approximately the same cost that one school was
about to pay an out-of-state company, we are able to
provide a highly customized IR for 5 schools
All payments are a balance transfer within the UNC
system, so all funds stay within UNC’s coffers
It seems unlikely that any school could host and run
their own IR (even an Open Source product) for as
little as they are paying us
The amount of staff time that UNCG is committing to
building and hosting NC DOCKS is more or less equal
to our income from the project, so it is cost neutral
24. Was it worth it?
In terms of usage, it is too early to say
Definitely cheaper for the five of us to share costs than
for us each to support a separate IR
25. NC DOCKS – “Risk Management”
Entrepreneurship
1. Makes fiscal sense
2. Aligns with library mission and goals
ROI (Money) – OK
ROI (Usage) – too early to say
26. Conclusion
Embrace entrepreneurship. It can be an effective vehicle
for promoting and extending library
values, collections, and services.
http://journalfinder.wtcox.com
http://library.uncg.edu/carolinaconsortium
http://libres.uncg.edu/ir