From Selection to Shelf: A Turnaround Time Assessment
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Presenters: Emily Williams, Sandra Barclay, Jin Xiu Guo. Presented at the Georgia Libraries Conference in Columbus, GA on 10/06/2017. Over the course of a year, the Technical Services department of Kennesaw State University tracked the time it took for electronic and print books to reach the shelf from the moment it was selected by department liaisons. Results, challenges, successes, and future plans regarding this turn-around-time assessment will be discussed.
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From Selection to Shelf: A Turnaround Time Assessment
- 1. Emily J. Williams, Kennesaw State University, GA Sandra Barclay, Kennesaw State University, GA Jin X. Guo, Stony Brook University, NY Georgia Libraries Conference Columbus, GA / October 6, 2017 From Selection to Shelf A Turnaround Time Assessment
- 2. Snapshot Kennesaw State University Library System
- 4. Book Order History Fiscal Year # of Print Books # of Ebooks Total 2016-2017 1980 620 2600 2015-2016 5542 1551 7093 2014-2015 2897 468 3365 2013-2014 2100 420 2520
- 5. Purpose Mandated from university’s Office of Institutional Effectiveness and library administration to look for ways to improve http://oie.kennesaw.edu/improve-ksu/
- 6. Why This Method? ● Improve Technical Services operational effectiveness ● Networked approach : across library departments instead of working in silos ● Opportunities for collaboration and high impact practices ● Integrate the assessment into workflows
- 7. How: an organic and eco-system ● Where we are now (Baseline data) ● What are the problems and patterns? (Describe problems) ● How to address the problems? (Seek solutions) ● Execute solutions (Improvement)
- 9. Our Workflow Selector Acquisitions Cataloging Access Services Library Shelves
- 10. Methodology Goal: Determine the length of time it took from book selection for purchase to the time it was received in the library for shelving. ● Identify which types of orders to track ● Determine how to track the data ● Random Sampling of Bib ID numbers ● Collect data from GOBI and Voyager
- 11. ● Firm Order (Regular and P-Card) Print Books ● Johnson Library Shelf-Ready Books without Errors ● Johnson Library Shelf-Ready Books with Errors ● Sturgis Library Shelf-Ready Books without Errors ● Sturgis Library Shelf-Ready Books with Errors ● Ebooks Order Types
- 12. ● Date of selection(according to GOBI) ● Date order placed / book purchased (according to GOBI) ● Date item shipped (according to GOBI) ● Date received at Technical Services when applicable (according to UPS tracking in GOBI ) Workflow deconstructed: Acquisitions
- 13. ● Date the batch of records loaded (according to Voyager) ● Date a book placed on the “problem” shelf (tracked manually) ● Date cataloging completed (according to Voyager) Workflow deconstructed: Cataloging Workflow deconstructed: Access Services Unit ● Date received by Access Services (according to Voyager)
- 14. Random Sample Collection Est. #of orders % of total Count Review retrospectively for FY2017 Johnson Shelf-Ready 381 0.199581 31.33 31 Sturgis Shelf-Ready 761 0.398638 62.59 63 Firm Orders 147 0.077004 12.1 12 Ebooks 620 0.324777 51 51 Total 1909 1 157 157
- 15. Results Order selected to order placed: Ebooks : 10.2 days Firm Order Books : 20 days Shelf-Ready Books : 16.3 days
- 16. Results continued Order placed to received/shipped from vendor: Ebooks : 2 days Firm Order Books : 31.9 days Shelf-Ready Books : 29.8 days
- 17. Results continued Order received from the vendor to placed on the shelf: Ebooks : 5.4 days Firm Order Books : 7.5 days Shelf-Ready Books (no errors) : 16.1 days Shelf-Ready Books (with errors) : 41.4 days
- 18. Final Results Overall from Selection to Shelf (average # days): Ebooks : 17.6 days Firm Order Books : 59.4 days Shelf-Ready Books (without errors) : 57.5 days Shelf-Ready Books (with errors) : 77.8 days
- 19. Considerations Acquisitions staffing changes ILS migration: Voyager to Alma Changes to shelf-ready shipment locations Majority of selectors selected books twice a year Two week winter break
- 20. Considerations
- 21. Successes Baseline data established Data collection integrated into our workflow Motivated to improve
- 22. Future Plans Continue tracking our turnaround time Recommend changing selection deadlines Train Technical Services student assistants to check for duplicates Find other ways to improve our workflows Track number of work days, not calendar days One week winter break
- 23. There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning. Emily J. Williams, Kennesaw State University, GA Sandra Barclay, Kennesaw State University, GA Jin X. Guo, Stony Brook University, NY ~Louis L’Amour, 1908-1988
Editor's Notes
- I’m Emily Williams, Metadata & Resource Management Librarian at Kennesaw State University, and I’m joined by Sandra Barclay, Special Formats Cataloging Librarian at KSU, and Jin Xiu Guo, our former Technical services director and now the Director of Collections & Resource Management at Stony Brook University Libraries in NY.
- Kennesaw State University is located 25 miles north of Atlanta, off of Interstate 75. In 2015, Kennesaw State University and Southern Polytechnic State University were consolidated, and we now have campuses in Kennesaw and Marietta. The university offers 150 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral programs, and we serve more than 35,000 students. The Library System has two physical libraries: Sturgis Library on Kennesaw Campus & Johnson Library on Marietta Campus, and we also have an On-campus Repository for older books, microfiche, and DVDs.
- Technical Services is managed by a unit director and includes acquisitions, cataloging, and processing. We have 4 librarians, 3 paraprofessionals and 1-2 student assistants. Our offices are located adjacent to the repository.
- To give you an understanding of the volume of monograph records we work with, we’ve included a snapshot of the number of books we’ve ordered in recent years. The year pertinent to the assessment we’re discussing today is Fiscal Year 2017 which includes July 2016 through June 2017. As you can see, we ordered a total of 2600 books, quite a bit lower than the previous year’s purchase of 7000.
- While we are always looking to do things more efficiently, we started this assessment because of KSU Improve, a university-wide initiative instituted in 2016 as a way for departments to demonstrate a University commitment to continuous improvement. By evaluating our processes, we ensure that the university is effectively accomplishing its mission.
- As part of this initiative, we decided to evaluate our ordering, cataloging, and distribution workflow. The cycle begins with our Undergraduate and Graduate Librarians selecting print and electronic books for purchase through GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO, a web-based acquisitions tool used to find and order print and electronic books. The Acquisitions department receives the book requests through GOBI and purchases the books after determining that the Library does not already own or have access to the book. We used our ILS at the time, ExLibris Voyager, to manage book purchases and MARC records. The majority of the books we receive arrive shelf-ready, meaning they shouldn’t require any physical processing and can be shelved upon arrival. Because of our separate locations, the books are shipped from GOBI to their respective libraries where they are unpacked, checked in, and shelved by the Access Services departments. They would set aside any books that the Cataloging Librarians had already identified as having issues in addition to any problem books they noticed when unpacking the boxes.
- As this was the first time we assessed this workflow, our goal was to establish baseline data at the end of FY2017. We wanted to establish the average length of time it took from book selection to purchase to the time it was received in the library for shelving. Before we could launch the evaluation, we had to develop a methodology, identify which types of orders to track, AND determine how we would track and collect the information from GOBI and Voyager. As mentioned, the Director of Technical Services led the initiative, and everyone in the unit participated in the project. Acquisitions helped develop the tracking form, identified titles to track throughout the year, and input acquisitions data. Cataloging also helped with the development of the tracking form, input the cataloging data, tracked processing and shipping, and assured completion of the data collection sheet.
- We initially determined that we wanted to track all the ebooks and print books selected for purchase. Having worked with shelf ready books for 3 years, we knew that we needed to differentiate those shelf-ready books with errors from those without because errors cause processing delays. For similar reasons, we also tracked those items purchased by p-card and other firm orders. P-card purchases, while initiated by selectors, are actually ordered by our Library’s Administration Office and arrive needing physical processing. Electronic books, understandably, have a similar but separate workflow.
- Utilizing Google Forms for ease of collaboration, we developed a spreadsheet to track the three main components within the workflow: Acquisitions, Cataloging, and Access Services. Acquisitions tracked the dates that books were selected by selectors in GOBI, the date the order was placed, and when the order shipped. We tracked when we received the books in Technical Services for firm orders.
- For Cataloging, we tracked when the batch of records for a shipment of books was processed, or loaded into Voyager, when books with errors or in need of special attention were placed on the “problem” shelf, and when cataloging was completed. For Access Services, we tracked the day the the books were checked-in to Voyager, meaning that they’re “in transit” or “in process” statuses were removed, At this point, they had arrived in the library.
- We started out by choosing a few titles here and a few titles there for our sample from the different categories. After a few months, we realized that the data we were collecting was inadequate, and looked for another method. Using Voyager Access, we identified the list of titles and bibliographic identification numbers “created” during Fiscal Year 2017, excluding those books not within our range of study. The total number of books was 1909. By using an online Sample Size calculator, we applied a 95% confidence level and .075 confidence interval to get the desired sample size of 157. Looking at the percentage of our orders in relation to each other, we calculated the number that we needed to analyze in each category. We used the Random Sampling in Excel to choose specific bibliographic records and titles we would use for our data. In hindsight, we would calculate our sample size differently. Some of these numbers were way too small from a statistical standpoint, but it was a good starting place.
- The reason the turnaround time for the firm orders is so high is due to the small sample set, resulting in a skewed average.
- We were surprised that our Shelf-ready books took nearly 2 months to get on the shelf. We were also surprised that our firm orders only took 2 days longer.
- Acquisitions staffing changes in middle of project resulted in our department being short staffed. Large amount of time devoted to ILS migration - getting ready for Alma Changed shelf-ready shipment locations from the libraries to the Repository in March 2017, adding an additional 2.9 days to the turnaround time. Majority of selectors made their book selections at once causing large batches of ordering and receiving Two-week winter break soon after first major ordering cycle deadline
- This shows our expenditures for materials, showing peaks in January and March, following the selection deadlines which were November 30 and March 1.
- Maybe more accurate to track by # work days instead of calendar days Our new president says only 1 week off at the holidays. We are excited to have our baseline established which completed our goal for the year, and now we can look to improving our processes with Alma.