Collection development is big business and how academic libraries decide to invest in content is radically changing. This is being driven as much by new approaches to organisational design, relationship management, and data insight in universities as by changes to business models and technology in scholarly publishing and the supply chain. Based on recent experience at Edinburgh, Manchester and Northumbria, this participatory session will explore new strategies for collection development, and specifically address challenges and opportunities faced by libraries that have moved or are transitioning from traditional subject librarian roles.

1. Collection development in a world without
subject librarians
 Panel:
– Rachel Kirkwood (Collection Development Manager, University of Manchester)
– Laura Shanahan (Head of Collections Development and Access, University of Edinburgh)
– Nick Woolley (Head of Library Services, Northumbria University)
 Introduction
 Panel presentations
 Participatory discussion and Q&A

2. Collection development in a world without
subject librarians
Collection development is big business and how academic libraries decide to
invest in content is radically changing.
This is being driven as much by new approaches to organisational design,
relationship management, and data insight in universities as by changes to
business models and technology in scholarly publishing and the supply chain.
Based on recent experience at Edinburgh, Manchester and Northumbria, this
participatory session will explore new strategies for collection development, and
specifically address challenges and opportunities faced by libraries that have
moved or are transitioning from traditional subject librarian roles.

3. Collection development in a world
without subject librarians
UKSG, Bournemouth 11th – 13th April 2016
Nick Woolley
Head of Library Services, Northumbria University

4. Outline
 Introduction to Northumbria
 Organisation and relationship management
 Strategy and policy
 Decision making for investment
 Value and impact
 Opportunities and challenges

5. Northumbria University
 Since 1894 (Rutherford College of Technology)
 Over 30,000 students from over 130 countries
 Four faculties across two campuses
 Tripled research power in REF2014
 In Britain’s best university city – Newcastle upon Tyne
 University Library
– Part of a super-converged directorate of student-facing services
– 24/7 and Customer Service Excellence (CSE)
– Joint highest scoring academic library in the UK (THE Student Experience Survey 2016)
– Two library divisions; Learning & Research Services; Collection & Digital Services
– ‘Next generation functional model’ – no subject librarians!
– Single frontline for all directorate – ‘Ask4Help’

6. Collections
 550,000 print books
 700,000 ebooks
 38,000 e journals
 Growing collection of primary digital sources
 Online reading lists
 Unifying on demand content services – DDA, ILL
 Member of UKRR

7. Organisational design and relationship
management
 2013 refocus moved to a ‘next generation functional’ design
 Transitioned from Subject Librarians with broad portfolios to functional leads
 Developed a ‘unified relationship model’
 Collection Development Librarian – new specialist with focus on:
– Informing policy, e.g. for business rules (reading lists, DDA, approval)
– Collaborative business cases in partnership with Faculty
– Publicising collections
– Join-up but no real focus on budget management, or other collection management
 Subject knowledge resides in Faculty?

8. Strategy and policy
 Collection strategy and policy part of wider University Library approach to wholly align
with institutional Mission, Vision and Corporate Strategy
 The Library Collection exists to support learning, teaching and research
 No formal conspectus approach
 The Library ‘business model’ - all scholarly content delivered by the Library should be
available free at the point of need and with no limits on reading
 Digital First for innovation and scaling delivery

9. Northumbria’s Digital First

10. Using digital to meet new demand

11. Levels of collection development
 Collection development is increasingly pluralistic and dynamic
 Library ‘mediation’ is still critical
 Standardisation, automation, and management by exception
 Focus efforts on adding value by higher level activity
– Reading lists and business rules
– Demand driven – ebooks, ILL
– Approval plans
– Comprehensive and robust business cases for all subscriptions and high value content
developed collaboratively in partnership with Faculty

12. Reading list business rules

13. Decision making for investment
 Strategic investment integrated with University teaching and research
– e.g. programme approval and review
– e.g. student experience action plans
 Collaborative in partnership with Faculty
– Business cases and also link with personal copies of textbooks
 Customer focus – genuine insight into student learning and experience
– End to end starts with customer not ‘supply chain’ or procurement activity
 Actionable intelligence from data
 Link to wider support for scholarly communication, including OA and publication fund

14. Using data to visualise the collection

15. Decision making for investment
 Opportunities and challenges?
– Cooperative and coordinated collection development above campus
– Ecommerce business models – size of container, streaming etc..
– Impact of move to OA, offsetting and end of big deals (?)
– Pressure on budgets and space
– Need to demonstrate value and impact
– Evolution of scholarly communication
– Growing importance of interdisciplinary research

16. Value and impact
 Importance of demonstrating value and impact of library, incl. VFM and ROI
 Collection development as an activity delivers value beyond the content
 Monitoring outcomes of action plans
– e.g. measurable changes to satisfaction for specific programmes
 Proxy metrics for learning and research
 Opportunities and challenges?
– Correlation between library use, and both student attainment and research excellence
– The research and learning environments
– Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), GPA and Learning Gain
– Learning analytics

17. Thanks for listening…