Variety is the Spice of Life: Differing Models of Entrepreneurship at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro Libraries Tim Bucknall, UNCG Variety is the Spice of Life: Differing Models of Entrepreneurship at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro Libraries Tim Bucknall, University of North Carolina at Greensboro In this session I will discuss and explore three very different successful entrepeneurial initiatives launched at UNCG. Journal Finder was the first link resolver to go into production in the U.S. and is currently used by 40 libraries in 6 states. It was recently sold to WT Cox, a serials subscription agency. The Carolina Consortium is a buying club of 130 libraries that save approximately $150 million per year through joint purchasing arrangements. NC DOCKS is a locally developed institutional repository shared among 5 universities. These collaborations are very, very different from one another, yet all are cost-effective and fiscally sustainable. This session will compare and contrast differing models of entrepeneurship within a library, as well as the mechanisms used for assessing their financial viability. Download the presentation. Tim Bucknall is the Assistant Dean, University Libraries at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and the Founder and Convener of the Carolina Consortia

1. Differing Models of Collaborative Entrepreneurship at
the UNCG Libraries

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.

3. Journal Finder- The Accidental
Entrepreneurial Model

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

10. The Carolina Consortium – The
Sam’s Club Entrepreneurial Model

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

17. Carolina Consortium - Trends
600
534
500
400
Offers
300 270 Schools
Deals
200
117
100 83 72
39 38
16
3
0
2005

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