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Michael Kelly at Library Journal reports that the Missouri Library Network Corporation and Amigos Library Services are exploring the possibility of merging their two operations, potentially creating ”the largest library consortium west of the Mississippi River, with approximately 1,000 libraries and cultural heritage institutions in 22 states.”
Read the Library Journal article here and Amigos statement here.
In a recent survey poll of both large and smaller sized publishers, EBSCO projects that academic and Medical libraries can expect the same 4-6% increase in serials pricing for 2012 as in 2011.
As Steve Bosch from University of Arizona commented, “It seems that publishers may be listening to librarians who are increasingly vocal about the need to bridge the gap between reduced budgets and increasing subscription prices”
Despite a positive outlook, many libraries still face budget cuts. As the article highlights:
“Nevertheless, as libraries struggle with budget cuts, even these lower projected price increases could mean more cancelled periodicals. As reported in LJ’s Periodicals Price Survey, 34 percent of 450 respondents to EBSCO Information Services’ 2011 Library Collections and Budgeting Trends Survey—mostly academic libraries—reported budget cuts for 2011, and 44 percent expected cuts in the next fiscal year. The migration from print—or print plus online—to online only will continue in 2012, and subscriptions in all formats will be subject to cancellation to fit within budget parameters.”
Please visit The Library Journal website for additional information on this article : http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/community/academiclibraries/892115-265/ebsco_projects_4_to_6.html.csp
After months of review, the Harvard University library system has implemented a new structure merging individual libraries into groups based on similar collection needs.
In a recent letter posted on the harvard.edu website, Provost Alan Garber explains the shift in more detail:
“This affinity group model maintains the individuality of the libraries while providing mechanisms for the cross-campus collaboration that the system needs for its strategic development and overall organizational effectiveness. An organizational design can be viewed on the Library Transition website. Although this plan is the product of a broad set of conversations across the libraries and the Schools, flexibility will be an integral part of the plan’s implementation.”
To read more on this announcement please visit the following link: http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k77982&pageid=icb.page459518.
Publishing Technology China launches at the Beijing International Book Fair
Company to offer full-service digital publishing solutions for Chinese content.
London and Beijing, 31st August 2011 – Publishing Technology plc (LSE: PTO), the largest provider of software and services to the publishing industry, has announced its expansion into the prospering Chinese market by delivering local online hosting platforms and domestic sales representation.
Based in Beijing and managed by digital publishing expert Helen Sun, Publishing Technology China will directly target Chinese publishers, offering a complete publishing solution through ingentaconnect, the largest single platform for research publishers. Ms. Sun will combine her vast industry experience and knowledge of the Chinese market with an existing network of experienced sales representatives located around the country. The innovative technology together with native expertise will increase visibility of Chinese content, create new revenue streams, and facilitate sales to researchers and librarians globally.
The joint venture is the latest extension of Publishing Technology’s operations as demand for digital publishing solutions increases across the globe. Home to over 15,500 electronic publications and over 250 partners, the ingentaconnect interface will be offered in both Mandarin and Cantonese along with a subset of high-profile content to several thousand libraries across the country, creating a new user base for international publishers in addition to encouraging Chinese publishers to move online.
As part of the launch, the company’s Publishers Communication Group (PCG) division will also leverage the established national sales network to roll out its sales and marketing services. Initially, PCG will represent the American Association for Cancer Research in mainland China, as well as BioOne in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
George Lossius, CEO of Publishing Technology, commented: “The Chinese publishing industry is fast-paced and flourishing, currently growing at an astonishing rate of 19% a year. With over 8,000 academic journals and a booming scientific research community, second only to that of the US, China represents a major opportunity for us – and it is also relatively untapped in terms of digital resources for publishers and end users. Helen is a tremendously talented digital publishing expert with a proven track record in the Chinese market. This, coupled with Publishing Technology’s innovation and market-leading product, will make it a winning partnership.”
Helen Sun, CEO of Publishing Technology China said: “It is a great honour to work with such a trusted and established company as Publishing Technology, and even more exciting to become a part of it. The joint venture with Publishing Technology will provide not only world-leading technologies with proven marketing and customer service support to Chinese publishers, but it will also offer a great distribution platform in China to all publishers across the Atlantic. Our partnership combines leading digital technologies with digital content providers that already have a wide network within the publishing industry and library community in China and we look forward to welcoming more publishers to our rapidly increasing client base.”
Posted on July 7, 2011 by Janet Fisher in the Publishing Technology Blog
Publishers always depend on data: may it be the number of copies purchased by a bookstore or wholesellers for book publishers, or the profile of their subscribers to a particular title or collection for journal publishers. But today, we have to know more. In the world of electronic publishing we have to know how much usage our products are getting and how they are being used. This issue was examined in a valuable session at the June 2011 meeting of the Society of Scholarly Publishing (www.sspnet.org).
Library customers have for years now stressed the importance of receiving COUNTER-compliant usage statistics for the electronic materials to which they subscribe. But publishers today must also mine the information they can collect from their electronic platforms in order to market their products most effectively to new potential customers and to retain their current subscribers.
In our renewal campaigns, Publishers Communication Group (PCG) finds that one of the major reasons for cancelling a subscription is lack of usage (http://www.pcgplus.com/pdfs/trends_05_10.pdf). To proactively avoid these situations, publishers can now examine their usage reports to gain a better understanding of some of the questions below. For example:
Google Analytics can also be employed to add further context to standard usage information. The day is coming when the standard renewal notice will include not just price and type of subscription, but information harvested from a variety of data gathering tools about how valuable the content has proven to be at the institution.
In addition to being a valuable tool for renewals, usage statistics can help publishers to identify strong prospects for new subscriptions. Monitoring turnaways and where they are coming from should lead publishers to institutions that are likely to have a high interest in their content.
Publishing Technology’s marketing division Publishers Communication Group helps publishers sort through all this data to develop plans for leveraging the tools at their disposals. As a result, well-designed campaigns can help boost usage where it is too low and find valuable new prospects. Contact us at inquire@pcgplus.com for more information.
During the Allen Press Emerging Trends in Scholarly Publishing Seminar held in Washington, DC last month, PCG’s Emilie Delquié presented an overview of how the Patron Driven Acquisition model is evolving in the library market. After a brief introduction of how PDA works, she examined some of the opportunities and challenges this new business model presents to publishers and librarians alike. Her presentation along with the other interesting talks given that day can be found online at http://allenpress.com/resources/archive.
This month’s ALPSP Seminar “Publishers and Library Consortia: Changing Expectations” explored the shifting sands of consortia-publisher relations, the consortia landscapes in Europe and North America, and what models are on their way in (PDA) and out (Knowledge Exchange-style partnerships). Speakers included Rick Anderson from the University of Utah, Richard Bennett from Springer, and Pierre Carbone from the French Ministry of Education, among others. Some of the highlights, courtesy of ALPSP.org, include:
SURFdiensten and international cooperation: the case of Knowledge Exchange (ppt)
Wilma Mossink, Legal Advisor, SURFfoundation/SURFdiensten, The Netherlands
Nol Verhagen, Licensing Working Group of Knowledge Exchange and advisor to the UKB Consortium of the Netherlands
Overview of the library consortia landscape in Europe (audio)(ppt)
Pierre Carbone, Library Inspector, French Ministry of Education
The consortia landscape in the USA (audio)(ppt)
Rick Anderson, Associate Director for Scholarly Resources & Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah
The global economic crisis and its impact on consortia licenses: a financial perspective (audio)(ppt)
Hazel Woodward, Cranfield University Librarian and Director of Cranfield Press
The past, the present and the future: a commercial publisher’s perspective on library consortia (audio)(presentation – link to prezi.com)
Richard Bennett, Vice President – Sales, North, West & Eastern Europe, Springer
The not-for-profit publisher and consortia negotiations (audio)(ppt)
Adam Gardner, Publishing Sales Director, CABI
Panel discussion: publishing collaborations and innovative licensing models (audio part 1) (audio part 2)
John Parsons, Senior Sales Manager, Europe, BioOne (ppt)
Robert Jacobs, Director of Publisher Relations, Swets (ppt)
Tom Taylor, President, DragonFly (ppt)
Emilie Delquie, Vice-president, Publishers Communication Group (ppt)
Several PCG managers will be in attendance at the ACRL conference this week in Philadelphia, as well as the UKSG Meeting in Harrogate, UK from April 4 to 6.
Please come visit at Booths 205 (ACRL) and 25 (UKSG), and email Vice President Emilie Delquie to set up a meeting (edelquie [at] pcgplus.com).
In the latest issue of the PCG newsletter, we take a look at the world of library consortia. Marco Castellan breaks down the past, present and future of the relationship between Library Consortia and the Big Deal, Emilie Delquie explores a potential new Solution for Smaller Publishers wanting to approach consortia, and Kate Stevens profiles the US mega-consortium LYRASIS in an Interview with CEO Kate Nevins. View The Vantage website here.
PCG is also proud to announce the following:
Last fall the former director of France’s COUPERIN consortium, Pierre Carbone, authored an informative and wide-ranging report on the “Costs, Benefits and Constraints” of sharing electronic resources via academic and library consortia. The study was based on detailed information from about 15 consortia from different regions (COUPERIN in France, JISC in the UK, OhioLink in the US, CIBER in Italy, etc.), providing an overview of who these groups are, why they exist, what acquisition and purchasing models they employ, and what some of the more recent trends may be.
PCG has excerpted some key insights from the study below. Quotations have been taken from the English summary, which can be read here.* The complete report, which is in French, can be found here.**
Why Consortia? A look at the primary missions of the library consortia reveal that their most important functions are cooperative negotiation, purchase and funding of electronic resources, followed by training, managing access to those resources, and storage. Click to enlarge the image below:
The consortia in question have memberships ranging from ten to several hundred, and a majority of these members are higher education and research institutions. In certain cases, corporate or public libraries are also included.
Financials. When it comes to funding for the consortia themselves, and the large amount of electronic resources they are acquiring, there are a variety of different models. Overall, however, they can be divided into “two categories of consortia: the first manage only a running budget or else have their running expenses paid directly by the members; the others bear the costs of the electronic resources, mainly owing to contributions from the members or in some cases thanks to national or regional financing.” CBU in Switzerland is an example of the former, and JISC an example of the latter. Click on the following table for a detailed overview of these consortia by the numbers: number of members, numbers of users, total e-resource budget (euros), and average e-resource budget per user.
Models. In addition to funding, the different groups have different models for contract negotiation and resource acquisition. For negotiation, some consortium officers prefer to deal directly with the publisher from the start – and work outward to determine interest among members and reach an agreeable offer. Many others prefer to work from the “bottom up”; asking publishers to generate interest among their members first, then having those members officially request a proposal from the consortium. When it comes to acquisition, the most popular arrangements are “opt in,” in which the member institutions join the agreement as their budget and content needs dictate, or a one-price-fits-all agreement in which the consortium provides access to all of its members for a single, discounted price. The report continues:
“The criteria for splitting the bill between members are in most cases the publisher’s criteria (the historical amount paid for the packages of journals), more rarely their relative size in terms of the number of students or teachers, the share of use, or the proportion of grants in the case of the British consortium JISC.
Some consortia tested innovative models: in particular a “cost for content” provision (Ohio LINK), a conversion of pay-per-view in subscription linked to a certain amount of use (JISC), a model for e-books (JISC). Other models were unsuccessfully tried, for instance a usage-based model (for which it was difficult to forecast the amount), while publishers have had difficulties in devising a new model for e-only which would be free of the reference to the paper’s cost.”
Trends. Some of more recent library consortia trends include:
Please visit the full report or English summary for more information about the state, composition and future of library consortia around the globe.
*http://media.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/file/2010/33/3/French_Report_on_Costs_Benefits_and_Limitations_of_Rlectronic_Resources_Sharing_Executive_summary_160333.pdf ** http://media.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/file/2009/69/8/rapport_MRE_diffusion_159698.pdfView more by category: publishing industry (52), library market (44), PCG (36), conferences (31), ebooks (19), budgets (19), Europe (18), Scholarly publications (13), publishing technology (13), higher education (12). .
