This Ain’t Your Papa’s Allocation Formula!Team Based Approaches to Monograph Collections Budgets

Scott Gillies, Team Head, Information ResourcesHelen Salmon , Information Resources Librarian

November 2013

University of Guelph Library ∙ www.lib.uoguelph.ca

Backstory – Who are We?

• Located in Guelph, Ontario Canada (near Toronto) – population 120,000

• Founding colleges date from the late 1800s; became a full-spectrum university in 1964

• A medium-sized comprehensive university with traditional strengths in agriculture, veterinary medicine, life sciences, applied social sciences

Backstory – A Bit about GuelphThen (1965) …. And Now

• FTE count: approx. 1,700 students• faculty 357• Three colleges• One main library (all subjects)• One departmental library

(veterinary medicine)• 625,000 volumes

• FTE count: approx. 25,000o 22,500 undergradso 2,400 grads

• 780 faculty• Seven colleges• 90+ majors in 13 degree

programs• Single library (main campus)• 4 satellite campus libraries• 1.2 million volumes

Enrolment Profile for the University of Guelph

What we value….student-focused

Experiential learning

residentially-intensive

E-learning and DE modalities

Strong focus on internationalism and open learning

Committed to the integration of learning and research

Highly collaborative and interdisciplinary (within and beyond the university)

Before 2009 …..Traditional Liaison Model

• One liaison librarian > many departments

• Multiple job roles

• Librarians (most) are ‘generalists’

• Matrix management reporting lines

• Liaison librarians report to the Head of IR for part (25%) of their duties, but their primary supervisor is the Head of Academic Liaison

Timeline – University of Guelph Organizational Renewal Initiative

2006 – 2008Academic Liaison Services Review is carried out

May 2008Launch of our Organizational Renewal initiative

Summer 2008 Staff engaged in defining organizational vision, values, and core work

2008-2009Ongoing organizational development training to support cultural change

Fall 2008Release of the first draft of our new Organizational Model with 5 strategic teams

Winter 2009Staff participate in working groups established to define new strategic teams and cross-functional teams

Spring 2009the final Organizational Renewal report is released and new positions are defined.

Fall 2009 -Spring 2010Staff are assigned to strategic teams, and the new organizational structure is implemented. The IR team is born!

After 2009 – principles arising from the Academic Liaison Review

• Liaison is not exclusively about departmental alignment, and is not done exclusively by librarians

• The situation in which “everyone does everything” is not sustainable

• The new model will support development of deeper skills and professional learning networks

• Avoid “silo-ization” of work; actively encourage

enhanced collaboration with each other and with many groups on campus

What were the expectations? for the new IR Strategic Team:

[The IR team] is responsible for the development and curation of the Library’s collections and for ensuring responsive and proactive support for the learning, teaching and research enterprise….

providing a coordinated approach to collection development and management

Ensuring that relevant, unique and useful resources are available for users in ways that integrate seamlessly with their learning and discovery activities

Focus of the New IR Team….

Collection

Development

Collection

ManagementEvaluation and Assessment

Information Resources

Team

Information Resources Team:

Head of Information Resources

Manager of Acquisitions

Coordinator, Acquisitions

Coordinator, Gov. Pubs & Collection

Maintenance

6 library assistants

IR librarians (4)

Media Resources specialist

(professional staff)

Building a shared community of practice….

By creating a team of librarians and professional staff who would focus on Information Resources, we hoped to remove the old silos and create new synergy:

a common purpose

a community of practice

a renewed focus on IR work

a rich peer-to- peer learning environment

sharing of our diverse

strengths

increased innovation,

agility, collaboration

Factors for Change – External

• Shifts in publishing trends – Greater availability of e-formats

– Rise/growth of consortia ebook licenses (big costs, multi-disciplinary content)

– Publishers are aggregating and integrating information “packages” – this requires broader funding models

– Increase in multi-disciplinary and Open Access publishing (who will pay for it?)

changes everything

Factors for Change – External

• Societal trends– Open access to information (the “Web” changed

everything!)

– Research and teaching increasingly cut across multiple disciplines

– Faculty cross-appointments

– growth of multi-institutional research teams

– ability to form research networks through social media channels

Factors for Change – Internal • Changes in research and teaching

on campus create larger, more interdisciplinary departments

• Increased focus on accountability at a broad institutional level (parent institution, provincial government, federal funding agencies) – replaces departmental focus

• Departmental affiliation/identity is diminished by other forms of academic networking

NetworkingCollaboration

Innovation

Factors for Change – Internal

• Demise of formal university governance structures• Monograph spending authority devolves to the

library• Transformative change in the role of academic

libraries

Monograph Budgeting: how do we do it now?

IF you came expecting a large series of Excel spreadsheets and formula minutiae…

PREPARE to be Annoyed

Monograph Budgeting: how we did it “then”

• $$ divided into College-level then department-level allocations

• Some broader funds (Reference, Interdisciplinary, ebooks, Parents’ Fund)

• Budget-setting done by the Head of IR, based on individual discussions with each liaison librarian

• Department input (sometimes) from faculty library reps and College library committees

Library Monograph Budget

College of ArtsFund

History Dept.allocation

English & Theatre

allocation

Philosophyallocation

Monograph Budgeting (Old)• Allocations formulae …

“Once upon a time…”− Primarily FTE driven

− Years of accretion and changes

− Often developed by political rather than numeric criteria

• Many different fund allocations within the monograph budget (over 60!)

• 55%+ of mono budget was allocated to firms

Monograph Budgeting (New)NEW Tools and Structures:

• Larger spending “pots”, with department budgets now aggregated into College-level funds

• Approval plan plays pivotal role in guiding mono acquisitions

• Allocations made in response to formal program and course assessments

Transition from department to university perspective:

Departmental

budgets

College-level and

fully centralized

budgets

Moving from an A Priori formula to Post-Hoc adjustments … how?

Determinative factors:

– Overall budgetary balance (80/20 rule)

– ATB increases/decreases

– Course / program assessments

– Format migration (emerging trends)

– Non-punitive framework

The Macro Level – Team Head

Budget View - OLDUG Monos 2005/06 >

College Mono. Total >

COA (Arts) mono.total >

– Fine Arts (Firm)

– Fine Arts (STO)

– History (Firm)

– History (STO)

– Languages/Literatures-

– Classics (Firm)

– French (Firm)

– French (STO)

– etc.

UG Monos 2005/06 >

Approval Plan Total>– Classics- approval

– Languages- approval

– Scottish- approval

– etc.

Budget View - NEW

UG Monos 2012/13 >

College Mono. Total >

• COA (Arts)

– COA- Firm

– COA- ebook†

– COA (STO)

UG Monos 2012/13 >

Approval Plan Total

† Non-allocated tracking fund for reporting purposes

Strategies to Adapt – Team HeadAction Example - Springer Ebooks Package

2008 > 8 Collections (Mono/College-Central Pooling)

College/Dept % Proportion

CBS (Life Sci) 15%

OVC 20%

Humber (Soc. Sci.) 17%

Ebooks (Serials) 48%

Strategies to Adapt – Team Head (2)Action Example - Springer Ebooks Package

2009 > ALL (12) Collections (Mono/College-Central Pooling)

College /Dept % Proportion

CBS (Life Sci) 20%Chem 3%Computer 15%Ebooks (Serials) 32%

Engineering 13%

Math 4%

OVC 10%

Physics 2%

Strategies to Adapt – Team Head (3)Action Example - Springer Ebooks Package

2010 / 11 > ALL (12) Collections (Mono/College-Central Pooling)

College % ProportionCBS (Life Sci) 12%CME 5%CPES† 26%Ebooks (Serials) 51%OVC 5%

†Includes all physical/eng. Sciences – chem, eng, math, physics

Strategies to Adapt – Team Head (4)Action Example - Springer Ebooks Package

2012 > ALL (12) Collections (100% Central funding)

College % ProportionEbooks (Serials)* 100%

*Includes some transfer funds from College monos as part of centralization

The selector viewpointCultural Changes:

• Development of a new team-based culture/approach for Collections

• Joint Work + greater trust + greater knowledge = Larger Shared Funds

• New workflows and practices support knowledge exchange and broader context

– Holistic approach

– Consensus decision-making

– Shared professional development

– Balancing of workload

– Use of Logic Models

Strategies to Adapt – P2P learning

• Maximize peer-to-peer learning environment

• Shared professional development and knowledge-sharing strengthens trust and creates new opportunities (collaboration on e-packages, better knowledge of new curricular initiatives)

• join forces to increase visibility and outreach effectiveness

Strategies to Adapt – Selector Tools

Removing silos and barriers:

– One approval plan– Common templates for assessments– New Products database– Shared decision-making and visioning– Evidenced-based librarianship

(assessment)– Mentoring and training the next

generation of Collections specialists– Curriculum-based collections work

Managing the budget – Selector Tools• New tools (or old tools used in

new ways)

– Statistical/usage tools

– COGNOS (MIS software) reports

– GOBI

– New products database and IR Newsfeed database

– Excel for budget tracking

– Vendor platforms

– Curriculum mapping

– LC schedules

Tracking expenditures at the micro (departmental) level

Strategies to Adapt – The TeamQ: Group work and sharing are great….but how do we ensure equity across the disciplines?

A: New Products Process– Ebook packages evaluated using standardized criteria and from a

holistic/campus-wide perspective

– Nominal “shares” of available new product funds

– Informal brokering and negotiating is grounded in formal assessment outcomes and faculty prioritization (resource is required for a new program)

Strategies to Adapt – The Team

• Evaluation and Assessment – how best to employ

use data?

• The broader view – UG mono collections in light of

regional (TUG) consortium

• Formal allocations formula

– To Re-fresh or Abandon?

Collaboration and Evaluation

Challenges - Communications• How to communicate new

modes of work to our users and our internal partners/clients?– Loss of Dept. Faculty Library

Reps

– Intra-library communications

– New modes of communication: social media, point-of-need ordering, PDA

• What do our friends (OCUL, ARL/CARL) and funders (University, Province – HEQCO) want to know? How can we measure this?

Library Open House

Challenges – Ebooks• Q: How do you track Ebooks?

• A: Here, there…everywhere

– Allocated serials fund

– Tracking funds in College Mono

– Tracking funds in College Approval

– Tracking funds in Reference

Challenges – Ebooks• Tracking cost/benefit (or even

cost-per-use) is not an exact science

• Lack of standardization – hard to know what we are buying and what we can do with it

• Consortial models for shared purchasing and resource sharing are just beginning to emerge

• PDA/DDA projects? transition…

Question Time• Comments?

• Feedback?