www.bournemouth.ac.uk
Session 2:Procurement and
E-Books
David Ball
www.bournemouth.ac.uk 2
Summary
• Consortia• Procurement cycle• E-books tender
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Advantages of Consortia
• Aggregation of spending power:• Discounts• Suppliers will invest to develop new
services, e.g. shelf-ready books• Savings:
• Competitive tendering process and contract management
• Monitoring and improving quality: • Pool spend and knowledge about
suppliers
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UK Library Purchasing Consortia
7 regional consortia covering all UK HEIs
Procurement for Libraries – umbrella group; forum for determining appropriate level of procurement
Funded by subscription and staff resources of members
General university consortia – stationery, IT, laboratory supplies
Concentrated on hard copy: exploit competition between aggregators
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Southern Universities Purchasing Consortium
(SUPC)• Largest of the regional consortia• 47 members – small to very
large• All areas of university
purchasing• Contracts worth over £100m
p.a. (US$187m)• Framework agreements not
central purchasing
www.bournemouth.ac.uk 6
SUPC Library Group
• Library contracts worth £33m p.a. (US$62m)
• Books, including campus bookshops:• 4 suppliers• Discounts average 15% of list price• Pioneered fully shelf-ready books
• Hard-copy journals – 2 suppliers• E-books
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Higher Education Agents
• Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)• Non-commercial, funded by top-slice• NESLi2, JISC Collections
• Eduserv/CHEST• Owned by HE sector, BUT funded by
percentage of sales revenue• Collections of e-journals and databases
• Both concentrate on e-resources: negotiate with publishers (monopolists)
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Differences from Turkey?
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Procurement Cycle
• Identify the need• Prepare the specification• Tender to find suppliers• Award contract• Measure and monitor
performance
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Identify the Need
• Determine precisely what is required
• On what basis – bought outright (hard copy), access (electronic), leased (LMS)
• Consult users and librarians
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Prepare the Specification
• Fundamental to any procurement• Informs suppliers of what is
required, when, how, to what standards
• Basis on which to evaluate and choose suppliers, and judge quality of service
• Specify requirements, not detailed processes – allow for creativity by suppliers
www.bournemouth.ac.uk 12
Find the Supplier
• Tender evaluation• Measurable requirements from
specification• Quality – accreditation, references, site
visits• Ability to meet specification -
functionality• Cost – comparable, whole life of contract
• Weight each requirement according to importance
• Award contract
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Measure and Monitor Performance
• Essential to keep suppliers engaged
• Contract management meetings – 2-4 per year
• Performance measures from specification• Discounts• Supply times• Errors
• Feedback from members
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Questions?
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E-Books
• Existing heavy use of e-journals by undergraduates
• Electronic medium the norm for students’ social and leisure pursuits
• Electronic medium becoming primary in HE
• Need for e-books
www.bournemouth.ac.uk 16
E-Books: Problems and Obstacles
• Lack of a clear open standard for operating systems;
• Fears about the protection of content and the rights of the content owner in the context of giving users flexibility;
• Lack of appropriate content in suitable quantities;
• Pricing of titles, software and hardware;
• Lack of integration into the general market for books. (Herther)
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E-Books: Current Developments
• Google Book Project:• California, Complutense of Madrid,
Harvard, Michigan, New York Public Library, Oxford, Stanford
• Scan and digitise 16m volumes
• MSN and BL – 100,000 volumes• Apple:
• iPod book reader• Agreement on content with
publisher
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E-books: Identifying the Need
• Developing market place• Fluid business models
• Mimic hard-copy business models• Trend towards bundling/Big Deal
• Avoid what happened with e-journals – publishers determine business models; price tied to historical spend on hard-copy
• Virtual learning environments
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Preparing the Specification 1
• Aim to provide agreements that:• Are innovative and flexible• Exploit the electronic medium fully• Focus on users’ needs not libraries’• Encourage the addition of library-
defined content
• Agreements available to all UK HEIs, not just SUPC
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Preparing the Specification 2
Two distinct requirements:Requirement A – a hosted e-book service from which institutions can purchase or subscribe to individual titles
Requirement B – a hosted e-book service of content that is specified by the institutions
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Selection Criteria
Academic nature of content Satisfactory authentication Demonstrable benefits for
consortium purchase Customer and technical
support 4 suppliers selected out of 8:
3 general aggregators, 1 specialist
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List Price?
• The 3 general aggregators offer pricing based on publisher’s list price
• 1190 common titles from 4 publishers were compared
• Many titles have no common list price in e-form
• Average e-book price for the common titles varied from $99.9 to $102.2, a spread of 2.3%
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Prices: Hard Copy vs. E
• One aggregator, offering outright purchase and only 1 simultaneous user, allowing for discounts and tax:• E-book: 155% of list price• Hard copy: 85% of list price
• E-book is 82% more expensive• Book budget buys 45% less e-
books than hard-copy books
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Price Comparison Year 1
$$ Co. Abuy
Co. A1500
subscribe
Co. B - buy
Co. B -subscriptio
nCo. C
100 books 11738 11741 18613 12021 12456
500 books 58691 11741 93066 60106 66782
1000 books 117383 11741 186132 120213 129064
1500 books 176074 11741 279198 180319 191345
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Price Comparison Year 3
$$
Co. Abuy
Co. A1500
subscribe Co. B -
buy
Co. Bsubscriptio
nCo. C
100 books 11738 35224 18613 15624 13356
500 books 58691 35224 93066 78119 67682
1000 books 117383 35224 186132 156238 129964
1500 books 176074 35224 279198 234357 192245
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Relative Pricing
• Purchase of 1500 titles:• Co. C 69% of Co. B• Co. A 63% of Co. B
• Subscription over 3 years to 1500 titles:• Co. A 15% of Co. B
• Over 10 years:• Co. A subscription 42% of Co. B
purchase
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Bespoke Subject Collections
• 2 aggregators expressed an interest
• First subject – nursing; other subjects to be determined
• Core list of 200 titles prepared by 4 universities, the Royal College of Nursing A maximum of 13% currently available
• Aggregators have agreements with some of main publishers
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E-Textbooks?
• Obvious advantages for libraries – no more multiple copies or short-loan collections; save on staff costs
• However 80% of publishers’ textbook revenue is from students – not available
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Contract Award
• Requirement A – ProQuest/Safari and Ebrary• Offer innovative models; value for
money; flexibility• Exploit electronic medium in
terms of granularity and multi-user access
• Requirement B – Ebrary• Show flexibility and willingness to
work openly• Investigate textbook models
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Lessons
• Strong message to the market place• Flexible and innovative pricing models• Value for money• Reject the strait-jacket of hard-copy
model• Exploit electronic medium• Libraries influence and select the
content to be provided• E-textbooks move us closer to
completely electronic provision
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References
D. Ball. Managing Suppliers and Partners for the Academic Library, London, Facet Publishing, (2005).
R. Everett. MLEs and VLEs explained, London, JISC, (2002). Available at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=mle_briefings_1.
N.K. Herther. “The E-book Industry Today: a bumpy road becomes an evolutionary path to market maturity”, The Electronic Library, 23(1), pp. 45-53, (2005).
D. Nicholas and P. Huntington, ‘Big deals: results and analysis from a pilot analysis of web log data: report for the Ingenta Institute’, in The consortium site licence: is it a sustainable model? Edited proceedings of a meeting held on 24th September 2002 at the Royal Society, London, Oxford: Ingenta, 2002 (Ingenta Institute, 2002), pp121-159, pp149, 151.
C. Tenopir. Use and Users of Electronic Library Resources: an overview and analysis of recent research studies, Washington, Council on Library and Information Resources, (2003). Available at: http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub120/pub120.pdf.