What explains the dip in library use in 2011-12?

We just published our annual Leading Indicators Report for the academic year 2011-12. Even though the news is not great (if you think an ever increasing quantity of service is good) we are committed to transparency so we publish such results -- warts and all. What we are wondering now is what led to this dip?

In both digital services, physical services, and physical and digital resource use we have seen a marked decline of between 7-23%. Gate count, the number of people who actually come through the door declined by almost 22% which correlated with a 15% in total check outs and a 14% decline in reference queries. OK, so were people going even more heavily digital than in previous years? But no, we also saw a 23% decline in searches for digital resources, an 8% decline in digital documents views, and a 19% decline is visits to the library's website. A small bright spot here is that people's searches continue to become more efficient in that they seem to be finding the documents they want with less searching. We also saw a 23% decrease in instruction sessions. Did this decline cause the others? If faculty requested less instruction from librarians and we were in fewer classrooms, perhaps students used library resources less. This really concerns me because I don't think we are well enough integrated into the classroom, partnering with faculty to teach information literacy as it is. I really don't want to fall back from the gains we have made.

Interestingly two bright spots are increased queries in Special Collections & Archives, admittedly from a very low base, and continued strong growth in interlibrary borrowing, which continued to rise, this year by just over 12%.

With the renovation of the main floor and a full complement of public service librarians focused on instruction, we are looking to see if that number turns around in 2012-13. We are also planning to repeat LibQual to see if we can learn anything from that.

Stay tuned.

Florida Survey Results from the Open Access Textbooks Project

Some interesting survey results from this project.

Here is a direct link to the executive summaries of student and of faculty/administrators survey results. 

The cost of textbooks continue to take a toll on students, but their are largely unaware of OER. Faculty and administrators are beginning to recognize open access textbooks and course materials, but not to use them very heavily.

 According to their website, "The Open Access Textbooks Grant Project is working with others involved in open content to create a sustainable model for Florida and other states to discover, produce, and disseminate open textbooks. This three-year initiative was funded by a grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE). The project builds on efforts in Florida and across the U.S. to create a sustainable open textbook model and a collaborative community to further implementation of open textbooks."

ALA Annual 2012 -- Serial Solutions Intota.

Intota is the name for SerSols upcoming ILA. Jane Burke gave the presentation. Here are my very hasty notes. Bottom line: they are furer than I expected, what they have looks quite good. But there is still a long way to go.

EDUCAUSE research on users show they value self sufficient, don't ask, think they know more about technology that you, they are the next faculty.

Three big buckets of pain for staff -- workflows, system maintenance, assessment.

Not first to market, but unique for:
Unified intelligent workflows -- cross training
Knowledgebase -- rebuilding it for Intota.
Assessment -- intelligence around usage data, blend it with outcomes data
Interoperable -- with registrars system, etc.
Developed and supported by SerialsSolutions

API's from the beginning.
Not print and not batch, immediate action.
Freeing staff to work with users.

Full functionality -- selection, acquisitions, description, discovery, fulfillment.

Selection -- united, inherent PDA,  
resource mgmt and acquisition -- unified workflow, auto copy cataloging, etc.
Description -- shared data, networked authority control, local editing possible, mutation formats ( MARC, Dublin core, other schema)
Fullfilment -- all functions, reserves, interoperable with ILLiad, link to user records. 

Expanded Knowledgebase, building FRBR, using RDA toolkit.

Multi-tenant SaaS. Individual instance, shared Knowledgebase etc.

Subscription model, lower total costs, profile migration fee, 

Phase 1 data mgmt
Phase 2 selection
Phase 3 fullfilment

SUNY Geneseo, Marist College development partner (closest in size to us)

To prepare: Convert and organize data, benefit from centralized data mgmt now, export/migrate to web scale.

Geneseo director. Cyril Oberlander cyril@geneseo.edu

Aiming to free up time. 

Redefining academic libraries http://www.educationadvisoryboard.com/pdf/23634-EAB-Redefining-the-Academic-Library.pdf
GIST get it system toolkit.

ALA Annual 2012 -- SPARC/ACRL Forum.

SPARC/ACRL Forum on Open Access Author Funds

First Heather Joseph gave some updates including:
PLoS One now biggest biomedical journal.
New OA journals -- Peer J and e-Life.
Growing focus on campuses not on introductions of services, but on refining and making things work.
Need a robust network of diverse funding sources. Which is where author funds come in.


Sue Kriegsman (Harvard) 


Compact for OA Publishing Equity (COPE) http://www.oacompact.org/
Current model -- costs hidden in library budgets, authors don't want to pay.
Looking for sustainable, economical, and without market dysfunction.
COPE -- right for own institution, timely, durable mechanism, reasonable publication charges, published in peer reviewed journal articles, OA journals., don't cover fees that others, like grant agencies, could cover.

15 inst have signed onto COPE plus supporting groups and institutions.

HOPE Harvard not supporting hybrid journals or when could have been written in grants.
SPARC collects stats on OA funds. Most schools have caps, most around $3000. 849 articles funded overall.


Check Eckman (Simon Fraser)


Peer review article growth 3-4% per year, about 20% is gold OA. Perhaps top out at 27%.
Article Processing Charge (APC) is the dominant model in OA. CERN found this as a barrier.(SOAP Survey)
Carleton (2012) is the only lib arts college that has one.
Accomplishments -- library visibility, school comm conversation, better understanding of publishing patterns, 
Do your homework, consult broadly, explore funding sources, define goals, establish eligibility criteria, consider hybrid journals, budget, cost control options, promotion, workflows, assessment.

Average cost per article -$1500.


I had to leave at the beginning of Andrew Waller's (Calgary) remarks.Rollins has not found a need for such a fund up to now, but we shall see as OA grows and faculty increasingly publish in such journals.

ALA Annual 2012 -- Copyright Discussion Group

ACRL Copyright Discussion Group


Jennifer Rothman http://www.lls.edu/academics/faculty/rothman.html

Her advice:
ARL code overemphasizes the transformative nature of these uses.
Look for what commercial options exist.
Be wary of code and set forth your dissent on paper.


Cambridge UP v. Becker (GSU)


Four Factors

1. Not transformative use, not not profit and educational
2. Factual and scholarly works, thinks 11th will overturn.
3. clear lines 10% etc.
4. Court focused on availability of exist license.

Sage got most of these because they had easy to use licensing service.

Court  didn't decide on books with different authors, anthologies, came up too late.
What happens if a licensing market comes later?

Don't allow more than 10% or more than one chapter.

Two pending cases to watch

1. UCLA streaming of video
2. Authors Guild v Hathi

Read licenses!

Congressman wants to get clearer fair use guidelines written. Sympathetic to users on this.

She described as "Overly sneaky" = 10% in the first half of semester, 10% in second half, for instance. I agree.

ALA Annual 2012 -- OCLC's Worldshare.

Attended Selecting OCLC Worldshare Management Services: Perspectives from Different Libraries 8:30am Saturday. Here are my notes.



Andrew Pace (OCLC)

Collections and users are changing, our back office systems are anachronistic. Users flocking to the cloud and we are missing opportunities to collaborate.
Strategy -- ensuring relevance -- syndication to the web,  efficiency, meeting users at PoN on the web. Unified Col Mgmt. Break down the silos. collaboration and innovation between libraries.

The system is INCIP (?) based. Links to 3rd party systems, standards based.

Gives staff the same easy interfaces as users. Staff are users too.



Margie Harrison (San Juan Island Lib)

implementation is a group experience, weekly meetings, chat, email, phone with User Support. 24/7 training tutorials. Live weekly training.
Workflow changes really saves time.
8 months from signing on to implementation.



Robert Powers (NASA Jet Propulsion)

early adopter. 3-4 month intensive period of implementation. Pressure on staff and need to added value services. Archive and library. 
"We don't want the OPAC to get in our way." Looking for efficiencies in cat and acq staff. ERM seen great efficiency. Simplified Circ. 
Want to see improved metrics and reports.
Discovery -- improving, but seems unsure. Satisfied with the knowledge base. 
Systems admin is very straightforward, all in the cloud at OCLC.



Gary Cocozzoli (Lawrence Tech Uni)

Wants to give same level of service to distant as well as local students.
Dissatisfied with previous ILS.
Asked all the questions we at Rollins are: Open Source, trad SAAS, next gen, local consortium, which was more expensive than WMS.
Buying a service, not a system, just joining in.
Using OCLC so much already.
Knowledge base and PubGet. Set it up in KB and it automatically updates KB.
Saving money and time.
More sophisticated vendor relationships/communication.
Again likes cohort implementation system and training.
4-5 months for implementation

What are you going to do with items in OPAC that are not in OCLC?
Review local serials holdings records LHR.



WMS-- vendors

Auto load or order records
Using API for transfer of data to Banner
Single  sign on
Quarterly upgrades
Roadmaps
Drupal site for user support.

Course Reserves, Copyright, and the GSU decision

Finally Judge Evans has handed down her ruling on copyright and course reserves in the Cambridge, Oxford, and Sage publishers v. Georgia State University. Many university and college libraries, including us, have been waiting for a decision in this case before reviewing their own course reserve policies. The case will almost certainly be appealed, but even so we now have some guidance. Over the summer we will be reviewing our policies in relationship to Judge Evans' ruling  and seeing if we need to make any changes.

I am going to be using this post to collect various resources about the decision.

• The ruling.
• Justia's Dockets & Filings.
• Kevin Smith's post on the decision.
• The Chronicle's article.
• The Inside Higher Ed article.
• James Grimmelmann's post on the decision.
• Atlanta Journal Constitution article.
• Bloomberg's article.
• Publishers Weekly article (which, touchingly, in the headline at least spins the decision in the other direction.)
• TechDirt post.
• Paid Content post.
• Ars Technica post.
• GSU Official response
• Matthew Dames' post on the decision
• Copyright Clearance Center statement 
• ARL Issue Brief .
• Jonathan Pink's post on the decision. 
• Cambridge University Press response to the decision.
• Barbara Fister's post on the decision.
• AAP's statement on the decision.
• The Library Journal article. 
• Karen Petruska's posts. Part 1 and Part 2. 
• Christine Ross' post on the decision. 

• The publishers' proposed injunction.
• Kevin Smith's response to the proposed injunction.

So, do you know of any other posts that should go here?

A snapshot of the Olin Library

Every year the Florida Library Association runs a Snapshot of Florida Libraries project that shows how people are using libraries around the state. Susan Montgomery took comments the users of Olin Library contributed and created this wordle word cloud.


What really strikes me about this is how closely their comments reflect what we are trying to achieve at Olin -- library, place, study, quiet, focus, friends, help, good.

Nice job Susan.

Persistence Pays Off for Mobile Site.

Paul Gindlesperger has been working for weeks to find a way to automatically redirect visitors using mobile devices who come to our regular site to our mobile site. This should not be difficult, but our CMS made it so. He finally did it (with an assist from Bill Svitavsky.) So, give it a whirl. Go to http://www.rollins.edu/library from your mobile phone or iPad and let me know what you think.

I will be interested to see if this results in a bump in traffic from mobile users.