Abstract
For many research libraries, the book acquisition process has grown increasingly complicated and unwieldy as libraries seek both print and electronic formats, practice both patron-driven and library-selected purchasing, and must accommodate a wide range of patron and disciplinary preferences in setting these priorities. In this presentation, Gabrielle Wiersma of the University of Colorado Boulder and Sarah Forzetting of Coutts Information Services describe an integrated approval plan system that manages all book acquisition processes to reduce inefficiency and streamline librarian workflows.
In this session, Sarah Forzetting and Gabrielle Wiersma discussed their successful collaboration to create an integrated approval plan for both print and e-book acquisitions. Forzetting is a Collection Consultant with Coutts Information Services focusing on the design and implementation of approval plans, and Wiersma is the Electronic Collections & Assessment Librarian at the University of Colorado Boulder.Footnote 1 Together, they explained the benefits of libraries working with monograph vendors to streamline acquisition workflows through the development of sophisticated and highly customized approval plans. Their system manages a complex library's acquisition strategy by building a series of institutional profiles that define purchasing parameters. The vendor also keeps track of acquisitions across the entire institution in order to eliminate redundancy and automate what have been time-consuming responsibilities for library staff.
An approval plan is a systematic way to identify and select materials for a library collection. Libraries create profiles to describe the kinds of materials they would like to purchase for their collection, and the vendor matches the library with any newly released titles that meet these criteria. Librarians might identify a range of call numbers, disciplines, publishers, prices, formats, genres, and other criteria that would best define their acquisition objectives. Some libraries use approval purchase plans to collect print material. With traditional approval plans, libraries rely on the vendor to select new titles according to the collection's profiles and ship the books automatically. The library can choose to reject some books that come in automatic shipments and return the rejected books to the vendor.
The University of Colorado Boulder (CU) is a comprehensive research university with the largest library research collection in the Rocky Mountain region. Wiersma noted that, like many libraries, CU currently faces a decreasing materials budget, and they have come to see e-books as the preferred format for making the most of limited library resources. They have been building their e-book collection for ten years and recognize the advantages of e-books in providing remote and twenty-four hour access to patrons, requiring no storage space, eliminating loss or theft, and providing search functionality. CU has purchased some large collections of subject-specific content and publisher e-book collections from Springer and Duke University Press, but they are looking for ways to purchase more front list e-books on a title-by-title basis.
CU initiated collaboration with Coutts when it became clear that they could save time and money by integrating their previously disparate acquisition processes for selecting print versus electronic formats, continuing to develop subject-area collections, and accommodating both librarian and patron-driven selection mechanisms. Wiersma explained that book selection at CU had been a decentralized activity with approximately thirty bibliographers selecting materials for more than seventy subjects, each according to subject-specific preferences for print and e-books. However, as CU approached a point where e-books were the preferred format over print, they recognized that they needed to develop more efficient ways to select and acquire e-books.
The solution has been for CU to work with Forzetting and Coutts to incorporate e-books into their existing print book approval plans and refine their profiles to reflect their new acquisition strategies. Selectors at CU want the ability to approve or reject the suggested books before they are shipped, so the librarians took advantage of the virtual approval process at Coutts that allows the selectors to review a list of books that meets their profile criteria and then select or reject the titles in an online ordering system. The virtual approval process also allows CU to accept or reject e-books and print books in the same workflow. To make their selections, the librarians consider bibliographic citation information as well as linked reviews or full-text previews if there is an electronic version of the book available.
For CU and Coutts, the two crucial innovations have been designing the system to accommodate patron-driven acquisitions (PDA) and creating a timetable that handles the fact that publishers rarely release e-book and print versions simultaneously. Wiersma remarked on the frustration she felt when she purchased a print book for the collection only to find out afterward that an e-book version would become available only a month or two later. As e-books become the increasingly preferred format at the University of Colorado and with very little information from the publishers themselves explaining their publishing sequences or predicting e-book release dates, the approval plan must establish appropriate format guidelines. These rules should balance the desire to delay purchasing a new text until the e-book becomes available with the need to provide patrons with access to new work as soon as possible.
Coutts uses a system they call On Hold for Alternate Edition to meet this challenge. On Hold for Alternate Editions allows the library to establish what it feels to be a plausible wait period for their preferred format. If the library has approved a purchase and would prefer to order an e-book rather than print, the approval profile is built with instructions to keep that title on hold for a defined period—usually 60, 90, or 180 days. If an e-book is released within the waiting period, the library purchases the e-book. If the time limit passes, the plan triggers a purchase of the print version. If there is an urgent need for the material, the library can always choose to stop the waiting period and order the print book right away.
Within this basic process, there is room for a great deal of customization. Different academic disciplines often have different format preferences, so the library's profiles might reflect different parameters for each subject. For example, at CU, e-books are highly preferable to print books in the hard sciences, so their profiles allow for 180 days of waiting for electronic versions of science books to be released. The delay is worthwhile to them in order to acquire the preferred format without duplication. In Anthropology or Religious Studies, on the other hand, the demand for e-books over print is not as strong, so the plan's instructions keeps purchases in these subjects on hold for only ninety days.
The plans also recognize that within a given field, some types of material are better suited to e-books than others, and the profile can establish exceptions to the general guidelines. Reference works, edited collections, conference proceedings, case studies, and textbooks can be much more useful in searchable electronic versions even if that subject area's patrons generally prefer to work with print, as in History or Women's Studies at CU. Accordingly, the library's profiles in print-preferred subjects include lists of exceptions for types of material that might work better in e-books.
Patron-driven selection models further complicate the approval profiles, but the system can be refined to account for scenarios in which both patrons and library selectors will be determining the library's purchases. In addition to the thirty-day traditional selector review process, Coutts can offer machine-readable cataloging (MARC) records to the library for direct inclusion in its catalog. These titles have been pre-selected because they match the library's profiles, but rather than relying on decisions by the selectors, patrons have free and immediate access to the e-books. Coutts tracks usage of these titles, and two or more uses trigger a purchase after which the library will be invoiced. Coutts also tracks all book purchases via either library approval or patron selection in order to avoid duplicate orders.
The decision whether to make books available for patron selection or traditional approval by librarians is also built into the library's collection profiles. CU has found that Patron Select (Coutts's term for this process) works especially well for interdisciplinary titles as well as books with ephemeral or frequently updated subjects. Patrons will find the relevant material in these fields without needing librarian intervention and the library only purchases titles that are used by patrons.
The type of book within the discipline will also set different selection models in motion according to profile instructions. In some fields, such as Sociology or Political Science at CU, edited collections are eligible for patron selection, but the system automatically funnels edited works in History into the library's approval process. Furthermore, due to high costs or concerns about quality, Wiersma and Forzetting recommend that some types of books be excluded from Patron Select regardless of subject area. At CU, librarians send all reference materials through the approval rather than Patron Select process because they like to assess those titles more carefully.
Wiersma concluded the presentation by detailing the workflow surrounding their ordering and acquisitions processes and was pleased to note that it was largely the same for both print and e-books. The process has been gradually modified to streamline the workflow for selectors, acquisitions, and cataloging staff. When Coutts provides lists of titles that match the library's profiles, the selectors have thirty days to review the lists in Coutts' online order management system and reject any titles they do not want. The default order is for Coutts to go ahead and send CU any books that are not rejected by the library after the thirty-day review period. During the review, selectors also have the opportunity to search the vendor database and order any titles that were not included in the profile-generated list. Once the list is complete, acquisitions staff approves the orders in the online system and download order records and MARC records for the new purchases. Catalogers then overlay the vendor records with Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC) records in order to update CU's catalog holdings and to maintain consistency for both print and e-books. CU has also found that tagging its MyiLibrary e-book holdings with a standardized note in a 956 field in the records has been an effective way to keep track of these materials.
For titles available for patron selection, librarians can first review the list of titles that match their profiles, but rather than reject any, cataloging staff downloads all of the MARC records from an FTP site and loads them into the CU catalog. Cataloging receives weekly email notification from Coutts that there are new records available for Patron Select titles. Catalogers next overlay the vendor records with an OCLC record and add a 956 note indicating “MyiLibrary PDA” so that the library can keep track of these titles. The titles are activated in CU's MyiLibrary account and patrons access e-books via the CU catalog or by searching in the MyiLibrary platform. Users can see a preview page with an abstract and table of contents without a use being counted. Two or more uses will trigger a purchase and library acquisitions receives monthly invoices. The invoice is then passed along to cataloging staff so that they can update the 956 field to read “MyiLibrary PDA Purchased.” The library is not marketing the Patron Select process to its users, and there is no indication of patron selection when the book is accessed.
As CU considers the future of this system, Wiersma notes that they must continue to evaluate and tweak their profiles in order to ensure a well-rounded collection and further shift its emphasis toward e-books. Ultimately, approval plan profiles are intended to be low maintenance, but the high degree of customization in these profiles and the newness of the program require more work up front. In time, the library must decide how to treat Patron Select titles that have zero or one use and have not yet triggered a purchase. The current plan is to keep the e-books available in the catalog for at least three years and then eventually decide whether to purchase them or remove them from the catalog. They are also monitoring their interlibrary loan (ILL) requests to gauge whether the On Hold for Alternate Edition process is creating intolerable delays for patron access. Analyzing their ILL data for patterns should reveal which book types or publishers or other criteria are frequently requested and require adjustments in the profiles. Finally, the library is exploring ways to solicit formal feedback from users regarding their preferences for e-books versus print.
An audience member asked the presenters how they track and reconcile e-book purchases from other vendors as well as monitor e-book purchases over the entire On Hold for Alternate Edition waiting period. Wiersma answered that CU sends weekly holdings updates to Coutts who keeps track of what e-books the library has acquired from other sources and should not be duplicated and constantly monitors the acquisition process for the timely delivery of purchases. Another person asked whether the waiting period usually results in acquiring e-books. Forzetting answered that, yes, more e-books are coming out all the time and with less delay, so the profile holding periods were usually more than adequate to ensure that the library would purchase an e-book if that is the preference. To address a question on how CU budgets for patron-selected e-books, Wiersma explained that their 2010 PDA pilot had a $20,000 deposit for 2,000 titles available to patrons. Over the course of the year, patrons only triggered $5,000 worth of purchases. Wiersma recommends limiting the number of titles and subject areas eligible for PDA but notes that it is difficult to budget money over time since the two e-book uses that trigger a purchase may span more than one fiscal year. Asked how the approval plan treats e-books that publishers list as a new release but which are actually simply an electronic edition of an older print title, Forzetting points out that libraries' profiles can define how to handle reprints so that they will not accidentally repurchase a book they already own in print.
The approval plan that Wiersma and Forzetting have created at CU offers a creative and thorough response to the challenge of juggling multiple formats, multiple publication sequences, and multiple selection models within a single integrated acquisitions system. The presenters clearly found that the considerable initial work of building dozens of sophisticated custom profiles had been well rewarded by their success in maintaining collection quality and streamlining library work flows.
Notes
1. Coutts Information Services has changed its name to Ingram Coutts, effective July 2011.