CEIRC SURVEY RESULTS:
WHAT ADDS VALUE TO CEIRC DEALS FOR LIBRARIES?
This survey took place October 2005-January 2006
The overall response rate for the survey was 69%, with an 87% response rate from the Australian and New Zealand universities.
There were 49 respondents, comprising:
33 Australian universities
8 New Zealand universities
CSIRO
2 Australian Government Departments
3 New Zealand Crown Research Institutes
2 New Zealand Polytechnics
84% of the respondents had been members of CEIRC since 1998, when it was established. The median collection budget for all these libraries was approximately A$4.9m.
In terms of size of institution, the respondents represented the full range. Although the median student EFTS for these libraries was 15,000 EFT, the numbers for individual institutions varied from 2,700 up to 35,450 EFT. Seven libraries served the university and TAFE areas, with 5 of the 7 having higher TAFE than university students EFTs. The largest TAFE EFT was 17, 150. The two polytechnics range in size from 4,500-6,000 EFT. The number of staff served by the six non-educational institutions ranged from 350 up to 3900 researchers. Three of these served populations of between 350-500, the other 3 populations of 2250-3900.
Summary of results:
1. Licence agreements and users
The priority was for students and staff, remote access, and for multi-site provisions. There was lesser interest in access for alumni.
2. Licence agreement and type of use.
The highest priorities were for teaching and research, study and learning, e-reserve (as electronic copy) and learning management systems (e.g. WebCT). Of much less interest were paper copies for reserve, interloan-out and course packs.
3. Authentication.
There was a very strong preference for IP access
4. Licence agreements
There was a clear preference for unlimited users. Content should be open URL compliant and compliant with the needs of federated search tools. For multi- year agreements, there was strong interestin an opt-out clause if the library faced an unexpected budget cut. Archival rights over the web were a strong preference by 94% of the respondents. There was a stronger interest in archival rights for full-text, than for bibliographic, databases.
5. Pricing
A range of views were expressed in terms of pricing, with anything over a 5% increase for increased content likely to result in libraries pulling out of any deal. 5% was also the trigger, beyond which libraries were reluctant to sign for a multi-year deal. There was great interest (98%) in the savings through e-only price options. Models for the distribution of costs between libraries received a range of responses, with a model based on the university or library budget receiving the least acceptance, and the greatest acceptance being for a model based on FTE or on discount bands relating to the number of consortium acceptances. Overwhelmingly, libraries wished to be billed in the overseas (native) currency of the vendor.
There were concerns and strong opinions about multi-site licence (which was also reflected in the general comments at the end of the questionnaire). The clear preference (78% of libraries) was for multi-site pricing to be no more expensive than for single sites. Even a 5% loading was deemed unacceptable by 12 libraries.
6. Trials
Trials were regarded as a matter of high priority or essential (46 libraries), with access via IP, and for month’s duration. Trials should be opened up by vendors only to those libraries who specifically request a trial.
7. Availability
Availability of the product at least 95% of the time was rated more highly than a vendor help desk available 24x7
8. Content clauses
Vendors should not charge for increased content during the course of an agreement (“an agreement is an agreement” was one comment), but a reduction of content during the course of an agreement should result in pro-rata refunds to the customer.
9. Branding or badging
29 libraries (59%) regarded this as essential or of high priority. The preference was for institution-generated badging.
10. MARC records
There was slight preference for MARC records to be made available through the vendor (47%) rather than from a third party (41%), and for the vendor to not charge for this service. Records should be supplied monthly.
11. Statistics
Statistics should be COUNTER-compliant (90% of libraries regard this as essential or of very high priority), they should be supplied monthly and by electronic means. All would like to be able to manipulate their usage figures locally.
12. Training.
The strongest interest was for (free) training materials and for easy means to increase concurrent users for training sessions where this was an issue because of limits on concurrent users. There was less interest in online training sessions (20%)
12. General comments
There were over 80 general comments from respondents. Some of the areas of concern included off-shore access, individual passwords for access, and pricing for multi-site campuses. Calculations of subject based FTEs also raised some debate. Lastly, as one respondent commented, “while a single issue in an offer from a vendor may not be a deal breaker, a combination of several may be a deal breaker”.
13. Outcomes
Results of the survey will be used for additions to the CEIRC vendor checklist for negotiations, and in conveying preferences and priorities to potential vendors. The results will also be used in the development of standard preferred wording for clauses in licences.
Acknowledgement: The CEIRC Committee are very grateful to the Datasets Coordinators for their work in completing the survey questionnaire. The summary above is a public document, which can be made available to the wider community. A full report, which includes the general and unscripted comments, is available on the CEIRC website for CEIRC members only .
Prepared by John Redmayne, MasseyUniversity
24 April, 2006
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CEIRC 2005 Survey Results (updated 24 April, 2006)