Resource Sharing Consultation Forum, NLA Kent Fitch May 2006

1. Expanding the borrowing options for AustraliansA proposal to provide rapid and easy access to the wealth of information resources that reside in libraries Resource Sharing Consultation Forum, NLA Kent FitchMay 2006 Version 4 18 May 8:45pm

2. Topics • Background • Increasing the "gravitational pull" of library hosted resources • Delivery via LA - analysis of current fulfilment • Proposals for better delivery • Becoming a parasite on the rump of e-commerce

3. Background Wake-up calls: statistics and commentary • Lorcan Dempsey's ILL stats • ILLs account for 1.7% of overall circulations“What this suggests is that we are not doing a very good job of aggregating supply (making it easy to find and obtain materials of interest wherever they are). The flow of materials from one library to another is very low when compared to the overall flow of materials within libraries.”blog • Australian ILL stats • 2002-3 loans: ~200m (Public Lib & CAUL) • ILL: ~800k in total of these CAUL supplied 93K original items, 212K photocopy/electronic items • ILLs account for 0.4% of overall circulationsexcluding school libraries

4. Background Wake-up calls: statistics and commentary • Dempsey, again: “It is not enough for materials to be present within the system: they have to be readily accessible ('every reader his or her book', in Ranganathan's terms), potentially interested readers have to be aware of them ('every book its reader'), and the system for matching supply and demand has to be efficient ('save the time of the user').”Dlib April 2006

5. Background Wake-up calls: statistics and commentary • Dempsey, again: “So, Netflix, for example, aggregates supply as discussed here. It makes the long tail available for inspection. However, importantly, it also aggregates demand: a larger pool of potential users is available to inspect any particular item, increasing the chances that it will be borrowed by somebody.”blog • Aggregation of supply • Transaction costs • Consolidated statistics, intentional data • Consolidated and distributed “inventory” • Navigation • Aggregation of demand • “gravitational pull” of Google, ITunes, Amazon

6. Increasing the "gravitational pull" of library hosted resources • Principle of least effort: “people do not just use information that is easy to find; they use information they know to be of poor quality and less reliable – so long as it requires little effort to find”LC Task Force – Improving User Access to Library Catalog, Marcia Bates, 2003 • 1% of Americans (and 2% of College students) start an electronic information search at Library web site Perceptions of libraries and information resources, Cathy De Rosa, OCLC 2005, Appendix A • “When Elsevier researchers asked librarians and scientists to namethe top three most reliable online services, librarians named ScienceDirect, ISI's Web of Science, and Medline. Scientists,on the other hand, named Google, Yahoo!, and PubMed.”LibraryJournal.com, Is Google the Competition? by Carol Tenopir, April 2004

7. Delivery via LA Analysis of current fulfilment • Search, Find then… • “Resource sharing”? • Little used outside university and specialist libraries and local arrangements (eg SA Public libraries) • Each ILL: • “charged” $13.20 • “total cost” $49 • 11.5 days from request to receive

8. Fulfilment For the lucky few “Borrow Direct: impact of an innovative reader-initiated borrowing mechanism on service quality”, Nitecki and Jones http://www.nla.gov.au/ilds/abstracts/NiteckiD.pdf

9. Fulfilment

10. Fulfilment Borrow Direct • Columbia, Pennsylvania, Yale, Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Princeton

11. Fulfilment Making “Search, find, get” seamless • Not just “Unmediated ILL”, not “ILL” at all • Lend direct from library to reader • mediated by a NLA system layered on top of the NBD • Readers request • Libraries bid to fulfil • Resources delivered to reader by post, returned in reply-paid envelope

12. Fulfilment • How can a library trust the reader? • 50% of Australians are a member of a pubic library • what extra % are members of Uni/TAFE/school library? • Legal infrastructure provides the mechanisms enabling commerce: parties don’t have to trust each other

13. Fulfilment MORE ^ Bidding system

14. Fulfilment NetBooks, operationally modelled on NetFlix • Lend direct from library to reader (credit-card holder) • Mediated by NLA system built on top of the NBD • Readers request, libraries bid to fulfil • Resources delivered to reader by post, returned in reply-paid envelope • $4.95 per item • Security: • $50 bond per item

15. Delivering information • For readers, the convenience of home/office delivery • For libraries, $2.45 plus late fees • System funded by income from targeted advertising from booksellers on web site and inserts in envelopes

16. Fulfilment • $4.95 for a book? • Convenience • Students and families are “Time poor” • Woolies Home-shop • deliver 10 bags of groceries to most of Sydney for $7.95 • NetFlix • $9.99/month, unlimited DVD’s/month (1 at a time) • covers 2-way postage, handling, royalties • 4 million subscribers • BooksFree • $8.49/month, unlimited paperbacks (2 at a time) • Covers 2-way postage, handling • Can libraries make money from $2.45 per book? • How many books can a $15/hr casual collect from a shelf and put into an envelope per hour? • Is a $50 bond reasonable? • What about people without credit cards?

17. Becoming a parasite on the rump of e-commerce

18. Conclusion • The ultimate motivation for using a discovery service is “getting” • Without efficient “getting” there is little point in providing even the best discovery service • Libraries, through the NBD, are in an ideal position to aggregate reader demand and book supply • Exploring new ways to better utilize the resources of Australian libraries is of benefit to all