Facing the future:Round-up, overview and panel discussion

Stephen TownDirector of Information

University of York

Round-up

• Strategic challenges and tactical responses

• The value proposition• Working together• Bargaining

Speakers’ points: a selection 1

• Gary: “vendor management”• David: “value proposition”• David: “fair pricing”• Martin: “access benefits”• Martin: “complex reality”• Martin: “use price”• Martin: “value for money”

Speakers’ points: a selection 2

• Martin: “brand driven use”• Martin: “open access” 11:38• Tony: “competitive concerns”• Tony: “collaborative working”

• Tony: “reduced overheads”• Sally: “no certainty”• Sally: “content imbalance”

Speakers’ points: a selection 3

• Sally: “sustainable expenditure”

• Sally: “finding failures”• Sally: “new activities”• Sally: “library rethink”• Sally: “special differentiation”

• Sally: “value presentation”• Sally: “relevant indicators”

Lessons from the past?

• Avoid “lose-lose” situations• Don’t get caught in the middle: “blame-blame”

• Neither “fight” nor “flight” reaction• Don’t reward negative behaviours• Failure to influence scholarly communication at any point? Giving it all away?

• Collecting counter-productive evidence?

Cost and Value

“focusing on cost without being able to demonstrate [service] value and quality … leaves the initiative to people whose chief concern is cost-control or profit: the funders and the vendors”

Whitehall, T (1995)

Strategy or tactics: the context

• Resource inflation greater than growth

• Service development demands• Quality and expectation demands• Competitive differentiation?• Low staff inflation

Conclusions 1

• Costs must be controlled– Individually– Institutionally– Collectively

• Purchase choice must shift to value– Quantitative measures insufficient– Qualitative evaluation critical to debate– Understanding of new user behaviours

Conclusions 2

• Maximising return– Better awareness– Active exploitation– Intermediate guidance

• Minimising overheads– Licensing, compliance and bureaucracy– Active engagement with publishers at all levels

– Charging back for University contributions– Managing expectations

Questions?

Panel discussion

The antidote for panel gamesI’m the bull to the two bears at the

other endI don’t want to appear flippant, but my

background is 20 year in a contract situation with a need to cut around 30%

every five to seven years; plus now being in an institution confident of

riding out this recession.So I’ll do two things I never do: first is read my presentation, because it’s never going to be on the conference website, the second is to give free

adviceSo in the spirit of airport bookshop

management texts with numbers in their titles, and old fashioned wisdom books like “Donts for wives 1913”, here’s my

“Five pieces of good advice for bad times”

1.

• Don’t panic (unless it’s a good act for University senior management)

• Things are never as bad as they seem• Leadership is about exuding calm and ensuring sustainability across bad times and good, not joining mass hysteria

• Measure and manage morale and other culture dimensions; your staff will see you successfully through bad times, not money

2.

• Preserve your measurement systems and their underpinning value assumptions as a priority

• Can’t show the detriments of financial change if you don’t have good data

• Data is more persuasive if you didn’t appear to have just invented it for hard times and single issue arguments

3.

• Don’t start from here• If your Library Director doesn’t already know

through a flexible and adaptive strategic analysis how to cut or grow by 4/10/40% then get a new one (you don’t have a strategy); just don’t expect him or her to share it with you

• Don’t salami slice; if you don’t have a Boston Box, get one

• Know the consequences through data and evidence for the institution of whatever actions are required

• Your users are your best friends and the best sources of data

4.

• Provide your Director with excellent and accurate cost breakdowns for all library activity

• Don’t ever attempt to mislead your Director about anything financial ever (even if it’s really bad news)

• Be realistic; all systems can be made cheaper; get over the loss of gold plating

5.

• Don’t break the virtuous cycle of good performance leading to investment leading to better performance

• Don’t punish the users for your own shortcomings in measurement

• Use the data to better informed about use and value than they are

The University Context (from the 2006 Library Assessment Conference,

after Lombardi)

Universities have two “bottom lines”

1. Financial (as in business)

2. Academic, largely through reputation in• Research (the priority in “leading”

Universities)• Teaching (& maybe Learning)

RIN Report on academic library challenges

• “ … there is a strong feeling among senior librarians that they have failed effectively to communicate the value of their services … there is an increasing risk that much of what libraries actually do may be invisible in a virtual environment. … we believe it is important that libraries should be able to show … that they provide services with demonstrable links to success in achieving institutional goals. Return on investment is thus an increasingly important issue. Libraries need to be more proactive in seeking to understand user behaviour and workflows; and in rigorously demonstrating the value of their activities … . The focus of performance indicators up to now has tended to be on inputs and outputs … rather than addressing the much harder issues relating to impact and value. … we believe it is essential that more work is done to analyse the relationships between library activities … and learning and research outcomes … .”

Guardian editorial reporting Professor Michael Sandel’s Reith

Lectures,4th July 2009

“the credit crunch has exposed myriad mirages, demonstrating how the market can get things badly wrong when it comes to valuing things … when bureaucracies price things which should not be priced, they start trading them off against other objectives, instead of appreciating their absolute obligations.”

What is value?

• Cost efficiency• Cost effectiveness• Cost comparison (for benchmarking)• Financial management process standards & audit• Financial allocation (for transparency)• Valuation (including contingent valuation)• Value added• Return on investment• Best value programmes (eg UK Open University)

Questions about computing value

• Extrinsic or intrinsic value?• Instrumental or symbolic? • Holistic or process-based?• Transcendent or hedonic?• Value within a value system

Orr’s Library Goodness (1973)

“Is good”

Quality

Effectiveness

“Does good”

Value

Benefit

The distinction between Quality and Value

R. H. Orr. (1973). MEASURING THE GOODNESS OF LIBRARY SERVICES: A GENERAL FRAMEWORK FOR CONSIDERING QUANTITATIVE MEASURES. Journal of Documentation. 29 (3), p318.