financial aspects of institutional repositories john maccoll head, digital library university of...
TRANSCRIPT
Financial Aspects of Institutional Repositories
John MacCollHead, Digital Library
University of Edinburgh Information Services
1. How Much is that IR in the Library?
2. Business Models for Research Libraries in the Digital Age
The costs (average UK research university)
• One production server• One test server• Technical support (0.5 FTE)• Metadata creation (0.25 FTE)• Advocacy and liaison (1 FTE)• Management (0.5 FTE)• Digital preservation (assessment, metadata &
storage)
Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Totals
Server (2) + RedHat licence 3,701 3,701 3,701 3,701 3,701 18,506
0.8 FTE 0.5 FTE 0.3 FTE 0.3 FTE 0.3 FTE
System Developer (AL1/2) + 20% o/h 18,682 12,694 8,024 8,346 8,767 56,512
0.8 FTE 0.8 FTE 0.8 FTE 0.8 FTE 0.8 FTE
Liaison Officer (AL1/2) + 20% o/h 18,682 20,310 21,398 22,255 23,378 106,022
- - 0.1 FTE 0.3 FTE 0.5 FTE
Metadata Editor (CN4) + 20% o/h - - 2,034 6,472 11,105 19,611
0.07 FTE 0.07 FTE 0.07 FTE 0.07 FTE 0.07 FTE
Management (AL5) + 20% o/h 3,368 3,566 3,683 3,794 3,908 18,318
Totals 44,432 40,271 38,840 44,567 50,859 218,969
Cost table: in-house
= saving of 33%!
Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Totals
Server (2) + RedHat licence - - - - - -
0.8 FTE 0.5 FTE 0.3 FTE 0.3 FTE 0.3 FTE
System Developer (AL1/2) + 20% o/h - - - - - -
Payment to Commercial Supplier 8,000 3,500 3,605 3,713 3,824 22,643
0.8 FTE 0.8 FTE 0.8 FTE 0.8 FTE 0.8 FTE
Liaison Officer (AL1/2) + 20% o/h 18,682 20,310 21,398 22,255 23,378 106,022
- - 0.1 FTE 0.3 FTE 0.5 FTE
Metadata Editor (CN4) + 20% o/h - - 2,034 6,472 11,105 19,611
0.07 FTE 0.07 FTE 0.07 FTE 0.07 FTE 0.07 FTE
Management (AL5) + 20% o/h 3,368 3,566 3,683 3,794 3,908 18,318
Totals 30,049 27,376 28,686 29,762 31,110 146,983
Cost table: out-sourced
A no-brainer?
-
10,000
20,000
30,000
40,000
50,000
60,000
Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5
Time
Co
st (
£) In-house
Vendor-hosted
Out-sourced: the pros
• Can be cheaper overall
• Market is becoming competitive
• Reduces risk
• More easily ‘sold’ to fund-holders
• May be only possibility for smaller institutions
Out-sourced: the cons• Loss of control • New area of activity – far from stable• Fluidity of environment argues for in-house
control meantime if possible• Marketplace is immature: difficult to
compare vendors• What assurances of institutional ownership
and preservation of assets?• Effect upon reaction time
How to find the costs?
• See them as partly substitutional, not wholly additional• Reprofile the budget to put digital content at the centre• Obtain grant funding for start-up• Apply to parent university for funding (create demand
first of all, through ‘doorstepping’)• Do the research on hidden costs (e.g. how much does
the status quo cost – distributed and unmanaged provision?)
• What is the cost of the risk (actuarial calculation)?
Preservation is essential
-
20,000
40,000
60,000
80,000
100,000
Year1
Year2
Year3
Year4
Year5
Year6
Year7
Year8
Year9
Year10
Time
Co
st (
£)
Repositories as symptoms (more costs on the way)
• Learning objects
• Images
• E-books
• Locally digitised collections
• Library as publisher
Business models on two levels
Institutional Library
The introverted library (pre-web)
(British Library)
The collaborative library
(British Library)
UKPMC
arXiv
Digital libraries (collaborative collections)
datasets
Certificated archives
Institutional Library
IR
“The roof is on fire”: is this the end of libraries?
The roof is on fire• “Within the existing system, libraries are trying hard to
optimize the output of a system with far from optimal input”• “It has become increasingly difficult for libraries to fulfil
their fundamental role of safeguarding equity of access”• “In the PDF version of the information chain, libraries are
aggregating the aggregators.That is a lot of aggregating for a digital world.”
• “At the core of the problems that libraries are facing is the total dependency on information held upstream in the information chain”
• “As such, there are numerous incentives for libraries:– to rethink themselves– to be pro-active in exploring alternative mechanisms for scholarly
communication”
Libraries: the good news
• Libraries are close to authors: – a great position to obtain institutional material– a great position to archive institutional material
• Libraries are fast at embracing new technologies• Libraries have very knowledgeable people• Libraries provide a level of redundancy in services
that is no longer required in a digital environment• The Library as an institution that safeguards equity
of access has global representation
Libraries: the bad news
• As organizations libraries are slow movers, hosted by slowly moving institutions
• Libraries are slow to recognize the fact that a new technology may allow (or beg) for a new mode of operation
• The information world runs on Internet time
“Effective collaboration is extraordinarily difficult for many reasons … Cooperation does not for the most part put a collection or library on the map … We must be honest. In the same way that a scholar, a scientist, can publish a series of articles in high impact journals and receive tenure for those publications, even though no one ever reads them—a librarian can write and speak about cooperation and receive all manner of credits and rewards, even though no cooperation ever results. Why? Because writing and speaking about cooperation are viewed as forms of leadership, while the act of cooperating is not. That is why there is so much discussion of cooperation, and so little of it.”
Ross Atkinson
“How then could such cooperation be brought about? … such cooperation can only be accomplished by research library collection development coalescing and operating as a group. And that will entail, to my mind, nothing less than a transvaluation or revaluation of some (not all) values, such that it comes to be understood … that, under certain circumstances in collection development, the highest form of leadership or distinction is to relinquish some leadership, to relinquish some distinctiveness. It will entail the creation of a culture in collection development of collective leadership to displace in certain situations the individual or institutional leadership that so characterizes research library culture at the present time.”
Ross Atkinson
But who will fund the collaborative (‘network-level’) Library?
