Sustaining Digital Resources: An On-the-Ground View of Projects Today

"Tens of millions of dollars, pounds, and euros are invested each year by government agencies and private foundations to develop and support digital resources in the not-for-profit sector. As budgets tighten, will these digitial resources be able to survive and thrive?

This question is at the heart of the Ithaka Case Studies in Sustainability project, a multi-year, international exploration of the strategies being used to support digital initiatives over the long term. Twelve detailed case studies present the steps project leaders have taken to achieve this, with special attention paid to their strategies for cost management and revenue generation. These studies include financial data, and explore the decision-making process that project leaders undertake when experimenting with different strategies to find the best fit for their organization.

Sustaining Digital Resources: An On-the-Ground View of Projects Today, serves as a guide to the cases, outlining the stages that successful projects undertake in developing sustainability models: from empowering leadership and developing accountability structures, to crafting a strong value proposition that responds to user needs, to securing the resources needed to help the project thrive. [...]"

• Rapport complet

• Etudes de cas:

• • BOPCRIS Digitisation Centre: Experimentation with Sustainability and Partnerships for Library Digitisation Projects
  • Centre for Computing in the Humanities: Leveraging Shared Infrastructure and Expertise to Develop Digital Projects in an Academic Department
  • DigiZeitschriften: Library Partnership and a Subscription Model for a Journal Database
  • eBird: A Two-sided Market for Academic Researchers and Enthusiasts
  • Electronic Enlightenment: Subscription-based Resource Sold Through a University Press
  • Hindawi Publishing Corporation: The Open-Access Contributor-Pays Model
  • L’Institut national de l’audiovisuel: Free Content and Rights Licensing as Complementary Strategies
  • The Middle School Portal 2: Math and Science Pathways, National Science Digital Library: Early Sustainability Planning for a Grant-Funded Digital Library
  • The National Archives: Digitisation with Commercial Partnerships via the Licensed Internet Associates Program
  • Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Building an Endowment with Community Support
  • The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae®: Specialised Historical Content for a Niche Audience
  • V&A Images: Image Licensing at a Cultural Heritage Institution

(source: JISC/Strategic Content Alliance & Ithaka, juillet 09 / via ResourceShelf, 14/07/09)

SAGE 2010 journals pricing is now available

"We are continuing our discounted rate off our base price (combined print and online subscription) as follows:

-10% discount off the combined base price for e-only subscriptions

-2% discount off the combined base price for print-only subscriptions

As more customers continue to move to e-only subscriptions, the 10% discount off the base price will assist librarians making this transition."

L'art de la suppression

"Dans Notes from a catastrophe : easing the pain of budget cuts, Barbara Fister propose quelques conseils pour faire des suppressions d'abonnements sans trop de heurts en ces temps de crise."

(source: Marlene's corner, 12/06/09)

Après d'autres institutions, c'est au tour de la California Digital Library de solliciter les fournisseurs de ressources documentaires sous licence: Open Letter to Licensed Content Providers .

"The University of California Libraries ask all information providers with whom we negotiate content licenses to respond to the major fiscal challenges affecting higher education in California in a spirit of collaboration and mutual problem-solving. We expect to work with each of our vendors at renewal to develop creative solutions that can preserve the greatest amount of content to meet the information needs of the University of California’s students, faculty, and researchers.

The economic crisis affecting libraries is particularly acute in California, which as of this writing (May 2009) is forecasting a $21 billion state budget shortfall for 2010 despite previous efforts to close a $42 billion budget gap in 2009. As a state-supported institution, the University of California has experienced significant budget reductions in fiscal year 2009, with more reductions to come. Coupled with the typical inflationary increases for scholarly publications, the erosion of library buying power will have a profound and lasting impact on all of the UC libraries. We welcome all innovative proposals for managing through these difficult times."

Sur la liste lib-license: à diffuser (et pas seulement dans le biblio-milieu; les académiques/autorités universitaires devraient sans doute se joindre au débat...):

Dear license gurus (please excuse the duplicate postings)

Another company is looking at the Elsevier model and using it.
Unfortunately, unlike Elsevier where a library might get more content than they could pay for and unlike Elsevier which does not require that a library participate, Wiley is requiring all multi-site libraries to have a no-cancellation, minimum life time spend.  Add insult to injury, we are not a multi-site library by any other vendor's definition!  But Wiley has designated us so.
Without recourse.

So, I am sending this letter to many, many people at Wiley and in the library community. Please, help resist these kinds of publisher practices.

*****

I am writing to you today in your capacity as someone concerned with [higher education, customer service] at John Wiley and Sons.

Wiley provides an EAL license which has three major features: two year agreement, a guaranteed minimum spend (no cancellations without adding titles) (ala Elsevier) and, for that 'lock-in,'
libraries will have a cap on the annual inflationary increases.
Wiley requires multi-site libraries - which they have declared we are - enter into an EAL license for electronic journal content.

We have two problems with this rigid requirement:

1.     Wiley is now treating my university as a multi-campus
university. Let me assure you that all other vendors treat us a single site because, while we have libraries in Minneapolis and St. Paul, we have a single IP address, single president, and a single Accounts Payable for all campuses (including Rome which has 4 seminarians studying abroad!).

2.     The EAL license is required for all online journal content
we purchase from Wiley/Blackwell in 2010. Currently, our online-only spend is about $3,000, our print +online is over $33,000, and our total spend is about $66,000 for journal content with Wiley.  What does that mean for the University of St.
Thomas?  We would not be able to cancel - i.e. lower our 'current' spend. That means that as tuition dollars dry up, as the university's contribution to the libraries shrink, we cannot cancel titles in the Wiley contract. It's ironic that while we would be locked into a multi-year contract during these incredibly unpredictable and difficult financial times, Wiley could change their title list at will - buying or selling titles as the market dictates.

We have spoken with your representative, Diane Conroy, and there are no alternatives IF we want online journal content from Wiley.
She is adamant.

Hence, our only option is to cancel all of our online content. I assume that is not Wiley's goal but the only one we see available to us since we cannot agree to a multi-year, dollar spend commitment.  We will cancel what we can - I can see about $30,000 in cancellations (27 titles) without too much pain. We will purchase print-only in the cases where we have had print +online and we will cancel our online-only and move back to print-only.
As we all know, even good content that is print-only will become marginalized by our users and as it does, we'll easily be able to justify canceling the remaining print titles. And, of course, we will not be purchasing new journal content from Wiley.

When September comes, if we have no agreement with Wiley for 2010 permitting cancellation and permitting single year subscriptions, we will have to take these draconian steps.

I will be sharing this letter with the Wiley board of directors, others in Wiley management, the serials community, the licensing community and other colleagues in the library community.

Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely,


CC:  Warren J. Baker, President
California Polytechnic State University Bonnie Lieberman,
Senior Vice-President for Higher Education
John Wiley and Sons
Clifford Kline, Senior Vice-President
Customer Service and Distribution
John Wiley and Sons

***************************************
Linda Hulbert, Associate Director
Collection Management and Services O'Shaughnessy-Frey Library #5004 University of Saint Thomas

"Megapublishers obligate librarians to buy hundreds of journals they do not need in order to access the journals their constituents actually read. The time has come to challenge this business model, which is unsustainable for the libraries."

(source: A Challenge to Goliath / via DigitalKoans, 29/04/09)

Les politiques européennes d’abonnement et de souscription aux périodiques électroniques: du financement à l’accès : problématiques, réalités, perspectives

"L’apparition de la documentation électronique, en particulier dans le domaine des périodiques, a profondément bouleversé les pratiques budgétaires traditionnelles et provoqué une explosion des coûts auxquels les organismes documentaires ne pourront plus faire face dans un avenir proche. Face à la construction de monopoles éditoriaux, les bibliothèques ont mutualisé leurs ressources afin d’établir un rapport de force. Chaque pays européen a construit une structure originale qui correspondait à l’approche qu’il avait développée de l’information scientifique et technique. Ces différentes structures ont accompli diverses réalisations, susceptibles aujourd’hui d’orienter une situation française en pleine mutation."

(source: Enssib, mémoire de fin d'étude du diplôme de conservateur portant sur les politiques européennes et les attentes institutionnelles en matière d’abonnement et de souscription aux périodiques électroniques, janvier 2009)

Pricing and other means of charging for scholarly journals: a literature review and commentary
(source: Learned Publishing, Volume 21, Number 4, October 2008 , pp. 248-272(25))

"There has been a clear upward trend over the past 50 years in traditional listed print subscription prices. The more recent trend towards electronic publishing has made possible new ways of charging for journals, such as differential pricing structures and bundling of journals which are purchased through license fees/charges (both of which enable libraries to buy significantly more journals, but at the same time make it more difficult to analyze prices). We are now also seeing a new emphasis on the 'author-side payment' model. This article analyzes pricing and charging policies and trends, illustrating how these are affected by the complexities of the evolving journal system."

SERU (Shared Electronic Resource Understanding), la fin des licences ?
(source: Couperin, France)

Un résumé en français de cette recommandation NISO publiée début de cette année, qui "ne se substitue pas à une licence, mais peut donner des éléments sur ce qui est généralement acquis en termes d’abonnement aux ressources électroniques."

Alain Collignon, Joachim Schöpfel, Informatique documentaire: le cahier des charges sous toutes les coutures (janv. 2007) (déposé sur ArchiveSIC)

Le cahier des charges est un préalable à tout projet informatique. Etude de l’existant, analyse des besoins, spécifications des caractéristiques fonctionnelles, cadre juridique: autant d’aspects qu’il faut maîtriser pour un projet réussi.