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1633110 เทคโนโลยีสารนิเทศและการประยุกต์ใช้
Information Technology and Application
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บทความประจำสัปดาห์
More, better, cheaper: The impossible dream?
Information Technology and Libraries; Chicago; Sep 1999; Diane Costello;
Volume: 18 Issue: 3
Start Page: 154-160
ISSN: 07309295
Subject Terms: Libraries/ Consortia/ Colleges & universities/ Information dissemination/
Studies/ Libraries/ Consortia/ Colleges & universities/ Information dissemination/ Studies
Abstract:
The Council of Australian University Librarians is dedicated to improving access by the staff and students of Australian universities to the scholarly information resources that are fundamental to the advancement of teaching, learning and research. Through an expanding program of information dissemination, coordination and consortia acquisition of electronic information services, it offers members tangible evidence of the benefits of working together.
Full Text:
Copyright American Library Association Sep 1999
The Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) is dedicated to improving access by the staff and students of Australian universities to the scholarly information resources that are fundamental to the advancement of teaching, learning and research. Through an expanding program of information dissemination, coordination and consortial acquisition of electronic information services, it offers members tangible evidence of the benefits of working together.
The Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) in 1999 is a focus for collaborative activity among Australia's university libraries. It coordinates national research projects, such as the Janus Collaborative Information Centres Project, the Benchmarking Project and the Authentication Project. It lobbies government on legal and regulatory reform in areas such as copyright and telecommunications. It acts as a broker for consortium purchasing of electronic information resources, and as a conduit for information exchange among members. It publishes university library statistics and performance indicator kits.
Membership of CAUL is open to the library director of each university that is a member of the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee (the council of Australia's university presidents). Thirty-nine are eligible for membership; all thirty-nine are members. The annual membership fee, currently $4,500, supports the CAUL Office, meetings of the Executive Committee, lobbying activities and some smaller projects, including the annual publication of statistics.
CAUL first formally constituted itself in 1965 as the Committee of Australian University Librarians, although meetings have been held in some form since 1928.' The late 1980s were marked by the formal abolition of the so-called "binary divide" between universities and colleges of advanced education and a consequent increase in the number, originally nineteen, of institutions called universities. An executive committee has been in place only since 1991, and the chairmanship has been an elected position only since 1984. In 1995 CAUL opened its office and appointed its first full-time executive officer. Until that time, each president was supported by staff within his own institution and paid an office allowance.
National Priority (Reserve) Fund Library Project
One of the first tasks in the newly established CAUL Office was to coordinate the trials of electronic database services in all Australian universities. These trials were financed by the Federal Government's National Priority (Reserve) Fund (NPRF).
In 1990 the Review of Library Provision in Higher Education Institutions (the Ross Review) proposed "developmental projects and investigations" designed to improve the capacity of university libraries to contribute to national goals in teaching and research. CAUL's formal response to the National Bureau of Employment, Education and Training in 1991 addressed the priorities which should be given to funding the Report's recommendations.
The outcome of the review was an allocation of $5 million over three years (1994-96) to the National Priority (Reserve) Fund Library Project Special Commonwealth Grant for University Libraries. The Australian Vice-- Chancellors' Committee supervised the project and managed the distribution of funds. The $5 million was used to fund three programs:
1. System-Wide Access to Databases (appendix A) $2,000,000
2. Improved Information Infrastructure (appendix B) $2,000,000
a. Network Information Support
b. CASMAC-Compliant Library Specifications
3. Electronic Publishing (appendix C) $1,000,000
System-Wide Access to Databases
The Database Access Working Group (DAWG) was established in 1994 under the chairmanship of John Shipp, then president of CAUL, to develop a program of projects (appendix A) that would:
enhance access to information locally, nationally, and internationally for all members of the higher education sector;
improve information support for teaching and research activities;
enhance best practice in the use of available information resources;
promote the use of networked electronic information and the development of information literacy; and
increase the cost effectiveness of access to information by sharing infrastructure costs and negotiating consortium prices.
Projects undertaken in the earlier part of the Database Access Program concentrated on products that provided network access to bibliographic citations but as more full-text products became available, the demand from the users and the focus of the libraries shifted to Web-based full-text products. In addition to the data acquisition financed through the NPRF, the Working Group began to negotiate with interested vendors to establish consortium deals for access to their products.
The last meeting of the Database Access Working Group was held November 27, 1997. CAUL has since formed its own committee, the CAUL Electronic Information Resources Committee (CEIRC), to continue the work of DAWG.
From "Special Projects" to "Part of the Furniture"
The trials started the ball rolling. CAUL does not manage its own infrastructure, yet it seemed an obvious body to coordinate the acquisition of electronic information services on behalf of its members.
As each of the trials came to an end, the vendor submitted a proposal for the continuation of the service on a commercial basis. Coordination of these subscriptions was managed by the CAUL Office, and led to a range of services under a range of terms and conditions being taken up by different subsets of CAUL institutions. Each institution makes its own decision to continue or not, which often means that the optimum terms and conditions (often price) can not always be achieved.
The CAUL role has grown and evolved over the last two to three years into one where CAUL is seen as a prime conduit for vendor proposals; as a creator and distributor of information about electronic information services; subscription coordinator and invoice manager; and representative of the universities in negotiating terms and conditions satisfactory in the Australian environment. As yet, all proposals are dealt with according to the members' interests. This means that no proposals are excluded because the cost of the service is too low to be worth pursuing on a consortium basis, or because there is interest from too few members. In both cases, if savings can be achieved they will be sought. In the latter case, the vendor may offer a significant level of savings because the information flow is being handled through CAUL rather than directly to each member institution.
CAUL manages an e-mail list primarily for the designated "datasets coordinator" in each and every university. The list is also open to others in the university libraries, and currently has 160 subscribers. Members are notified of all proposals to CAUL via the list, and whenever possible, this information is then made available in a passworded directory on the CAUL Web site at www.anu.edu.au/caul/. The list is also used for discussion, more actively in recent times, of terms and conditions of specific products, but also for more general areas of concern, notably cost-sharing models within the consortium and post-subscription access to a journal's electronic archive.
Towards 2000
It is highly unlikely that Federal funds will be again made available to the whole higher education system in this fashion, so means must be sought to deliver terms and conditions that will permit the widest possible distribution of needed services.
One key objective is to achieve conditions that will permit the smaller and/or less established institutions to gain some access to the services, even if on a limited scale. Pricing models, such as those of Academic Press that promote the availability of the full set of the publisher's electronic journals to all members of a consortium irrespective of the previous level of print subscriptions at an individual institution, allow the smaller institutions to participate at a realistic cost. Other vendors use the "one price fits all" model, whereby an institution with 30,000 students and a budget of $20 million dollars pays the same price for a given product as an institution with 15,000 students and a $7 million budget. CAUL is working to convince publishers and vendors to introduce more flexibility into their pricing mechanisms.
Another key objective is to assist the adoption of some of the highly priced (and highly desirable) products on the market today. The current Australian higher education environment is effectively a shrinking market. This is caused by real reductions in public funding of universities, the usual super-inflationary cost of science and technology journals, and, often, an added premium for the electronic version, all exacerbated by a very poor exchange rate vis-a-vis the U.S. dollar and the European currencies. In the two years from September 1996, the exchange rate dropped from U.S. 0.78 to U.S. 0.57, a fall of nearly 27 percent. Those two years have seen major cancellations of journal subscriptions throughout Australian universities with few exceptions. The total value of cancellations in 1998 was around $5 million from a total budget of $130 million.
CAUL Electronic Information Resources Committee (CEIRC)
CEIRC was established in early 1998 to take the place of the NPRF-funded Database Access Working Group. Its work is financed by a $1,000 participation levy on each CAUL member, and was recently reviewed as to its structure, effectiveness, and priorities. The Committee's continuation has already been approved.
It was recognized from the beginning that the research information requirements of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) overlapped significantly with that of the universities, and that there was mutual benefit in potential collaborative opportunities and in ensuring a constant information flow. The committee comprises three CAUL members (library directors), two "on the ground" librarians, the CAUL executive officer and a representative of the CSIRO. Almost immediately after its inception, an invitation to participate was extended to the Council of New Zealand University Librarians (CONZUL), New Zealand's equivalent of CAUL. CONZUL's seven universities all agreed to participate. The committee was initially chaired by Steve O'Connor of the University of Technology, Sydney.
One of the first priorities of the committee was to create a model license for the purchase and acquisition of electronic information resources. A great believer in not reinventing the wheel, and a strong supporter of the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC), CEIRC used the ICOLC model licence as the basis for a CEIRC version (www.anu.edu.au/caul/datasets/icolc-oz. html). The local version addresses the issues of access to support and timing of maintenance that take into account international time differences, the definition of a site, and extension of access for training purposes.
A major activity of the committee was its Market Day, designed to give vendors the opportunity to show their wares to the entire CEIRC community over a two-month period in late 1998. Vendors were invited to submit proposals that met specific criteria based on the model license. Although the original intention was to focus the exercise according to a parameter such as subject discipline, type of product, or target audience, the committee elected to open all products and proposals to the community and allow the institutions to select those they wished to trial and evaluate. In cases where the products were of interest to CEIRC participants but the vendors' terms and conditions were unsatisfactory, the committee invited vendor representatives to meet with them in late January. Although this resulted in several revised proposals, some of those remain on the table pending further negotiation, see www.anu.edu.au/caul/ datasets/ceircmd1.htm.
A recent committee review of Market Day recommended that the exercise not be repeated in its current format. It was agreed that it required too large a commitment from the universities, the vendors, and the CAUL Office, and the preferred option involved fewer and more focussed trials such as were originally intended. It was further advised that the handling of vendor proposals, product trials, and negotiation of terms and conditions continue to be undertaken on a continuous and ad hoc basis by the CAUL Office.
Should there be difficulty in coming to an agreement with the vendor, the committee may elect to hold a round of interviews with the vendors during one of the national conferences devoted to electronic information resources (e.g., the Conference of the Victorian Association for Library Automation (VALA) or the Australasian Information Online and On Disc Conference). Negotiation with vendors is usually complicated by distance and differing time zones. American or European vendors use an Australian agent in some cases, while in others they have a regional representative. In neither case is it possible to hold serious discussions because the decision-making almost always rests elsewhere, often in Head Office. Regional representatives are generally sales people who rarely have the authority to deal themselves with unsatisfactory proposals. One of the joys of attending ICOLC meetings is the opportunity to make contact with Head Office.
The Bottom Line
CEIRC program members are now grappling with intra-consortium cost models. In most cases, subscription costs to participants have reflected the method by which the vendor calculates the consortium cost (e.g., the cost of base-year print subscriptions, subscription history, full-time enrollment [FTE], the Carnegie Classification, the number of concurrent users). Occasionally the consortium is offered a whole-of-consortium price and may choose the method of charging back to participants.
In 1998, members came to a reluctant consensus on a model of charging for Current Contents that recognized the value to all participants of access to the product, but acknowledged that the potential and actual usage of the service varied considerably across the institutions. The first half of the consortium cost was shared equally, but the second half was priced in four bands according to FTE. The first quartile, the smallest institutions, were charged 54 percent as much as the fourth quartile, that of the largest institutions. Members are extremely reluctant to base models on institutional collection size or budget, or on actual usage of a given service. All naturally lean towards the model which makes it cheapest for their institution. The goal is a model that makes it more cost-effective for the largest and more affluent institutions to participate in the consortium rather than to go it alone, while permitting the smallest and budget-- challenged institutions some level of access.
The CEIRC participation levy made possible the employment of a part-time assistant to handle the day-to-day administration of the program, bringing the office staffing to 1.3, and enabled the executive officer to attend ICOLC meetings. CAUL does not impose any other charges on participants (e.g., it does not add on fees of any type to subscription costs).
Apart from the aforementioned exchange rate impediment and the complications of negotiating at a distance, CAUL's experience of consortium purchasing mirrors very closely that of other ICOLC consortia. This is both a relief and a disappointment-relief that we don't feel that we have to break down the barriers on our own, in isolation, disappointment that it seems to take so long.
[Reference]
1. Neil Radford, "For the Interchange of Views and Information: The Council of Australian University Librarians 1928-1998," Australian Academic & Research Libraries, Special Issue (1998).
[Author note]
Diane Costello (diane.costello@anu.edu.au) is Executive Officer, Council of Australian University Librarians (www.anu. edu.au/caul/).
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รศ. จุมพจน์ วนิชกุล
chumpot@hotmail.com