Table Talks Notes

The Acquisitions Institute at Timberline Lodge

May 20, 2019

Converting Journals to OA
Facilitator: Keith Layson of Annual Reviews
Discussion Notes:

What are vendor and subscriber views of a model where a set of journals goes Open Access once a
threshold of subscriptions to the full series are attained.
A librarian said that Annual Reviews are heavily used regardless of individual title/subject, so it is not
likely that his institution is ever not subscribing. He said it is helpful if the state consortia adopts this
subscription.
A vendor said that from their experience, smaller institutions are seeking “free” wherever possible and
this hasn’t always worked. You have small to medium tier groups that are concerned or wait on this to
see if they can obtain it OA. Another vendor agreed that there is always going to be a “free rider”
problem, no matter what title.
How do you justify to your Board/Stakeholders when they see that something you’re spending
thousands of dollars on can be obtained for free?
A librarian said that you can expect to see institutions that are very committed to OA happily continue to
subscribe so that others can benefit, but we all have our funding limitations… He guessed that, in time,
it’s possible that subscribers drop their access if this plan has been successful enough that they can get it
OA. What is to motivate an institution to be the one to subscribe if the titles go back to closed access
versus another institution?
The table speculated that a membership model could help by giving added features to motivate
subscriptions. A discount or other incentive to subscribe before a deadline was another thought.
Opening up other journal backfiles was another incentive. Perhaps all members paying for author fees
could be considered.
From the vendor perspective, it would be important to reach your own definition of “sustainable,”
acknowledging that after 5, 10 years it will be time to assess and change again.

Key Takeaways from Table Talk Discussion:

● Lot of uncertainty with using subscription dollars for OA
● Don’t let sustainability concerns deter experimentation
● Economic models for OA don’t necessarily align with subscription budgets.
New Acquisition Methods for Individual E-Textbook Titles
Facilitator: Yumi Yaguchi of Florida International University Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine

● Really need single title (title-by-title) ebook access to textbooks for Medical Students (Yumi) ---
especially 3rd & 4th year students who are in clinical rotations (off campus access, their clinical
teaching sites are all over south Florida region.)
● [Background]
○ FIU, including College of Medicine, is very care about student cost of attendance.
Affordable textbook is for our case as well. FIU is an institutional partner of OpenStax.
○ Med Library annually has to prepare all course required and recommended textbook
reference collection (for 6 programs) & creates course textbook guide within medical
library website.
● Experiencing difficulty - not able to license by single title. Often available only in a big package
(already subscribing a couple of packages, but probably no more), only in print, only via
aggregators (with platform fee eventually), publisher created their own platform and no single
title sales any more, per user pricing model, etc. But, no alternative title is available as it’s a
course textbook & this specific title must be found.

[what suggested/discussed]
● At least a couple of academic libraries have concern about affordable textbooks & took
measures already.
● Several ideas are suggested/discussed, including:
○ Rental textbook service with college bookstore (B&N) --- probably only print
○ Form “negotiation team” within library (referring negotiation tools/strategies from 5/20
AM presentations) & discuss with vendors regarding our issue
○ Consult & discuss via listserv (to find the libraries which have the same issue/concern.
Maybe beyond medical library --- e.g., community colleges. During the discussion, a
community college case was reported that no textbook purchase required to students.)
○ Overdrive (they started sales to academic libraries a couple of years ago)
○ ProQuest --- an Australian institution having contract with ProQuest ebook central &
faculty choose their textbook from it - students no need to pay
○ Also we can make a request to ProQuest (maybe also other vendors?) not only access
title requests, but also request user numbers (from one user to unlimited sim users). No
guarantee, but they’ll discuss with the publisher.
○ The point --- we want to ask publishers to listen to what libraries need!
If Feeling Were First: Improving Collection Practice
Through Emotional Awareness
Facilitator: Fred Folmer of Connecticut College

● Turns out, there are emotional issues related to collection development!

● Selectors agonizing over choices, feel of failure or making hte wrong decision, and how that
makes you feel, espl. If you can't undo it
● What if it incites anger?
● If I'm the messenger, how does that affect my decision making?
● The effect of stress on making decisions (Fred did some prior reading, which maybe he could
share here later? With links? :))
● Politics: not doing something we felt out to be done: emotional avoidance of the situation, so as
not to deal with the politics
● Question assumptions, let emotions come out / process

Learning Collection Development On the Job

Facilitator: Rose Reynolds of Smith College

How many have a collection development policy that guides the process?

● 72 page document providing guidance. Helpful but challenging to keep updated.

(Broken down by discipline)
● Holds meeting with selectors every semester - budget, goals, discussion space.
Crowdsource expertise about Collection Development practices.
● Collection development is "extra" - secondary responsibility for most.
● Need for guiding principles.

Monthly meetings with subject liaisons.

Faculty requested list of new books - could be valuable marketing tool

Created guide for liaison outcomes and expectations / best practices = annual reflection

How do you create guidelines for expectations that are reasonable and fair, but consistently
applied?
New librarians found information about usage to be valuable/enlightening

What do you wish you knew as a new librarian?

 Collection development is inconsistent
Assessment is a huge challenge - how do you assess a relevant and useful collection for your
community?
● Time from purchase to check-out / (did assessment again after 3 years)
● Marketing resources is essential - also time consuming and challenging
How to "know" if you're making the right decisions for selection

What do you wish you knew about faculty relationships?

● Willingness to get out there is essential. Liaisons with more faculty engagement are
more confident / secure in selection work than those who aren't.
● Get syllabi - or access to LMS - this is a way to get helpful insight without needing to be
so "out there"

What kind of data / information do new collection development librarians need to better inform
their work?
● Reports as discovered through - raw data plus summary to share with librarian/faculty
● Format is challenging
● Usage is important - what other metrics? Correlation with curriculum?
● Print collection lists that hadn't circulated - put them up to share with liaisons
● Hoping to develop dashboard where people can filter by dept

Decolonizing Acquisitions and Collection Management

● Understanding what decolonization means
○ Discussed the decolonizing acquisitions and collection management from indigenous
perspectives
● Learned some ideas from different institutions on this topic, being mindful about indigenous
cultures in our practices; What are the things we are currently doing in our own institutions, in
actual practice, in this area?
○ Build partnership with indigenous communities and advocate the decolonize indigenous
resources
○ Community involvement (Sit, Wach, and Listen approach; let the indigenous voice
emerge on its own)
○ Support for first generation students
○ Promote and advocate indigenous resources
○ Assess representation on the shelves; comprehensive collections review
○ Collaborating with Indigenous Studies programs, departments
 ○ Removing materials considered harmful
○ Creating a brief for vendors - this is happening at Vancouver Island University
○ Reading Jesse Loyer’s work on librarianship and building accountability to and with
Indigenous communities - within librarianship and with communities in relationship with
libraries
○ Reflecting on ownership vs. Access: Ethical conflict about the origins of ownership
■ Relationship of Indigenous Protocols with what libraries hold and how materials
can be used and by whom
■ Responsibility of acquisitions in collections and archives to returning Indigenous
communities’ materials to rightful owners - and not acquiring materials that
have been taken
○ Decolonization issues around Ownership, Control, Access, and Preservation (OCAP)
○ Using & building connections with Brian Deere classification system
○ Understanding of the difference between equality and equity
○ Sit, watch, listen - this is our forever road
○ Supporting first generation students - universities as a colonized context - this is
happening at UC Riverside
○ Partnering with Indigenous artists, publishers, creators - this happened at University of
Texas at Austin with Resistencia Bookstore
○ Collecting materials published by Indigenous publishers - including Kegedonce Press &
Theytus Press
○ Assessing the harm our libraries have caused/are causing

Streamlining / Restructuring Acquisitions Budgets

● Lots of challenges- changing systems or entering new roles presents opportunity to clean
up/restructure funds
● Considering how to use ILS to do more analysis
● Consider which funds are necessary for reporting
● Allocating funds to selectors, changing with different organizations of librarians in organization
● Complexity of mapping library funds to campus systems
● What is considered acquisitions? (e.g. software, bibliographic utilities, memberships)
● Dealing with budget cuts-- ways to managing costs including reporting to colleges/campus units,
ways to limit resources to specific units
Promoting Your Purchase: Marketing Strategies &
Success Stories for Acquisitions
● Marketing your acquisitions is definitely growing in importance
● However, we are not experts in doing this!
● Group talked about challenges they face
● Brainstormed a variety of options to try, including
● Building internal checklists for marketing internal within your library and out to faculty and
students (codify the options and share it)
● Try to engage additional stakeholders, e.g., with Student Life, who communicates directly with
students; asking each dept to have a faculty champion to promote within the department
● Request advice and assistance from other areas of the university - Communications or
Marketing departments
● Share with faculty that it's Use It Or Lose It: show them the costs
● Use the marketing templates provided by vendors and request customizable options for cross-
resource and appropriately branded materials
● Turn your marketing challenge into a challenge for business and/or graphic design students at
your institution. Make your problem their project -- they can help!