Presentation

Financial Aspects of
Institutional Repositories
John MacColl
Head, 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)
Cost table: in-house
Server (2) + RedHat licence
System Developer (AL1/2) +
20% o/h
Liaison Officer (AL1/2) + 20%
o/h
Metadata Editor (CN4) + 20%
o/h
Management (AL5) + 20% o/h
Totals
Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
Year 4
Year 5
Totals
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
18,682
12,694
8,024
8,346
8,767
0.8 FTE
0.8 FTE
0.8 FTE
0.8 FTE
0.8 FTE
18,682
20,310
21,398
22,255
23,378
-
-
0.1 FTE
0.3 FTE
0.5 FTE
-
-
2,034
6,472
11,105
0.07 FTE
0.07 FTE
0.07 FTE
0.07 FTE
0.07 FTE
3,368
3,566
3,683
3,794
3,908
18,318
44,432
40,271
38,840
44,567
50,859
218,969
56,512
106,022
19,611
Cost table: out-sourced
Year 1
Server (2) + RedHat licence
-
-
0.8 FTE
System Developer (AL1/2) + 20% o/h
Payment to Commercial Supplier
Liaison Officer (AL1/2) + 20% o/h
-
Totals
Year 3
-
0.5 FTE
-
0.3 FTE
-
Year 4
0.3 FTE
-
Year 5
-
Totals
-
0.3 FTE
-
-
8,000
3,500
3,605
3,713
3,824
0.8 FTE
0.8 FTE
0.8 FTE
0.8 FTE
0.8 FTE
18,682
20,310
21,398
22,255
23,378
-
-
0.1 FTE
0.3 FTE
0.5 FTE
-
-
2,034
6,472
11,105
0.07 FTE
0.07 FTE
0.07 FTE
0.07 FTE
0.07 FTE
3,368
3,566
3,683
3,794
3,908
18,318
30,049
27,376
28,686
29,762
31,110
146,983
Metadata Editor (CN4) + 20% o/h
Management (AL5) + 20% o/h
Year 2
22,643
106,022
19,611
= saving of 33%!
A no-brainer?
60,000
Cost (£)
50,000
40,000
In-house
30,000
Vendor-hosted
20,000
10,000
Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5
Time
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
100,000
Cost (£)
80,000
60,000
40,000
20,000
Year Year Year Year Year Year Year Year Year Year
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Time
Repositories as symptoms (more
costs on the way)
•
•
•
•
•
Learning objects
Images
E-books
Locally digitised collections
Library as publisher
Business models on two levels
The introverted library (pre-web)
Institutional Library
(British Library)
The collaborative library
UKPMC
Digital libraries
(collaborative
collections)
IR
datasets
Institutional
Library
Certificated archives
(British Library)
arXiv
“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
Ross Atkinson
“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.”
But who will fund the collaborative
(‘network-level’) Library?
Thank you!
[email protected]