Webcast: Building ROI through Discovery: Leveraging the Value of the Library Collection

Second in the series Returning the Researcher to the Library

Dodie Ownes -- Library Journal, 7/1/2009

Close to 300 attendees joined the June 30 webcast, Building ROI through Discovery: Leveraging the Value of the Library Collection, sponsored by Serials Solutions and Library Journal. This was the second in the webcast series, Returning the Researcher to the Library. (ROI = return on investment.)

Jane Burke, vice president and executive director at Serials Solutions, set the stage in her introduction by pointing out that “the collection is often the largest single investment in the library and the source of its competitive advantage.” Unfortunately, when users try to navigate it, they are often frustrated and stop using the library for their research needs. Studies such as Ithaka's 2006 Studies of Key Stakeholders in the Digital Transformation in Higher Education (Ross Housewright and Roger Schonfeld, 2008) also indicate that there is a growing threat of disintermediation of the library from the research process.

Three-phase study
Panelist Carol Tenopir, professor at the School of Information Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville and Online Databases columnist for LJ, presented the current results of a three-phase ROI study that began at University of Illinois in 2008. The goal of these studies is to demonstrate that library collections contribute to income-generating activities for their institutions, both immediately and downstream.  

Using an ROI model based on faculty use, citations, grant income and other factors, the first phase of the study indicated that, for every dollar invested in the library, the university received nearly five dollars in income. Phase two, which expanded the study to a range of institutions worldwide, is close to completion. The quantitative and qualitative data received so far supports the library as key to ongoing faculty research, particularly in the area of e-resources.

Tenopir noted that institutional mission can affect the focus on ROI, and that ROI should not be the only measure of a library’s value. Phase three of the study will look at the broader functional areas of the library, not just value tied to grants, including trying to correlate downstream results to ROI.

Improving access
Anne Prestamo, associate dean for collection and technology services at Oklahoma State University (OSU) Libraries, began her presentation by describing several ways that libraries have attempted to improve access to library resources for faculty and students, including link resolvers, federated search and e-journal portals. Usage data from OSU indicate that these tools are helping in many cases, particularly in the area of article download, and an increase in connections to full-text online via link resolvers.

Federated search is driving more traffic to A&I (abstract and index) databases, pushing the cost per article down, in one case close to 50% less than four years ago, and cost per search has gone done dramatically as well. Prestamo noted that there are still challenges with federated search tied to connectivity issues, aggregation and display problems and open URL link failures.

OSU Libraries decided to embark on a one year study to get to know how users approached the OPAC, analyzing logs in the traditional OPAC versus the ‘next-gen’ catalog (via AquaBrowser), and learned “some scary things in the process,” she said. Nearly 33% of searches done in the traditional OPAC resulted in no hits, while in the next-gen catalog, less than 10% of searches had no hits. She continued to review results, and offered some suggestions to libraries and content providers on how they can be sure resources are consistently and easily available to users.

Tenopir and Prestamo fielded several questions from attendees, from construction of Tenopir’s studies (she’s happy to take suggestions!) to the analysis of relevancy of results in Prestamo’s catalog search log review. 

Upcoming webcast
Burke thanked the panelists for a very insightful and thought-provoking discussion, and reminded the audience that the third webcast in the Returning the Researcher to the Library series is scheduled for Tuesday, August 18, at noon ET.

Defining Web-scale Discovery: The Promise of Unified Search Index for Libraries will feature library world notables, Eric Lease Morgan, University Libraries of Notre Dame, and Marshall Breeding, Vanderbilt University, and will be moderated by Andrew Nagy, senior discovery services engineer at Serials Solutions. Registration will be available soon at www.libraryjournal.com/webcasts.

Building ROI through Discovery: Leveraging the Value of the Library Collection, sponsored by Serials Solutions, is now available in the Library Journal webcast archives for on-demand viewing.