Trends in Physical Delivery

1
Trends in Physical Delivery
Valerie Horton Executive Director, Colorado
Library Consortium (CLiC)
2

• The end users experience of DELIVERY is as
  important, if not more important, than his or her
  discovery experience.

2009
3
Discovery to Delivery

• End users generally dont see the point of
  finding things they cant get.
• OCLC Report

4
while librarians tend to think about user tasks
as separate and distinct.

• From the OCLC Report
• End users appear to perceive the process of
  moving through discovery and selection to access
  as one continuous flow

5
OCLCs Conclusions

• Pay more attention to the librarys delivery
  services
• Explore the feasibility of home or office
  delivery

6
LIBRARY DELIVERY IS DIVERSE!
7
What are We Moving?
Data from Colorado, Florida, and Wisconsin
8
Four Delivery Funding Models
9
Funding Models

• 1. No cost to library (state/LSTA grants)
• 2. Per package cost
• 3. Part of consortium membership
• 4. Fee-based by stop (1 to 5 days)
• With administrative fees
• With high volume charge

10
Five Delivery Models

• 1. USPS
• 2. Overnight Commercial Carrier
• 3. In-House
• 4. Regional Carrier
• 5. Hybrids

11
1. United States Postal Service

• Traditional
• Ubiquitous
• 7 to 10 day
• Mostly reliable
• Lot of packaging
• Moderately expensive per piece

12
Libraries and USPS Multi-Million Dollar Business

• USPS 4.00, one-way
• OCLC 10,000,000 ILL transactions/yr
• 90 in USA
• 45 are returnables
• Say conservatively, 50 sent via USPS
• 20,000,000

13
2. Overnight Commercial Carriers

• Very fast and very reliable
• Often used by academic consortia
• Expensive
• lt 1 million transactions
• Lots of packaging

14
Piece Pricing Range -
Average .47
Phone survey by V. Horton in April and a follow
up by G. Pronevitz in the summer 2008
15
3. Internally Managed Delivery

• Trucks owned, driver are employees
• Tend to serve smaller geographic areas
• Common in public library systems

16
4. Commercial Delivery Service

• REGIONALLY-BASED
• Common with consortia
• Tend to serve larger geographic regions

17
Regional Carriers

• 7,000 companies
• Bike services to conglomerates
• 9.9 of GDP in 2006
• Volatile industry
• 32 of costs is fuel
• High customer ratings

Sources Messenger Courier Association Council
of Supply Chain Management
18
5. Hybrids

• Some combination of the other four models

Most common model
19
Delivery is Growing FAST!!!
20
Delivery is growing because Libraries are BUSY

• 123,291 libraries circulating

2,100,000,000 items
Source ALA Library Fact Sheet 1 and 2005 LRS
data
21
COLORADO DATA
22
Delivery is growing because of Consortia Catalogs
ICOLC email survey 8/2008
23
Delivery is growing because of Statewide ILL
Systems
The New York State Librarys ILL System
TexNet Interlibrary Loan
24
Delivery is growing because of Patron Placed
Holds
25
Rapid Growth Delivery Problems

• Soaring costs
• Storage and sorting space
• Vehicle wear and tear
• Difficulty retaining drivers
• Lifting injuries
• Insurance expenses

26
How do we reduce delivery?
27
Automated Handling
28
Floating Collections

• Item remains where the patron returns it
• Common in public libraries with
  branches

29
Hold Queue Clustering

• Hold is given to the first person at the
  location item was returned
• - Not the first in the overall queue
• Wisconsin study found that overall holds are
  filled faster!

30
Making Delivery Connections
National Courier?
31
Linked Regional Couriers

• Need 3 things
• 1. Discovery system
• 2. Physical delivery systems
• 3. Agreements

32
A Regional ApproachOrbis Cascade, TexExpress,
WI/MINITEX
33
(No Transcript)
34
COKAMO

• Both
• -- a reciprocal borrowing agreement
• -- a delivery service
• Shift away from borrowing from other states
• Rapid growth
• -- 1000 items a week in less than 1 month

35
Hard part Agreements

• Frequency of long hauls
• Shipping containers
• Labeling
• Long haul shipper
• Greyhound 35-40
• Separate ALL costs and web pages

36
Future Hope to link to TExpress
37
Home Delivery
38
Home/Office Delivery is Common

• Academic libraries delivery to
• Distance education students
• Faculty grad student offices
• Not to Undergraduates

• Publics offer delivery to
• Homebound
• Nursing homes
• Hospitals
• Schools
• Rural addresses
• Etc.

LIMITED
39
OCLC Study

• Montanas Public Libraries
• USPS
• Participants would pay 5
• Overwhelmingly, users love home delivery
• Charging patrons LIMITS use!

40
What about unlimited home delivery?
___ County did free home mailing of library
materials it was as if we were giving away free
food. Luckily, with the increase in postal
rates, we could end the program gracefully.
41
Unlimited Home Delivery by USPS

• Topeka, KS
• 153,438 circulations
• 2 to 5 days to leave library
• US Mail 7 to 10 days
• Drop off or US Mail return

• Polk County, FL
• New program, growing fast
• 17 library consortium
• Drop off or US Mail return

42
Home Delivery without USPS

• Orange Cnty, FL uses a commercial carrier
• 800,000 deliveries
• 8 of overall circulation (4th largest branch)
• 2.40 per piece
• Compares to regular circulation cost
• Patron must return item
• VERY POPULAR

43
Another Home Delivery Alternative

• OCLC Interlibrary Loan as Home Delivery
• Better World Books to patrons home
• Free shipping
• Cost effective compared to traditional ILL
• The patron or the library can buy the book
• OCLC plans to expand home delivery to WorldCat
  Resource Sharing libraries later this year.

44
Cant Afford Home Delivery?
?
45
Finally Home Delivery

• is no more expensive than maintaining a branch
  with a circulating collection
• is no more expensive than interlibrary loan
• serve everyone, not just selective populations
• reduces air pollution
• it will be VERY popular

46
NEWFirst bookon deliverypublished since
1970ALA Editions