A Necessity: Outsourcing the Issues of Print Serials

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A Necessity Outsourcing the Issues of Print
Serials

• Presenters
• Heather DAmour, Head, Technical Services
  Digital Access
• Ada-Marie Atkins Nechka, AUL, Collections
  Technical Services
• Co-authors
• Gloria Dingwall, Manager, Acquisitions
• Umashanie Reddy, Special Projects Librarian

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About the University of Calgary

• 27,915 students
• 17 faculties
• 30 research institutes

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Libraries and Cultural Resources

• OUR COLLECTIONS
• 7.8 million library items
• 28,000 electronic serials
• 800 databases
• 20,000 museum items
• 2,354 linear metres of archival materials

• Current University Library MacKimmie Tower

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Taylor Family Digital Library

• Emphasis is on digital collections for the
  University
• Library
• Archives
• Museum
• Press

• New University Library September 2010
• New High Density Library
• Spring 2010

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Collections and Technical Services multi-unit
area

• Responsible for
• acquisitions
• cataloguing
• collection development
• Serve TFDL, 4 branches, archives, special
  collections, museums, HDL, HIN, 1 college
  library, partners

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Serials Processing
8 Staff 30,784 issues/year
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Strategic Planning and Collaboration

• Collections and Technical Services Management
  Group (CTSMG)
• The cornerstone of strategic planning for CTS
  issues
• Collaboration open communication is
  fundamental.
• Preliminary vendor discussions presented to the
  group
• Recommendation for an RFI was presented and
  approved
• RFI reviewed evaluated
• Project vendor recommendation approved
• Results recommendation made to Vice-Provost
• Project Team formed as sub-group of CTSMG
• Coordinated activities and responsibilities.

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Project Management

• Project Team
• Vendor managers, sales representatives,
  technology gurus
• Client CTS managers and staff with support from
  IT department
• Characteristics of our team
• Multifunctional expertise
• Common goal
• Collaborative thinking
• Excellent communication skills

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Outsource Journal Processing

• Goal Develop a shelf ready journal process
• Service is offered by major serial vendors
• SwetsWise Consolidation
• EBSCO JETS (Journal Expediting and Technical
  Services)
• Service Parameters
• Journal sent directly to vendor depot(s)
• Vendor receives barcodes individual issues
• Issues physically processed
• Claims placed by vendor
• Regular shipments sent to Library (weekly)
• Issues scanned in upon receipt (optional)

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Available Processing

• SISAC Barcodes
• Security Strips
• Labels (Call s)
• Property Stamps
• Packing Slips
• Routing Slips
• Sorting
• Unwrapping
• Reports
• Shipped shelf ready

Categories of Titles that can be included Trade,
Scholarly, University Press, Private
Corporations, Non-Profit, Government,
Museum/Gallery, Small Presses, Societies/Associati
ons, Medical, Fulfillment Centers, Law, General
Serials
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Project Requirements

• Select titles for the service
• Identify titles vendor currently handles
• Transfer titles from other vendors
• Work within renewal deadlines
• Mailing address change required
• Requires contacting all impacted publishers (74)
• Select the physical processing
• Develop workflow process
• With vendor, within acquisitions and with
  Library system (Sirsi Dynix Symphony)

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Analyze Serials
Code titles to identify potential targets for
inclusion or exclusion
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Title Exclusion Criteria

• Government documents (depository)
• Daily titles
• Weekly titles (most)
• Local material (Western Canadian)
• Specific subject
• E.g. law
• Format
• Microform
• Publisher Direct Requirement

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Title Inclusion Criteria

• Frequency
• A critical category in order to target the
  greatest number of issues
• Vendor
• Once a critical mass was reached all titles were
  moved to the project if possible
• Domestic, United States, Outside North America
• Print Online
• If title was online but print was retained the
  print was moved to the project list
• NOTE Vendors had our list of titles during the
  RFI process and returned a list indicating titles
  that could be part of this service.

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Review

• Serials Staff
• Reviewed their individual titles to identify red
  flag titles or highlight concerns.
• Collections Technical Services Management Group
• Head of Collections, Serials Librarian, Metadata
  Librarian, Manager Serials Acquisition
• Reviewed the entire list
• Heads of Areas
• Project reasons, goals selection criteria (Not
  individual titles )
• Includes Law, Business, Medicine, Geology,
  Client Services

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Deliberation

• Focus on the goal deadlines
• Refine the list
• Sub-includes, memberships
• Ensure coverage information is clear
• What ifs

• Sign off and send the list of titles
• 1135 titles selected
• 364 titles from project vendor
• 771 titles identified to transfer from other
  vendors
• (266 titles from outside North America)

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Receiving

• Checkin process
• Challenges and Solutions
• Barcodes (ink rubbed off when scanned)
• Scanners not reading barcodes
• Duplicate (grace) issues
• Plastic packaged Issues
• Unwanted new print titles were shipped
• Memberships, subscription includes (ensure
  maintained as one order)
• Duplicate payments (timing of renewals)
• ISSN in SISAC barcode did not match ISSN in ILS

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Shipping and Courier Scenarios

• Sent shipping and courier scenarios to vendor for
  costing.
• FEDEX, DHL, Purolator, Canada Post
• Decision (weekly shipments arranged through
  vendor)
• DHL for US Foreign shipments
• Foreign titles sent to vendors main office
  incorporated into DHL shipment
• FedEx ground for Canadian shipments
• Box sizes and weight
• 27 lbs 12X12 boxes regular serials
• 40 lbs 16X16 boxes- larger serials
• Average monthly cost of courier CAN 50.00

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Call Number Labels

• Pre-consolidation printed or handwritten labels
  done in-house
• Common practice is to have customized label
  formats
• Sent label format and specifications to vendor
  for shelf ready call number labels
• Vendor could only provide one label format that
  did not meet our needs
• Decision
• Spine label development in-process with vendor
• Re-evaluated standardized label formats
• Do labels in-house using Dymo label writers

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SISAC Barcode
The SISAC or SICI (Systems Industry Systems
Advisory Committee) barcode is a symbol that
uniquely identifies a serial issue Allows for
automatic-check-in by scanning barcode
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Image of journal back cover with SISAC

• ILS system was setup to check-in using SISAC
  barcode
• Scanners encoded to read code 39 barcodes
• Label printers and hand-free scanners
• SISAC on back cover
• Must comply with ILS system standards and barcode
  scanners
• Test Barcodes were generated for testing purpose

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STATISTICS

• Averages
• Titles received weekly 198
• Claims 2,489 of 11,265 issues
• Check-in time/issue
• 1-2 minutes if straightforward
• 2-3 minutes if complex
• Turnaround time
• Vendor to Library 2-3 days
• Library to stacks 2-3 days

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Workflow Training

• Process Review and Consolidation Project
• Paradigm shift new serials workflow was needed
• Identify the issues consider solutions
• Identify need for new skills staff development
• Implement hands-on training support
• Main areas of training and development
• Microsoft Excel
• Title lists, renewal lists, invoices, accounts
• Vendor Changes
• Vendor database training
• Establish communication channels with vendor team
  

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Communication
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Moving Forward

• Transferring more titles to consolidation
• Refining serials process (stop check-in ?)
• Investigating consolidation of government
  publications NGOs
• Pursuing the outsourcing of standing orders
• Implementing EDI invoicing
• Re-assigning staff to other projects related to
  the demands of our digital Library

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What Have We Learned?

• First academic library in Canada to use the
  serial consolidation service.
• Open communication use of asynchronous
  collaboration tools is highly effective
• Collaborating with staff via a process review
• greater buy-in
• willingness to learn to use new tools adapt to
  new processes
• end result - greater efficiency in serials
  workflows.
• Cost effective

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• REFERENCES
• EBSCO electronic data interchange with integrated
  librarysystems.(2009).Retrieved October 29, 2009
  from EBSCO websitehttp//www2.ebsco.com/en-us/So
  lutions/ils/Pages/ILSInterfaces.aspxsisac
• Featherstone, R.(2009). Basecamp. Journal of the
  Medical Library Association, 97(1), 67.
• Lacey, Stephen. (1999) Back to the future
  consolidation services and the National Library
  of Australia. 10th Annual National Library
  Technicians Conference, Fremantle, 8-10,
  September, 1999.
• Nicholas, J.M. and Steyn, H. (2008) Project
  management for business, engineering and
  technology principles and practice. Amsterdam
  Boston Elsevier Butterworth Heinemann.
• Xu, J., Zhang, J., Harvey, T., and Young, J.
  (2008).A survey of Asynchronous Collaboration
  Tools Information Technology Journal, 7 (8),
  1182-1187.

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THANKS TO PARTNERS AND CONSULTANTS

• EBSCO
• Harrassowitz
• Library of Congress
• National Library of Medicine
• SWETS
• University of British Columbia

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CONTACT US

• Ada-Marie Atkins Nechka
• Associate University Librarian for Collections
  Technical Services
• adamarie_at_ucalgary.ca
• Heather DAmour
• Head, Technical Service Digital Access
• damour_at_ucalgary.ca
• THANK YOU!