Valuing Library Collections for Insurance Challenges and Change

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Valuing Library Collections for Insurance
Challenges and Change

• Jocelyn Priddey, Senior Manager, Collection
  Development

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Overview

• Background
• University Library profile
• Challenges affecting Library collections
• Insurance valuation principle methodology
• Variations in results
• Outcomes

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University Profile

• The University of Queensland is the oldest and
  largest of Queenslands eight universities and
  was founded in 1910
• Annual revenue A814,450,000
• Research funding A131,340,000
• Group of 8 (GO8)
• Universitas 21 Alliance (U21)
• Research intensive
• 4,000 courses offered
• 5,000 PhDs
• 8,644 Awards granted in 2004

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Library Profile

• 13 branch libraries
• 7 within St Lucia Campus
• 1 on the Ipswich Campus
• 1 on the Gatton Campus
• 3 in teaching hospitals
• 1 in the Dental School
• Warehouse collection (closed access lesser used
  material)
• University Archives

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Library Users

• Enrolled students
• 38,139 ( 29,320 EFTSU )
• Staff (research, teaching, general)
• 5,081
• Community (walk-ins)
• Visiting academics Adjunct appointments
• Alumni

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Library Collections

• Over 2 million print volumes
• 11,530 print journal titles and 25,835 electronic
  journal titles
• 822 networked databases
• 315,305 electronic books
• 44,000 multi-media items
• 34,000 maps
• Extensive manuscript, microform and pictorial
  collections

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Major Challenges Affecting Library Collections
and Facilities since 1994

• Financial challenges include
• Unpredictable A
• Unpredictable library budgets - not kept pace
  with rising costs
• Technological developments have changed
• How we work
• What we buy
• Who we buy from

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Major Challenges Affecting Library Collections
and Facilities since 1994 ctd

• Expectations of our customers
• Desk top delivery (where-ever the desk may be!)
• 24x7
• Organisation of Branch Libraries
• More PCs
• Laptop ports
• Wireless connections

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Library Collection Development Policy

• 150 pages
• Public document
• Library collections for permanent retention to
  support the Universitys research endeavours
• However
• Finite space has led to establishment of closed
  access collections for lesser used material
• Unique copies retained permanently
• Duplicates discarded

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Insurance Valuation - Principle

• In the event of a disaster to our collection we
  would wish to replace at least 85 of the
  destroyed content.
• Format may be different
• DVD replacing film
• Electronic replacing print and/or microform
• CDs replacing LPs

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What Part of the Collection is Insured?

• Included
• Physical items
• Excluded
• Licenced electronic data
• Risk covered by vendors. For example
• Elsevier Science / National Library of the
  Netherlands partnership

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Insurance Valuation - Methodology

• A) Rare manuscript material professionally
  valued every 5 years.
• Purchase value of new acquisitions added annually
• B) Remaining standard collection based on
• Collection count for each format
• Multiplied by
• Average price for each format
• Plus
• Processing cost for each format

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Insurance Valuation Methodology ctd

• 2004 print standard collection counts
• 1.4 million books
• 853,000 bound journals
• 226,000 microfilm microfiche
• 28,000 video / film / dvd
• 16,000 audio and music cds
• 34,000 maps
• Calculated from a base 1992 actual count new
  items discarded items.

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Insurance Valuation Methodology ctd

• Average price
• Determined from Innopac, the Library's integrated
  library management system.
• To reduce the distortion effect on yearly
  averaged prices caused by currency fluctuations,
  expensive purchases and the variations in the mix
  of purchases from year to year, the average
  purchase price has been averaged over 4 years.

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Insurance Valuation Methodology ctd

• Average price - Variation for Journals
• Items purchased less than 10 years ago
• Repurchase value Average price as calculated
• Items purchased more than 10 years ago
• It is assumed photocopying would be permitted.
• Photocopying cost based on average per page
  copying cost an average no of pages per
  journal.

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Variations on a Theme or Why are the results so
different from last year?

• Reasons may include
• Collection weeding projects
• Collection building for new areas of teaching
  and/or research
• Replacement of print journal subscriptions with
  electronic subscriptions
• Purchase of electronic journal back-files

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Outcomes

• Fair and accurate representation of the
  replacement costs
• Libraries exist in a dynamic world
• Methodology needs to be flexible
• So far it has stood the test of time
• In summary
• It works for us!
• Thank you!