E-resources and consortia in Italy: past, present and future

Paola Gargiulo

CASPUR

gargiulo@caspur.it

II Seminàrio de Consòrcios de Bibliotecas Italo-Ibero-Americanas (SCBIILA)

Current situation Currently Italian universities (over 80) + various research centre access to a

variable number of e-resources (e-journals, A&B databases and e-books) mainly through consortial deals

The access takes place through publisher’s website and through local loading/archiving (parallel access)

There is no national portal to access toll- based e-resources

A national portal for OA e-prints, doctoral theses, conference proceedings (PLEIADI- Portale Letteratura Elettronica Italiana Archivi e Depositi Istituzionali)

3 consortia Italian universities and Italian university libraries do not have a strong

tradition in cooperation

The role of two supercomputing consortia: CILEA and CASPUR

In the late nineties (1998-99) 3 interuniversity initiatives took place to provide access to the new emerging scholarly electronic resources : CILEA Digital Library, CIBER/CASPUR and CIPE

Cooperation in purchasing electronic resources was the outcome of the ITC developments and as well as the response to the so called “periodicals crisis”

In 1999 3 different contracts were signed with Elsevier Science

A consortium of 11 universitiesbased in central and northern Italy

Members:11 universities

Subscribers:over 40 universities + various research centres and hospitals, all together about 100 institutions

What is CILEA?

Interuniversity Supercomputing Institutions which offersdifferent types of servicesalso to non members..Fundedby the ministry of University& Research Miur

A group of 26 universities cooperatingin purchasinge-resources and in sharing knowledge,experience in the digital library field.CIBER is supported by CASPUR for administrative and technical services.CASPUR is funded by MIUR

What happened since 1999 The 3 consortia started negotiating e-journals together since 2000-01 Some contracts were and are currently signed together (ACS, Kluwer/

Springer, Kluwer Law International) under a master contract,

Few are still negotiated and handled individually by each single consortia (Blackwell, JSTOR, Oxford University Press,) others are signed by CILEA and CIBER together ( Annual Reviews, BioOne, IOPP, Nature, Science, Royal Chemical Society, Wiley),

A&B databases are negotiated in few cases in national deals (Sci-finder Scholar through CILEA) or by interconsortial deals (WOK, SCOPUS, etc) or by single institutions

Not all the contracts are signed by all consortia neither by all the members of the same consortia (the latter it is not true for CIPE)

What happened in 2006 CRUI- Conference of Rectors of Italian Universities Library Committee- a 3 year

project called CARE- Coordinamento per l’accesso alle risorse elettroniche CRUI assembly approval and the project started out at the end of 2006

CARE: 3 consortia (CILEA- Digital Library, CIBER/CASPUR, CIPE)+ 3 rapresentatives of the Italian universities

Objectives are: improving access and services related to e-resources at national level, promoting national deals, act on govt on VAT issues or other issues penalizing e-resources and their dissemination, promoting national solutions for long term preservation

CARE initiated the first national deal: the renewal of Elsevier Science contract in 2007- still under negotiations- Negotiators: Content Complete + local consultant under the lead and supervision of CARE group.

Since July 2007 the renewal of Springer contract is negotiated too under CARE aegis with no consultants

Reasons and objectives for aggregating

Periodical crisis and cuts in the library budgets

Access to more information and application of economy of scale

Strenghten the buying power of Italian universities

Develop strategies and adopt business models that better suit Italian research and education

Lead the collection development process

Permanent access and long term preservation

Shared print archive

How they work CIPE - legal status: a consortium since 2007, CIBER and CILEA- Digital Library

no legal status, their organization is more informal and more loose, they respectively have the legal and financial support from CASPUR and CILEA

Members pay a fee (CIBER and CIPE) in case of CILEA they pay a % on each contract

Each consortia has a Steering Committee. Inclusion policies are different, CIPE has a very strict policy

Sharing costs within the consortia are applied differently in each consortia

Universities neither consortia get any extra funding from the central governament, each university pays out of its library budget or out of special funds allocation (print and electronic fee, the latter is advanced by CASPUR (for CIPE and CIBER) and by CILEA for CILEA subscribers)

Negotiations

CILEA Digital Library - Negotiations are handled by CILEA staff with the support of the Steering Committee

CIPE - Negotiations are handled by a contract out consultant under the lead and the supervision of members of the Steering Committee

CIBER - Negotiations are handled by members of the steering committee together with CASPUR staff and in some cases with the assistance of a contract out consultant (contracts signed together with CIPE)

Pro and Cons of a contract out- consultant

Negotiations (cont.) E-resources of interest are selected by universities (CIPE and CIBER)

Publishers are then contacted by negotiators. There are few cases when publishers approach consortia first

A pre-negotiating phase is devoted to collect information about the publisher, its current pricing models, to collect literature on the web, exchange information when possible with colleagues abroad, to analyze institutional needs

A first call of interest takes place when negotiations start, consortial members responding to the call are kept informed during the negotiations process (through reserved mailing lists) and are asked to keep the information confidendial

Most of the contracts allow new members to join later on during the year at the same conditions

CILEA has a different approach, contacts publishers, gets offers from publihsers, negotiates them with publishers in collaboration with other consortia

Access and consortia promotion

CARE website gives information about CARE actitivities and negotiations (it is mainly addressed to librarians and university administrators)

CARE is just starting an awareness activity addressed to the research community about the issues regarding costs of scholarly publishing

Each consortia mantains its website and promotes information about their own activities by using different type of technologies (rss feeder, blogs, newsletter, emailing, etc)

Consortial website are more oriented to professional staff then end-users,

Each consortia conducts several activities beyond consortial purchasing (training courses for library staff, training courses for end-users, sharing sw on a consortial or regional basis, organizing open days to present new products from subscribing publishers, holds regular meetings with its members)

Access and websites Each university has its library website and some are building interesting

portals

A good number of them adopt integrated solutions to manage access to digital resources (meta search engines, linking resolvers, etc) purchased on an individutal basis or through regional or consortial deals, provide help desk services and often online reference services (ask a librarian)

End-users either access resources directly through publishers website, or through CILEA and CASPUR digital platforms, or through specific A& B databases (Pubmed, Sci-finder Scholar, WOK, Scopus, etc), through library website and more often through Google Scholar, Google

Users

CASPUR and CILEA make available to the authorized end-users based on the contract signed by each institution a local digital platform consisting of over 6 million articles from major publishers. They both offer help desk services to end-users

CASPUR and CILEA committment to long term preservation

These two digital platforms are not a replica of each other, they will be in the near future

CASPUR conducts surveys and statistical usage studies on its platform

Statistics usage

Each consortia collects and analyzes statistical data on each contract

Using data from publisher’s website and from local platform (CIBER/CASPUR and CILEA)

CASPUR and the university of Messina, a CIBER member, provide statistical data from CASPUR local digital platform, by generating statistical data according to Counter journal reports 1 and 2 . They are currently working on a solution based to collect data from local platform and from publishers websites by using SUSHI protocol

An in-depth analysis of statistical data of Elsevier journals has been conducted on in house and publisher data in view of the current national deal

Critical issues Different library systems : centralization and autonomy

Consortia empowerment : still weak compared to the strong publishers conglomerates

Costs of resources increase and library budget decrease (the latter not everywhere and not at the same pace or in the same field of knowledge)

Maintenance of contract or renewal become very critical for some institutions

Business models: more flexibility

Big deal: is still sustainable?

Critical issues (cont.)

Other business models: core list of journals + peripheral list. Are feasible for national contracts?

Move to e-only makes centralized library funding and long term preservation two urgent issues

Shared print archive: some experiments are carrying out

Critical issues (cont.)

More measuraments are needed : research output and usage of electronic resources. More knowledge about users,their behaviours, their needs is required

Improvement of services to end-users AAI intiative (Shibboleth)

More training for end- users

Cooperation with other consortia

Italy has been an example of cooperation with other consortia within the country!!

Cooperation vs Competition

Role of INFER- Italian National Forum of Electronic Resources

Cooperation with SELL- Southern European Library Link Exchange of experience, knowledge, First interconsortial negotiations: ALSP- Sweets Deal

Future prospects

CARE : stable national initiative and gets some central funding

More involvement with OA initiatives Italian library Consortia and SCOAP initiative

A stronger international cooperation to share experience, competence, knowledge (SELL, ICOLC, SCBIILA)

thank you for the attention

Cited web sites

• CARE- http://www.crui-care.it• INFER – http://www.infer.it• CILEA- Digital Library – http://cdl.cilea.it• CIBER – http://www.uniciber.it• CASPUR- http://www.caspur.it• CIPE – http://www.unicipe.it• PLEIADI –

http://www.openarchives.it/pleiadi