the total cost of ownership of multitenant cloud systems compared to

T H E T O T A L C O S T O F O W N E R SH I P O F M U L T I T E N A N T C L O U D S Y S T E M S C O M P A R E D T O C O N V E N T I O N A L

L I B R A R Y M A N A G E M E N T S Y S T E M S

AN ADBU STUDY

Maurits van der Graaf 2015-10-30 Pleiade Management and Consultancy BV Keizersgracht 62 1015 CS Amsterdam The Netherlands T: +31 20 488 9397 [email protected] www.pleiade.nl

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.pleiade.nl/

PLEIADE MANAGEMENT EN CONSULTANCY 2

Table of contents

Management summary ............................................................................................................... 6

1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 7

2. Study design ........................................................................................................................ 8

2.1 Central research questions ................................................................................................ 8

2.2 Categories of total cost of ownership ............................................................................... 8

2.3 Three tracks of the study .................................................................................................. 9

2.3.1 Track 1: case studies of libraries using a cloud system versus case studies using a conventional system ............................................................................................................................................ 10

2.3.2 Track 2: case studies of shared cataloguing systems .................................................................. 11

2.3.3 Track 3: additional interviews focusing on aspects that are insufficiently clarified by the tracks 1 and 2 .................................................................................................................................................. 11

2.3.4 Working methods ....................................................................................................................................... 12

3. Total cost of ownership of a multitenant cloud system used by individual libraries ........ 14

3.1 Introducing the new generation of library management systems ................................... 14

3.2 Three libraries that have migrated to a cloud system ..................................................... 16

3.2.1 The libraries of the Boston University ...................................................................................... 16

3.2.2 The library of the University of Salford ............................................................................................. 18

3.2.3 The library of the Tilburg University ................................................................................................. 20

3.3 Comparison of the system-related costs before and after the migration in the case

studies ................................................................................................................................... 22

3.3.1 System-related out-of-pocket costs .................................................................................................... 22

3.3.2 Staff involved in technical management and operational management ............................. 23

3.3.3 Downtime ...................................................................................................................................................... 24

3.4 The efficiency of workflows based on multitenant cloud systems ................................ 25

3.4.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 25

3.4.2 The efficiency of the acquisition workflows.................................................................................... 26

3.4.3 The efficiency of title by title cataloguing ........................................................................................ 29

3.4.4 Electronic resources management ...................................................................................................... 31

3.4.5 The usage of API’s/ connections to internal systems .................................................................. 35

3.4.6 Other workflows & observations ......................................................................................................... 36

3.4.7 Organisational consequences at the libraries of the University of Liège and the University of Manchester ................................................................................................................................... 36

3.5 Migration to the cloud .................................................................................................... 39


3.5.1 Results of the three case studies .......................................................................................................... 39

3.5.2 The migration project at the library of the University of Delft................................................ 40

3.5.3 Preparing the migration .......................................................................................................................... 41

3.6 Long-term costs .............................................................................................................. 43

3.6.1 Development costs ..................................................................................................................................... 43

3.6.2 Cost of dependence/independence .................................................................................................... 43

3.6.3 The cost of a future migration to another system......................................................................... 43

4. The total cost of ownership of a conventional LMS ......................................................... 45

4.1 Introduction to the case studies on the French libraries ................................................. 45

4.1.1 The network of libraries of the federal university TOULOUSE MIDI-PYRENEES ............ 45

4.1.2 The documentation Centre of the University of Bretagne Occidentale ............................... 46

4.1.3 The documentation centre of the University Nice Sophia Antipolis ..................................... 47

4.2 Two elements of the total cost of ownership: Out-of-pocket costs and human resources

49

4.3 The workflows based on the existing systems seen from the perspective of an eventual

migration to a Cloud system ................................................................................................. 52

4.3.1 Acquisition workflows ............................................................................................................................. 52

4.3.2 Cataloguing title by title ........................................................................................................................... 58

4.3.3 Changing the system for shared cataloguing: the experience of the library of La Pérouse 61

4.3.4 The management of electronic resources ........................................................................................ 63

4.3.5 Conclusions ................................................................................................................................................... 65

5. Total cost of ownership of shared cataloguing systems .................................................... 67

5.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 67

5.2 LIBISnet ......................................................................................................................... 67

5.2.1 LIBIS and LIBISnet ..................................................................................................................................... 67

5.2.2 The migration to a multitenant cloud system ................................................................................ 68

5.2.3 Costs directly related to the system ................................................................................................... 68

5.2.4 Costs related to the operational management of the system ................................................... 69

5.2.5 Resource sharing within LIBISnet ....................................................................................................... 70

5.2.6 Effects on the coordinating organisation ......................................................................................... 71

5.2.7 Effects on cataloguing ............................................................................................................................... 72

5.3 Sudoc .............................................................................................................................. 75

5.3.1 The Sudoc network and ABES ............................................................................................................... 75

5.3.2 Sudoc and cloud systems ........................................................................................................................ 75


5.3.3 Total costs of ownership of the Sudoc system ............................................................................... 76

5.3.4 workflows and services around Sudoc .............................................................................................. 77

5.4 Comparison of LIBISnet and Sudoc .............................................................................. 80

5.4.1 Differences between LIBISnet and Sudoc......................................................................................... 80

5.4.2 Changes in the coordiation of a shared cataloguing system in the Cloud ........................... 80

5.4.3 Cataloguing and metadata production in cloud systems ........................................................... 81

5.4.4 Observations and conclusions from the perspective of the Sudoc network ...................... 83

6. Summary and Conclusions ............................................................................................... 86

6.1 Introduction and Study design ........................................................................................ 86

6.2 Four categories of the total cost of ownership ............................................................... 86

6.3 Costs directly related to the system ................................................................................ 86

6.4 Efficiency of the workflows based on cloud systems .................................................... 87

6.4.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 87

6.4.2 Acquisition .................................................................................................................................................... 88

6.4.3 Cataloguing title by title and shared cataloguing systems ........................................................ 88

6.4.4 Electronic resource management ........................................................................................................ 89

6.4.5 Connections to internal systems .......................................................................................................... 90

6.4.6 Organisational changes ............................................................................................................................ 91

6.5 Long-term costs .............................................................................................................. 91

6.6 Migration issues ............................................................................................................. 91

6.7 Elements for a business case for migrating to a multitenant cloud system .................... 92

Figure 1 Case studies of individual libraries........................................................................................................ 10 Figure 2 Case studies of shared cataloguing systems ...................................................................................... 11 Figure 3 Standard calendar FOR the migration to a cloud system ............................................................. 39 Figure 4 Example of a swimming lane diagram with regard to order approval ................................... 42 Figure 5 Overview acquisition procedures at the University Nice Sophia Antipolis .......................... 56 Figure 6 Workflows for cataloguing title by title ............................................................................................... 58 Figure 7 The configuration in Alma ......................................................................................................................... 70 Table 1 The additional interviews of track 3 ....................................................................................................... 12 Table 2 Sources for the case studies ....................................................................................................................... 13 Table 3 Advantages of cloud systems ..................................................................................................................... 14 Table 4 The configuration of Information SYSTEMS BEFORE and after the migration of the BU libraries ............................................................................................................................................................................... 17 Table 5 The information systems of the library of salford before and after the migration ............. 19 Table 6 The configuration of systems before and after migration of the library of the Tilburg University ........................................................................................................................................................................... 21

https://pleiade-my.sharepoint.com/personal/maurits_pleiade_nl/Documents/ADBU/Rapportage%20final/The%20Total%20Cost%20of%20Ownership%20of%20Multitenant%20Cloud%20Systems%20compared%20to%20conventional%20Library%20Management%20Systems%20ADBU%20Study%20WERKDOCUMENT.docx#_Toc433400091





Table 7 System-related out-of-pocket costs before and after the migration ......................................... 22 Table 8 Staff involved in the technical and operational management ...................................................... 24 Table 9 The CONFIGURATION OF Information Systems in TOULOUSE ................................................... 46 Table 10 The configuration of Information Systems at the University of Bretagne occidentale ... 47 Table 11 The configuration of Information Systems at the University of Nice Sophia antipolis ... 48 Table 12 Overview of two elements of the total cost of ownership ........................................................... 49 Table 13 An overview of the various aspects of the situation of electronic resources in the three case French studies ........................................................................................................................................................ 65 Table 14 Overview of the IT systems before and after the migration ....................................................... 68 Table 15 Overview of the costs directly related to the system .................................................................... 68 Table 16 Costs related to the operational management of the system .................................................... 69 Table 17 Elements of the total cost of ownership of Sudoc’s........................................................................ 76 Table 18 Overview costs directly related to the system ................................................................................. 87


MANAGEMENT SUMMARY

What is the total cost of ownership of a cloud system in comparison with a conventional library management system?

This is the main research question of this study commissioned by the ADBU. In total 14 libraries and library organisations participated in this study.

The total cost of ownership can be divided in four categories. In very broad terms, the outcomes per category are as follows:

Costs directly related to the technical management of the system: these costs are shown to be in the same order of magnitude for multitenant cloud systems in comparison to conventional systems.

Costs of the operational management of the system: the human resources involved in the operational management of the system appear to be primarily related to internal organisational factors and not to the type of system in use.

The efficiency of the workflows based on the system: The efficiency of the workflows based on a multitenant cloud system can be higher than the efficiency of the workflows based on conventional systems if the library is willing to adapt its policies, its workflows and its organisation. The main efficiency gains can be achieved in electronic resource management, in cataloguing and to a lesser extent in acquisition. In order to achieve these efficiency gains, change management is key. More efficiency gains might also be expected resulting from new developments within the multitenant cloud systems and from new services for the platforms of the cloud systems developed by publishers.

Long-term costs: with regard to these costs, no definite conclusions can be drawn from this study.

A business case for the migration might therefore be based on the following elements:

• The increased options to create (better) services for end-users. • The workflows better adapted to the management of electronic resources • The options to share resources with other libraries and with vendors • The options to connect with the internal systems of the university.

A more elaborate summary with detailed conclusions of this study can be found in chapter 6.


1. INTRODUCTION

The competitive dialogue for the implementation of a shared library management system in the Cloud - managed by the ABES and with the participation of 46 university and academic libraries - has begun in January 2015. This will probably lead to a choice of a cloud system within a year.


This is the main research question of a study commissioned by the ADBU. The aim of this study is to support decision making by academic library directors in view of a possible migration to a library management system, by ensuring a good understanding of the financial/economic consequences.

The present report describes the results of this study, which is executed by Maurits van der Graaf (Pleiade Management and Consultancy) and supervised by representatives of the ADBU: Christophe Pérales (president), Stéphane Potelle (executive director) and the ADBU Committee for Discovery and Information systems, chaired by Grégory Miura.


2. STUDY DESIGN

2.1 CENTRAL RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The main research question is: What is the total cost of ownership of a library cloud system compared to the conventional systems? This research question is twofold:

• Individual libraries: Analysis and evaluation of the costs (including hidden costs) that will be incurred by the adoption of a multitenant library management system in the Cloud.

• Shared cataloguing systems: Analysis and evaluation of the costs (including hidden) of a shared cataloguing/collective catalogue system in the cloud to ABES (the coordination organisation) as well as to libraries using Sudoc in comparison to the costs of the present system Sudoc.

2.2 CATEGORIES OF TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP

The total cost of ownership means the total cost of a certain product for its entire life-cycle. With

regard to an IT system, the total cost of ownership is composed of1:

A. Cost of hardware and software and its technical management

This cost category includes the out-of-pocket costs and the cost of the workflows that are directly related to the technical management of the system:

The cost of hardware and software including network, servers, workstations and installation of the software and services delivered by the providers of the systems

Technical management of the system: maintenance of the servers; maintenance of the databases; back-ups et cetera.

B. Operational costs

This cost category includes all the costs that are directly related to the operational management of the system:

The operational and day-to-day management of the system and its related applications: o maintenance o problem solving o user support o the cost of interruptions or malfunctions, the cost of lower performance o the cost of testing o training et cetera.

C. Efficiency of the workflows

1 These cost categories are developed for this study, based on : Logiciels libres et ouvertes : guide d'analyse du coût total de propriété ;

conseil du trésor du Québec ; 2013


In the case of a comparison of the total cost of ownership between an existent solution and new solutions, the costs of the workflows based on the existent system (with for instance manual workflows) have to be compared with the cost of the workflows in the new solutions. In the case of the comparison between conventional library management systems and multitenant library management systems in the cloud, the following workflows are important with regard to:

Acquisition

Circulation and access to documents

OPAC and/or discovery tool

Metadata production/cataloguing

Electronic resource management

Analytics and management information

Local applications/systems

D. Long-term costs

This cost category includes:

The costs of future developments

The costs of the migration to another system in the future

The costs related to dependence/independence of the provider.

2.3 THREE TRACKS OF THE STUDY

The study will follow three tracks:

• Track 1: A comparison between the case studies of libraries that are presently using a cloud system and the case studies of French libraries.

• Track 2: A comparison between the case study of Sudoc and the case study of a shared cataloguing system that is presently using a cloud system.

• Track 3: Additional interviews in order to clarify the effects of cloud systems on specific workflows (which were not sufficiently clarified by the tracks 1 and 2).

These three proposed tracks are presented in more detail below.


2.3.1 TRACK 1: CASE STUDIES OF LIBRARIES USING A CLOUD SYSTEM VERSUS CASE STUDIES USING A CONVENTIONAL SYSTEM

This track is composed of three case studies of non-French university libraries that have migrated to a cloud system:

• University libraries of Boston, who migrated to Alma • Library of the University of Salford Manchester, which also migrated to Alma. • Tilburg University Library, who migrated to WMS.

These three case studies of foreign university libraries focus on their experiences with the new multitenant LMS in the cloud, in terms of direct and indirect costs:

• The costs and workflows directly related to the new system and management of the LMS (for example the tasks and workflows of system librarians) and which have changed as a result of the migration to the new system.

• The costs of workflows that have become more efficient because of the possibilities offered by the new system.

• The costs of the transition, the costs of future developments and long-term costs (such as dependency costs).

Track 2 is also composed of three case studies of French university libraries using a conventional SGB:

• The network of libraries of the Université fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées • The library of the Université Bretagne occidentale • The library of the Université Nice Sophia-Antipolis.

The purpose of the comparison between the three case studies with a cloud system and the three French case studies with a conventional system is to analyse the following:

FIGURE 1 CASE STUDIES OF INDIVIDUAL LIBRARIES


An inventory of the various elements of the total cost of ownership of a cloud system (including the workflows) that are significantly increased or decreased in comparison with a conventional system.

An analysis of the following question: to what extent can the efficiency gains and/or workflow changes reported by the libraries that have moved to the cloud be transposed to French university libraries. In addition, this analysis might show the conditions under which these efficiency gains can be transposed to the French situation.

2.3.2 TRACK 2: CASE STUDIES OF SHARED CATALOGUING SYSTEMS

Track 2 is composed of a case study on the costs of Sudoc system in its current form for the ABES (now named Sudoc1), and its participating libraries and a case study on a shared cataloging system in a Cloud system. For this last case study, LIBISnet, a network of Belgian university and special libraries, which migrated to the cloud system Alma, participated in this study.

With regard to the success of the present SUDOC system, it has to be emphasised that there are many unknown factors as several scenarios for SUDOC 2 are currently considered. A final decision might be expected in 2016. Therefore, the results of this study cannot result in a definitive analysis of the total cost of ownership of the Sudoc 2 system. However, it is expected that the results of this track might be informative of the possible efficiency gains in this domain.

2.3.3 TRACK 3: ADDITIONAL INTERVIEWS FOCUSING ON ASPECTS THAT ARE INSUFFICIENTLY CLARIFIED BY THE TRACKS 1 AND 2

This track consists of additional interviews in order to study aspects that are insufficiently clarified by the tracks 1 and 2. During the workshop at July 15 in Paris with the ADBU Committee for Discovery and Information systems, it was decided to focus the additional interviews on the efficiency of workflows and the migration to a cloud system. In table 1, the

FIGURE 2 CASE STUDIES OF SHARED CATALOGUING SYSTEMS


additional interviews are presented. The results of these additional interviews have been added to chapter 3 in various paragraphs or text boxes.

The library of: Topic:

University of Washington Blending of acquisitions and cataloguing

University of Swansea Preparing the migration by designing ideal workflows

University of Manchester Tasks moving from the technical team to the collection management team

Université de Liège Organisational changes and new services

La bibliothèque de la Pèrouse - IFREMER

Changing the system for shared cataloguing

Bibliotheek TU Delft Migrating to a cloud system TABLE 1 THE ADDITIONAL INTERVIEWS OF TRACK 3

2.3.4 WORKING METHODS

This study has been carried out by the consultant Maurits van der Graaf in collaboration with representatives of the ADBU which took the following forms:

A kick-off meeting with Christophe Pérales, Stéphane Potelle en Grégory Miura (March 9, 2015).

A workshop with the members of the ADBU committee discovery and information systems (July 15)

The representatives of the ADBU participated also in the following workshops this the representatives of the case studies:

Workshop with the representatives of the case studies of the individual libraries, 18 September.

Workshop with the representatives of the case studies of the shared cataloguing systems, 22 September.

The final results of the study are reported by:

A French language report.

An English language report.


Sources for the case studies Boston University Libraries

Interviews Jack Ammerman (May 15, 2015; July 7, 2015); Jack Ammerman, Steve Smith, Tim Lewontin (May 27, 2015); Boston University libraries pushing forward with Alma Platform; article in The Digital Shift, January 28, 2013 SCD de l’université de Bretagne occidentale

Interviews Nicolas Tocquer (directeur) et Perrine Helly (services numériques) ; group interviews with David Hervé (SIGB Aleph), André Jestin (SFX, serveurs), Dominique Chalm (Sudoc), Isabelle Jaffrès (WorldShare BLP), Dominique Corlett (ERMS) et Perrine Helly ; interviews with Vassilia Hervé-Lohyn (catalogage Santé), Isabelle Rosso (acquisitions et catalogage Langues vivantes, SFX), Séverine Lepiouff (acquisitions Droit) ; documents prepared by Perrine Helly (Commandes d’ouvrages et circuit du document - État des lieux au SCD de l’UBO ; coût des applications documentaires) and other documents of the SCD (documentation électronique, Rapport d’activité 2014 du SCD). The Library of the University of Salford

Group interview with Angela Walker, Duncan Wilson, Andy Bourne, Regina O’Brien, Stella To at May 13, 2015; a telephone interview with James Allen at 30 June, 2015; telephone interview Angela Walker July 16; and on the documents: Next Generation library management system: business case; second of August 2011; PowerPoint presentation at the Association des Client d’Ex Libris France, 19 June 2014. SCD de l’université Nice Sophia Antipolis

Interviews with Sarah Hurter Savie, director SCD et Étienne Cavalié, departement Sidoc et Ghislain Chave, service informatique du SCD ; July 2, 2015 ; Telephone interview Étienne Cavalié July 13 ; and the documents : Cataloguer demain : conduire le changement, présentation à journée ADBU 04-02-2015 ; Rapport d’activité 2013-2014 4 du SCD et les situ du web unice.fr. The Library of the University of Tilburg

Interviews with: Marc van den Berg; Cherry Taylor and Richard Broekman, 28 May 2015; adaptations and additions by Marc van den Berg and Richard Broekman Sudoc

Interviews with Jérôme Kalfon, Martine Brunet Diedhiou, Stéphane Rey, Mariane Giloux, Pascal Perotin et Serge Genot ; and the documents : ‘le Sudoc en 2015, états des lieux’ et ‘Mission Sudoc 2’ ; comments by Martine Brunet, Stèphane Rey et Marianne Giloux, July 17 LIBISnet

Interview with Jo Rademakers, head of LIBIS; 19 May 2015 and an interview with Jo Rademakers and Luc Lannoy (head cataloguing of the Leuven University) at 23 June 2015; a SlideShare presentation of Mr. Rademakers dd. 10.3.2015 and a PowerPoint presentation by Mr. Bart Peeters; informatie aan Zee, 2013

Interviews of track 3 Sion Romaine, acquisitions librarian & ILS operations coordinator; University Libraries; University of Washington

Andy Land; digital programmes manager; The University of Manchester Library

Francois Renaville; University libraries; University of Liège

Frits van Latum; project manager; Library of the technical University of Delft

Andrew Brown; Collections Services and Systems librarian; University library; Swansea University

Isabelle Jaffres; Bibliothèque de la Pérouse ; IFREMER

TABLE 2 SOURCES FOR THE CASE STUDIES


3. TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP OF A MULTITENANT CLOUD SYSTEM USED BY INDIVIDUAL LIBRARIES

3.1 INTRODUCING THE NEW GENERATION OF LIBRARY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS2

Four categories of advantages of cloud systems Advantage Explication

1. Outsourcing of the management of the system

No internal servers no system management

2. Modernity of the system

2.1 Web-based No client software

2.2 Integrated workflows for print and electronic materials

2.3 Integration of the knowledge base, discovery tool and link resolver

2.4 Convergence of the catalogue and the knowledge base

Convergence that might evolve into total integration in the future

2.5 Statistical tools to generate management information

3. Resource sharing At a global level

At group level (national, regional or a consortium)

3.1 Management of the patron data Possible at group level

3.2 Metadata production Direct link to the metadata production of publishers

Shared cataloguing at global level

Shared cataloguing at group level

3.3 Electronic resource management

Administration (consortium level): ERM system

The management of discovery and accessibility (global level and consortium level) : the knowledge base manages to link resolver and the discovery tool (with a central index)

3.4 Union catalogue Possible at group level

3.5 ILL Based on the union catalogue, level to be chosen

3.6 Collection management Based on the union catalogue, level to be chosen

3.7 Exchange of metadata with international platforms Google ; WorldCat ; VIAF etc.

4. Harmonisation et automation of the workflows

Rationalisation & automation

Interchangeability of employees

Loss of control ; loss of self-developed workflows

Workflows standardised with libraries using the same cloud system

Efficiency gains

Functionalities that remain unchanged

Functionalities related to circulation and loan functionalities related to access management

Conventional LMS systems often have more sophisticated functionality with regard to circulation and loan.

TABLE 3 ADVANTAGES OF CLOUD SYSTEMS

In table 3, four categories of advantages of cloud systems are presented:

1. The advantages of outsourcing of the system, related to the storage in the cloud. 2. The advantages of a modern system, not necessarily related to cloud systems.

2 The source of this section is chapter 4.1 of the following report: Phase 3 : l'avenir de RERO au sein d’un système en cloud

https://www.rero.ch/pdfview.php?section=communique&filename=RERO_GT_Biblio_2017_rapport_phase_3_v1.1.pdf

https://www.rero.ch/pdfview.php?section=communique&filename=RERO_GT_Biblio_2017_rapport_phase_3_v1.1.pdf


3. The options for resource sharing. These options are mainly offered by multitenant cloud systems.

4. Options for harmonisation and automation of workflows.

Some functionalities are hardly changed within cloud systems, such as access management in functionality related to circulation.

Library management systems in the cloud can be separated into two categories:

Multitenant systems: this means that all participating libraries use the same system at the same moment. The system consists of shared databases and of databases that are specific to one participating library or a group of participating libraries. All participating libraries have to migrate to new versions of the system at the same time. The development of the system seems guaranteed. At this moment there are three multitenant systems: Alma of ExLibris, WMS of OCLC and Intota of ProQuest3.

SaaS: “Software as a Service system” means that the system is hosted in the cloud. In other aspects, this kind of system does not differ greatly from conventional LMS systems. In general, a provider of a SaaS system will support the latest version of the software and several earlier versions.

This study is focused on the comparison between multitenant cloud systems and conventional LMS systems.

3 Intota is only partially developed in 2015, but will be fully developed in mid-2016.


3.2 THREE LIBRARIES THAT HAVE MIGRATED TO A CLOUD SYSTEM

3.2.1 THE LIBRARIES OF THE BOSTON UNIVERSITY

The libraries of the University of Boston: Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With over 33,000 undergraduate and graduate students from more than 140 countries, 10,000 faculty and staff, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States. The BU libraries consist of six branches and three independent faculty libraries (law, theology, medical sciences). Independent means that these libraries are financed independently and therefore have their own financial system. BU Libraries house more than 2.4 million physical volumes, over 45,000 current unique serials, and 77,000 media titles.

Business case for the migration: In 2010, the BU Libraries engaged in a strategic planning effort from which came a set of strategic goals along with the objectives and measures to support the implementation and the assessment that “represent an intentional redefinition of the Boston University Libraries to develop programs, services, and information sources to support learning and scholarship in the 21st century.” (http://www.bu.edu/library/about/strategic-plan/). The Libraries recognized that the existing integrated library system (Millennium) significantly limited the Libraries’ ability to integrate with learning and administrative systems on campus as well as external vendor systems. Achieving the Libraries’ strategic goals would require major changes in the Libraries’ workflows, gaining efficiencies in many, eliminating some, and developing new services and workflows to support them. The Libraries technology systems were identified as impeding these changes in workflow and organizational change. The BU libraries started looking into the options for discovery tools in 2010. At that time, the BU libraries used MetaLib, which was not very successful with regard to the number of users. In 2011 Primo was implemented as part of a major website redesign project. The Libraries’ goals and related decision to give priority to acquiring electronic resources required increased staffing and efficient staffing for managing electronic resources. As the Millennium system had limited functionality for managing electronic resources, a library staff member had developed a ‘home-grown’ ERM system. This system was initially set up to generate an A to Z list, and was later developed into a full-blown electronic resource management system. As mentioned above, the three independent faculty libraries managed their own ERM systems. After a review of next-generation library system, the BU libraries took the decision to become an early adopter of Alma and the implementation of Primo was seen as a first step towards a new library management system.

Migration period: The migration started in April 2012 and the BU libraries went live with the Alma system in November 2012. After the ‘go live’ moment, period of consolidation started: as the BU libraries were an early adopter of Alma, some essential functionality was not yet developed. Also, in this consolidation period the library adapted their workflows.

System configuration: o In table 4 the system configuration of the BU libraries is presented. Before the

migration, the BU libraries used the Millennium system and for electronic resources the SFX link resolver, the Primo discovery tool and self-developed ERM systems. For shared cataloguing, one used WorldCat. In addition, one used several services with regard to bibliographic data in order to improve the bibliographic data in the systems.

o After the migration, the BU libraries used the Alma system, the test environment of Alma, Primo and WorldCat for shared cataloguing. The above-mentioned services

http://www.bu.edu/library/about/strategic-plan/)


with regard to bibliographic data were no longer necessary in the environment of Alma.

o With regard to related systems, the the self-service machines are connected tot Alma and the financial system SAP (that was implemented at the same time as Alma) will be connected to Alma in the short term.

Before migration After migration

Library management system elements

Millennium SFX - knowledge base and link resolver Self-developed ERM system(s); see text Primo - discovery tool (since 2011) Metalib WorldCat (for cataloguing)

Syndetic services Authority record service Serial Solutions (Mugar) Serial Solutions (Law)

Alma Primo WorldCat (for cataloguing; see

description)

Sandbox of Alma (test environment with

the libraries own data)

Related systems

Dspace (institutional repository) Blackboard Financial system of the university Student information system; Human

resource system

Dspace (institutional repository) Blackboard Financial system of the university (SAP,

implemented in the same period as Alma) Student information system; Human

resource system Self-service machines (3M)

TABLE 4 THE CONFIGURATION OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS BEFORE AND AFTER THE MIGRATION OF THE BU LIBRARIES


3.2.2 THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF SALFORD

The library of the University of Salford: The University of Salford is primarily a teaching University with 20,000 students, 3000 international students and 2500 staff members. The University is divided in four colleges and nine schools. The library has 3 sites. The collection consists of approximately 500,000 books and 300,000 e-books, 325 physical journals and 17,000 electronic journals.

The business case for migration: The business case for the migration was built on the following considerations: (1) The Talis system had been in use by the University of Salford for almost 15 years. The focus of the University library was changing, with a significant increase in the number of electronic resources that were being purchased. It therefore became essential that the library management system was able to reflect these changing demands. In recent years, developments to the Talis system had slowed, with a new release every 2 to 3 years. In 2011, the Talis system was bought out by Capita, and there was some concern, that there would be a further change in focus, which may not meet the demands of academic libraries. (2) As mentioned above, the University of Salford had experienced a sharp increase in the use and acquisition of electronic resources, including journals and e-books. The Talis system did not provide functionality for the management of electronic resources, therefore an in-house ERM system was developed. (3) The system management of Talis was carried out by the IT department of the University. The IT department is a central service which manages requests from across the University. This could place heavy demands on IT staff, which could impact on the delivery of library requests. Moving to Alma, saw the system management of the LMS move to the Library, allowing staff to be more responsive to system issues and developments.

The configuration of the information systems: o In table 5 the information systems before and after the migration are presented.

Before the migration, one used Talis as LMS, and for the electronic resources the SFX link resolver, the discovery tools Primo and Metalib and a self-developed ERM system. In addition, software for the management of reading lists was used.

o After migration, the configuration consisted of Alma, the sandbox environment of Alma and Primo.

o The library is working on the implementation of a new software package for the management of reading lists (Talis Aspire). In Blackboard there are approximately 2000 reading lists managed by the educating staff. The new software package will create a link between Blackboard on the one hand and Primo and Alma on the other hand (see below).


Before migration After migration


Talis - library management system Talis Prism library Catalogue SFX - knowledge base and link resolver Primo - discovery tool (since 2011) Metalib in-house ERM system

Alma Primo

Talis included a proprietary shared

cataloguing system (Talis Base)

No shared cataloguing system (Salford does not participate in a library network)

Sandbox of Alma with own data for

testing

Related systems

Reading lists software

E-print for repository Blackboard

Financial system (Agresso)

Reading lists software lecture (new: Talis

Aspire)

E-print for repository Blackboard

Financial system (Agresso) TABLE 5 THE INFORMATION SYSTEMS OF THE LIBRARY OF SALFORD BEFORE AND AFTER THE MIGRATION


3.2.3 THE LIBRARY OF THE TILBURG UNIVERSITY

The library of the Tilburg University: the Tilburg University has as its mission to

contribute to solving social issues and aims to achieve this mainly by developing and

transferring knowledge and bringing together people from various disciplines and

organizations. Therefore Tilburg University has invited companies, organizations,

government, and citizens to work together to develop new insights and solutions that create

value for society. This innovation is created by conducting research, by learning, and by

understanding society (understanding society and an active contribution to society is

essential to the mission of the university). The university counts over 12,500 students and

over 1000 academic staff members. The focus of the library is the same as the above-

mentioned focus of the university. Its collections focuses on economics & management, law,

social and behavioural sciences, humanities and theology and contain over 900,000 volumes.

The business case for the migration: the two main arguments for the migration were:

o (1) the library used an unstable library management system, which made a

migration to a new library management system urgent

o (2) at the same time the library and IT services department wanted to simplify its IT-

landscape and bring a gradual end to the intensive use of a variety of ‘home-grown’

systems (the library operated a home-grown knowledge base and link resolver and a

home-grown discovery tool).

o In addition to these arguments, the Tilburg University library migrated its library

management system (LBS3) to WMS in 2013. At that moment, the WMS system of

OCLC was not yet fully developed, so to a certain extent the choice for WMS meant a

leap into the unknown. Being the first university library in Europe, the Library of the

University of Tilburg expected therefore to have influence on the development of the

system.

The configuration of the information systems:

o Table 6 presents the configuration before and after the migration. Before the

migration, the library used the LBS3 system of OCLC, and for the electronic resources

link resolver and a discovery tool that were developed by the library itself. For

shared cataloguing, one used the national system in the Netherlands.

o After the migration, the configuration consists of WMS and WorldCat Discovery.

o From 2016 onwards, the library of the Tilburg University will use WorldCat for their

shared cataloguing. This transition is part of the larger project, which migrates the

entire national shared cataloguing system in the Netherlands to the WorldShare

platform. The national catalogue will become a subset of WorldCat.

o The authentication system of the University of Tilburg is used for generating the

identities of the users of WMS.

o The connection of WMS to the financial system of the Tilburg University (SAP) will be

implemented in the course of 2015.


Before migration (2012) After migration (2014)


LBS 3 - library management system A self-developed knowledge base and

link resolver A self-developed discovery tool

(Meresco) Cataloguing in the GGC/NCC with the

cataloguing tool WinIBW (national shared cataloguing system)

WMS WorldCat Discovery Cataloguing in WorldCat with the cataloguing tool

Record Manager (planned from 2016 onwards) as part of the transition of the Dutch national catalogue to the WorldShare platform.

Related systems

The authentication system of the University

Institutional repository (ARNO) Heritage collection (Brabant Collection)

utilising 3 types of software The financial system SAP

The authentication system of the University Pure (current research information system) Heritage collection : a migration to a cloud system is

planned, using the same software as Europeana, in collaboration with other heritage institutes

The financial system SAP TABLE 6 THE CONFIGURATION OF SYSTEMS BEFORE AND AFTER MIGRATION OF THE LIBRARY OF THE TILBURG UNIVERSITY


3.3 COMPARISON OF THE SYSTEM-RELATED COSTS BEFORE AND AFTER THE MIGRATION IN THE CASE STUDIES

3.3.1 SYSTEM-RELATED OUT-OF-POCKET COSTS

The libraries of the Boston University Conventional LMS Millennium Maintenance 58,2 Alma abonnement (annual)

Millennium module 6,1 Tools re electronic resources

SFX 2,9

Metalib 6,7 Bibliographic metadata services

Authority Record Service 3,6

Serials Solutions (Mugar) 7,1

Serials Solutions (Law) 8,2

Syndetic Services 7,3 Total out-of-pocket costs before

the migration 100,0 Total out-of-pocket cost after the

migration 114,6

Outside the cost comparison

WorldCat for shared cataloguing WorldCat for shared cataloguing

Primo Primo

The library of the University of Salford Conventional LMS Talis Alto- library management

system Alma subscription (annual) 66

Talis Prism library Catalogue Tools re electronic resources

SFX Metalib

Bibliographic metadata services

Talis Base Bibliographic metadata services 1

Total out-of-pocket costs before

the migration

100 Total out-of-pocket cost after the migration

67

Outside the cost comparison

Primo Primo

The library of the Tilburg University Conventional LMS LBS 3 WMS

WorldCat Local (WorldCat Discovery)

Tools re electronic resources

Self-developed link resolver, knowledge base and discovery tool

Bibliographic metadata services

Shared cataloguing in the national system (GGC/NCC)

Shared cataloguing in WorldCat

Total out-of-pocket costs before the migration

100 Total out-of-pocket cost after the migration

87

TABLE 7 SYSTEM-RELATED OUT-OF-POCKET COSTS BEFORE AND AFTER THE MIGRATION

In table 7, the system-related out-of-pocket costs are presented for the three case studies. Based on these results, one can conclude that the system -related out-of-pocket cost for a multitenant cloud system are comparable to the system -related out-of-pocket cost of a conventional system with related applications for electronic resources and bibliographic metadata services. However, it is important to make the following observations:

The price reductions for development partners and early adopters: the three libraries that have been studied, sometimes have received price reductions for their annual subscription as development partner or early adopter. One can expect that the annual subscription prices for libraries that presently migrate might possibly be higher. For


example, the library of the University of Salford has reported a price reduction of 25% as early adopter. If one makes the calculation without this price reduction, the result after migration will be 89.

Discovery tool: the three libraries studied had implemented a discovery tool before the migration. For the library of the Tilburg University, the costs of the discovery tool are included in the comparison. In the other two cases, the discovery tool is left outside the comparison.

The initial situation with regard to the cost calculation: the initial situation is of course very important in the determination of a decrease or an increase in the out-of-pocket costs after the migration. For legal reasons, the out-of-pocket costs are here only reported as relative figures. However, the absolute figures show that the price differences between the conventional LMS systems were considerable and did not seem to be related to the size of the libraries.

Bibliographic metadata services: before the migration, the BU libraries bought several metadata services in order to improve their OPAC. These services were not deemed to be necessary any longer after the migration to Alma because the metadata that were available in the environment of Alma and Primo were considered adequate.

Shared cataloguing systems: the out-of-pocket costs for the participation in shared cataloguing systems are considerable. The BU libraries continue to use WorldCat for shared cataloguing, however this different workflows (see section 3.4.3). The library of the Tilburg University will use WorldCat from 2016 onwards. This migration is part of a larger project that will migrate the national shared cataloguing system and the national union catalogue of the Netherlands to the WorldShare environment. The cost of this new shared cataloguing environment are similar to the old cataloguing system. The LMS of the library of the University of Salford contained a proprietary shared cataloguing system. After the migration to Alma, the library needed bibliographic metadata for the cataloguing of (physical) books, which made the acquisition of bibliographic metadata from commercial vendors necessary.

3.3.2 STAFF INVOLVED IN TECHNICAL MANAGEMENT AND OPERATIONAL MANAGEMENT

In table 8, the changes with regard to the human resources involved in the technical management and in the operational management of this system as a result of the migration to the cloud system are presented:

The BU libraries report a decrease of 1,2 FTE. Before the migration, the technical and operational management took 1,3 FTE: 1,0 FTE for a system librarian, 0,3 FTE for this report needed for the client software of the former LMS. After the migration, no technical management is needed any longer. The operational management of the Alma system takes only 0,1 FTE.

The library of the University of Salford report a net increase of 0,74 FTE for the human resources that are related to the management of the system. Before the migration, the technical management of the LMS was carried out by the IT department of the University. This technical management took 0,16 FTE. The operational management was carried out by a team of librarians. After the migration, the capacity of this team was increased with 1,0 FTE. There are two reasons for this increase: firstly, the new system is used much more intensively then the former system by the entire library; secondly, there is a new version every month of the new system, while the former system was not updated since several years.


The library of the Tilburg University report a decrease of 1,0 FTE. Before the migration, technical management of the systems took 1,0 FTE. After the migration, no technical management was longer necessary. The human resources for the operational management have stayed at the same level (0,45 FTE).

These results lead to the following conclusions: o All human resources involved in the technical management of the information

systems were made redundant after the migration to a cloud system. It is important to note that the technical system management is often carried out by another department of the University and that these costs are not always passed to the library.

o The changes in the human resources involved in the operational management of the system before and after the migration appear to be primarily related to internal organisational factors.

The libraries of the Boston University

Staff involved in technical management

System librarian (1,0 FTE) Client software support (0,3

FTE) no distinction between

technical and operational management

1,3 FTE

No technical management needed 0 FTE

Staff involved in operational management

Operational management of Alma takes an estimated 0,1 FTE

0,1 FTE

The library of the University of Salford


0,16 FTE No technical management needed 0 FTE


A team of librarians was involved. The total FTE to spend is difficult to calculate

The team of librarians has been expanded with 1 FTE

1,0 FTE

The library of the Tilburg University


1,0 FTE No technical management needed 0 FTE


0,45 FTE 0,45 FTE

TABLE 8 STAFF INVOLVED IN THE TECHNICAL AND OPERATIONAL MANAGEMENT

3.3.3 DOWNTIME

The costs related to downtime form a real element of the total cost of ownership of a system. The BU libraries report a downtime for the new system, of 5%. However, there are other periods during which they cannot use Alma as a result of all the technical problems: power outage or problems with the local network. For the end users, the consequences of the downtime that it is impossible to search in Primo. However, the self-service machines continue to function. The library of the University of Salford reports a downtime of approximately 5 to 8 hours per year, which are similar to the former system. The library of the Tilburg University reports a downtime of approximately six hours each time they have to migrate to a new version of WMS. This leads to the conclusion that for the cloud systems the costs resulting from downtime are minimal.


3.4 THE EFFICIENCY OF WORKFLOWS BASED ON MULTITENANT CLOUD SYSTEMS

3.4.1 INTRODUCTION

The third category of the total cost of ownership - the efficiency of workflows based on the multitenant cloud systems - seem to be the most promising in terms of possible efficiency gains. Therefore, the efficiency of workflows has been an important focus of the case studies. However, the cases have not resulted in quantitative data with regard to the efficiency of workflows of multitenant cloud systems in comparison with conventional LMS systems. The reasons for this lack of quantitative data are as follows:

A slow road to efficiency gains: o In most cases the changes in the workflows are realised over a period of several

years and have led to a very gradual reallocation of human resources. In addition, other factors have led to changes in the workflows. In other words: (1) the migration to a cloud system is not the only driver of change, and (2) the changes take place over a long period.

o There are also workflows that are not yet adapted to the possibilities of the new system because of organisational factors.

o During and after the migration, the libraries face a dilemma: change the existing workflows to the options of the new system or change the system to the existing workflows. In some cases the prevalence of the existing workflows leads to workarounds outside the cloud system. A number of those workarounds are reported in the case studies.

The multitenant cloud systems are still in full development: the two multitenant cloud systems are still in the development phase. This means that not only the provider develops the system further, but also that other parties such as for instance scientific publishers are developing services for the platforms of the multitenant cloud systems. As a result, the big promises of the multitenant cloud systems with regard to resource sharing with other parties and libraries are at this moment only realised to a very limited extent.


3.4.2 THE EFFICIENCY OF THE ACQUISITION WORKFLOWS

THE LIBRARIES OF THE BOSTON UNIVERSITY

The BU libraries report that not all options of the new system with regard to acquisition are not yet used because of organisational factors. One has identified a number of possible efficiency gains as well as a number of potential obstacles:

Order records and data: Millennium was a procedural system: one could carry out the

tasks without impact on the rest of the data. However, Alma is a workflow-based system, in

which the data have a central position and are driving the workflows. The order data from

the Millennium system were migrated to the Alma system, but need further standardization

and adaptation in order to be fully functional in the Alma environment.

Connection to the university financial system: in the same period as the migration to

Alma, the University implemented SAP for its financial system. The connection between

Alma and SAP is not yet realized but is seen is very important in order to improve the

efficiency: now there is double input necessary in the two systems with regard to orders,

invoices and payments. The connection between the two systems will result in significant

staff savings.

Connections to vendor systems:

o Real-time connections with vendor systems have been set up to create real-time

ordering, real-time acquisition and automated invoices.

o After a time-consuming procedure with a call for proposal, the BU libraries moved

recently from the usage of several subscription agents to one.

Fund management: the Alma system is rather powerful with regard to fund management. It

is very easy to manage various acquisition funds in Alma and a fiscal year roll-over - which

used to be one month of work - can now be realized with several clicks. In addition, as there

is less system expertise needed, the staff level required for this type of work might be

lowered.

THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF SALFORD

The library of the University of Salford has encountered immediately after the migration a

number of difficulties with regard to acquisitions. As the library was one of the first in the United

Kingdom to use the Alma system, there were hardly any connections with UK vendors. In order

to get Alma to function with the (UK) book suppliers and to ensure the workflows were

operational, a great deal of work had to be carried out with both ExLibris and the book suppliers.

There are approximately 12 incoming streams of vendors and publishers. For each incoming

stream, a profile has to be developed with normalisation rules. These profiles and normalisation

rules require regular maintenance and monitoring by library staff.

The library has a special way of acquiring printed books: approximately 5000 new books

(mostly print) are acquired annually, this is done on a title by title basis when an item is added

to a reading list (see paragraph 3.4.5 for a further explanation) and when requests are received

from students (‘library champions’). In Blackboard there are approximately 2000 reading lists,

containing several thousand book titles. Generally speaking, the workflows with regard to the

acquisition of printed books are not considered more efficient than before. The new workflow is

described as follows:


Search in the community zone or elsewhere

Data on the purchase are found

An order is created with instruction to deliver the bibliographic record by one employee.

An approval is given by a different employee (requirement of the University: see below)

EDI to the vendor (a claim will be sent in case of no response)

Delivery of the book and the bibliographic record

The bibliographic record will be uploaded into the catalogue; possibly after a check by the

cataloguer.

The library will develop a connection with the financial system in the immediate future.

With regard to E-book packages, the new workflows are considered to be more efficient: when a

e-book package is ordered and received, the metadata is automatically imported via FTP into

Alma. Alma ingests this data and Primo publishes it for discovery. This process lasts

approximately 6 hours. In other words, the process for the discovery of e-book packages takes

place within a short period of time and is fully automated.

THE LIBRARY OF THE TILBURG UNIVERSITY

The vendor management options that are included in the system are praised by the library. The system provides the details of most vendors, the library can add their own data to the records such as a contact person. The vendor management option makes ordering new content from publishers extremely easy. However, the vendor management at Tilburg University has been recently simplified by the selection of one intermediary agent after a European tender procedure, thus making the vendor management options of WMS less relevant for them.

The vendor management can be integrated with the collection management: if one orders an e-book collection, the metadata of the books will be automatically available in the discovery tool. A similar efficiency gain has been reported by the library of the University of Salford. Further efficiency gain will be realised then the connection with the financial system of the University and WMS will be developed in the course of 2015.

BLENDING OF ACQUISITION AND CATALOGUING IN THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON (RESULT OF TRACK 3)

The University of Washington Libraries has used Alma since June 2013, as part of the Orbis Cascade Alliance consortium, in combination with OCLC as their primary bibliographic/cataloguing utility. The Libraries’ central acquisitions department currently has 19 staff members, the central cataloguing department has 30 staff members. (The East Asia Library and Law Library each have their own technical services units, but coordinate processing policies and procedures with the central departments.)

One effect of the usage of Alma has been the further blending of acquisition and cataloguing workflows. The interviewee explains this effect: Alma is a workflow-based system, and each step in the workflow must be followed if the Alma workflow is to complete properly. For example, if items are not received (or activated, if electronic) in a prescribed way, the related purchase order line will not close and will appear on the claims list. Acquisitions staff need to coordinate workflows with cataloguing staff to ensure that the workflow completes properly.

For most workflows, the first step starts with the creation of a purchase order and the selection of a purchase order type (e.g., Print Book – One Time; Electronic Book – One Time). The purchase


order type dictates the ensuing workflow. Thus, if a purchase order type of Print Book – One Time is selected, the workflow following the creation of the purchase order will be greatly different from the workflow for an Electronic Book – One Time.

In many cases, MARC records are delivered and uploaded into the Alma Network Zone with the delivery of the purchase. These MARC records may be brief bibliographic records supplied by the vendor or fully catalogued records supplied by OCLC Cataloging Partners. For newly received print monographs, the acquisitions department uses Microsoft Access to screen the cataloguing quality of the bibliographic records. If the metadata quality is acceptable (e.g., a fully catalogued OCLC record requiring no updates in OCLC), student employees working in the acquisitions department may be asked to carry out copy cataloguing. If the metadata is acceptable but needs minor editiong (e.g., a fully catalogued OCLC record which is missing pagination or a contents note), the records will be modified by staff members of the acquisitions department. If there is only a brief record available and/or no catalogued record exists in OCLC, the cataloguing department will create new bibliographic records.

CONCLUSIONS

With regard to the acquisition, the following conclusions based on the case studies can be drawn:

Connection with the financial system: the connection with the financial system of the University will eliminate double input of orders, invoices and payment information. These connections are possible and are planned by all three libraries studied. However, at a moment of writing no library could report on the resulting efficiency gains.

Connections with vendor platforms: connections with vendor platforms make the automation of orders, invoices and payments possible. The development of these connections however need human resources of the library at the start (for the development) but also continuously for the maintenance. These connections facilitate the process of acquisition, but especially the process of cataloguing (see the example below of Yankee Book Peddler).

Databases with vendor information: the multitenant cloud system offer databases with vendor information. These databases facilitate the acquisition processes, although this advantage might be limited if the library has opted for a unique vendor for all its acquisitions (such as the BU libraries and the library of the Tilburg University).

Budget management: the BU libraries have reported an efficiency gain of approximately one person-month workload for their annual fiscal reports.

Final conclusion: o No library studied has reported large efficiency gains with regard to the workflows

of title by title acquisitions (mostly concerning printed) publications as a result of the migration to a multitenant cloud system. There appear to be two reasons for this:

A number of possible efficiency gains can only be realised after the connection with the financial system has been developed.

The efficiency gains based on the connection with the vendor platforms appear to be rather limited with regard to the workflows of acquisition, but appear to be more important for the workflows regarding cataloguing. The library of the University of Washington reports a sort of merging of the workflows of acquisition and cataloguing.

o The acquisition of e-book packages has become very efficient as a result of the connections between the multitenant cloud systems and the vendor platforms (see also section 3.4.4).


3.4.3 THE EFFICIENCY OF TITLE BY TITLE CATALOGUING

THE BOSTON UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

The cataloguing department and the workflows around cataloguing have been changed

dramatically in the last years. This is not only due to the new system, but also to changes in work

practices.

In 2009, the cataloguing department counted 21 FTE. In 2015, the cataloguing department

counts 12 FTE, thus a decrease of about 40%4. Apart from the new system, there are two other

explanatory factors: (1) the new workflows contain no more checking of each bibliographic

record produced by a vendor or publisher. The metadata of e-book packages are discoverable

via the discovery tool Primo. The Alma system is in many cases directly connected to publishers

or vendors, so that metadata are directly available within the system. (2) A separate OPAC does

not exist anymore: it is incorporated into Primo. According to the interviewee “discovery

systems can accommodate some messiness in the bibliographic records” as a result of its use of

full text and other searching algorithms in comparison with the traditional OPACs.

With regard to the workflows for cataloguing title by title, the following procedure to

apply:

o Derived cataloguing in Alma:

Books ordered via YBP:

(1) books are ordered at Yankee Book Peddler

(2) OCLC records are sent by YBP and automatically uploaded in

Alma in a batch procedure

Books ordered via other vendors:

within Alma: Z39.50 search in WorldCat and the records that are

retrieved by this mechanism are being uploaded into Alma

Synchronization with WorldCat:

Holdings data of the cataloguing records created according to the

workflows mentioned above are automatically synchronized with the

records in WorldCat via a batch process that runs daily.

o Creation of new bibliographic records in WorldCat:

There are costs, but these have not changed as a result of migrating from

Millennium to Alma.

Original cataloguing:

Original cataloguing takes place within WorldCat: a new record will

be created with the cataloguing tools of OCLC within WorldCat.

These records are uploaded from WorldCat into Alma.

It is important to remark that the above-mentioned decrease in human resources in the

cataloguing department consisted mainly of a reallocation of tasks:

4 Very recently, this workforce of 12 FTE has been split into 6 FTE dedicated to cataloguing and mass treatments of bibliographic data and 6 FTE dedicated to the quality control of electronic resources.


A special position for the management of Primo has been created.

In addition, a new position for a research data manager has been created.

3 FTE are reallocated to the metadata production for the institutional repository, presently

maintained in Dspace. However, Alma is used to create and manage the metadata as follows:

(1) metadata are created in Alma, (2) Alma publishes these metadata and these are uploaded

into the Dspace (which functions mainly for the preservation of the digital content), (3)

Dspace makes these metadata available via de harvesting protocol OAI-PMH, (4) Primo will

harvest these metadata, so that the content of the institutional repository is also

discoverable via Primo. The advantage is that most workflows will be based on a single

system, Alma, which will require less training for the staff members and make the support

processes simpler.


The workflows of acquisition and cataloguing for books that are ordered title by title are described in section 3.4.2 and repeated in the text box. The migration to Alma has not resulted in any changes in the human resources involved: these has remained 0,5 FTE. The new workflow for the cataloguing procedures are not considered more efficient then the former workflows. Within the former system, a proprietary shared cataloguing system made cataloguing rather efficient.


The library of the Tilburg University uses at the moment of writing the Dutch system of shared cataloguing (GGC/NCC), but will migrate to WorldCat from 2016 onwards. This is because the GGC/NCC system will migrate to the WorldShare platform, where the national catalogue of the Netherlands (NCC) will transform into a subset of WorldCat. The result of this will be that the library of the Tilburg University will use the same system for cataloguing as for the other workflows, which will probably lead to an efficiency gain. One estimates this will results in an efficiency gain with regard to the workflows of acquisition and cataloguing of approximately 10% in terms of working time, to be realized over a period of years.

CONCLUSIONS

Three types of cataloguing can be distinguished:

Derived cataloguing: one uses a bibliographic record of another source and modifies the records according to the cataloguing rules in use by that specific library.

Shared cataloguing: one participates in a system of shared cataloguing with other libraries, while the system has its own cataloguing rules. If a bibliographic record already exists in the shared catalogue, the library only has to add its holding data.

Original cataloguing: an entire new bibliographic record is created.

Workflows of acquisition and cataloguing

1. Search in the community zone or elsewhere

2. Data on the purchase are found

3. An order is created with instruction to deliver the

bibliographic record by one employee.

4. An approval is given by a different employee

5. EDI to the vendor (a claim will be sent in case of no

response)

6. Delivery of the book and the bibliographic record

7. The bibliographic record will be uploaded into the

catalogue; possibly after a check by the cataloguer.

For this workflow, the connections between Alma and 12 vendor platforms are used.


With regard to the multitenant cloud systems, the following conclusions relating to title by title cataloguing can be formulated, based on the three case studies:

Derived cataloguing: multitenant cloud system facilitates derived cataloguing by using metadata delivered by vendors via the connections between the cloud system and the vendor platforms. The connection with the platform of Yankee Book Peddler as is used by the BU libraries, is a case in point. However, the case studies also have clearly shown that the policy with regard to cataloguing determines to a large extent the efficiency of the title by title cataloguing. Thus, if a library decides to use as much as possible metadata produced by editors or by other parties, a multitenant cloud system facilitates this in two ways: (1) by its connections with the vendor platforms (2) by offering an environment containing bibliographic records that are being shared (such as the community zone of Alma). The cataloguing workflows of the library of the University of Salford shows that the connections to vendor platforms are not always operational and that the development of these connections involve efforts by the library itself.

Shared cataloguing: if a library participates in a shared cataloguing system (such as the library of the Tilburg University and – partially - by the BU libraries), the efficiency of the workflows depends primarily if one can use the same system. If one has to use two systems, the way the synchronisation between those two systems works is also an important factor in the efficiency of workflows.

Original cataloguing: with regard to original cataloguing, multitenant cloud systems do not seem to offer efficiency gains (see also the experience of LIBISnet, chapter 5).

3.4.4 ELECTRONIC RESOURCES MANAGEMENT

THE BOSTON UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Before Alma, the main library maintained two systems for the management of electronic resources: 1. Self-developed SQL database: they received regular data loads from Serial Solutions with

updated data of their electronic journals. These data were loaded into a self-developed

MySQL database. This MySQL database was linked to several PHP systems in order to

generate a searchable A to Z list. In addition, they had another MySQL database for databases

in order to generate an electronic guide system on the website of the library. These systems

have now disappeared since the migration to Alma. The libraries of Law and Medicine had

developed their own systems for these purposes.

2. SFX Link resolver: the second system for the management of electronic resources was the

SFX knowledge base with the SFX link resolver. The link resolver solution was implemented

somewhat later than (1) and was thus a separate system using different data (the data were

not matched as they came from a different provider).

After the migration, one has to manage only one dataset instead of three datasets (the database of electronic journals, the database of databases and the catalogue records of electronic resources), which is an important efficiency gain.

The workflows with regard to e-journal packages and e-book packages are as follows:


Standard packages of e-books or e-journals: If it concerns a standard package, then only a

check mark in the Knowledge base of Alma (which is rather similar to the SFX knowledge

base) is needed.

Non-standard packages: If the packages are not standard, some custom work is needed

using the local collections module:

o For e-journals, they rely on the Marc 21 records that are available in the community

zone of Alma

o For e-books, the Marc 21 records within the community zone (if available) are not

seen as of sufficient quality. Therefore, they rely on downloads of Marc 21 records

from vendor sites or from OCLC. These are very streamlined workflows: the Marc 21

records from the vendor or OCLC are loaded into Alma and Alma automatically

creates all the information in the similar way as if it was already available in the

Knowledge base.

Other remarks:

o 1 BU policy: in principle, the BU libraries follow a “1 BU policy”, which means that a

license for electronic resources is generally acquired for the entire University. The

only exception to the rule are some acquisitions by the Law library as a result of the

very high costs of such licenses.

o Overlapping e-book packages: some e-book packages have overlapping titles.

However, the user will not see double records, as there is in Primo a ‘behind the

scene’ deduplication.

With regard to the migration to Alma, the following points were made:

Migration: The migration to Alma with regard to the data on electronic resources was really

easy as they already used the SFX database.

Discoverability: The largest benefit from the migration to Alma is with regard to the

discoverability of e-books. The cataloguing department was in working rather independently

and used at that time a workflow of cataloguing one by one, which is rather impractical with

regard to electronic resources (as the data are in constant flux). In practice, a large part of

the electronic resources were therefore not catalogued5. With the migration to Alma, Marc

21 records for all electronic resources became available and discoverable via the same

search engine (Primo), while before there were two separate mechanisms for the discovery

of printed and for electronic resources. This also enables them to present merged records for

a publication that is in their collection as well as in electronic form as in printed form

available6.

5 As a result of inefficiencies in the Millennium system’s ability to manage e-books and the procedures at the

cataloguing department, a significant backlog of approximately 500,000 records existed at a time of the migration.

These 500,000 bibliographic records were not loaded into the Millennium catalogue. To ensure discovery, the library

website contained links to the platforms of the vendors such as Ebrary. This situation was seen as very unsatisfactory

and the fact that this now has been solved is seen as one of the largest benefits of Alma.

6 The presentation of merged records does not work always: it does work fairly well if records are managed by

themselves and coming from Alma, it works less well if it relates to records from the central index from Primo.


‘Time to market’: as there are more real-time connections and updating in the new system,

new acquisitions and/or changes in electronic resources become much quicker available for

the end-users.

Increased transparency: another noteworthy change is that Alma functions as a source of

information if there are questions. This system often provides the answer, whereas before,

one had to ask one or more staff members in order to find the answer.

Efficiency gains:

o The maintenance of long database instead of several databases is considered

as an important efficiency gain. However, a quantification of the above-mentioned

efficiency gains is seen as impossible for the following reasons: (1) The nature of

work has been changed as the type of work has changed into more quality control

such as checking the accuracy of data et cetera. (2) The above-mentioned

distribution of the work among several staff members, made possible by Alma. (3)

The size of the electronic resources collection of the BU libraries has very much

increased in the last years as a result of the transition from print to electronic

resources. The management of this transition has also been facilitated by Alma (and

would have been much more difficult to manage with the former set of systems).


Before the migration to Alma, a number of systems were involved in the management of electronic resources:

Talis Alto was used for the administration of the fund and payment information.

SFX knowledge-base was used to administrate the journal holdings for the SFX link resolver

and for the Primo discovery tool (which was acquired earlier than Alma).

Physical storage of the licences.

An in-house Access database containing information on renewal processes.

This in-house Access database was developed following the University’s involvement in a JISC project on electronic resource management. In this project commercial ERM systems were assessed, along with open source solutions. As these ERM systems did not match the workflows of the Library, the Access database was developed, replacing several spreadsheets. The Access database contained information for renewal processes such as contact details, quotes received, librarians involved, renewal dates as well as practical information such as usernames and passwords, and the recording of downtime and resolution.

The database contained information about approximately hundred databases/journal packages and about 800 individual journal subscriptions. The ERM team (involving three members of library staff) were pleased that the work processes for renewals in Alma were very similar to those developed for the Access database. The interviewee described a large efficiency gain when they began to use the Access database. Due to the substantial efficiency gains from the Access database, efficiencies from the move to Alma were limited to approximately 5% to 10%. The efficiencies gained as a result of the migration to Alma is mainly due to the fact that Alma is an integrated system, and everything is recorded in the same place with integrated workflows for the order process and invoicing.


How has the migration to the Alma system played out in terms of efficiency gains? The interviewee states that a true comparison is not possible as the library has allocated more staff resource to electronic resource management to reflect the increased importance of electronic resources in the library collections. The ERM team is now investing additional efforts in the following three areas: (1) More quality control on the journal holdings (2) more efforts to collect exact and complete usage statistics; and (3) online recording of the licences with the aim to analyse the terms and conditions. The ERM team will record the licences in the Knowledgebase Plus environment as this software environment at the moment offers more functionality for the management of licences (especially reporting options). In the longer term, they would like to record licenses in Alma (Ex Libris is working on expanding the functionality with regard to licences).


The transition from the home-grown knowledge base and link resolver to the knowledgebase of WMS (WCKB) initially did not bring efficiency gains. However, there are a number of developments with regard to the knowledgebase of WMS that could bring efficiency gains in the future. The options of WCKB are as follows:

1 Library specific collections from publishers: publishers deliver library-specific collection

data to OCLC and OCLC adds this data to WCKB

2 Global collections from publishers: publishers deliver global collection data to OCLC and

OCLC adds this data to WCKB.

3 Collections created by the library. It is possible to share self-created collections with other

libraries.

The global collections from publishers are the most-used option: there are thousands of such collections. The difference between option 1 and 2 that in option 1 a collection is created that is unique for a library (or a group of libraries) and thus an exact match with the subscribed journal titles. In option 2, a general collection is in the system and the library has to indicate to which titles it subscribes.

There are two types of efficiency gains foreseen:

An example of the first option is Elsevier. Elsevier maintains the titles of the Science Direct collection in the OCLC WMS system through the WorldCat Knowledge Base that is part of the licence of the University of Tilburg. In other words, the library has no work related to the maintenance of the titles of these licenses. This works very well and is a promising development. However, the number of publishers or vendors that provide this service is at the moment still rather limited.

With regard to the third option, a project is set up with SurfMarket, an organisation that manages the licenses bought by the consortium of the Dutch University libraries and the national library (UKB). The aim of the project is that SurfMarket will maintain the UKB licenses in WCKB, while these data will also be made available for knowledgebases of other vendors via exports in KBART format. For the Tilburg University library, this project might result in an efficiency gain of approximately 10 – 20 person days per year.

CONCLUSIONS

The case studies lead to the following conclusions with regard to the management of electronic resources:


Efficiency gains: the multitenant cloud systems bring added value to the management of electronic resources: all information with regard to electronic resources are managed in the same system, as before there were two or three or more systems that contained data with regard to the electronic resources). The integration into one system results in in efficiency gains with regard to the management of these datasets. In addition, it is possible to distribute tasks among more several employees (before, many of these self-developed systems could only be used by one employee at a time).

Increased transparency: all the data with regard to electronic resources are available in the same system, meaning that they are accessible for the entire organisation. This has led to an increased transparency and a lower need to ask questions to colleagues.

Improved and more efficient discoverability of the e-book and e-journal packages: o The discoverability of standard packages can be arranged in minutes. o The discoverability of non-standard packages takes more time, but the results can be

shared by all libraries who use the same multitenant cloud system and/or participate in a consortium.

o A number of publishers maintained the data of their e-book or e-journal packages at the platform of the cloud systems, thus relieving the library of these tasks. The number of publishers with these services is still limited but can be expected to grow.

Reallocation of staff: the three libraries studied here report that the migration to a multitenant cloud system has facilitated the reallocation of human resources to the management of electronic resources. This reallocation has been facilitated by the integration of the workflows related to printed and electronic resources. This reallocation is also seen as necessary because of the increase in size and importance of the electronic collections. The reallocation of tasks includes to a large extent more quality control regarding the electronic resources.

3.4.5 THE USAGE OF API’S/ CONNECTIONS TO INTERNAL SYSTEMS

The following examples of the usage of API’s in order to create connections with other systems are reported by the libraries studied here:

Financial systems: all three libraries have announced projects in order to develop a connection with the financial system of the University and the multitenant cloud system. It is important to note that the providers of the cloud systems are not necessarily involved in these developments. When the connections are realised, one expects to be able to make the financial administration of the library more efficient.

Self-service machines: the BU libraries report the development of connections to their self-service machines (3M) using an API of Alma. The provider of the former LMS system did offer to develop these connections for a considerable amount of money.

Student information systems; human resource systems: the BU libraries report to have developed connections with the student information and human resource information system of the University. Similar connections have been developed by the library of the University of Salford. The library of the Tilburg University has developed a connection between the identity management system of the University and WMS: the majority of the users of WMS are generated by this identity management system of the University.

Educational system: the BU libraries have planned a project to connect the educational system of the University (Blackboard) with Alma. The library of the University of Salford has a similar project for their reading list software. In their educational system (also Blackboard), there are over 2000 reading lists managed by the educational staff members. The reading list software will provide the following functionality:


New book: if a lecturer adds a new title to a reading list in Blackboard, the acquisition

department of library will be automatically be informed via Alma.

Generating a list: the lecturer can easily use Primo and select titles for the reading list in

Blackboard

Students: in Blackboard there is a direct link to Primo and an indication of the

availability of the title.

3.4.6 OTHER WORKFLOWS & OBSERVATIONS

The following additional observations were reported by the libraries studied here:

Statistics: the analytical/statistical tool of Alma is very much appreciated by the BU libraries: for them this amounts to one of the biggest advantages of the new system. The library of the University of Salford uses this same tool, but doubts the trustworthiness of the data. They use in addition the JUSP service of Jisc. WMS - as reported by the library of the University of Tilburg - offers over 40 types of standards statistical reports. However, the development of a tool, which enables to libraries to make statistical reports themselves is on the roadmap of WMS.

Web-based interfaces: the library of the Tilburg University reports that the interfaces of WMS are very user-friendly and easy to learn. However, there are some complaints about the interconnectivity between the various models of the system. The library of the University of Salford finds that web-based interfaces are very efficient as they allow the staff members to use the system from other places than the library building itself.

Circulation and document delivery: the library of the Tilburg University uses two workarounds outside WMS: for the claiming of journal issues (this functionality is offered by WMS, but considered inadequate) and for the document delivery procedures from the warehouse of the library.

Mass treatments: the library of the University of Salford reports an important efficiency gain with regard to mass treatments of catalogue records. The former LMS could only handle treatments of maximum 3000 bibliographic records per day. Mass treatments in the multitenant cloud system have no limits and are rapidly executed: first, one tests the mass treatments in the Sandbox environment, then one carries out the mass treatment in the production environment of Alma, often taking only minutes.

3.4.7 ORGANISATIONAL CONSEQUENCES AT THE LIBRARIES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LIÈGE AND THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER

ORGANISATIONAL CHANGES AND NEW SERVICES IN LIÈGE

The five libraries of the University of Liège have migrated to Alma since the beginning of 2015. The main reason for migrating to Alma was to use the new functionality offered by the system to adapt the workflows within the library with the ultimate aim to reduce the back office to free up human resources for the front office. Traditional library workflows were often linked to print workflows and were not in tune anymore with the present. The new system has led to several organisational changes. The main ones are the following:

Less, more specialised cataloguers: many staff members catalogued in the old system, even when they carried out this activity only a few times per year. In the new system, the staff members had to follow a training course in using the cataloguing module and to obtain a certificate. Only staff members with a certificate get access to the library catalogue.


Less, more specialised acquisition librarians, more centrally organised: before the migration, an inventory was made of the workflows used for print and electronic acquisition. It appeared that many staff members did not use the acquisition module of the former library management system (Aleph), but instead used self-developed workflows with spreadsheets or prints. The decision was made to adapt the workflows to the options of the new system. For the new acquisition workflows, the staff members had to follow a training course and to obtain a certificate. Also, the acquisition librarians were at the same time organised in a number of virtual units (they stay working in their libraries). A further efficiency gain in acquisition is expected from the development of a connection between Alma on the one hand and the financial system of the University (SAP) at the other hand.

More staff members involved in the management of electronic resources: before the migration, 3 to 4 staff members were involved in the management of the SFX knowledge base and located at the central organisational unit. After the migration, the number of staff members involved in the management of electronic resources have slightly been increased in order to reflect the increasing importance of this type of resources. At the same time, a decentralisation has been taken place: next to central organisational unit, now each library has its own staff member involved in electronic resources.

With regard to new services, the following services have been developed or will be developed shortly:

Books on demand: the user can make a reservation for book in the discovery environment and this reservation will be transmitted in real time to the owner library. In a next step, the library will search and find the requested book, put it on the hold request shelf for the patron and the book will then be available for the user at the circulation desk of his preference (there are eight different pickup locations).

Digitization on demand: a project has recently been started to develop this service. If a user will request an article from a printed journal or a chapter from a printed book, this will be scanned and delivered as a PDF file to the user. The service will at first available free of charge for the University faculty and staff members and if successful and feasible in terms of human resources, be expanded to the students of the University.

TASKS MOVING FROM THE TECHNICAL TEAM TO THE COLLECTION MANAGEMENT TEAM

The library of the University of Manchester migrated in the summer of 2013 to Alma. More than two years later, the following effects on the distribution of tasks between the various departments become visible:

A number of workflows within the library became more efficient as a result of the new system. In addition, the new system also allowed different workflows, for instance patron-driven acquisition. The library has now patron driven acquisition installed for e-books and for p-books. Each are limited by a budget. Students and university staff browse in book titles and if they select a title for full text access, without human intervention, the e-book or p-book is purchased. A recent study into the books purchased in this manner showed that the large majority of the purchases is indeed appropriate. This automated process has of course replaced a large part of the traditional acquisition process. There are also new task driven workflows between teams that ensure workflows progress efficiently, that issues can be more easily picked up and that progress of a workflow can be more easily monitored.

A number of workflows can be carried out by the collection management team with the tools of the new system, while before these had to be carried out by the technical team. The


interviewee mentions in this respect the creation of normalisation rules for importing bibliographic records and mast treatment of bibliographic records.

This has led to a changing role of the technical team. They can now focus on their function as a bridge between library staff and the provider of the system, on developing the connections between Alma and other university systems to further the integration of these systems and on the development of new services based on the API’s of Alma.


3.5 MIGRATION TO THE CLOUD

3.5.1 RESULTS OF THE THREE CASE STUDIES

FIGURE 3 STANDARD CALENDAR FOR THE MIGRATION TO A CLOUD SYSTEM

Based on the three case studies, one can sketch a standard calendar for the migration to cloud system (see figure 3):

The duration of the migration project: the BU libraries report that there migration to the new system to 7 months. The library of the University of Salford reports 9 months, whereas the library of the Tilburg University reports 1 ½ year: one year for the migration and six months for the final acceptance of the system.

Consolidation phase: o All three libraries mention period of consolidation after the “go live” moment. During

this phase, one had to deal with the lack of some functionalities in the new system. This lack of functionalities was partly caused by the fact that the systems were not fully developed at the time and partly because the system was not adapted to the environment of the library itself. The library of the Tilburg University specifically mentions that their consolidation phase had lasted approximately one year and they had to reallocate one full-time equivalent in order to solve the problems. In addition, the library had to spend €10,000 for outside help.

Change management phase: o After the consolidation phase, the change management phase begins. During this

phase, one adapts the workflows to the possibilities that are offered by the new system and by the connections with other systems (from the University or from vendors). The results reported in section 3.4 show that the period of change management can last several years.

The costs of the migration:


o The out-of-pocket costs reported by the case studies are not representative for all the libraries, because these costs were minimal or zero because of the fact that they were development partners or early adopters7.

o Human resources: the case studies find a variation of 0,6 FTE to 6,1 FTE spent by the libraries on the migration project:

The BU libraries estimate that the migration project took approximately 2,5 to 3,0 FTE

The library of the Tilburg University reports that they have spent over 9600 hours on the migration projects (approximately 6.1 FTE; excluding approximately 1300 additional hours spent during the consolidation period).

3.5.2 THE MIGRATION PROJECT AT THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF DELFT

The Library of the Delft University of Technology has been recently migrated to the WMS system and WorldCat Discovery Services. Before, the library used five different systems. The selection of the WMS system was made in a tender procedure. With regard to the price, the library asked to distinguish three elements: (1) the licence costs per year for a period of five years with possible extension of five years (2) a fixed price for the implementation including data conversion (3) an hourly tariff for after-care after the migration.

Compared to the costs for the systems in use within the library in 2012, the out of pocket costs have been decreased with approx. 40%. In addition, from 2016 onwards 1 FTE for technical management of the systems is no longer necessary. The expectation is that the amount of work in the backoffice will decrease from 2016 on.

The migration and implementation project focused on the configuration and testing of the new system and the connections with the identity management system (SURF CoNext) and the financial systems. In some cases are also existing workflows changed during the migration project, based on the possibilities of the new system. An example is a change in circulation by reducing 23 different categories of library patrons to 6 categories. All metadata of physical material was migrated to WorldCat trough GGC (OCLC’s CBS in the Netherlands). All metadata of digital metadata was migrated “by hand”: OCLC’s knowledge base was filled with the necessary collection data, mostly by clicking on collections that are already in the system. The result was that end users do have access in WorldCat Discovery to the full text of articles of e-journals and e-books. Other necessary changes (for instance the improvement of the administration of licences for electronic resources) were not part of the migration project, but will continue after the migration project.

The project lasted six months. The project organisation within the library was as follows:

A project manager

A project team with 8 members, each with a specialism: testing, training, configuration; ICT connections; metadata; operational management; communication and a project secretary. Generally, the project team members spent a two or three days per week on the project.

A group early adopters: one or two staff members per module of the new system with a role in testing, as source of information and as a link with the department. Generally, these early adopters spent a few hours per week on the migration.

7 According to other information, a new client might have to pay a fee for the migration of 100% to 150% of the annual costs of the subscription after the migration.


The total number of hours spent by the library staff on the migration project was almost 2000 hours (approx. 1.3 FTE).

The migration to the new cloud system can be seen as a success. However, the interviewee emphasises that it is important for the library management and the library staff to have a willingness to change and adapt to the new system.

What about a possible migration in the far future to another system? The interviewee stresses the importance to have an exit scenario for cloud systems. In the contract with OCLC is clearly stated that in case of a migration to another system, the library can use all its own data including the data related to their own data but generated by others, like in shared cataloguing. With regard to the contract with the provider, they made use of the SURF Framework of legal standards for cloud services in higher education.

3.5.3 PREPARING THE MIGRATION

The library of the Swansea University has recently migrated to the Alma system as part of the WHELF consortium. In preparation of the migration, workshops were held with employees of the library in order to develop ideal workflows for various library processes: “the happy path”. Staff members were asked to forget about the actual workflows in the existing system (Voyager) and really try to think anew what would be the best workflow for a specific library procedure. The attendees to each workshop learned at the start how to use and understand the swimlane charts used for describing the ideal workflows. Each workshop counted 10 participants as a maximum. Most participants were very enthusiastic about the possibility to invent ideal workflows in collaboration with their colleagues. In a series of workshops, most workflows were described and documented with a swimlane chart. In all, about one third of the staff was involved in at least one workshop.

The resulting flowcharts of ideal workflows helped enormously during the migration project: the project management had to take quite a number of decisions on the configuration of the new system. The ideal workflows acted as a sort of signpost for the decision-making: each time when there were two or three options to choose, the option was chosen that was most aligned with the ideal workflow. At the moment of the interview, the library had been using the new system since

a few months and it was too early to say if the fact that a third of the staff

https://www.surf.nl/binaries/content/assets/surf/en/knowledgebase/2015/framework-legal-standards-cloud-services-higher-education.pdf

https://www.surf.nl/binaries/content/assets/surf/en/knowledgebase/2015/framework-legal-standards-cloud-services-higher-education.pdf


members were involved in thinking about ideal workflows, also had helped the staff to adapt to the new system. However, according to the interviewee, the series of workshops did also help in creating a different mindset with regard to the new system and the changes that would come with the new system.

FIGURE 4 EXAMPLE OF A SWIMMING LANE DIAGRAM WITH REGARD TO ORDER APPROVAL


3.6 LONG-TERM COSTS

3.6.1 DEVELOPMENT COSTS

The BU libraries have mentioned the important difference in the pricing model of Alma in relation to the pricing model of their former LMS. The provider of their former LMS developed new models that could be used by the library for an additional price. In contrast, all the developments that take place in Alma are accessible for all subscribing libraries8. Thus, most developments costs are included in the annual price of the subscription. However, there are development costs that are not included in this subscription as there are developments outside the system such as the applications based on API’s et cetera.

3.6.2 COST OF DEPENDENCE/INDEPENDENCE

To what extent the library using a multitenant cloud system becomes dependent of the provider and what would be the costs of this dependence? This question is considered more important in relation to cloud systems then in relation to locally hosted systems for the following reasons:

The library is owner of its own data in the cloud system (according to the contracts), but one does not actually possess the data on internal server.

The risk of a vendor lock-in might be higher because the library is only subscribing to the cloud system (instead of having bought a licence to the software and having to pay an annual maintenance fee).

On the other hand, the libraries that subscribe to a multitenant cloud system form a community of subscribers with communication channels such as discussion lists and other forms of collaboration. In other words: the buying power of clients to multitenant cloud system seems to be higher.

3.6.3 THE COST OF A FUTURE MIGRATION TO ANOTHER SYSTEM

The definition of the total cost of ownership includes the entire life-cycle of a system. Thus, the cost of an eventual migration in the far future to another system is an element of the total cost of ownership. Clearly, there are at this moment no examples of migration from a multitenant cloud system to another system. There appear to be two opinions about this topic:

According to one opinion, there will be no difference between a migration of a locally hosted system to a cloud system on the one hand, and the migration from a cloud system to another system on the other hand.

Another opinion however foresees new difficulties for a migration from a cloud system to another system. These difficulties could be: (1) the data migration might be more difficult as the data within a cloud system are a mix of data from the library itself and data that belong to the provider or to other the libraries, (2) a library that has used a cloud system for several

8 The pricing policy of WMS with regard to developments seems to be rather similar.


years will have no longer a technical infrastructure and might lack technical competences with regard to formats, data conversion et cetera.


4. THE TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP OF A CONVENTIONAL LMS

4.1 INTRODUCTION TO THE CASE STUDIES ON THE FRENCH LIBRARIES

As part of this study, three case studies regarding French university libraries have been carried out, with the following objectives:

1. To get an overview of the total cost of ownership of the locally hosted LMS systems 2. To achieve an insight into which efficiency gains might be possible for the French university

libraries in case of a migration to a multitenant cloud system.

With regard to the total cost of ownership of locally hosted LMS systems, the case studies were focused on (1) all costs directly related to the systems and (2) all costs related to the operational management of the systems. It was not seen as feasible to assess the costs of the workflows based on the existing systems of ownership, or the long-term costs.

4.1.1 THE NETWORK OF LIBRARIES OF THE FEDERAL UNIVERSITY TOULOUSE MIDI-PYRENEES

Federal University Toulouse Midi Pyrenees: the Federal Universityof Toulouse counts 21 higher education institutes and five research institutes in 10 cities. It includes three universities and one university centre of higher education and research, 14 higher education institutes for engineers and other specialists and five national research institutes.

The documentation centre SICD and the network: o The documentation centre SICD is responsible for all software that is used by the

network of the libraries of the University with the aim to offer to the participating libraries services for the internal operations and for their public services.

o The network consist of 14 university institutes representing over 50 libraries9. These 14 institutes have the same LMS and the same catalogue. The idea is that all 14 institutes will migrate to a multitenant cloud system. The other institutes that participate to the network use the services of the SICD à la carte. These institutes might migrate to the cloud system in a later stage.

o A number of key figures: Staff: over 400 functions. OPAC: around, 2,4 million documents in the catalogue (Archipel) with an

annual increase of around 150.000. Discovery tool: approximately 50.000 e-journals accessible via Summon. Usage figures:

around 620.000 loans to around 55.000 patrons yearly

Over 500.000 visits to the catalogue per year.

Configuration of the information systems: Table 9 shows the configuration of the information systems in use. The network uses since many years Horizon as its LMS system for the management of the printed collections. This software is hosted at internal servers. For the electronic collections, the SFX link resolver is used and the Summon discovery tool. The subscription to Summon includes also the module for the management of electronic

9 Two recent mergers has resulted in the disappearance of a dozen smaller libraries. The RCR list of Sudoc still lists over 60 libraries.


resources (360 RM), but this is not used: all participants in the network used their own methods for management of the electronic resources, mostly by using Excel or Access. The network is preparing a migration to a multitenant cloud system. The SICD participates in the competitive dialogue that is managed by ABES, together with 8 other institutes. It is envisaged to continue to use Sudoc as a shared cataloguing system, at least for the time being. In addition, there is a digital library for digitised heritage works that will be maintained after the migration to the cloud system.

4.1.2 THE DOCUMENTATION CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF BRETAGNE OCCIDENTALE

The University of Bretagne occidentale: the University has around 18,000 students and 2500 employees and offers education and research in the following domains: humanities, social sciences, maritime sciences, sport science, technology and medicine.

The documentation centre: the documentation centre (SCD) of the University of Bretagne occidentale has two main missions: (1) the coordination of the information policy of the University (2) access to those documents in whatever form that are necessary for students and staff members and (3) the training of students and staff members in the usage of information resources. Some key figures:

o 12 libraries o 89 staff members o 437.000 printed works o 1165 printed journals o 17000 e-journals o 35 subscriptions to electronic resources o 1 million visits per year o about 200.000 loans per year o acquisition budget in 2013: 1.150.000 euro (of which about 60% for electronic

resources)

Configuration of the information systems: the present configuration of the information systems in the use are presented in table 10. A number of remarks:

o The subscription to Primo is cancelled per end of 2015 because the service gave a number of problems that were not expected to be solved in the near future. For a discovery of the journal literature, the SCD offers Scopus.

o For the management of electronic resources Excel spreadsheets are used.

Information Systems in use Information Systems expected after the migration

Horizon (SGB) (including a reporting module) and the OPAC Archipel

An integrated cloud system

SFX (link resolver and list A-Z; named Lirel)

Summon (discovery tool, named Archipel+)

Digital library (named Tolosana) Digital library (named Tolosana)

Other services Other services

Sudoc as a shared cataloguing system Sudoc as a shared cataloguing system TABLE 9 THE CONFIGURATION OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS IN TOULOUSE


o The IT department of the University follows a policy of migrating to cloud systems. This is also the reason why the SCD looks for a cloud solution for its LMS. The SCD does not participate in the competitive dialogue managed by ABES, but hopes to participate in the second cohort that will migrate to a cloud system.

4.1.3 THE DOCUMENTATION CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSITY NICE SOPHIA ANTIPOLIS

The University Nice Sophia Antipolis: the University Nice Sophia Antipolis (UNS) is a multidisciplinary university with over 25.000 students, of which approximately 1300 PhD students. The University counts several campuses and unities for education and for research. The University has around 2700 employees: over 1600 staff members and about 1100 administrative employees. Each year, about 200 dissertations are produced. The UNS has 12 principal campuses, nine faculties, two institutes and two schools. The annual budget is 237 million euro.

The documentation centre: the documentation centre (SCD) has as a mission tool facilitate the access to documents necessary for the education and for the research at the University. The SCD coordinates the acquisition of the collections for University and also offers training courses in using the information sources. The SCD is composed of four units, combining the 7 libraries at the University: o The direction o The cluster LASHS, with the library for Law and Political sciences, the library for

Literature, Humanities and Art and the library for Medicine. o The cluster STM, with the library for Sciences, the LC Sophia, the BU STAPS and the

library for Dentistry o The SIDOC department with task in the field of documentation, data coordination and

scientific production. o In addition, there are 12 libraries that are associated with the SCD. o Key figures (2013):

acquisition budget: 1,2 million euro (about 77% for electronic resources) Staff: 94,34 FTE annual acquisition of books: 9706 current print journals: 848 electronic journals: 32455.

Configuration of information systems: the configuration of the information systems at the University Nice Sophia Antipolis is presented in table 11. A number of remarks: o Aleph is hosted at the servers of the DSI Department of the University. o The OPAC of Aleph is not used. Instead of this, the software of Primo is used for the

discovery of the metadata of the OPAC provided by the Aleph system, in combination this a number of other datasets (such as HAL and EBSCO). It is important to note that the

Aleph – SGB Hosted at internal services of the IT department of the University

Aleph reporting centre Idem SFX link resolver Primo discovery tool For the period of 2014 to 2015 Related services: Sudoc as a shared cataloguing system

TABLE 10 THE CONFIGURATION OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRETAGNE OCCIDENTALE


central index of Primo (Primo Central) is not used by the SCD of the University Nice Sophia Antipolis.

o The two tools for the management of electronic resources are self-developed and use SQL databases. For the management of the contacts with the vendors, Excel spreadsheets are used.

TABLE 11 THE CONFIGURATION OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NICE SOPHIA ANTIPOLIS

Aleph – SGB Primo (the software) Self-developed systems for the management of electronic resources: for administration of the budgets for the usage statistics Related services: Sudoc as a shared catalogue system EBSCO A to Z WorldCat Other relevant systems SIFAC (the financial system of the University)


4.2 TWO ELEMENTS OF THE TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP: OUT-OF-POCKET COSTS AND HUMAN RESOURCES

Overview of elements of the total cost of ownership expressed in an index for the out-of-pocket costs (the total out of pocket cost are set at 100) and in FTE for the human resources The library network of the federal University Toulouse Midi Pyrenees

Costs and workflows directly related to the system

Out of pocket costs of the information systems – total 100 Out of pocket costs software :

o LMS (38,7) o Discovery tool (16,7) o Link resolver (10,6)

66

Out of pocket cost of bibliographic services (Sudoc) 27,5 Out of pocket costs hardware 6,5 Staff 0,7 FTE Costs and workflows of the operational management of the systems

Staff SICD involved in the operational management 3,3 FTE Staff of the libraries participating in the network, involved in operational management 12,8 FTE Total FTE involved in the operational management 16,1 FTE SCD of the University Nice Sophia-Antipolis


Out of pocket costs of the information systems - total 100 Out of pocket costs software :

o Costs software per year (24) o Costs maintenance (26) o Costs services per year (21)

71

Out of pocket costs bibliographic services : o Sudoc/ WinIBW (13) o WorldCat (1) o EBSCO A to Z (10)

24

Out of pocket costs hardware 4 Staff 0,6 FTE Costs and workflows of the operational management of the systems

Staff SCD involved in the operational management 1,6 FTE Le SCD of the University Bretagne occidentale


out of pocket costs of the information systems - total 100 Out of pocket costs software (without Primo) 83,5 Out of pocket costs bibliographic services (Sudoc) n.a. Out of pocket costs hardware 7,7 Self-service machines 8,8 Staff 0,35 FTE Costs and workflows of the operational management of the systems

Staff SCD involved in the operational management 1,0 FTE TABLE 12 OVERVIEW OF TWO ELEMENTS OF THE TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP

In table 12 an overview of two elements of the total cost of ownership is presented, as they were collected during the case studies. It is important to note that these figures from different case studies are not completely comparable with each other. For instance, in the case of the SICD of the University of Toulouse Midi Pyrenees, the out-of-pocket cost include a discovery tool,


whereas in the case of the SCD of the University of Bretagne occidentale, the cost include the self-service machines. However, these results lead to the following conclusions:

The costs directly related to the system: o The out-of-pocket costs for the software represent the largest part of the out-of-

pocket costs directly related to the system: we report here a variation of 66%, 71% and 83,5%.

o The out-of-pocket costs for the hardware, such as the internal servers that host the LMS or the licences necessary for the servers, represent less than 10% of the out-of-pocket costs directly related to the system. We report here a variation of 4%, 6,5% and 7,7%.

o The out-of-pocket costs for bibliographic services represent approximately a quarter of the out of pocket costs directly related to the system. We report 24% and 27,5%. It is important to note that these costs are not included in the cost calculation of the SCD of the University of Bretagne occidentale. In the case of the SICD of the University of Toulouse Midi Pyrenees, these costs include the cost for Sudoc, in the case of the SCD of the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, these cost include the cost for Sudoc, for WorldCat and for the EBSCO A to Z service.

o The human resources involved in the technical management of the systems are rather limited: we report here 0,7 FTE, 0,6 FTE and 0,35 FTE.

The costs related to the operational management of the system: The SICD of the library network of the federal University of Toulouse Midi Pyrenees report that 3,3 FTE of the SICD itself are involved in the operational management of the system. In addition, they reported that 12,8 FTE of human resources from the participating libraries are also involved in the operational management of the system. These include a number of working parties that are part of the organisation of the library network10. However, it seems that these working groups are more involved in the collaborative activities of the network as a whole than strictly in the operational management of the systems. Thus, the total of 16,1 FTE appear to include activities of collaboration and coordination for the library network. Therefore, the 3,3 FTE of employees from the SICD itself seems a better representation for the operational management of the system in the strict sense of the term and appear to be more relevant with regard to the comparison with the figures from the other case studies. The SCD of the University Nice Sophia Antipolis report that 1,6 FTE are involved in the operational management of the system. The SCD of the University Bretagne occidentale report 1,0 FTE involved in this type of system management.

Based on these results, it is possible to formulate a number of conclusions on the possible financial consequences of an eventual migration to a cloud system:

The costs that might be strongly reduced or disappearing: o Out-of-pocket costs for the hardware: a migration to a cloud system will make

internal servers that hosted the LMS and other locally hosted systems redundant. The out-of-pocket costs for hardware - according to these case studies less than 10% of the total out-of-pocket costs related to the system - will be strongly reduced or

10 Coordinators of the network ; administrators of the catalogue data ; administrators of the loan data ; administrators of the acquisition data ; administrators of the journal management data ; correspondents for the public interfaces ; Correspondents for the statistics; correspondents for the technical aspects ; Correspondents for the training ; Correspondents SFX


have totally disappeared. It is important to note that these costs are often born by the budget of the IT department of the University and not always passed to the budget of the library.

o The human resources related to the technical management of the system: a migration to a cloud system will in addition make the technical management of internal servers unnecessary. In the case studies, this amounted to 0,35 FTE to 0,7 FTE. Here also, these human resources are often part of the IT department of the University and the costs of these are not always passed to the budget of the library.

The costs that will remain in the same order of magnitude: o The human resources involved in the operational management: we have seen in

the case studies of the libraries that have migrated to a cloud system that the human resources involved in the operational management of the system seem to be mainly dependent on organisational factors and not on the type of system used.

o The out-of-pocket costs for the software (and the discovery tool): we have also seen in these case studies that the total out-of-pocket costs for an annual subscription to multitenant cloud system are in the same order of magnitude as the total cost for the licences of the systems before the migration. In two of the three cases, we have seen a decrease in costs (13% and 33%), in the third case we have seen an increase of 14,6%. It is important to note that a migration to multitenant cloud system implicates the usage of a discovery tool. In the two case studies of the French libraries, a discovery tool was not part of the configuration (in the case of the University of Bretagne occidentale, the subscription of the discovery tool was cancelled per 2016). In other words: if one does not have a discovery tool before the migration, the total out-of-pocket cost for the subscription to multitenant cloud system and a discovery tool will be most probably higher than the total out-of-pocket costs for the licences for the systems before the migration.


4.3 THE WORKFLOWS BASED ON THE EXISTING SYSTEMS SEEN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF AN EVENTUAL MIGRATION TO A CLOUD SYSTEM

4.3.1 ACQUISITION WORKFLOWS

THE LIBRARY NETWORK OF THE FEDERAL UNIVERSITY OF TOULOUSE MIDI PYRENEES

The following observations were made with regard to the acquisition procedures.

Trend to centralise acquisition: at this moment there is a trend at several participating libraries to centralise their acquisition and to make it an integral part of a team that takes care of all the processes from acquisition to the point where the documents are made available for the end-users. This development has not been realised yet, but it is still expected that within two years a centralised acquisition will be realised in several libraries participating in the network.

Large number of different vendors: the libraries participating in the network use a large number of vendors for the acquisitions, in particular a large number of small vendors for French language documents. Outsourcing of the acquisition by using one agent (as been seen in two case studies on the non-French libraries) does not appear to be a serious option as the present acquisition method is considered very important. However, the 80 – 20 rule applies :

o Around a dozen publishers amount to the large majority of the acquisition for the collections. These acquisitions take approximately 20% of the working time of the employees involved in acquisition.

o Around 100 publishers are being used for the rest of the acquisitions. These acquisitions take approximately 80% of the time of the employees involved in acquisition.

The acquisition module of the present LMS: the acquisition module of Horizon is considered to be very complex and therefore some libraries in the network do not use this module.

The e-books are under-used: the e-books are generally speaking not very much used by the end-users of the libraries of the network. There appear to be several reasons for this: (1) there are problems with the discoverability of the e-books (2) undergraduate students seem to prefer printed books and (3) the various access models offered by the various publishers create confusion for the end-users. For these reasons, the library network has not yet developed the common policy with regard to e-books and has not used the patron driven acquisition models yet.

Connection with the financial system: a connection with the new library management system and the financial systems used by the participating institutes of the federal University of Toulouse Midi Pyrenees are seen as extremely important. However, there appears to be a rule by the AMUE (the French agency for management software for the higher education sector) that forbids connections, which import automatically data from other systems into the financial system. If a university makes such a connection, the AMUE agency does not take any responsibility. This will mean that also in the new configuration with a multitenant cloud system, double input for acquisitions will continue. For this reason, one pleads that ABES (the French agency for bibliographic data for the higher education sector) will advocate a change of this rule at the AMUE agency.

In general, there are three categories of workflows for the acquisition:


Printed publications: generally, the acquisition model of Horizon is used for these acquisitions workflows. The lack of a connection between this module and the financial system of the University leads to double input. The acquisition model of Horizon is considered very complex, but functions very well according to the experienced users.

Printed journals: for the acquisition of printed journals, many libraries within the network use services offered by subscription agents such as EBSCO. For the claiming of journal issues, Horizon is generally used.

Electronic resources: o For the acquisition of electronic resources, most libraries use Excel spreadsheets.

This method is not considered adequate, because this makes it very difficult to distribute the work involved in this type of acquisition among several employees.

o The acquisition of individual titles of electronic journals is time-consuming because of the different licensing models, access models et cetera.


THE SCD OF THE UNIVERSITY OF BRETAGNE OCCIDENTALE

Twelve libraries have acquisition teams for printed materials. Within the LMS (Aleph) 30 different acquisition budgets (organised in a hierarchical way) are maintained. 20% of the orders come from end-users, 80% from the librarians themselves.

The acquisition process for printed publications is described in detail in the text box. In addition, the following observations were made: The vendors are selected via tender procedures: there are tender procedures for 9 work

packages. A contract lasts for two years with a possible extension of another two years. No connection between the LMS and the financial system: the result of this lack of a

connection means double input, which takes a lot of time. In addition, the budgets in the two systems are not synchronised and often show different figures (mainly due to the VAT, which is not registered in the Aleph system).

The SCD is working on a simplification and rationalisation of the workflows in question. One of the ideas is to completely stop using the acquisition model of Aleph (considered very complex) and instead only use orders placed at websites of the vendors and/or use Excel spreadsheets. However, such a change in the procedures will also bring some disadvantages: the orders will not be visible any more (with a risk of double orders) and the data will not be available for the statistical tool of Aleph.

With regard to a new multitenant cloud system, the following expectations have been formulated:

o real-time connection with the financial system (SIFAC) o a simplification of the acquisition workflows o direct connections between the cloud system and the systems of the vendors in order

to facilitate the acquisition workflows.

With regard to the acquisition of electronic resources:

The SCD subscribes to more than 9000 e-journals, 29 databases and over 1200 e-books.

1. Preparation of ‘baskets’ with orders at the website of the vendor (or of Electre for ’Dialogues” orders). 2. Execution of the orders :

o Intellectual and administrative validation directly with the interface of the vendor or in case of Electre by mail. At 4 libraries, the intellectual validation will be carried out by another employee than the one who prepared the orders.

o Involvement of the financial system SIFAC: after the administrative validation (by employee A), the data will be entered in the financial system SIFAC by employee B followed by a signature of employee A.

3. Export of the bibliographic records via the web interface (mostly Décitre, Erasmus or Electre) followed by the upload of the records in Aleph (cataloguing module)

4. Acquisition module Aleph : o Using a printed list of the documents, retrieving each record in Aleph in order to adapt it: price,

number of copies, budget involved, vendor, publication type, library, number in SIFAC et cetera. o New retrieval of the same records in order to send them via EDI to the vendor. o The records appear in the OPAC with the status « ordered » o Delivery of the documents : in the module of acquisitions of Aleph : retrieval of the records in

order to change the status to « in treatment » o The printed invoice is used for the payment via the SIFAC system.

5. Cataloguing module Aleph : o The bibliographic records of the vendors are replaced by the bibliographic records of Sudoc. o After the treatment of the publication is completed, the status in the OPAC will change into « new »

or « available » o Invoicing via EDI: this allows to update the information in Aleph in order to be used for the

updating of the acquisition budgets.


The acquisition and the management of electronic resources is coordinated by the unit for electronic documentation, which counts 1,2 FTE. There is no specific system for the management of the electronic resources: one uses Excel spreadsheets. The acquisition process follows the following phases:

o There are six committees for six disciplines (consisting of staff members and librarians) that will make propositions for the acquisition of electronic resources.

o The direction makes the final decision o The decisions are carried out by the above-mentioned unit for electronic

documentation. The annual budget for electronic resources is 695,000 euro, which is approximately 60% of

the total acquisition budget. Approximately 80% of the licences are acquired via the consortium Couperin. The other

20% consist mainly of individual titles. One uses approximately 40 to 50 different vendors. For the usage statistics, one uses at this moment the statistics that are delivered by each

vendors. The analyses of these statistics takes 4 to 5 days. In the future, one plans to use the software Ezpaarse from Couperin for this type of analysis.


THE SCD OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NICE SOPHIA ANTIPOLIS

In figure 7 overview of the acquisition procedures at the SCD of the University Nice Sophia Antipolis is presented. The figure is provided by the SCD and therefore partly in the French language. The flowchart in blue represent the procedures with regard to the acquisition of printed resources, whereas the flowchart in purple represent the procedures with regard to the acquisition of electronic resources.

With regard to the acquisition procedures for printed resources:

Bibliographic records are imported from the vendors (Electre) or created (for the other vendors) in the bibliographic database of Aleph.

Using the acquisition model of Aleph, order forms are created and sent to the vendors while simultaneously created in the financial system Sifac.

After the delivery of the publications the process of cataloguing in Sudoc starts.

It is noted during the interviews that the connection between Electre and Aleph doesn’t optimally function.

With regard to the acquisition procedures for electronic resources:

In the period from July to September, a selection is made of electronic resources, of which the subscription should be renewed or which should be considered for acquisition.

These proposals are being discussed in the period October/November in the committee for this purpose.

FIGURE 5 OVERVIEW ACQUISITION PROCEDURES AT THE UNIVERSITY NICE SOPHIA ANTIPOLIS


After the decision-making, the orders will be carried out and the process of making the electronic resources discoverable starts:

o The e-journals are activated in the service A to Z of EBSCO. o The databases are described in the records using Excel and then uploaded into Primo

in the format XML o For the e-books bibliographic records are retrieved from the publishers or from

WorldCat. o These bibliographic records are imported in Primo.

With regard to the organisation of the acquisition one has analysed the work of the employees involved in the acquisition of all the libraries that are part of the network of the SCD. The result was that there were 12 employees that acquired less than 50 publications per year. This means that those employees might lose their expertise in using the complex acquisition model of Aleph.

CONCLUSIONS

Based on the descriptions of the acquisition workflows of these case studies, the following conclusions/observations can be formulated:

The acquisition workflows for the printed resources and for the electronic resources are completely separated in two of the three libraries studied: this is the case for the SCD of the University of Bretagne occidentale and for the SCD of the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis.

Imbalance of human resources: an imbalance can be observed between the human resources allocated to the acquisition of print resources and those allocated to the acquisition of electronic resources at the one hand, compared to the volume of those two collection types at the other hand.

A lack of professional tools for the acquisition of electronic resources: the present usage of Excel spreadsheets is considered as unsatisfactory.

The vendors: o The acquisition is often spread out among a large number of often small vendors:

approximately 100 vendors in the case of the library network of Toulouse; 40 to 50 vendors in the case of the SCD of the University of Bretagne occidentale.

o The rules with regard to tender procedures in France enforce a periodical change of vendors.

There is a trend to concentrate the acquisition and integrate the acquisition to other workflows: the SICD of the University of Toulouse Midi Pyrenees and the SCD of the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis have developed ideas to change the acquisition workflows in order to make them more efficient and to integrate them with other workflows like cataloguing.

A strong wish to connect to the financial system11: the three libraries studied have strongly expressed their wish to connect their LMS to the financial systems of their Universities in order to eliminate the double input and to synchronise the budgets that are maintained in both types of systems.

11 See also the remark with regard to AMUE at section 4.1.1.


4.3.2 CATALOGUING TITLE BY TITLE

THE LIBRARY NETWORK OF THE FEDERAL UNIVERSITY OF TOULOUSE MIDI PYRENEES

FIGURE 6 WORKFLOWS FOR CATALOGUING TITLE BY TITLE

The workflows with regard to the Sudoc system and the local LMS systems (in case of Toulouse the Horizon system) are presented in figure 8:

The cataloguer catalogues the title in Sudoc.

The new or modified bibliographic records are downloaded every night in Horizon. [In Toulouse, all modifications made by the Sudoc participants are downloaded].

The next day, the cataloguer adds holdings data to the bibliographic records uploaded from Sudoc. There are sometimes books with more than 70 copies.

There is no synchronisation as the local catalogues with all holdings data and the national Sudoc catalogue.

This type of workflow presents the following disadvantages:

One has to use two different systems.

The workflows for the cataloguers are more complex because they are fragmented and spread out over different working days. This fragmentation is the cause of human errors.

The fact that there is no synchronisation between the local catalogue and the national catalogue gives problems when weeding the collections.


With regard to the multitenant cloud system, one hopes to achieve an integration or a synchronisation in order to use only one system for cataloguing. Such a synchronisation would eliminate the waiting time that now exist between creating/modifying a bibliographic record and the addition of the holdings data. One estimates that this would result in an efficiency gain of 25% to 50% of the workload for the cataloguers. The number of key figures with regard to cataloguing in Sudoc by the library network of the University of Toulouse Midi Pyrenees:

New records created by the network: o 11.600 bibliographic records per year o 6600 authority records per year.

Modifications of records by the network: o 90.000 bibliographic records modified per year o 6600 authority records modified per year

OPAC (Archipel): o around 350.000 bibliographic records uploaded from Sudoc each year o Archipel counts 1.100.000 bibliographic records with over 2 million holdings.

There are two types of cataloguers:

Cataloguers who add holdings data

Cataloguers who create new bibliographic records.


The SCD of the University of Bretagne occidentale uses also Sudoc for its cataloguing. Thus, the cataloguing process is similar to the description above. The following remarks have been made during the interviews:

One has to use two different systems.

The workflows for the cataloguers are more complicated as they are fragmented and spread out over different working days. This is the cause of human errors.

The lack of synchronisation between Aleph and Sudoc causes problems in case of weeding the collections: one has to delete all these data in two systems. In practice, this leads to different data in the two systems.

With regard to a potential new multitenant cloud system, a real-time connection between the new system and Sudoc is seen as very important in order to simplify the workflows of the cataloguers.

A number of workflows have been described in more detail: o Localisation and adding the classification for the placement in Sudoc: the attribution

of the classification for the placement data makes the reading of the content page and the cover pages necessary as sometimes a search for similar documents in the catalogue of the library itself.

o The adding of the PPN number from the Sudoc record in the record of acquisition in Aleph: the next day, this enables the verification of the updating in the aleph catalogue.

o With regard to electronic dissertations by the University of Bretagne occidentale: In Sudoc:


Creation of a bibliographic record using a template; input of the bibliographic data and adding keywords from Rameau.

Creation of an authority record for the author using a template. In Aleph:

Creation of the electronic holdings.

Key figures: o In 2014, 8146 bibliographic records were created or modified in Sudoc. This

percentage varies among the different libraries: for instance the library for literature produces 14,2% of the new bibliographic records, whereas the library for medicine produces only 2,2%.

o Over 95% of the bibliographic records are already present in Sudoc, thus one only needs to add the holdings data.

THE SCD OF THE UNIVERSITY NICE SOPHIA ANTIPOLIS

The SCD of the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis has studied the processes for cataloguing in detail. Below a number of conclusions of their study are presented.

The proportions of adding holdings data, derived cataloguing and original cataloguing:

Around 90% of the bibliographic records are already present in Sudoc, thus only the addition of holdings data is needed.

Around 6% of the bibliographic records are derived from WorldCat.

Around 3% of the bibliographic records are created anew in Sudoc.

The production of bibliographic records has been analysed. One of the results shows that 15 cataloguers create less than 20 bibliographic records per year. In addition, one has observed that many employees of category A and B (the higher categories) are involved in the adding of holdings data which is a rather simple task. This is the reason why they started to automate this task (see below).

The workflow for cataloguing is similar to the workflows described for the other case studies with two exceptions:

1) Only the records modified by themselves are uploaded into their LMS. 2) One has recently developed an automated procedure for adding holdings data:

Before: the procedure with regard to adding holdings data was similar to the above described procedures at the other two case reports.

Now: a script (using JavaScript) has been developed in order to automate the adding of holdings data. The employees responsible for the storage of books received the books, apply the barcodes and put the books at the bookshelves without intervention of cataloguers (with the exception if a new bibliographic record has to be created in Sudoc). Because of this automated procedure, the cataloguing procedure has become very efficient. However, the interviewee states that this automation is based on systems that are not really made for these kind of scripts and therefore needs to be reviewed each time a system is updated. In addition, the development of this automated procedure has taken about 20% of the time of the interviewee for a period of four months. At the moment of the case study, the efficiency gain in the cataloguing process had not yet compensated the time of the development. In the long run, one system for cataloguing instead of two systems is therefore preferred.


4.3.3 CHANGING THE SYSTEM FOR SHARED CATALOGUING: THE EXPERIENCE OF THE LIBRARY OF LA PÉROUSE

The library of La Pérouse is a joint realisation of the University of West-Brittany, the Institute IFREMER (the French research Institute for exploitation of the sea) and the IRD Institute (the French research Institute for development). This Centre of Documentation for the Sea has as its goal to organise the access to the literature of the maritime sciences to the users from the three above-mentioned institutes. The library has migrated to WMS in 2013. The main reasons for this migration were the implementation of the discovery tool, to use a modern library management system and to have better statistical information.

At this moment, the library users WorldCat for cataloguing. WorldCat is adequate because the relevant literature is mostly English language and thus for the larger part already available in WorldCat. For this reason, the cataloguing is mainly focused on adding holdings data. In addition, specialised keywords and other information related to the copy itself are added.

The library of La Pèrouse continues to use Sudoc because of the interlibrary loan system. The library has asked ABEs to realise an automated import of the bibliographic records used by the library from WorldCat to Sudoc. However, this is not yet realised by Abes. Therefore, at this moment, the cataloguing is carried out also in Sudoc.

The purpose of the migration to WMS - a better functionality with regard to discovery - has been achieved: the end-users find the simultaneous searching in electronic resources and printed resources and in walks and journal articles very practical.

CONCLUSIONS

Metadata from the vendors: in general, one only uses the metadata from the vendors for the process of acquisition. In a next step, these metadata are uploaded into the LMS and in a next step replaced by the bibliographic records from Sudoc.

Efficiency and inefficiency of Sudoc: o The bibliographic records are to a large extent already present in Sudoc: this is

true in over 95% of the bibliographic records for the SCD of the University of Bretagne occidentale, for approximately 90% of the bibliographic records used by the SCD of the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis and used by the SICD of the University of Toulouse Midi Pyrenees.

o Lack of synchronisation in real-time of the local catalogues and the Sudoc catalogue means that the workflows of cataloguing are fragmented and spread over different working days. This leads to human errors and according to the SICD of the University of Toulouse Midi Pyrenees to an increase of the workload of 25 to 50%. In addition, this lack of synchronisation is problematic in case of weeding the print collections.

o The automation of adding holdings data: the solution developed by the SCD of the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis has made the workflows of cataloguing very efficient. A similar automation might be very relevant for other libraries who take part in the Sudoc shared cataloguing system.

o The uploading of bibliographic records from Sudoc: two of the three libraries studied upload all modifications to bibliographic records from Sudoc, whereas the third library only uploads the modifications made by themselves. Thus, in the last


case, the library does not make full use of the efforts by other libraries participating in the Sudoc network12.

12 For the entire Sudoc network the figures are: 32 libraries - on a total of 164 libraries - retrieve all modifications made by the participating libraries. See : Catalogage partagé et production de métadonnées communes au sein du réseaux Sudoc et Sudoc-PS : un aperçu des orientations possibles ; Maurits van der Graaf ; 2014


4.3.4 THE MANAGEMENT OF ELECTRONIC RESOURCES

THE LIBRARY NETWORK OF THE FEDERAL UNIVERSITY TOULOUSE MIDI PYRENEES

Tools in use: o With regard to the electronic collections, the SFX link resolver and the Summon

discovery tool are used. In addition, the OPAC (Archipel) is also used for the discoverability of the e-books.

o With regard to the acquisition of electronic resources, one uses mostly Excel spreadsheet. This method is not considered satisfactory because it does not allow to distribute a work over several employees. The subscription to Summon includes also an ERM tool (360 RM), but this is not used.

Workflows: o The acquisition of individual e-journal titles takes a lot of time because of the

different licences and access models. o With regard to the knowledge base, there are at a moment now two different

knowledge bases (for Summon and for SFX). A migration to a multitenant cloud system would bring efficiency in this regard.

o The import of metadata for e-book packages: these metadata are produced by the vendor and are imported into Sudoc (by ABES), in the second step these metadata are imported into Horizon and into the OPAC. These metadata are not indexed by the authority system IdRef (Rameau) 13 (see also below).

o The workflows with regard to the printed resources and the electronic resources are separated and different. In addition, the human resources allocated to each type of resource are not seen as balanced with regard to the volumes of each type of resource.

Discoverability of e-books: o The discoverability of electronic resources is not considered sufficient. The

knowledge base of Summon has important lacunas with regard to electronic resources in the French language and especially with regard to French e-books14. As a result, the libraries are forced to make these resources discoverable via other means: Sudoc/ Archipel, A to Z lists for periodicals and sometimes just by a link to the website of the vendor. In short: the discovery tool does only cover a part of the electronic resources that are acquired by the libraries of the network.

Discovery tool: o One view for the entire network: there is only one view in Summon, which means that

in many cases end-users find resources that they cannot access because there is no licence for the entire network.

o English/French language: the end-users generally are not used to carry out searches in English, while the large majority of the electronic resources are indexed in English. In addition, the bibliographic records in the OPAC are indexed with key words in French (from the Rameau system). However, many students use natural French

13 The CERCLES project within the Sudoc network looks to share the work of improvement of the metadata of e-book

packages.

14 These French language resources are not present in the knowledge base of Summon (or for that matter in the

knowledge base of SFX, which allows to create manually the appropriate data) because the publishers of these resources have not the means or the will to provide metadata and/or the full text to ProQuest or other providers of this kind of software. The BACON project by ABES looks to improve this situation.


language for the searches and thus retrieve an incomplete selection of relevant records.

Usage: o The OPAC often network is the most frequently used discovery tool with about

500.000 searches per year. The Summon discovery tool attracts approximately 60.000 searches per year.


Tools used: the SFX link resolver is used, while the Primo discovery tool will be used until the end of 2015, because of the cancellation of the subscription. The OPAC of Aleph is also used to make the e-books discoverable. For the management of the electronic resources, Excel spreadsheets are being used.

Workflows: o The acquisition and the management of electronic resources is coordinated by the

organisational unit for electronic documents, with 1,2 FTE. The electronic resources consist of more than 9000 e-journals, 29 databases and over 1200 e-books. The acquisition of these resources takes approximately 60% of the entire budget.

o The operational management of the Primo discovery tool took approximately 1,8 FTE during one year.

o With regard to the subscriptions to e-books: localisation and enrichment in Sudoc creation of electronic holdings in Aleph input in relation to the subscriptions or cancellations mass treatment of packages: preparation of the delivery of the metadata to

ABES for importing in Sudoc; followed by the creation of the electronic holdings data in Aleph.

Discoverability of electronic resources: o The subscription to Primo has been cancelled because there were many problems

with this service that could not be solved in the short term. For the journal literature, one uses Scopus.

o For e-books, one has to use Sudoc and the OPAC. The CERCLES project might support this process.

o The electronic resources in the domain of Law have a very specific problem: there are five important databases with complementary information from five different providers. There is not a method that enables the end-user to carry out a search in the five databases simultaneously, due to the various policies by the five providers with regard to the metadata.

THE SCD OF THE UNIVERSITY NICE SOPHIA ANTIPOLIS

Tools in use: the software of Primo is used for the OPAC in combination with a number of other datasets (but the Primo central index is not in use, thus the coverage for the Primo set-up in Nice is much more limited than a standard discovery tool set-up). There is no link resolver in their configuration. For the management of the electronic resources, Excel spreadsheets are used.

Collections: about 77% of the acquisition budget is spent on electronic resources.

Discoverability: o E-journals are activated in the A to Z service of EBSCO.


o The databases are described in records using Excel and in a next step, uploaded into Primo using XML.

o With regard to e-books, the bibliographic records from the editors or from WorldCat are retrieved and imported into their Primo set-up.

4.3.5 CONCLUSIONS

overview of the situation regarding electronic resources in the three French libraries studied

SICD of the University Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées

SCD of the University Bretagne occidentale

Le SCD of the University Nice Sophia-Antipolis

Tools for the discoverability of the electronic resources

Link resolver (SFX) Discovery tool (Summon) OPAC (Horizon)

Link resolver (SFX) OPAC (Aleph)

OPAC (with the software of Primo)

Tools for the management of electronic resources

Excel Excel Excel

Problems listed discoverability of the electronic resources

One view of the discovery tool for the entire library network.

Incomplete discoverability for e-books

Incomplete discoverability for e-books

No method for simultaneous search among five important databases in the domain of Law

Discoverability of the electronic resources is not optimal in the present configuration of systems because of the absence of a link resolver.

Organisational factors Workflows for electronic resources and for print resources are different.

An imbalance between the two types of the collection at the one hand and the human resources involved at the other hand.

Workflows for electronic resources and for print resources are different.


The management of the electronic resources is taken care of by separate organisational unit

Workflows for electronic resources and for print resources are different.


Other remarks The electronic resources take 60% of the acquisition budget

The electronic resources take 77% of the acquisition budget

TABLE 13 AN OVERVIEW OF THE VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE SITUATION OF ELECTRONIC RESOURCES IN THE THREE CASE FRENCH STUDIES

An overview of the various aspects with regard to the electronic resources in this the case studies is presented in table 13. Based on these results, the following conclusions/observations can be formulated:

A lack of discovery tools: in two of the three case studies the configuration lacks a discovery tool. In the third case, the discovery tool is not considered satisfactory: there is one view for all participating libraries while many licenses do not allow access by all end-users of the libraries participating in the network.

A lack of professional tools for the management of electronic resources: Excel spreadsheets are mostly used for this purpose, while this is not considered satisfactory because it is difficult to distribute the work among different employees with this tool.


Problems with the discoverability of the electronic resources: in the three case studies, a number of problems with regard to the discoverability of the electronic resources are observed:

o The knowledge bases of the link resolver or the discovery tools have important lacunas with regard to the French language resources: as a result, one has to use other means. The project BACON by ABES is set up to solve this problem.

o The discoverability of e-books: in the three case studies, one tries to make the e-books discoverable via Sudoc and the OPAC. This leads to complicated and time-consuming workflows with rather unsatisfactory results. With regard to the e-book packages, there remains a problem with regard to keywords from the French language Rameau system. The project CERCLES by ABES is set up to solve this problem.

o Five databases in the domain of law: the SCD of the University of Bretagne occidentale has specifically mentioned a problem with the discoverability of five databases with Law information.

Different workflows, sometimes different organisational units: in the three case studies, the workflows with regard to the electronic resources are different from the workflows with regard to the printed resources. In the case of the SCD of the University of Bretagne occidentale, a separate organisational unit is set up for the management of the electronic resources.

Imbalance: there appears to be an imbalance with regard to the human resources involved in the electronic resources and involved in the printed resources, if these are compared to the volumes of the two types of resources.

A more general conclusion with regard to the situation of the electronic resources in the three case studies is the following: the above-mentioned problems are to a large extent caused by the lack of integration of the tools with regard to the management of electronic resources and the conventional LMS, focused on the management of printed resources. This is why many of these problems would be solved by the migration to the multitenant cloud system and a discovery tool at the same time.


5. TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP OF SHARED CATALOGUING SYSTEMS

5.1 INTRODUCTION

In the second track of the study, the changes in the total cost of ownership of the shared cataloguing system of LIBISnet, a Belgian network of research and special libraries that has migrated to a cloud system, has been studied in detail. In addition, the total cost of ownership of the shared cataloguing system of the higher education institute in France (Sudoc) has been studied. The aim of this second track is to understand the effects of the migration to cloud systems of French libraries on Sudoc and the effect of an eventual migration Sudoc itself to a cloud system.

5.2 LIBISNET

5.2.1 LIBIS AND LIBISNET

LIBIS is service organisation of the Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven). LIBIS supports the following networks:

LIBISnet: a network of 33 institutes with 89 libraries with a union catalogue of

approximately 6,000,000 records. LIBIS managed this network until recently with Aleph

software.

PBS Vlaams-Brabant: this is a shared library management system (also based on Aleph

software) that is used by 60 libraries in the province of Vlaams-Brabant.

Open Vlacc: this is a union catalogue for public libraries in Flanders, containing

approximately 6.5 million records (and also runs on Aleph).

LIAS and Heron networks: LIBIS also supports a network of archives and a network of

museums.

The LIBIS organisation consists of 19 employees.

LIBISnet is a network of libraries in the HE sector and specialised libraries. The network exists since 1977. By far the largest library is the library of the KU Leuven, which has 12 different campuses and 24 libraries (and more than 56,000 students). The total number of librarians involved in the network is approximately 400. LIBISnet consists of 31 institutions with 89 libraries.


5.2.2 THE MIGRATION TO A MULTITENANT CLOUD SYSTEM

Before migration After migration Library management system elements

For print resources: o Aleph - library management

system For electronic resources:

o SFX - knowledge base and link resolver

o Verde (electronic resource management)

o Metalib (Federated search) For discovery:

o OPAC o Primo - discovery tool (since

2011)

For print and electronic resources: o Alma (31 Instances and 1

Network Zone and 1 Sandbox (test environment))

For discovery: o Primo

Related systems

For storage/repository: o Digitool

For storage/repository: o Rosetta and Alma

TABLE 14 OVERVIEW OF THE IT SYSTEMS BEFORE AND AFTER THE MIGRATION

Before the migration, the network used a range of ExLibris products: Aleph, Metalib, SFX, Digitool and Verde. Since the summer of 2014, all institutions of LIBISnet have been migrated with one exception. This migration entails 33 Alma institutions (31 institutions [with 89 libraries] + a Network Zone + a sandbox). In the first half of 2015, the last Institute has been migrated to Alma. The network is now in a consolidation phase. Therefore, not all effects of the migration might yet be visible. However, in the following paragraphs the presently known effects are described.

5.2.3 COSTS DIRECTLY RELATED TO THE SYSTEM

Costs and FTE directly related to the system before and after the migration The costs before the migration are set as 100

Aleph Alma

Costs of licences (Aleph, SFX, Metalib before the migration; Alma after the migration) [Primo and Rosetta excluded] and the costs of the maintenance of the 13-20 servers dedicated to Aleph by the IT department of the University

98,4 In 2015 and 2016 : 92,2

From 2017 onwards : 129

subscriptions to WorldCat [increase as a result of

more derived cataloguing after the migration]

1,6 5,2

Total out-of-pocket costs 2015, 2016 100 97,4

Total out of pocket costs 2017 onwards 100 134,2

Staff dedicated to technical system management 0,8 FTE 0,5 FTE

TABLE 15 OVERVIEW OF THE COSTS DIRECTLY RELATED TO THE SYSTEM


In table 16 an overview of the out-of-pocket costs directly related to the system is presented. Before the migration, the out-of-pocket costs for the licences and for the maintenance of the servers and for the use of WorldCat is set as 100. After the migration, the total out-of-pocket costs are given in the first two years after the migration and after the first two years. In the first two years, the price of the subscription to Alma has been reduced in order to enable LIBISnet to achieve the efficiency gains made possible by the new system. As explained in paragraph 6.2.7, WorldCat is used more as source of bibliographic data after the migration and thus the cost of the usage of this service have been increasing. In all, the out-of-pocket costs directly related to the system have been somewhat reduced in the first two years after the migration (2,6%) and will be increased after that period (34,2%).

The task with regard to the management of the Aleph systems was partly carried out by the IT department of the KU Leuven and partly by the staff of LIBIS. The maintenance of the hardware and all management related to the operating system was carried out by the IT department. All matters related to the management of the application itself (including backups) were carried out by the LIBIS staff. The IT department charged for their services. These costs will now partly disappear as is the usage of 13 to 16 servers. The migration of the last Institute will mean that at the end of the year 2015, the Aleph installation for LIBISnet will be terminated. At that moment, the efficiency gains for the externalisation of the system management will kick in. It has to be noted however that LIBIS will continue with 2 Aleph installations (for the public libraries and for the Open Vlacc catalogue), which means that the efficiency gain here will be for the moment limited. It is estimated that the daily operational system management for Aleph by LIBIS is diminished from 0.8 FTE to 0.5 FTE.

5.2.4 COSTS RELATED TO THE OPERATIONAL MANAGEMENT OF THE SYSTEM

Costs related to the operational management of the

system

Aleph Alma

Costs of daily management of the Alma system, training and

management of the network: Personnel (estimated)

5 FTE 3 FTE

Costs of the daily management of Primo 2,2 FTE 2,2 FTE

TABLE 16 COSTS RELATED TO THE OPERATIONAL MANAGEMENT OF THE SYSTEM

In table 16 an overview is given of the costs related to the operational management of the

system. The total number of FTE’s implicated in the LIBIS activities for LIBISnet were before

migration around 7. After the migration, the Primo team consist of 2,2 FTE and this level will be

kept for the coming period as there are many plans to develop Primo further15. The Alma team

will consist of approximately 3 FTE, including helpdesk. The total reduction of staff is estimated

at this moment at around 2 FTE. However, the interviewee foresees in the future possible

15 LIBIS is a development partner in the development of a new user interface for Primo. Furthermore, LIBIS works among others on (1) the inclusion of data in Primo of publishers that are located in Belgium and (2) the integration of library collections and museum objects.


further reductions as the librarians get more used to the new system and the rate of

development of Alma (now regular releases are coming out with new functionality) will slow

down.

5.2.5 RESOURCE SHARING WITHIN LIBISNET

FIGURE 7 THE CONFIGURATION IN ALMA

In figure 7, a sketch of the configuration in Alma is presented. Each institution has its institution

zone with functionality comparable to a traditional library management system. The resource

sharing options within the network take place within the network zone. Alma has also a

community zone, which contains shared data and resource sharing options for all participants

within the Alma system.

The network zone contains the following resource sharing options within the network:

Cataloguing: creating records or copy cataloguing by adding local holdings to existed

bibliographic records. In the institution zone, a library can manage the local authority list or

bibliographic records that cannot be part of the network zone.

Administration of library patrons: the members of the LIBIS network also maintain a

common administration of library patrons: each patron can make full use of another library

in the network.

ILL: the network zone also provides functionality for interlibrary loan among the members

of the network. This is an ILL functionality without charges. [There is also a national system

for ILL (Impala), which does incur charges.]. There is a development with the aim to replace

the present ILL functionality within LIBISnet by consortial borrowing: the user would then

be able to directly request another library within the network for the item. This could result

in a considerable efficiency gain.


Acquisition of e-resources: a subset of 12 libraries within the LIBISnet network forms an

acquisition consortium for electronic resources. The usage of one knowledgebase and the

options within the network zone for such an acquisition consortium result in a clear

efficiency gain for the participating libraries.

More dimensions to the network zone: it has to be noted that the network zone has more

dimensions. It is possible to share different resources with different groups within the

network and also to have two different groups within the network sharing the same type of

resource (for instance, two separate acquisition consortia would be possible). Another (yet

unused) option of resource sharing is to share resources with regard to acquisition of print

material. It is possible to designate one library that will carry out the acquisition of print

resources for other libraries.

Generally speaking, the migration to the Alma cloud system has not changed the resource

sharing within the network. The only difference is that now everything is organised within one

system. With regard to the effects on LIBIS as the coordinating organisation, it is noted that the

network zone requires only a very limited workload. With regard to the costs of the network

zone, the contract with ExLibris has been set up in such a way that it is not possible to

distinguish the costs for the institution zones and the network zone.

5.2.6 EFFECTS ON THE COORDINATING ORGANISATION

Within the coordinating organisation LIBIS, following changes in work practices have been

observed after the migration to Alma:

Monthly releases: Alma has monthly releases with new functionalities. From a technical

viewpoint, this can be seen as a large improvement as there is no work involved from the

technical staff. However, the new releases require lots of attention because of the new

functionality involved: one has to be attentive, check and test the new functionality and

assess if the new functionality is of interest to the participating libraries. If yes, quite an

effort is involved to communicate the new functionality to the participating libraries. The

total amount of work cost approximately 5 to 6 workdays per month at this moment.

Control and self-determination: the consequences of a cloud system is that there are

limited possibilities to have control over the system. This is a big change for the involved

staff members, as they were used to adapt the Aleph system themselves by changing the

software deep into the system. The alternative for adapting the system to special needs is the

development of applications using the API’s of Alma. There are already quite a number of

API’s in Alma and more will be developed. However, it has to be noted that there are some

disadvantages to the use of API’s: sometimes the API’s are not well documented, sometimes

parameters are suddenly changed in a new release with consequences for the applications

using the API. LIBIS presently works on the development of two real-time connections via

an API between Alma on the one hand and University systems on the other hand:

o SAP: the financial system SAP is the system from which the payments have to be carried

out. The idea is that with a connection via an API, there will be a real-time collection and

the budgets in the two systems will be always similar. The approach will probably be

that the ordering part of the process will take place in Alma, while the rest of the process


will better take place within SAP. However, the librarian would always work within the

Alma environment.

o Library patrons’ database: the student registry from the University is periodically

uploaded into Alma. However, it happens regularly that a student will have a change in

address registered at the library but not at the student administration office. Again, a

real-time connection via an API will streamline these processes.

Effects on the type of work activities: In the text box, a number of categories with regard to the type of work activities are depicted. Has the migration to Alma changed the work activities of the coordinating organisation in this respect? The following observations have been made: o Problem prevention/solution activities:

there is a strong feeling that they need to

know more about the system and

understand the system better. This is

especially true for this type of activities:

the understanding of the problem takes

more time as a result of this in

comparison with the situation with the

Aleph system.

o Coordinating activities: as Alma is an

integrated system, in contrast to the

earlier situation with several systems, there is less coordination needed with regard to

these different systems. However, there are more communication activities needed as a

result of the monthly releases with new functionality.

o Development activities: this is clearly diminished in comparison with the former

situation.

o Control activities: this is also somewhat diminished. However, the analytical/statistical

functionality within Alma is still not used to its full potential.

5.2.7 EFFECTS ON CATALOGUING

The University library of the KU Leuven is by far the largest participant in LIBISnet and counts 24 libraries of practically all disciplines, distributed over 12 different campuses, and is associated with another 22 libraries (of the associated University of applied sciences). The head of the metadata department of the University library described the following situation with regard to metadata production and cataloguing within the University libraries:

Functionality Alma: their experiences with the functionality of Alma with regard to

cataloguing in comparison with the Aleph functionality are as follows:

o The search functionality in Alma functions very well.

o The options to set up templates that automatically formats an imported records from

another database are also very useful and practical. This means for example that

with a template automatically some RDA fields will be filled out if one imports a non-

RDA record from an external source.

Another way to look at workflows is the following:

operating activities: regular tasks that

allowed the main functions of the

departments to be carried out

problem prevention/solution activities:

identification of problems that must be

prevented and/or quickly and easily solved

coordination activities: the activities that

are coordinated within the Department

and/or coordinating with other

systems/departments

development activities: identification of

products or services which need to be

developed/improved

control activities: to ensure the

department works efficiently and meets its

targets (statistics, quality control, etc.)


o The cataloguing interface of Alma facilitates derived cataloguing from external

sources. They use WorldCat, LoC and OpenVlacc (the collective catalogue of

Flanders).

o For creating a record, the metadata editor of Alma is seen as somewhat less optimal

in comparison with similar functionality in Aleph.

o From end-to-end, the cataloguing functionality in Alma is seen as more or less similar

in efficiency as Aleph, with the exception of the much better search functionality.

Effects Alma on efficiency of cataloguing workflows: the following effects on the

cataloguing procedures are observed:

o More derived cataloguing: this is not only an effect of the migration to Alma

(although the interface facilitates derived cataloguing), but is also the result of a

management goal to limit the creation of bibliographic records to unique

publications as much as possible16.

o Ebook package metadata: metadata from e-book packages are imported from the

publisher, a template will be developed and possibly fine-tuned after testing and

then all the metadata are imported into the catalogue. This is a large efficiency gain:

the development of a template and the testing will cost approximately 1 person day.

This procedure is only applicable for e-book packages that are not available in the

community zone of the Alma system. If the e-book package is available in the

community zone, then one has only to activate the package. However, it has to be

noted that the metadata of these e-book packages in the community zone are often

rather limited.

o In conclusion:

For printed material, with regard to the actual collections, the cataloguing

process is more efficient in Alma as a result of the increased percentage of

derived cataloguing. The percentages of derived cataloguing differ

enormously between the various disciplines, as for some disciplines the

external data sources contain fuel bibliographic records.

For printed material, with regard to the heritage collections, the cataloguing

process is as efficient in Alma as it was before.

For electronic materials, the workflows in Alma are much more efficient.

Activating an e-book package in the community zone hardly costs any time,

importing metadata of an e-book package that is not in the community zone

is adequately supported by the templates within Alma.

o OPAC and Primo: the migration to Alma also resulted in different positioning of the

OPAC in the KU Leuven. The OPAC as such is now part of Primo. Primo is set up with

three tabs:

All content (which is the electronic collection, the print collection and the

Primo Central Index)

Physical items (only the print collection at title level)

Electronic items (databases, e-books and e-journals).

16 The result of more derived cataloguing is a 3 times higher invoice for the usage of WorldCat.


o Authority files:

LIBISnet use an authority file for author names and for uniform titles but not

for subject classifications. For subject classifications, each library uses its

own system as it is impossible to reach consensus on a standard subject

classification because of the very different types of libraries that participate

in LIBISnet. Alma includes standard the Library Subject Headings and the

MESH.


5.3 SUDOC

5.3.1 THE SUDOC NETWORK AND ABES

Sudoc /Sudoc-PS is a national system for shared cataloguing and a union catalogue. Nearly all libraries and documentation centres in the higher education sector in France participate in the Sudoc network (in 2014 158 Institutes with 1531 libraries participate in Sudoc). In addition, 1700 other libraries outside the higher education sector participate in Sudoc for their serials collections (the Sudoc-PS network, organised with 32 regional centres).

Sudoc consists of more than 11,7 million of bibliographic records describing all types of documents (books, dissertations, serials, electronic resources, audio-visual materials, manuscripts, maps et cetera).

The Sudoc catalogue has also a mission to list all dissertations that are published in France with links to the full text.

The Sudoc network and its systems and services are managed by ABES, the bibliographic agency for the higher education sector. The following services are based on Sudoc:

Shared cataloguing: the shared cataloguing is an integral part of the workflows of the participating libraries. The aim of this shared cataloguing system is to offer an important efficiency gain to the participating libraries with regard to cataloguing and to offer a gain in quality as well. In order to create the aforementioned efficiency gain, a goal of Sudoc is to ensure that participating libraries only need to create themselves full bibliographic records for 10% of their acquisitions. There are four tools in use for the cataloguing work processes :

WinIBW: the cataloguing tool of OCLC

Colodus: the cataloguing tool developed by ABES with the aim to add holding data.

IdRef: an authority system for the indexing of the bibliographic records.

Star: a tool developed by ABES with regard to electronic dissertations

Services based on the union catalogue : o services for libraries to improve their local catalogues o interlibrary loan (SUPEB): the interlibrary loan system based on Sudoc o Périscope: a tool developed by ABES to visualise serial collections in order to

support conservation plans. o Sudoc public: a public interface for the union catalogue.

Surfaces related to dissertations: there are three metadata production tools for dissertations (Sudoc, Step - an application which assures the discoverability via thèses.fr all dissertations that are in preparation, and Star – a tool for depositing dissertations in electronic form and to make them discoverable in Sudoc and in thèses.fr), and two public applications (Sudoc and thèses.fr).

5.3.2 SUDOC AND CLOUD SYSTEMS

THE COMPETITIVE DIALOGUE

ABES manages the competitive dialogue with regard to library management systems in the cloud. This dialogue will select 2 to 5 relevant systems. In a next step, the libraries who have


signed up to adhere to the results of the competitive dialogue (more than 40), could set up tender procedures among those selected systems.

THE LANDSCAPE OF LIBRARY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

The present landscape of the 158 library management systems within the Sudoc network consist of 18 different software packages. It might be expected that migration of several dozens of institutes to cloud systems will simplify this landscape to a certain extent. However, it is clear that the institutes participating in the Sudoc network will continue to use a large spectrum of different library management systems in the foreseeable future.

SEVERAL SCENARIOS FOR SUDOC CONSIDERED

For the future development of Sudoc itself, there are several scenarios on the table. In this study, the focus is on the comparison between the total cost of ownership of a library network that has migrated to multitenant cloud system and the present Sudoc system (excluding the above-mentioned Sudoc-PS system, which is not comparable to LIBISnet). The effects of the migration to cloud systems of participants to the Sudoc network will be discussed, as well as a possible scenario of the migration of Sudoc itself to a cloud system.

5.3.3 TOTAL COSTS OF OWNERSHIP OF THE SUDOC SYSTEM

Elements of the total cost of ownership of Sudoc


Costs of software and hardware and the usage of external databases 39,1

Staff involved in the technical management (estimate based on 5 FTE) 11,9

Subtotal 51,0

Cost of the operational management of the system

Cost of training and coordination of the network and other costs 1,1

Staff involved in the operational management (estimate based on 13,7 EPT) 32,8

Subtotal 33,8

Development costs and other costs

Additional costs (costs for retro conversion of collections)

Cost of development by ABES

Subtotal 15,2

Total cost of ownership

Total 100

TABLE 17 ELEMENTS OF THE TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP OF SUDOC’S

In table 17 the elements of the total cost of ownership of the Sudoc system are presented in terms of an index set at 100 (based on the financial figures of 2014). Below, the results are discussed in more detail.

The out of pocket costs of software and hardware and the usage of external bibliographic databases:

o CBS: the CBS system is the principal system of Sudoc. The software is developed by OCLC. The servers are maintained by ABES and hosted by CINES (centre informatique national de l’enseignement supérieur).

o XML database: a self-developed XML database is used as a mirror database which in addition its use as the basis of some services (e.g. the public interfaces to Sudoc).


o External databases: the CBS system is connected (via Z39.50 gateways) to several external bibliographic databases (some free, some at a cost) in order to facilitate derived cataloguing. The most important paid services are WorldCat van OCLC, CERL en ISSN.

o Developments: The licence for the usage of the CBS software includes the preventive, adaptive and corrective maintenance as well as new versions of the software. If ABES needs specific developments in the software, then these will come at an additional cost. For historical reasons, the costs for the CBS software are relatively high, while the costs for the usage of data from WorldCat are relatively low. These two contracts with OCLC are linked: if ABES would end the licensing of the CBS software, the price for the usage of WorldCat data will increase.

o Human resources involved: The distinction between the technical management of the system and operational management of the system is in practice difficult to make. The 5 FTE mentioned here must be seen as a best estimate.

The costs of the operational management of the system: o Training and coordination: the out-of-pocket costs for training and coordination of

the system are relatively low. o Staff: the staff involved in the operational management of the system is estimated at

13,7 FTE. The staff involved in carrying out the workflows based on the system are included in this estimation. It is also important to note that there are 59 FTE staff working at ABES. The 18,7 FTE workload involved in Sudoc (the 13,7 FTE mentioned here and the 5 FTE mentioned above) are distributed over more than 40 staff members.

Development costs and other costs: the costs for the development outside the licence of CBS or developments of tools/applications by ABES itself fluctuate yearly. The other costs include the support given by ABES for retro conversions of collections of participating libraries. In total these costs were 15,2% of the total costs of ownership in the year 2014.

Long-term costs: the long-term costs of an eventual migration to another system cannot be known at this moment and is therefore left outside this calculation.

With regard to the income of ABES, the costs for the staff is for the larger part covered by the budget from the ministry, while the costs for the functioning of the system is covered by the contributions of the participating libraries. This contribution for participating libraries is partly based on a fixed annual contribution linked to the type of institute (tariff structure based on the number of library patrons and the dimension of the collections) and partly on the activities of the participating library in Sudoc: € 0,53 for each used bibliographic record and a bonus for a creation of a new bibliographic record (€ 0,57), deduplication of bibliographic records (€ 0,42) et cetera.

5.3.4 WORKFLOWS AND SERVICES AROUND SUDOC

WORKFLOWS BETWEEN SUDOC AND THE LOCAL LIBRARY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

The cataloguing process in Sudoc is already explained in paragraph 4.3.2. The use of two systems - cataloguing in Sudoc and adding the holdings data in the local catalogue - does make the cataloguing process inefficient for the cataloguers. In addition, ABES has to take care that the new or modified bibliographic records are regularly (mostly nightly) exported to the local catalogues. There are 156 local catalogues that are updated in this way, to 18 different software packages and using the UNIMARC format (in case of the large majority of the library management systems) or the MARC21 format (in case of 14 library management systems). However, these exports are largely automated and take therefore little staff time.


A number of key figures for Sudoc (year 2014):

the number of participating institutes: 158 (of which 1531 libraries)

the number of holdings data added : 1.400.000

the number of newly created or derived bibliographic records : 360.000

average percentage of creation/derivations : 25,6%

IMPORTING BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA IN SUDOC

There are one-off imports of data (often at the request of participating library) and regular imports of metadata from editors (including the metadata with regards to the national licences of ISTEX). Two methods are in use:

Direct imports in the CBS system: for this one uses the import module of the CBS system.

Imports are mainly related to metadata of books.

Imports via the Metadata Hub into the CBS system: the Metadata Hub of ABES is a

mechanism to improve the metadata. This mechanism is mainly used for metadata relating

to e-journals or e-books that are part of the national licensing program.

OTHER SERVICES

ABES offers a number of other services to the participating libraries with the aim to improve the quality of the metadata in Sudoc:

Sudoc :

o Mass modifications of holdings data and exports upon request.

o Connexions and data exchanges with other union catalogues in France.

Services around Sudoc:

o Interlibrary loan: the interlibrary loan service (SUPEB) focuses on all libraries that

participate in the Sudoc network and on other libraries with loan requests (mostly

participating in Sudoc-PS). In 2014, approximately 93.000 requests have been

fulfilled. The number of requests is decreasing yearly: in 2011, the number of fulfilled

loan requests was approximately 140.000.

o Authority systems :

i. IdRef

ii. RCR : the repertory of libraries

ELECTRONIC RESOURCES: BACON ET CERCLES

80% of the institutes participating in Sudoc do not use the union catalogue for their e-book or e- journal packages, but use instead one of the four commercial knowledge bases (EBSCO, ProQuest, ExLibris, and OCLC). However, these knowledge bases often contain metadata of low quality or lack the metadata from French publishers.

This observation has led to an initiative of ABES to start the BACON project. The BACON project focuses in its first stage on the metadata of the larger French publishers as well as on the metadata of the electronic resources licensed under the national licence program ISTEX. Approximately 40 French publishers and vendors will be approached in the second stage of the project.


There are also institutes participating in the Sudoc network that would like to include the metadata of the electronic resources in Sudoc. For this reason, the project CERCLES (Correction et Enrichissement par les Réseaux de Corpus de L’Enseignement Supérieur) has been started. This project aims for sharing the work on these electronic resources: one institute will take care of the inclusion of the metadata offers certain package, another Institute for another package. The coordination is carried out by ABES.


5.4 COMPARISON OF LIBISNET AND SUDOC

5.4.1 DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LIBISNET AND SUDOC

There are a number of very important differences between LIBISnet and the Sudoc network that make them not directly comparable:

Size of the network: LIBISnet consists of 33 institutes with 89 libraries. The Sudoc network consists of 158 institutes with 1531 libraries (excluding the Sudoc-PS network).

Size of the catalogue: Sudoc consists of 11,7 million records, whereas the LIBISnet union catalogue consists of approx. 6 million records.

Tasks of the network coordinating organisation: ABES, the coordinating organisation has

a national task to fulfil and therefore the Sudoc network includes services as the public interface to the national catalogue, a number of services related to the national database of

dissertations and the maintenance of a national authority system (IdRef). In contrast, the

coordinating organisation for LIBISnet services only the network itself.

Financing: the difference with regard to the tasks of the coordinating organisation is also reflected in the way of financing. LIBIS is completely financed by the financial contributions

of the participating libraries. In contrast, ABES is partly financed by the French Ministry of

Education and partly financed by the financial contributions of the participating libraries.

Configuration of the systems: the libraries participating in LIBISnet use Alma as their library management system and on top of it, they used the network zone of Alma as their

environment for shared cataloguing and other types of resource sharing. In contrast, Sudoc

is a stand-alone system for shared cataloguing and has to make connections to 156 local

catalogues using 18 different types of software and different formats (Unimarc for 142 local

catalogues and MARC21 for 14 local catalogues). Because of the number of institutes

involved and the national task of ABES, it is not conceivable that all libraries participating in

Sudoc would migrate to the same cloud system and thus be able to use a similar setup as

LIBISnet.

5.4.2 CHANGES IN THE COORDIATION OF A SHARED CATALOGUING SYSTEM IN THE CLOUD

LIBISnet as a coordinating agency has reported the following efficiency gains as a result of their migration to Alma:

License costs and server costs: LIBISnet has reported a decrease of 5% in the first two

years and an increase of 33% after the first two years in the out-of-pocket costs for licenses

and servers as a result of the migration to Alma. The decrease in first two years is a result of

a reduction in the price because of the role of LIBISnet as a development partner. The

increase of 33% might also give a false impression: this is a comparison between financial

figures of 2013 and 2017, thus excluding price increases due to inflation and market

developments. In addition, the increase in out-of-pocket costs relate to the complete

package, thus a library management system for 33 libraries. The proportion of the costs for

the environment for sharing resources (the network zone) cannot be estimated but is surely

a fraction of the total cost.

Personnel: LIBIS reports a decrease in the human resources needed for coordinating the system of 2,3 FTE. This decrease is due to the fact that technical system management is not

needed anymore (0,3 FTE) and by the fact that the development activities by LIBIS itself are


diminished. It has to be noted that the operational management of the environment for

sharing resources is estimated as minimal: hardly any operational management appears to

be necessary for the network zone. In addition, it is important to note that LIBISnet has kept

the level of human resources dedicated to Primo at the same level (2,2 FTE), because a

number of developments in the coming years are foreseen.

5.4.3 CATALOGUING AND METADATA PRODUCTION IN CLOUD SYSTEMS

With regard to the participating libraries in LIBISnet, the following efficiency gains are reported by the library of the University of Leuven:

Cataloguing and metadata: o Derived cataloguing is facilitated by Alma via its Z39.50 connections with sources

such as WorldCat and is stimulated by the policy of the University of Leuven. As a

result, derived cataloguing has increased and original cataloguing has considerably

decreased.

o With regard to the workflows for the creation of new bibliographic records, no

efficiency gain is reported.

o With regard to e-book packages, the efficiency gain is important as Alma makes the

import of metadata from the publishers very easy.

Other shared resources:

o Apart from their shared cataloguing system, LIBISnet participants share via the

network zone a database of library patrons, interlibrary loans in the network and a

subset of libraries share the acquisition of electronic resources (greatly facilitated by

the use of the same knowledge base).

With regard to efficiency gains in cataloguing, the case reports of the individual libraries are also noteworthy:

Cataloguing title by title: the libraries of the Boston University reported an increased use of

metadata from the publishers with regard to their title by title cataloguing: if a book is

ordered via the platform of Yankee Book Peddler (which is connected with Alma), the

bibliographic records of the book is automatically delivered together with the book itself and

automatically loaded into Alma.

E-book packages: like the library of the University of Leuven, the three other libraries

report large efficiency gains with regard to the metadata of the e-book packages or by using

the metadata that are already available in the cloud system or by an easy import of the

metadata from the publisher.

E-journal packages: the library of the University of Tilburg has reported the service by Elsevier to maintain their e-journal packages (title changes etc.) directly on the platform of

the cloud system.

Finally, the results of the case report of the French University libraries are also relevant:

Lack of real time synchronisation: Lack of real-time synchronisation between Sudoc and local LMS complicates workflows.

Two systems; separate procedures for holdings data: there is generally a separate procedure for adding holdings data in the local catalogue, which means that the cataloguers

have to use two systems and that the workflow is fragmented and spread out over different

working days, which is seen as inefficient and causes human errors. The recenlty developed


automated procedure by Nice for the adding of holdings data and the resulting large

efficiency gain can be seen as further proof that the usage of two different systems for the

cataloguing process causes inefficiencies.

Metadata E-book packages: the discoverability of e-book packages is problematic for many French University libraries. Many do not have a discovery tool and thus have developed

workarounds to load the data in their OPAC. The workflows are complicated and the

indexing of the e-books is not consistent with the indexing of the print books (no Rameau

indexing for the e-books). The French University libraries with a discovery tool encounter

problems with the French language e-book packages who are often not indexed in the

commercial knowledge bases. [Two projects strive to solve these problems: the CERCLES

project for the indexing and the BACON projects for the gaps in the commercial databases).


5.4.4 OBSERVATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE SUDOC NETWORK

POSSIBLE EFFECTS FOR CONSEQUENCES FOR THE PRESENT SET-UP OF THE SUDOC NETWORK WHEN FRENCH LIBRARIES WILL MIGRATE TO A CLOUD SYSTEM

What could be the possible consequences for the present Sudoc system when a number of French University libraries migrate to a multitenant cloud system? Based on the results of this study, the libraries with a multitenant cloud system would change their workflows related to the metadata as follows:

More derived cataloguing: using bibliographic records from vendors or from within the multitenant cloud system.

E-journal packages: maintenance for some e-journal packages will be carried out by the

publisher instead of the library. In addition, sharing of e-journal collections with other

libraries using the same system can take place.

E-book packages: there will be less or no need to use Sudoc for the metadata of e-books.

Resource sharing options: the multitenant cloud system offers a number of other possibilities to share resources with other libraries. It is conceivable that French libraries

might use a network zone for these resource sharing options and include the option of a

shared catalogue within the system as a sort of subset of Sudoc.

These changes in work practices would have the following effects on Sudoc/ABES:

Reduction of the number of connections between Sudoc and library systems: now

ABES has to maintain 156 connections to (local) library systems. It can be expected that only

one connection will do for the libraries that used the same multitenant cloud system. In

other words: a reduction in the number of connections.

Less copy cataloguing by the libraries using a cloud system: as described, libraries using multitenant cloud systems will use increasingly derived cataloguing. This will mean that for

these derived bibliographic records, the libraries will not use the Sudoc system anymore for

copy cataloguing. As libraries are charged for the usage of bibliographic records for copy

cataloguing, the income of Sudoc from these libraries will decrease.

A split in Sudoc as shared cataloguing system and Sudoc as a union catalogue: if the libraries using a multitenant cloud system indeed will not use Sudoc records for their

metadata produced by derived cataloguing, a split will occur between Sudoc as a shared

cataloguing system and Sudoc as a union catalogue. Presuming that the libraries using a

cloud system will still want to represent all their data in the union catalogue of Sudoc, the

metadata streams between Sudoc and the libraries will be inverted from the libraries to

Sudoc instead of the other way around.

There will be also effects on libraries that that continue using conventional library management

systems:

Lower percentage of copy cataloguing: the increased use of the derived cataloguing outside the Sudoc system by libraries using a multitenant cloud system will result in a lower percentage of bibliographic records present in the Sudoc system, thus decreasing the percentage of copy cataloguing for libraries using a conventional library management system and thereby increasing the need for original cataloguing for these libraries.


Effects on the financial contributions to Sudoc: as libraries using the multitenant cloud system will make less use of the Sudoc system with the effect that their financial contributions will decrease, and assuming that total of the financial contributions to the Sudoc system have to stay the same, the financial contributions for the libraries using a conventional library management system probably have to increase.

POSSIBLE EFFECTS WHEN SUDOC ITSELF MIGHT MIGRATE TO A CLOUD SYSTEM

What could be the possible effects if the Sudoc system would migrate to a multitenant cloud system in a similar way as LIBISnet has migrated. For Sudoc/ABES the following (broadly sketched) effects could be expected:

Less or no system management: less or no servers managed by ABES needed for the Sudoc system as well as the technical management of those servers.

Less operational management: less operational management needed with regard to those libraries that participate in the same cloud system for their library management

functionalities.

Less control: as the system is run by the provider, ABES will have less control and probably less flexibility.

Less original cataloguing needed: as Sudoc will be part of a multitenant cloud system and

as such connected to the metadata streams of libraries throughout the world and to other

publishers, a decrease in the need for original cataloguing might be expected.

Management of metadata of e-book packages: Sudoc could use the same mechanisms as the libraries participating in the multitenant cloud system and thus incorporate these

metadata in Sudoc.

Reduction of the number of connections with local catalogues needed: the Sudoc

system still needs to be connected to all French libraries that use another system. However,

the total number of connections will be lower as there will be also libraries that used the

same multitenant cloud system.

With regard to the libraries, one to distinguish three groups: (1) libraries that will use the same cloud system as Sudoc (2) libraries that will use another cloud system and (3) libraries that will continue using a conventional library management system. The following effects could be expected:

For libraries using the same cloud system as Sudoc:

o The use of one system will result in an important efficiency gain.

For French libraries that are using another cloud system: o These libraries will most probably use more derived cataloguing for their metadata

production and thus using Sudoc less.

For French libraries that continue using a conventional library management system:

o Lower service level: As ABES will be no longer in total control of the system, services

for the libraries that continue using a conventional library management system

might be less satisfactory because of the lower control/flexibility by ABES.

o Lower percentage of copy cataloguing: the usage of more derived cataloguing by the

libraries using the cloud systems will lower the percentage of copy cataloguing in

Sudoc for libraries using a conventional library management system.

o Better coverage of metadata of e-book packages: Sudoc as part of the multitenant

cloud system will probably be able to offer a better coverage of metadata of e-book

packages.


o Possible higher financial contributions: as presented above, the lower usage of Sudoc

by libraries using a cloud system could result in higher financial contributions to the

Sudoc system by libraries using a conventional library management system.

GENERAL EFFECTS OF CLOUD SYSTEMS ON SUDOC

From the above described possible effects of a migration to a multitenant cloud system by a group of libraries and/or by Sudoc itself, the following more general conclusions can be drawn:

Sudoc will cease to be the one and unique place where French libraries catalogue.

As a result, two functions of the present Sudoc system will be split: the function of a shared cataloguing system and the function of a union catalogue at a national level will be separated, while the function of a shared cataloguing system will be used at different degrees by different libraries.

The function of the union catalogue might gain additional importance. Presently, the function of Sudoc as the union catalogue for the French higher education sector supports (1) discovery (2) interlibrary loan and (3) collection management tools such as Périscope. Migration to cloud systems might bring an additional function to Sudoc as a deposit/safeguard for the metadata of libraries who migrated to a cloud system.

New services based on Sudoc need to have added value in comparison to services offered by multitenant cloud systems. Good example of such services by ABES with a clear added value are the Metadata Hub and the BACON project.


6. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

6.1 INTRODUCTION AND STUDY DESIGN


This is the main research question of this study commissioned by the ADBU. The aim of this study is to support decision making by academic library directors in view of a possible migration to a library management system, by ensuring a good understanding of the financial/economic consequences.

The study was set up as follows:

Three detailed case reports of libraries that have migrated to a multitenant cloud system, in order to understand the effects of the total cost of ownership.

Three detailed case reports of French libraries in order to understand the possibilities to transpose the above-mentioned effects onto the French situation.

Two case reports on shared cataloguing systems: Sudoc - the French cataloguing system for the higher education sector and LIBISnet - a library network in Belgium that has migrated to a multitenant cloud system.

Six additional interviews with libraries who have migrated to a multitenant cloud system.

6.2 FOUR CATEGORIES OF THE TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP

For this study, four categories of the total cost of ownership are distinguished:

1. Costs directly related to the technical management of the system. 2. Costs of the operational management of the system. 3. The efficiency of the workflows based on the system. 4. Long-term costs.

6.3 COSTS DIRECTLY RELATED TO THE SYSTEM

In the table below, an overview is presented of the main results of the migration to a multitenant cloud system in the three case studies with regard to the costs directly related to the system. This led to the following conclusions:

The out-of-pocket costs for multitenant cloud system are in the same order of magnitude as the out-of-pocket costs for conventional library systems.

The human resources related to the technical management of the information systems are made redundant after the migration to cloud system.

The human resources related to the operational management appear to be primarily related to internal organisational factors and not to the type of system in use.

The results of the French case studies show that many French university libraries do not have a web scale discovery tool. As a migration to a multitenant cloud system implies the use of a discovery tool, this might mean that the out-of-pocket costs for French libraries without discovery tool might increase after the migration to a cloud system. With regard to the technical management of the system, it has to be noted that this is sometimes carried out by the IT


department of the University and that these costs are not always passed to the budget of the library.

System-related out-of-pocket costs

The libraries of the Boston University Including: library

management system,

tools for electronic

resources and

bibliographic metadata

services

Total out-of-pocket costs before the

migration

100,0 Total out-of-pocket cost after the migration 114,6

The library of the University of Salford Including library

management system,

tools for electronic

resources and

bibliographic metadata

services


migration

100 Total out-of-pocket cost after the migration 67

The library of the Tilburg University Including library

management system,

discovery tool, tools for

electronic resources,

graphic meta data

services


migration

100 Total out-of-pocket cost after the migration 87

Human resources related to the system

The libraries of the Boston University Staff involved in

technical management System librarian (1,0 FTE)

Client software support (0,3 FTE)

no distinction between technical and operational management

1,3 FTE

No technical management needed 0 FTE

Staff involved in

operational management Operational management of Alma takes an estimated 0,1 FTE

0,1 FTE

The library of the University of Salford Staff involved in

technical management 0,16 FTE No technical management needed 0 FTE

Staff involved in

operational management A team of librarians was

involved. The total FTE to spend is difficult to calculate

The team of librarians has been expanded with 1 FTE

1,0 FTE

The library of the Tilburg University Staff involved in

technical management 1,0 FTE No technical management needed 0 FTE

Staff involved in

operational management 0,45 FTE 0,45 FTE

TABLE 18 OVERVIEW COSTS DIRECTLY RELATED TO THE SYSTEM

6.4 EFFICIENCY OF THE WORKFLOWS BASED ON CLOUD SYSTEMS

6.4.1 INTRODUCTION

The third category of the total cost of ownership - the efficiency of workflows based on the multitenant cloud systems - seem to be the most promising in terms of possible efficiency gains. Therefore, the efficiency of workflows has been an important focus of the case studies. However, the cases have not resulted in quantitative data with regard to the efficiency of workflows of multitenant cloud systems in comparison with conventional LMS systems. The reasons for this lack of quantitative data are as follows:


A slow road to efficiency gains: In most cases the changes in the workflows are realised over a period of several years and have led to a very gradual reallocation of human resources. In addition, other factors have led to changes in the workflows. In other words: (1) the migration to a cloud system is not the only driver of change, and (2) the changes take place over a long period.

The multitenant cloud systems are still in full development: the two multitenant cloud systems are still in the development phase. This means that not only the provider develops the system further, but also that other parties such as for instance scientific publishers are developing services for the platforms of the multitenant cloud systems. As a result, the promises of the multitenant cloud systems with regard to resource sharing with other parties and libraries are at this moment only realised to a very limited extent.

6.4.2 ACQUISITION

The results of the libraries using a multitenant cloud system studied here lead to the following conclusions:

No library reports large efficiency gains with regard to the workflows of title by title acquisitions (mostly concerning printed) publications as a result of the migration to a multitenant cloud system. There appear to be two reasons for this:

o A number of possible efficiency gains can only be realised after the connection with the financial system has been developed and this had not yet been realised.

o The efficiency gains based on the connection with the vendor platforms appear to be rather limited with regard to the workflows of acquisition, but appear to be more important for the workflows regarding cataloguing. The library of the University of Washington reports also a sort of merging of the workflows of acquisition and cataloguing.

The acquisition of e-book packages has become very efficient as a result of the connections between the multitenant cloud systems and the vendor platforms.

With regard to the French case studies, two characteristics might make a transposition of some of the above-mentioned results difficult: (1) the usage of a large number of vendors and (2) the rules of with regard to tender procedures in France, which enforce a periodical change of vendors.

6.4.3 CATALOGUING TITLE BY TITLE AND SHARED CATALOGUING SYSTEMS

The case reports of the individual libraries that have migrated to the cloud as well as the case report of the shared cataloguing system that has migrated show a profound effect on cataloguing if the library is willing to change its cataloguing policy. The main effects are:

Increased derived cataloguing: multitenant cloud system facilitates derived cataloguing (see for a definition paragraph 3.4.3) by using metadata delivered by vendors via the connections between the cloud system and the vendor platforms. However, the case studies also have clearly shown that the policy with regard to cataloguing determines to a large extent the efficiency of the title by title cataloguing. Thus, if a library decides to use as much as possible metadata produced by editors or by other parties, a multitenant cloud system facilitates this in two ways: (1) by its connections with the vendor platforms (2) by offering an environment containing bibliographic records that are being shared (such as the community zone of Alma). It is important to note that the connections to vendor platforms


do not always exist and that the development of these connections involve efforts by the library itself.

Shared cataloguing: if a library participates in a shared cataloguing system, the increased derived cataloguing facilitated by the multitenant cloud system means that there is a decrease in original cataloguing. This will have as long-term effect that the function of a shared cataloguing system and the function of a union catalogue (now overlapping in the Sudoc system) will be split.

The results from the French case studies show that cataloguing primarily takes place in Sudoc. Sudoc is very efficient with regard to copy cataloguing (percentages of over 90% are reported), but the efficiency of the workflows is hampered by the fact that one has to use two systems: Sudoc for the bibliographic records and the local catalogue for the holdings data. The effects of two potential scenarios of migrations to cloud systems on Sudoc are being discussed in paragraph 5.4.4.

6.4.4 ELECTRONIC RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

The case studies of the libraries that have migrated to the cloud show important improvements in the efficiency and the quality of the management of electronic resources:

Efficiency gains: the multitenant cloud systems bring added value to the management of electronic resources: all information with regard to electronic resources are managed in the same system (before, there were two or three or more systems that contained data with regard to the electronic resources). The integration into one system results in an efficiency gain with regard to the management of these datasets. In addition, it is possible to distribute tasks among more several employees (before, many of these self-developed systems could only be used by one employee at a time).

Increased transparency: all the data with regard to electronic resources are available in the same system, meaning that they are accessible for the entire organisation. This has led to an increased transparency and a lower need to ask questions to colleagues.

Improved and more efficient discoverability of the e-book and e-journal packages: o The discoverability of standard packages can be arranged in minutes. o The discoverability of non-standard packages takes more time, but the results can be

shared by all libraries who use the same multitenant cloud system and/or participate in a consortium.

o A number of publishers maintained the data of their e-book or e-journal packages at the platform of the cloud systems, thus relieving the library of these tasks. The number of publishers with these services is still limited but can be expected to grow.

Reallocation of staff: the three libraries studied here report that the migration to a multitenant cloud system has facilitated the reallocation of human resources to the management of electronic resources. This reallocation has been facilitated by the integration of the workflows related to printed and electronic resources. This reallocation is also seen as necessary because of the increase in size and importance of the electronic collections. The reallocation of tasks includes to a large extent more quality control regarding the electronic resources.

The French case studies lead to the following observations:

A lack of discovery tools: in two of the three case studies the configuration lacks a discovery tool. In the third case, the present setup of the discovery tool is not considered satisfactory.


A lack of professional tools for the management of electronic resources: Excel spreadsheets are mostly used for this purpose, while this is not considered satisfactory because it is difficult to distribute the work among different employees with this tool.

Problems with the discoverability of the electronic resources: o The knowledge bases of the link resolver or the discovery tools have important

lacunas with regard to the French language resources: as a result, one has to use other means to ensure adequate discoverability.

o The discoverability of e-books: in the three case studies, one tries to make the e-books discoverable via Sudoc and the OPAC. This leads to complicated and time-consuming workflows with rather unsatisfactory results.

Different workflows, sometimes different organisational units: in the three case studies, the workflows with regard to the electronic resources are different from the workflows with regard to the printed resources. In one case, a separate organisational unit is set up for the management of the electronic resources.

Imbalance: there appears to be an imbalance with regard to the human resources involved in the electronic resources and involved in the printed resources, if these are compared to the volumes of the two types of resources.

6.4.5 CONNECTIONS TO INTERNAL SYSTEMS

The usage of API’s of the multitenant cloud systems in order to create connections with other systems within the University are seen as an important possibility to embed the library better within the University. The three libraries using cloud systems report the following:

Financial systems: all three libraries have announced projects in order to develop a connection with the financial system of the University and the multitenant cloud system. When the connections are realised, one expects to be able to make the financial administration of the library more efficient.

Self-service machines: the Boston University libraries report the development of connections to their self-service machines (3M) using an API of Alma. The provider of the former LMS system did offer to develop these connections for a considerable amount of money.

Student information systems; human resource systems: the Boston University libraries report to have developed connections with the student information and human resource information system of the University. Similar connections have been developed by the library of the University of Salford. The library of the Tilburg University has developed a connection between the identity management system of the University and WMS: the majority of the users of WMS are generated by this identity management system of the University.

Educational system: the BU libraries have planned a project to connect the educational system of the University (Blackboard) with Alma. The library of the University of Salford has a similar project for their reading list software.

The French libraries studied here have all expressed a strong wish to connect their LMS to the financial systems of their Universities in order to eliminate double input and to synchronise the budgets that are maintained in both types of systems. However, the regulations (by AMUE)with regard to the financial systems of the University might be a hurdle for developing such connections (see paragraph 4.1.1).


6.4.6 ORGANISATIONAL CHANGES

The libraries that have migrated to a multitenant cloud systems report important organisational consequences: (1) the staff involved in the technical management of the system is no longer needed (2) the number of FTE involved in the cataloguing department can be decreased (Boston University libraries) (3) a reallocation of tasks between the technical staff to the collection management staff (Manchester University library). In addition, some libraries report the implementation of new services (e.g. the library of the University of Liège).

6.5 LONG-TERM COSTS

The following elements of long-term costs are relevant for multitenant cloud systems:

o Development costs: all developments within the cloud system are accessible for all libraries that subscribe to the system. This is a different economic model than in use by conventional library management systems that sometime charge for additional developments and/or modules.

o Cost of dependence/independence: the fact that libraries using a cloud system do not have direct access to their data might lead to a situation of a vendor lock-in. On the other hand, libraries using a multitenant cloud system form a community of users with the possible effect of increasing buying power.

o The cost of a migration in the future: a migration from a cloud system to another system in the future might be more difficult because of the following reasons: (1) the mixture of data belonging to the library and data belonging to the vendor or other libraries and (2) the fact that the library will not have any longer a technical infrastructure and technical competences. The library of the technical University of Delft has planned therefore an exit scenario (see paragraph 3.5.2).

6.6 MIGRATION ISSUES

With regard to the migration to a multitenant cloud system, the following observations were made:

The duration of the migration project: most migration projects took 6 to 9 months.

Consolidation phase: all three libraries mention period of consolidation after the “go live” moment. During this phase, one had to deal with the lack of some functionalities in the new system. This lack of functionalities was partly caused by the fact that the systems were not fully developed at the time and partly because the system was not adapted to the environment of the library itself.

Change management phase: after the consolidation phase, the change management phase begins. During this phase, one adapts the workflows to the possibilities that are offered by the new system and by the connections with other systems (from the University or from vendors). The results reported in section 3.4 show that the period of change management can last several years.

The costs of the migration: the out-of-pocket costs reported by the case studies are not representative for all the libraries, because these costs were minimal or zero because of the fact that they were development partners or early adopters. With regard to human resources for the migration, the case studies find a variation of 0,6 FTE to 6,1 FTE. The most recent one in this study (the library of the University of Technology of Delft) reports approx. 1,3 FTE.


Other aspects: the description of the setup of the organisation of a migration project by the library of the University of Technology of Delft and the preparation of the migration by library of the Swansea University (see paragraphs 3.5.2 and 3.5.3) might be relevant for libraries to consider a migration.

6.7 ELEMENTS FOR A BUSINESS CASE FOR MIGRATING TO A MULTITENANT CLOUD SYSTEM

Is the total cost of ownership of a multitenant cloud system lower than a conventional system? Based on this study, this question can be answered as follows:

• The costs directly related to the system (out-of-pocket costs and the cost of the technical management of the system) are in the same order of magnitude.

• The costs of the operational management of the system appears to be more related to organisational factors than to the type of system in use.

• The efficiency of the workflows based on a multitenant cloud system can be higher than the efficiency of the workflows based on conventional systems if the library is willing to adapt its policies, its workflows and its organisation. The main efficiency gains can be achieved in electronic resource management, in cataloguing and to a lesser extent in acquisition. In order to achieve these efficiency gains, change management is key. It has to be noted that a multitenant cloud system also offers the possibilities for more and better services to end-users. It has become clear that to achieve the above-mentioned efficiency gains in workflows change management is crucial and that the process of adaptation will be a long term process. More efficiency gains might also be expected resulting from new developments within the multitenant cloud systems and from new services for the platforms of the cloud systems developed by publishers.

• With regard to long-term cost, no definitive conclusions can be drawn from this study. The developments cost might be lower than a conventional system, a future migration to another system are unknown.

A business case for the migration might therefore be based on the following elements:

• The increased options to create (better) services for end-users. • The workflows better adapted to the management of electronic resources • The options to share resources with other libraries and with vendors • The options to connect with the internal systems of the university.