Variety is the Spice of LifeDiffering Models of Collaborative

Entrepreneurship at the UNCG Libraries

Different, but the sameShould make fiscal sense. Should align with our mission and goals.

Has to be good for primary clientele – the students and faculty of UNCG.

As a state-supported school, we would like initiatives to provide benefits state-wide.

As a public academic library, we would like initiatives to provide benefits to other libraries.

Journal Finder- The Accidental Entrepreneurial Model

Creating Journal FinderAt the time of its creation and early

development, there was no entrepreneurial intent

The product was so good, that lots of libraries wanted it.

We decided to become a service provider for other libraries.

“It isn’t right to charge”

Money QuestionsShould we charge at all? Or should it be

Open Source?What is our overall fiscal strategy? Are we

going to use this as a cash cow? Or are we viewing this as a community service?

How should we structure the fees? FTE? Number of titles?

What services should we provide?Should we go national or stay local?Should we try to sell it to a company?

The Balance Sheet“Why in the world would you run a service that

just breaks even? You should pay someone else to do it.”

Changing numbers- The equation during development- The early stage of the service- The mature stage of the service- The sale

Indirect BenefitsSaved an estimated $150,000 that UNCG would have

had to pay for a link resolver (based on a Serials Solutions quote for comparable functionality)

Estimated cost avoidance for NC schools of $525,000 (all that money would have gone out of state)

Estimated UNC System savings of over $240,000There is also a certain amount of value to

The ability of UNCG faculty and students to use to a resolver two or three years before most other schools

UNCG’s name and logo displayed for years at 42 schools with 200,000+ students

Raising profile of UNCG nationally through presentations, consulting, articles, etc

Was it worth it?We were able tobe the first in the country provide our

students and faculty with a research tool available nowhere else

offer a cut-rate, high quality service to historically underfunded schools

offer a cutting-edge research tool to UNCG patrons and come out over $400,000 ahead over 5 years, while other institutions are coming out about $200,000 behind to offer a comparable product over the same 5 year period

Journal Finder – Accidental Entrepreneurship1. Makes fiscal sense2. Aligns with library mission and goals

ROI (Money) – HighROI (Usage) – High

The Carolina Consortium – The Sam’s Club Entrepreneurial Model

BackgroundMajor cancellations at UNCG lead us to

implement wide-scale PPVPPV was more cost effective than

subscriptions, but use was clustered in a few publishers

It was cheaper to join Big Deals for Wiley, Blackwell, and Springer but we weren’t eligible to join any consortiums with access to those deals

Other schools had expressed interest, so we decided to see if we could achieve critical mass to form a group

The Carolina ConsortiumFounded in 2005 with 39 academic libraries

participating in up to 3 deals, with a total cost avoidance of about $70 million

NC and SC partnershipNo committees, officers, or staffA Virtual Consortium

Measuring the value of the groupUsageNumber of available titlesCost per useCost per titleCost avoidanceEconomic impactActual savingsROI

Small – Meredith CollegeEnrollment of 2400In 2004, had 3 Wiley and 11 Springer

subscriptions with a list price of approximately $9950

By participating in the Carolina Consortium Wiley and Springer deals, they gained access to an additional 1447 journals

Meredith was able to increase its Wiley and Springer holdings 1000% and was only required to pay about 2% more

Medium – UNCGIn 2004, we paid $65,886.32 for PPV articles.

After the Big Deals, that expenditure was reduced by 75%, generating a $48,000 savings.

Dropped $10,000/yr Springer Solinet dealBenefited from inflation capsSignificant actual savings (around

$65,000/year), not just cost avoidancePaying less, and getting more

Large – Clemson and USCGained many new titlesJoined the Carolina Consortium so that they

could share their titles state-wide

Carolina Consortium - Trends

3 163839

72

11783

270

534

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100

200

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2005

OffersSchools

Deals

The Carolina Consortium today130 colleges, universities, and community

colleges72 offers generate 879 dealsAnnual aggregate cost avoidance of $230

million

Carolina Consortium– Sam’s Club Entrepreneurship1. Makes fiscal sense2. Aligns with library mission and goals

ROI (Money) – HighROI (Usage) – High

NC DOCKS – The “Risk Management” Entrepreneurial Model

A Shared NeedMultiple UNC-system schools were highly

interested in establishing IR’sOne was poised to pay a commercial vendor

over $20,000 one-time, plus $10,000/yr for an IR product

A Shared SolutionUNCG offered to build and host an IR for

UNCG, UNCP, ECU, ASU, and UNCW for $3500/yr per school

Schools would commit to 3 yearsThe group would collectively decide on

features and needsInitial design is fairly low-cost, with the

option of adding features if usage warrants

The MoneyFor approximately the same cost that one school was

about to pay an out-of-state company, we are able to provide a highly customized IR for 5 schools

All payments are a balance transfer within the UNC system, so all funds stay within UNC’s coffers

It seems unlikely that any school could host and run their own IR (even an Open Source product) for as little as they are paying us

The amount of staff time that UNCG is committing to building and hosting NC DOCKS is more or less equal to our income from the project, so it is cost neutral

Was it worth it?In terms of usage, it is too early to sayDefinitely cheaper for the five of us to share

costs than for us each to support a separate IR

NC DOCKS – “Risk Management” Entrepreneurship1. Makes fiscal sense2. Aligns with library mission and goals

ROI (Money) – OKROI (Usage) – too early to say

Conclusion

Embrace entrepreneurship. It can be an effective vehicle for promoting and extending library values, collections, and services.

http://journalfinder.wtcox.comhttp://library.uncg.edu/carolinaconsortiumhttp://libres.uncg.edu/ir