Acquisitions

Acquisitions : the new age

Anxiety or euphoria?
Consortial acquisitions

Paul Wilkins, Barr Smith Library, University of Adelaide

Overview

• Consortia: a new step in co-operative acquisitions
• New age anxieties
• Consortial objectives
• New age acquisition skills
• Sharing the benefits

Consortial acquisitions

• As a new step in acquisitions co-operation
• Formal association of members which may exist for range of consortial purposes or be formed specifically for acquisitions
• Joint selection of preferred supplier/suppliers and agreed contributions to consortium expenditure

Notes
The portion of the Library of Congress foreign acquisition program that acquires materials for other libraries, known as the Co-operative Acquisitions Prograrn, is a perfect example of how the library is uniquely positioned to serve the nation's library systems. Currently, the Library of Congress provides this centralised service so that 78 of the nation's premier academic libraries may secure hard-to-acquire foreign research materials. As originally conceived, the program was a way to make use of foreign currencies that the U.S. government would accumulate all over the world [P.L. 83-480]. As P.L. 480 funds have been depleted, the library, since 1983, has been able to operate the program by recovering costs from the participating university and research libraries.

Specialist areas
Libraries may be members of different consortial groupings for different purposes.
Serials, in my experince have proved more difficult than monograhps to approach consortially. First of all in large libraries particularly, the management of serials is a major budget item in its own right which the library may be reluctant to subject to consortial influence. Consortial licensing which is very much part of the new age acquisitions is not part of my brief today.

Contribution is percentage of monograph vote.

Consortia

• OhioLink
• CONZULAC
• WAGUL
• VARLAC
• Preliminary discussions by the South Australian Regional Collections Planning Group of the three SA university libraries

Notes
The big one in the US is indeed OhioLink with over 70 libraries involved. Public, private, universities, colleges, community colleges, etc.

Another is the Research Triangle Libraries in North Carolina with Duke University, University of North Carolina, and North Carolina State University. There are a number of New England libraries involved in a consortium as well. In the UK, there are large regionally based consortiums.

In California, there is an emerging consortium consisting of the 23 California State University campuses. And of course, here in New Zealand there are the CONZULAC libraries consisting of seven of the eight universities (University of Auckland opted out). Council of New Zealand University Libraries Acquisitions Consortium.

No VARLAC data shared which was not in the public RFP.

Some acquisitions anxieties

• Mindset change
• Discounts will come at the expense of quality
• Danger of monopoly
• Commitment targets
• Cataloguing criteria for acquisitions decisions
• Supplier viability

Notes Mindset change: interview analogy.
Formal agreements. In VARLAC case contracts with suppliers.
Consortium agreement.

VARLAC assessment priorities.
Book supply and service quality.
Pricing policy.
Value chain improvement possibilities.

Single supplier. Not necessarily the case. May be one or two suppliers VARLAC RFP.

Some supplier anxieties

• Loss of market share
• Lack of true economy of scale
• Firm order market
• Commitments not met
• Escalating costs to meet Library IT and ancillary expectations

Notes
What's in it for the vendor?

• Expenditure almost never reaches the amounts mooted. Since this is a firm-order market there is, unlike approval plans, no economy of scale for the vendor.
• We are still asked to receive orders from a number of sources, bill and deliver books to a number of customers,and get paid by a number of customers.
• There is a serious problem of the survival of vendors in the industry and a resulting near-monopoly.

Consortial objectives

• Best value for money
  
  • Supply and quality of service
  • Price
    
    
• Value chain improvements
• Shared benefits
• Shared collection development
• Political benefit

Notes
Buying club?

Best value for money - i.e shared money?

Supply and quality of service.
Price.
Value chain improvements.
Shared benefits.

Supply and service assessment

• Rigorous RFP assessment process
  
  • Vendor interviews and presentations
  • Demonstrated ability trials
  • Vendor references
    
    
• Compliance with standards
• Performance measures
• Performance reports
• Review meetings

Notes
VARLAC key performance standards
Fill rate
Speed of delivery
Customer support responsiveness
Availability fo vendor database
MARC records where required

Also monitoring
Accuracy of supply
Accuracy of invoicing
Timeliness, regularity and accuracy of status reports
Coverage, accuracy and currency of vendor database

Consortial pricing issues

• Current discounts
• Orders mix
• Degree of consolidation
• Expenditure quantum and cashflow
• Ancillary services factor
• Approval or firm order
• Service standards expected

Porter's value chain

• The value chain for any firm in any business is the linked set of value-creating activities all the way from basic raw material sources for component suppliers through to the ultimate end-use product delivered to the customer.
• perform activities more efficiently (lower cost)
• perform activities in a unique way that creates greater value (differentiation)

Customers purchase value, which they measure by comparing the products and services of a company with similar offerings of competitors. It was pointed out by Porter (1990), that to gain competitive advantage over rivals, a firm has two options:
a.to provide comparable buyer value but perform activities more efficiently than its competitors (lower cost);
b.to perform activities in a unique way that creates greater buyer value and allows a higher price (differentiation).

Is applicable to our internal Library procedures - part of the New Age picture is the now quite long standing reorganisation of technical services workflows, staffing and structures as a result of integrated library systems allowing more one stop task completion with online capture of cataloguing data as part of the acquisitions and receiving process. Other things being equal the move has been to adding more value in processes and the next step is to develop this externally in the overall process from supplier to user.

New age acquisition skills

• Negotiation
• RFP and response assessment
• Legal liaison
• Change management
• Co-operation and conflict resolution
• Supplier relationship management
• Performance review
• Systems and holistic view
• Time management

Sharing the benefits 1

Small library benefit

Sharing the benefits 2

• Known relationship
• Closer co-operation
• Value chain improvements
• Simplified processes
• Increased discount and purchasing power
• High systems development input
• Political approval