24 th Annual IATUL Conference June 5, 2003 • Ankara, Turkey

1. 24th Annual IATUL ConferenceJune 5, 2003• Ankara, Turkey Ever Widening Circles: Managing Library Consortia, Managing Change Deb deBruijn • Executive Director • Canadian National Site Licensing Project

2. Library Consortia in Canada • Demographics – entire Canadian university community smaller than state of California • No national education funding authority • Universities under provincial jurisdiction • Development of local, regional, national library consortia • Focus on electronic resources: transforming the marketplace • Profound change in our own organizations

3. What’s the Problem? • Changing research environment • interdisciplinary, international, informatics • researcher needs and expectations are changing • Libraries’ ability to predict needs is changing • Economic realities • proliferation of publications • double-digit price increases • decline of Cdn dollar • chronic erosion of library collections to support teaching and research • Canada has little clout in global market

4. Reality Check Status quo Business as usual

5. Opportunity • Canada’s national innovation agenda • Emergence of new players in research funding • Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI)

6. Canadian National Site Licensing Project (CNSLP) • Research content isinfrastructure • Equitable access to research content is good public policy • Demonstration project: proof of concept at national scale • CNSLP was the second largest national award made by CFI

7. CNSLP Goals • Build capacity for innovation • Increase quantity/breadth/depth of scholarly pubs • Lower economic barriers to access • Speed transition to digital formats • Introduce critical mass • Maximize value to researchers • Influence the marketplace • Leverage buying power & influence • Reduce market volatility / unpredictability • Test and develop new business models

8. Mechanism • 33-year demonstration project, 64 Cdn universities • Licensing digital forms of scholarly content • Fulltext, primarily S/T/M • $50 M (Cdn.) - $47 M of that is content • Prototype – test structures & resources necessary to scale to national level • Gain experience; explore issues • Develop means to extend the initiative over time

9. Distinguishing features:Organization • National governance, management & communication structures • “Empowering” agreements • Proposal to CFI (April 1999) • Inter-university agreement (Jan 2000) • Agency agreement with U of Ottawa (Feb 2001) • Leveraging human resources • Licensing/legal expertise, negotiations, contract administration

10. Distinguishing Features:License Procurement Process • Licensing as a complex procurement in a dysfunctional market • Key considerations • Best value per CNSLP $ • Fair, thorough, unbiased process • Procurement strategy • Understand the vendor • Create a competitive environment • Position CNSLP for powerful negotiations • Formal methodology • Pre-qualification bid, RFP, & bid evaluation • Structured negotiations in order of Preferred Bidders

11. Achievements • Pan-Canadian licenses (2001-2003) with 7 publishers • 2200+ electronic journals & citation tools • CNSLP license agreement • Cdn jurisdiction, Cdn $, advantageous usage rights • Excellent return on investment • $47M Cdn investment = over $300M of content • Electronic-based pricing model (unbundled print) • Shift in public policy: Libraries recognized as points of strategic investment • CNSLP as leverage for other funding & developments

12. Observations • Risk reduction is good for all parties • Reduce price margins • Encourage movement / innovation • Allow shifts in business practices • Building research infrastructure requires long-term commitments, and serious interdependence • We are not the same organizations as when we started

13. Organizational & change management: lessons learned • Collaboration is fundamentally different from cooperation • Negotiations with members and internal clients are more complex than with vendors • Conflict and problems are a necessary and productive way of moving ahead • Sometimes easier to agree on big things than on small • There will be shifts in roles and responsibilities • Commitment to accountability • Goodness is not self-evident • Some would rather see the initiative fail • Processes must be open, transparent, defensible (eg. governance, procurement) • Define the need/problem before defining the solution

14. Evaluation • Evaluation framework • Team-based • Pragmatic & strategic • Quantitative & qualitative measures • Objectives, activities, outputs, and impacts • Importance of communications and documents that: • Set out the process • Define the participants • Clarify roles and responsibilities • Tie activities to strategic goals, core business, consultations, and past decisions

15. The Future? “I dream of a new age of curiosity. We have the technical means forit; the desire is there; the things to be known are infinite;the people who can employ themselves at this task exist. Why do wesuffer? From too little; from channels that are too narrow, skimpy,quasi-monopolistic, insufficient. There is no point in adopting aprotectionist attitude, to prevent "bad" information from invadingand suffocating the "good." Rather, we must multiply the paths andpossibility of comings and goings.” - Michel Foucault, "The Masked Philosopher" quoted in Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order ofNature 1150-1750 (New York: Zone Books, 1998): p. 9.

16. More information Deb deBruijn debruijn@uottawa.ca www.cnslp.ca