International
During 2004 DEF was involved in a number of international activities, like for example participation in international fora, international visits to Denmark and study visits. The license experts in the secretariat have also had continuous contact to suppliers who normally travel to Denmark for their meetings.
International fora:
- DEF participates actively in the organisation ICOLC (International Coalition Of Library Consortia) i.a. through planning the annual conference which took place in Barcelona in October. DEF also took part in the annual conference in UKSG (United Kingdom Serial Group) where inspiration can be found in lectures and workshops and where useful contacts and meetings are provided
- Nordic license work is organised in a Nordic License group which means a good opportunity to put pressure on the supplier for better prices and better conditions. A join meeting was held in Finland and meetings with suppliers were held in some of the Nordic countries. Together with other Nordic colleagues DEF was invited to Norway, i.a. to advise ABM-utvikling (Archives, Libraries and Museums) on their potential involvement in license work in Norway
- In the beginning of December DEF participated in Online Information 2004 in London Olympia. Apart from network cooperation, participation in this annual event is purely for the purpose of arranging a large number of meetings with suppliers about prices, contractual conditions and outstanding business concerning electronic resources. In particular renewal of extensive contracts with Elsevier, ISI and Springer/Kluwer were being considered. The event provides excellent opportunities for keeping up with development within the area, and DEF presented a paper on selection and implementation of a journal search engine
- DEF took part in the LIBER conference which this year was held in St. Petersburg in Russia. There were several interesting presentations at the conference itself and as usual a pre-conference had been arranged, organised by SPARC Europe (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition Europe) on the subject OA (Open Access). Inspiring presentations were given on status for OAAI (Open Archive Initiative), Institutional Repositories, Berlin Declaration and prospects for university libraries
- DEF was invited to a JISC strategy seminar in London and was given the chance to comment on an initiative from a number of American and English researchers as to future development and research within digital libraries.
International visits to Denmark:
- A number of international organisations visited DEF in Denmark in connection with study tours etc. The steering committee for the project Norwegian Digital Library visited DEF to gather experiences for the national Norwegian project in continuation of a DEF presentation in Norway
- In the spring LIBRIS department from the Royal Library in Stockholm visited DEF in Copenhagen. They were followed by a group of ten Polish library people from the Polish National Library and other libraries in Poland, lead by the head of the Danish Institute of Culture in Poland. Finally a very large group of librarians from various Polish libraries arrived by bus. All in all they amounted to 45 people, including interpreters, and consisted of library directors of public libraries and university libraries as well as teachers from library schools
- Finally DEF was visited by a Spanish delegation from Catalonia who has subsequently invited the Danish National Library Authority to arrange various teaching courses in Catalonia.
Study tours:
- DEF was invited to participate in a Nordic study tour, i.a. with a view to e-learning initiatives and general national initiatives. The tour was also used to strengthen cooperation with the organisers JISC and SURF
- The DEF steering committee visited SURF in Utrecht in The Netherlands and JISC in Bristol in England. The week’s visit provided much new information and ideas for new activities were generated. Both trips resulted in closer contact to SURF and JISC and a more formal cooperation is expected to be established in 2005.
Savings by license cooperation
The price which the individual institution pays for scholarly journals in both printed and electronic form is normally based on the institution’s original subscriptions for printed journals. It means that it can be more expensive for the institution to enter into consortia because it has to pay an extra electronic fee. This extra fee means, however, that the institution gets access to the consortium’s collective stock of journals, consequently getting more for the money as well as the chance of greater flexibility in relation to the end users’ actual usage. It turns out the end users’ use at the individual institution is spread over the total holdings of the consortium. The type of consortium agreement that gives the institution access to the entire package is called a ’big deal’. In the following two examples of saving by consortia agreement are presented.
American Chemical Society: The agreement consists of about 30 journals at a total value of USD 47,550 (2005). Twelve libraries participate. If the libraries were to pay full price individually for all journal titles, the total price would be USD 570,600. However, the consortium only pays USD 190,211 – a saving of USD 380,389. The institution’s historic collection of journals means that the saving for the individual institution varies. A library which previously had no subscriptions pays USD 500 and gets full access. The library that had most subscriptions already pays USD 39,564 and gets the same access. In relation to the total price for all the journals of USD 47,550 both institutions save money.
ACM Digital Library: This agreement gives a discount dependent on how many libraries participate. If a single library wishes to get access the price is USD 10,845. The Danish consortium has nine participants, and the price is therefore USD 6,146 per participant or a saving of USD 4,699 per institution. See figure.
The figure shows the payment for access to the online product ACM, dependent on whether the agreement is signed with a consortium or with individual institutions. The horizontal axis shows the number of institutions and the vertical axis shows their payment collectively and individually. This consortium has 9 participating institutions. Each institution in the consortium pays USD 6,145. The corresponding payment per institution outside the consortium would be USD 10,845. This means the individual institution saves about 40%.
This page forms part of the publication 'Denmark's Electroic Research Library. Annual Report 2004' as chapter 12 of 15
PrintPublication may be found at the address http://www.bs.dk/publikationer/english/deff04/index.htm
© 2005