Monographs State of the Art Theo Stubbs Imperial

Monographs: State of the Art Theo Stubbs, Imperial College London

What I will cover - The monographs survey from summer 2018 - Current work and next steps - Overlap and the 583 field (slides kindly provided by Ruth Elder and White Rose Libraries)

Monographs survey - general overview - Done as part of my dissertation last year - Questions covered many aspects of what we would need to know about shared collections - Now available as a report and a short report

Aims of monographs survey - To find out if there is appetite among the community - Whether the idea of ‘rareness is common’ has credence - What benefits would be sought - What challenges exist

Recommendations - These covered the work that should be done And the potential shape of a UKRR for monographs

Vestibulum congue Wait for the NBK More work on digital surrogacy Larger overlap studies Next Steps Development of a model Guidelines for best practice

And finally. . . - Consult academics

Why? - Politically sensitive issue, particularly among some groups - A good opportunity to understand users and develop a model with this information in hand - Means these groups feel part of the process

Relevant specific findings of monographs study

Survey for academic staff designed - Developed in conjunction with the UKRR Board - The general aims were to understand: - Disciplinary differences - Behaviours in relation to items held in closedaccess stores and interlibrary loan - The potential benefits and priorities for researchers when taking part in this type of work

Survey (for library directors) about a survey (for academic staff) - We need the support of library directors, as this would be likely to come from them - It thus needs to be in a form that they are happy to share - We sent this out to RLUK directors, asking two questions and for them to mark up the survey with track changes

The two questions: ▪ Would you be prepared to distribute the survey to academics at your institution? If not, why not? ▪ Do you foresee any risks with surveying academics?

Responses - Received responses from 16 RLUK libraries - Some positive, most cautious

Issues noted - Too long and too complex - Library-centric jargon - Mixed opinions towards survey format - Many libraries unprepared to send - would be more happy to consult academics using other channels - Some data can be more reliably gathered from other sources

Three main steps Obtain relevant data Where desired, support local consultation Where desired, support institutions to deliver an edited survey

Next steps - obtain data - Try to pull together data from different sources to address some of the questions - Sources include: - Ithaka studies - SCONUL returns - LMSs - General research

SCONUL data 1 - collection size

SCONUL data 2 - interlibrary loans

Ithaka data - where do people go next? 1) Freely available online version 2) Give up and look for something else 3) Interlibrary loan What does this mean if more material is not immediately available? From: Wolff, C. , Rod, A. B. , & Schonfeld, R. C. (2016). Ithaka S+R, Jisc, RLUK - UK survey of academics 2015. https: //doi. org/10. 3886/ICPSR 34651

SCONUL data 3 - SCONUL Access data - Use of other libraries is not very popular - Less than 1000 loans to Band A Sconul Access users per year - Issues with data on this - Has only been part of the SCONUL return since 14/15 - Bluntness of Band A: includes academic staff, support staff, Ph. Ds

Next steps - support local consultation - Appreciate that some institutions would prefer to consult in their own way - Put into place a central point of contact and a deadline for institutions which don’t want to use the survey format - This central point of contact could be the newly convened RLUK Collections Strategy Network - Guidance about the areas we would like to understand

Next steps - deliver edited survey - Re-design the survey, making it much shorter and focused specifically on benefits - Make this available to institutions which wish to use it

Understanding collections overlap: an investigation into White Rose Libraries collections using the SCS Green. Glass and COPAC Collaboration Collection Management Tool Final Report, July 2017

● Size of the data lake ● How does this impact on the level of overlap? ● The potential of the NBK infrastructure to expose retention commitments ● Appetite within the community to commit to the development of a national shared collection – with the commitments that will involve?

Example of use of 583 MARC tag in Amherst College local catalogue (East Retention Partner) o

● What might a national collection look like ○ Research ○ Loanable? ● Where is a national collection sited ○ Distributed collection ○ Centralised collection ● Objective: preservation of a national collection whilst liberating space locally

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step…

Thanks, and any questions?