Budgets and resources and sanity, oh my!

I’m learning the local budgets at MPOW these days (as the guy wearing the Electronic Resources hat) and it is impressively squirrely. Without digging myself into a hole (since the library, university, state system, and state – let alone the country – are already impressively in the hole) of overly-transparent-ness: “Wow.”

Do you buy your electronic database subscriptions title by title?  Do some come in a “package?”  Do you get some via a consortium?  Do you know what your list price is for each database? Do you know how much you pay for each database “item?”  Which databases are “comes with” databases, which of these actually come free with your main subscription(s) and which have small surcharges attached?

How about your budget process? Do you get one lump sum budget with cost-centers? Do you get 2 or 3 (or more!) budgets with some things being bought wholly from one budget while others are bought with different amounts from multiple budgets?  Are we ready for one of those budgetary pots of money to disappear with the new Chancellor?  Are we ready for a possible 5% “give-back” to the State? *weep*

I was going to say “Actually it’s not as bad as all that…” but actually… well… it is.  If not worse.

Fun task #1: Report (for University Library Committee meeting) [see previous post for adventures on this front]

• #sessions & searches (monthly, semesterly, academic yearly)
• price per search (monthly, semesterly, academic yearly)
• top 10 (heavily used) and bottom 10 (lightly used) databases
• Future: map databases to departments and # of students served

Fun task #2: Identify items purchased in past few years with Performance Funds that have renewals attached and move ongoing commitments from Performance Fund to Library Budget items

Fun task #3: Budget training

Alright, enough kvetching.  I’m off to go make it happen, and I’m just the guy to do it.

Counting with Counter

So I’m doing stats today (pulling reports instead of uploading data) and I find that while the huge table of usage I can pull is quite the nice data set, it could really use some functionality (maybe it’s there and I missed it) to improve the reporting

Suggestions for functionality:

Reports by month are very handy, I love ’em; but it would be great to be able to get semesterly reports, fiscal and/or academic year reports, top 10 (20, 25,50,100) or most used databases, bottom 10 (20, 25,50,100) or least used databases, trend analysis by database, percentage of total usage within reporting period, etc. with one click.

Also there has to be a way to “normalize” some of these database names on the fly.  I have “Academic Search Complete”, “Academic Search Complete Publications”, and “Academic Search Complete — Publications” used in different months.  Couldn’t these all be merged into one database (maybe with an option to break them out in a “database details” popout chart?

These are just what I’m running up against today, I’m sure I’ll have more suggestions later.  Just wait until I have the time to dig into the ERMS at the Journal title level – then we’ll have some fun 🙂

Anyone have other ways to mash their data?
What reports work well for you to help understand your use patterns and usage data?

ERMS prequel

Used to be (at FPOW) I would spend 20-25 hours a month manually gathering database usage data and manually updating this huge spreadsheet with all kinds of fancy cross-links to summary sheets which took me a good three years to build and which I continually tweaked.

Well, a job change a few years ago basically killed that beautiful spreadsheet (different databases, forgot what I did where to make it work right, no time to even glance toward database stats, and other huge little stuff) and I’d been wanting an easy way to skip most of the manual stuff.  Enter SUSHI & COUNTER standards.

After being asked for a recommendation on an ERMS a year (or more) ago those 20-25 hours a month seemed like waay too much hassle.  I explored a bunch of options, never wrote up the process, and in the end we went with Serialssolutions 360 Resource Manager and 360 Counter products as an ERMS and Assessment combination.  (long story short, it meshed well with the rest of our stable of SerialsSolutions products – we don’t do 360 MARC Records since we use the 360 Core A-Z list for all periodicals access)

Time passed, other priorities reared their ugly heads.  More on the story in the next post…

I encourage people to get a handle on their eResources however you may, I had a spreadsheet which did everything except sliced bread.  Now I have a hosted ERMS which I … well I’m getting ahead of myself.

/end backgrounder

Draft ALA Website Style Guide

Straight from ALA WAC, there is a 44 page draft style guide (doc or pdf)for the ALA website making the rounds.

If you’re Section 508 compliance-proficient or if you’d like to lend your eyes for a readthrough and comment upon, please feel free.  Comments here or over on WAC Chair, Michael Stephens’ Tame the Web post or via email to the Web Editorial Board would be much appreciated.  [add:]Please feel free to use the ALA ITTS WebPlanning Wiki as a more central commenting board. (You’ll need to register to comment on this wiki, tho)[end add]

I, Michael, and the WAC (along with all the ALA webcontent volunteers) thank you for your effort.

Cogitating about Conference Costs

So okay, I’m still working on several responses to the post on In the Library wth a Lead Pipe and I took a math detour while spinning my wheels on my regular day job stuff.

How much does it cost to go to a Library Conference?
(I’m using on-site registration $$)
CiL = $469 / 3 days of programs
IL = $449 / 3 days of programs
ALA MW = $300 non-member / $190 personal member / 5 days of working meetings and discussion groups
ALA Annual = $370 non-member / $260 personal member (no citation but I think this is acceptably close to accurate) / 5 days (with 300+ programs, plus committee meetings and other events)

But ALA Annual is *big* (freally big ~20K people) and ALA MW is about half that size (and still fvery large)

Are ALA conferences really that expensive?  Should presenters be givien a “bye” on registration?  Here’s where my (limited) math skills come in to play.

300 programs (some have only 1 presenter, some have 2, some are panels of up to 5 or occasionally 6) so I’ll use a multiplier here (pulling this out of my… ear) say average of 1.75 presenters / program.

300 programs * 1.75 presenters = ~525 “complimentary registrations”

525 comps * $260 for on site registration = wait for it… $136,000 or $68,250 if a special half-rate applies to presenters.

Is the potential draw for comp’d speakers going to at least come close to covering this amount?  I wouldn’t hazard a guess, but I would hope so.  Various sub-units of ALA have differing practices on this – I’d love to see BigALA go this route, but I doubt it would fly.

If you had the chance, how would you restructure ALA’s conference finances in a revenue-neutral way?  Feel free to blog it somewhere (Jason did a long while back) or post your thoughts to the Improve ALA wiki at: http://improveala.pbwiki.com/

Membership: how to pitch it?

Thinking back to Emily’s 3 tiered pyramid

Tier 3:  the dues-paying, insanely active committee serving members
Tier 2:  the dues-paying, conference attending and sort of active members
Tier 1:  the dues-paying yet not really active members

I’d like to bring attention to two other “groups”

The “former members who decided to not renew” and the “potential members who have never joined”

Not to start a gripe-fest, but:
Why did the former members lapse?
Why have the potential members not joined?

Without knowing why people have left or not joined in the first place, how does a very large and very diversely interested association (re-)appeal to people who are not members?
What are the strengths of size/diversity?
What are the weaknesses?

Without completely ignoring the folks outside the pyramid, how can the Association appeal to the Tier 1 members to become more involved?

ALA is working to provide an online meeting space for members to organize their activities; ALA Connect – it’s in beta right now.  I suspect this may be the best start in this direction ALA has yet taken.

imho, one of the keys to the success of this endeavor will be the ease in which members can share out their activities in their myriad social feeds and draw in more interest and participation. I hope to see this work well for the association

Membership: what’s in it for me?

Membership was one of the themes Emily mentioned over in her post on In the Library with a Lead Pipe

Q: What do you (the reader) get out of your membership in ALA?
A: Sorry, you’ll have to answer that one for yourself. *grin*

Q: What do I get out of my membership in ALA?
A: I personally feel one gets out what one puts in.  I put in ~$350 in membership dues (ALA, ACRL (CLS+ULS), LITA, RUSA (BRASS+MARS), GODORT, LHRT, NMRT) plus my personal time for serving on several committees (OITP Advisory and ALA Council, currently) and other initiatives (I volunteer as an ACRL Legislative Advocate and am doing some ALA Web Advisory Committee activities, on the side, too).  I’ve been an ALA Committee Intern (OITP Advisory Committee) and an ALA Committee Virtual Member (ALA Membership Committee) in addition to “regular” committee memberships.  I get loads of positive feedback as well as self-approval for my activities in ALA.  Sure, I would rather not have to pay the dues to do this; but our dues support so much more than what we individually do.

Q: What do libraries (and librarians, all library employees, and library patrons/users) get out of our membership in ALA?
A: My perception is “LibraryLand” (encompassing everyone listed in this Question plus everyone these folks interact with in the course of the day) gets huge benefits.  and now I’ll switch to bulleted list format for brevity:

• ALA Washington Office

The ALA Washington Office is a tremendous asset to LibraryLand as a whole. With a relatively small staff, the WO really provides more bang for the buck than most of the Divisions.  The WO provides a needed focus for LibraryLand voices as well as spearheads our efforts to affect and effect public policy on behalf of all of us.

• ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom / Freedom to Read Foundation / etc.

How to sum up what OIF, FTRF, and all these other programs which tirelessly advocate for our rights to free inquiriy, to privacy of circulation and purchasing records, to teaching people to read, and everythings else they do?  They do the stuff I feel is important but for which I have not the time or energy to spare. My dues (plus other donations) go toward their efforts for which I wish I had time.

• Consolidated administrative / overhead costs for areas each of us find [most interesting/most important]

Contrary to some folks, I figure the Divisions actually get a good value for the dues they don’t have to charge their members.  “BigALA” takes the flack for high dues and the Divisions can focus their dues income into projects deemed worthy without really having to worry about full-time funding for all the positions “BigALA” provides.

• Feel connected

Connection to a very large group of people who put their money where their mouths are, supporting member and Association activities which further the advancement of “library” and thereby “public good” issues and which aim to thwart agendas which do not serve the public at large

That last bullet is really loosey-goosey and wide open to interpretation, of course.

In my view Information Policy is a vital battleground these days and libraries/librarians/library employees/library users all need to be engaged with protecting users’ rights to use what we have legally acquired in digital format.  We also need to be in the forefront of protecting the rights of future users of today’s created-digital content.

In other members’ views our attention should be on best practices for reference, or the future of cataloging, or data modeling, or a host of other valid concerns.

The beauty of being an ALA member is: at the macro level your dues go toward supporting all the above and more; plus everyone’s dues go toward supporting people acting upon your personal concerns.  On a micro level, hopefully you are one of the people taking action on your concerns, if not your concerns might not be fully addressed.  I’m in there advocating for changes I see are needed, many others are in there advocating for the changes they feel are important.  More people advocating for and supporting results which benefit all of us means a stronger voice for our collective concerns.

More members = louder voice (we just have to be sure our collective voice is focused on promoting the services we can, do, and could provide for the public good)

Brainstorming about ALA & Lead Pipes

Over at In the Library with the Lead Pipe Emily Ford posted a nice long detailed post on ALA & Membership. She described a 3 tier model to describe members’ participation in pyramid form which is a good conceptual framework on which to hang ideas and discussion points.

The largest group, the bottom of the pyramid, are Tier 1; people “who pay dues and who have minimal investment in ALA as a professional organization.”  A smaller group, the middle of the pyramid , are Tier 2; people “who pay dues, attend conferences and are nominally to marginally involved in the organization.” The smallest group, the top of the pyramid, are Tier 3; people “who pay dues, belong to divisions and serve on committees.”

I have a lot of not easy to summarize thoughts on many of the points there & plan to post my responses in several posts which will hopefully make sense in the end.  Wish me luck and feel free to suggest things for me to take back to ALA in the form of discussion points and/or recommendations.

Virtual Reference Presentation Brainstorming

Myself and some others have noticed a dearth of presentations on Virtual Reference over the past few years.  I wonder why?  Too much “nuts & bolts” or “how I dun it gud” presentations on the topic in previous years?

Would a more philosophical presentation/discussion raise interest?
Is virtual reference a brain-dead obvious service these days?

Here’s a list of possible themes/questions which I wonder about / think might be good for discussion points:

Themes:
Co-browsing — requirement/superfluous?
Typos — acceptable/omgwtfbbq no way?
Follow ups — email/chat/phone/f2f appointment?
Reference Knowledgebase — use chats to fill/make stuff up/guess what users might want or need?

Questions:

“What are the basic requirements for “Virtual Reference”?
IM?
Avatars?
Reference Blogging?
Meebo Widgets on every page?

Brainstorm with me!

Feel free to comment on Friendfeed if you prefer, though some new commentary on the blog would make me feel good, too 🙂

ALA TFoEMP Question 1 – Open Meetings

After much [seemingly “behind the veil” to non-task-force-members] researching and discussions, the ALA Task Force on Electronic Member Participation has developed some questions needing answers.  Question One concerns “Open Meetings.”  See the ALA Council List archive for the full message sent out to Council. (excerpted below)

If you have comments you would like me (as your Councilor at Large / vocal proxy) to make officially (whether on your behalf or in the aggregate) regarding this request for comments, I’ll be watching and participating in the comments below as well as in my various aggregated social media feeds.

So, some history and then the request (note the N.B. below the request) ::

The Open Meetings Policy originated around 1970 because the “library press” (I wonder which ones?) wanted to attend ALA Executive Board meetings.  “Open” and “Closed” are not defined in the policy and are not addressed in any “interpretations.”  No goals and/or reasoning for or against is provided by available historical documentation.  “However, there have always been limitations to the “reach” of the Open Meetings Policy, deriving from physical, logistical, and financial factors.” The Open Meetings policy has never been applied to between-meeting correspondence of any kind which is/was part of “regular work of the association“.

…the Task Force has concluded that expansion of electronic participation in association governance requires not a new policy, but a new Interpretation of the existing policy.

(which, to me, seems appropriate)

…the Task Force is asking for input from Councilors about what they believe the benefits of open meetings to be, what we should hope to achieve by having open meetings, and, if it is impossible at this time to implement “the purest form” of open meetings, what the nature of “open” means in an online environment, and what kinds of access to what kinds of information would be sufficient to satisfy our desire for openness in Association governance.

N.B. these caveats:

Specifically, this request for input is addressing “providing a mechanism for people who are not members of particular governance entities (committees, task forces, boards, etc.) to know what those entities are doing.”

Specifically *not* about electronic participation by members of these entities and *not* about electronic access to “non-meeting activities” of those governance entities.