The development of the virtual electronic library and the resulting shift
in emphasis from ownership to access raise questions about the
responsibility for local collection development. However, access depends
on ownership; a network does not create new resources, it facilitates
the sharing of existing resources. This sharing has resulted in
burdensome levels of interlibrary loan activity. In addition to the
financial costs that result from this activity, convenience costs to local
users at the lending library and increased preservation costs must be
considered. Finally, research libraries will not only be measured by
ownership statistics but by access criteria as well, and they will also
have to deal with the politics of virtual libraries and networking.published or submitted for publicatio

Shaughnessy, Thomas W.

English

Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship Repository

THOMAS W. SHAUGHNESSYUniversity LibrarianUniversity of MinnesotaMinneapolis, MinnesotaThe Real Costs and Financial Challengesof Library Networking: Part 2*ABSTRACTThe development of the virtual electronic library and the resulting shiftin emphasis from ownership to access raise questions about theresponsibility for local collection development. However, access dependson ownership; a network does not create new resources, it facilitatesthe sharing of existing resources. This sharing has resulted inburdensome levels of interlibrary loan activity. In addition to thefinancial costs that result from this activity, convenience costs to localusers at the lending library and increased preservation costs must beconsidered. Finally, research libraries will not only be measured byownership statistics but by access criteria as well, and they will alsohave to deal with the politics of virtual libraries and networking.THE VIRTUAL (OR LOGICAL) LIBRARY AND NETWORKINGOne of the most dangerous ideas to confront research librarianshipin recent years is the notion of the virtual electronic library. This isthe library represented in part by the OCLC and Research LibrariesThis paper summarizes comments made by the author as part of a panel discussiontitled "The Real Costs and Financial Challenges of Library Networking." Panelparticipants included Kenneth Gros Louis, Paul Hunt, Thomas Shaughnessy, andWilliam Studer.123124 THOMAS W. SHAUGHNESSYInformation Network (RLIN), plus the online public access catalogs(OPACs) of individual libraries, plus a vast array of commercialdatabases. So what is so dangerous about this idea? The danger is thatit relieves libraries, in the minds of campus decision makers, of theresponsibility to build local collections, to request more space for old-fashioned, paper-based collections, and to engage in all of the labor-intensive inventory control activities that are required by printcollections. The so-called library without walls, however, continues tobe very much a series of physical places housed within some very realwalls. For it is these institutions that supply a great deal of theinformation requested via the networks.The recent shift in emphasis from ownership to access thinkingthat seems to have pervaded even our own field without muchchallenge leads one to ask why any library should buy any printmaterial at all. In fact, why even have a library? Would not an officeequipped with fax machines, text-digitizing equipment, scholarlyworkstations, and other electronic telecommunication devices suffice?But what would such a center be providing access to? The answer restsheavily upon collections and other resources identified, selected,purchased, cataloged, processed, shelved, and made available for useby some library, somewhere, which invested in the ownership of scholarlymaterial. In the last analysis, access depends on ownership.Some have tried to compare research libraries to supercomputingcenters. A relatively small number of supercomputers are sufficient tomeet the needs of most academic researchers. Most of the university-based supercomputers have excess capacity, and consequently time onthese machines is being sold to the private sector. But there are no"superlibraries." Most research libraries are able to acquire less thanone-tenth of the world's publications each year (estimated by UNESCOto be some 850,000 titles).It is also important to remember a statement that Dick DeGennaromade about networks: by itself, a network creates no new resources;it merely facilitates the sharing of existing resources. To build onDeGennaro's insight, one can compare the relationship betweennetworks and libraries to the relationship between the musicians inan orchestra and their conductor: Networks, like batons, make no sound.The sounds that bring us to the concert hall and elevate our spiritsare those made by the individual instrumentalists and virtuosos. Weneed to value and reinvest in our virtuoso library collections and moveaway from a situation in which we seem to know the cost or priceof everything and the value of nothing.USE OF NETWORKS RESOURCE SHARINGThe second topic briefly addressed here is one of the specific usesmade of networks: resource sharing. In the past three years, interlibraryCOSTS OF LIBRARY NETWORKING PART 2 125loan lending among the ten largest public academic research librariesincreased by 16 percent, while borrowing increased by 25 percent.Reasons for less interlibrary loan activity among the largest are (a)overload, (b) internal tactics by staff to reduce workload, (c) fees, and(d) saying "no." Among all (large and small) Association of ResearchLibraries (ARL) university libraries, lending activity increased by 25.6percent (1987-90), while borrowing increased by 30.5 percent. These onehundred or so university libraries loaned or borrowed more than 4.2million items in 1989-90. If this rate of increase persists, by 1995-96,interlibrary transactions will increase to 6.3 million items. Accordingto Rowland Brown, OCLC's former CEO, U.S. ARL libraries provideapproximately 22 percent of the loans on OCLC but account for only2.5 percent of the membership.Tom Waldhart (1985), in his review article on interlibrary loan,postulates that if the volume of interlibrary loan activity were toapproach just 5 percent of every library's total circulation, "it is highlyunlikely... that the nation's libraries, or its interlibrary loan system, couldeffectively deal with numbers of this magnitude without a majorbreakdown in operation" (p. 217).But the fact is that many of our libraries are already finding itimpossible to keep up with existing levels of interlibrary loan traffic.As George Keller (1983) noted in his book, Academic Strategy, wherepressures are in charge, the present gets attention, not the future; fightingbrush fires and improvisation take precedence, not planning; defenseis the game, not offense (p. 75).Many of us believe that there are two driving forces behind therising demand for resource sharing: the increased bibliographic accessprovided by OPACs and CD-ROMs and the use of resource sharingnetworks to borrow not just esoteric or seldom-used material but basic,curriculum-related undergraduate books and journals. We know thisis happening in Minnesota, and it is probably occurring in other statesas well. Because all of Minnesota's public colleges have converted theirbibliographic records, it is possible to determine the age of librarycollections based on date of publication. Twenty-seven percent of thetitles owned by these libraries were published before 1960; 26 percentwere published in the 1960s; 27 percent in the 1970s; and 19 percentin the 1980s. One of these state university libraries currently has a listingof 450 journals from which it has requested the maximum number ofphotocopies allowable under the copyright law. A large and growingproportion of the 600 items that the University of Minnesota librarieslend each day is not research material. Not long ago, at a meeting similarto this one, Sheila Dowd, who was then head of collection developmentat Berkeley, said that the jury is still out on how far we can go insharing materials that are central to our respective universities' missions.126 THOMAS W. SHAUGHNESSYCOSTS OF NETWORKING/RESOURCE SHARINGStrange as it may sound, it is very difficult to get a handle onthe costs of resource sharing. The Research Libraries Group (RLG)tried to conduct a study of these costs in five libraries in 1988 and cameup with these figures: borrowing costs ranged from $13 to $20 per item;lending costs ranged from $5 to $15. If we were to assume that theaverage cost of an interlibrary loan transaction in 1990 was $15, thenthe ARL university libraries spent $63.6 million on this activity in 1989-90. This is almost three times the amount these libraries spent on bindingand is 87 percent of the amount they spent for part-time studentassistants. In just five or six years, if present trends continue, ARLuniversity libraries could be spending 100 million dollars on interlibrarylending and borrowing.There are obviously other costs in addition to financial ones. Theseinclude convenience costs to local users (to what extent is access likejustice: is access delayed or denied?) and preservation costs (to whatextent is the life span of library collections particularly boundjournals being shortened due to repeated photocopying?). To the bestof the author's knowledge, these costs have never been factored intothe real costs (mushy as they are) of resource sharing.MEASUREMENTS, STANDARDS, AND POLITICSA few words about each of these. Measurement: We all bemoanthe fact that research libraries continue to be measured according toownership statistics that bigger is necessarily better and that quantityis synonymous with quality. Library volume counts; volumes addedand serials subscribed to are simply inputs to the library organization.We need these measures, but we also need to measure "units of access."But as the ARL Committee on Statistics learned, trying to measureaccess is like trying to climb a very slippery slope. And while we maycriticize the ARL statistics, they remain the best in the library worldand continue to be relied upon by library administrators and othercampus decision makers. Our challenge is to come up with valid accessmeasures that focus on user outcomes, measures that balance ourtraditional measures of library inputs or throughputs.With regard to standards, many librarians are far more interestedin standards such as Z39.50 than they are in ACRL standards that statethe responsibility of all academic libraries to develop collections thatsupport the curriculum. There is no substitute for basic, up-to-datecollections available on site. We would not think of borrowing basicCOSTS OF LIBRARY NETWORKING PART 2 127laboratory equipment such as microscopes and Bunsen burners fromanother institution. Certain library collections are just as basic.Finally, the politics of virtual libraries and networking must beconsidered. In many ways, the problems faced by libraries are similarto those of the health industry. In both areas, costs are escalating beyondour ability to keep pace, and questions of institutional responsibilityare being raised along with questions of access, the quality of servicesrendered, and the need for cost containment. One writer has suggestedthat research libraries are imprisoned by the book, and were they ableto eliminate entirely the need to acquire and manage large printcollections, up to 80 percent of the cost of operating these librariesmight be saved or redirected. But the challenge that we face is managingour libraries over a fairly extended transition period. We are caughtbetween two very different worlds. Many library administrators aretrying to move towards a library without walls as they deal with resourcesthat are very much placebound. But in the last analysis, most of uswould acknowledge that Jim Penrod was right when he said that inthe world in which we now live, capital and/or human resources orbook collections can no longer guarantee success. Rather, he said, servicequality, speed of response, and innovation are now the determinantsof success in information organizations.We need, therefore, to appreciate the fact that a great deal of theworld's information continues to exist in print and paper. Consequently,for quite a few more years we will continue to need real libraries, notvirtual ones.REFERENCESKeller, G. (1983). Academic strategy: The management revolution in American highereducation. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Waldhart, T. J. (1985). I. Performance of interlibrary loan in the U.S.: A review of research.Library and Information Science Research, 7(3), 209-229.

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