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Stanford University Libraries Redesign Report
Implementation Issues
True to the goals of reengineering, the
numbers of transactions necessary to acquire and
process materials are reduced dramatically in
this plan. To ensure that our collections, their
access, and their service are not jeopardized,
the Libraries must consider carefully impact of
implementation. Identifying issues and applying
and monitoring solutions across the entire
library system are critical to the success of
this cost-saving endeavor.
All library divisions must commit to balance
streamlining procedures with the guarantee that
needed materials will not be missed or unduly
delayed; working together as colleagues, not
adversaries, is key to our shared success.
Whatever the difficulties inherent in
balancing the traditional facets of the SUL's
mission -- building collections, providing
physical and intellectual access to them, and
servicing them -- the redesign study makes it
clearer than ever that the entire organization
must be informed and involved with the fiscal
implications of each facet.
Selectors are held accountable to SUL and
their faculties to wisely spend the materials
budgets; staff acquiring the materials are
responsible for using a vendor offering the best
range of services and costs for Stanford. This
circumstance could result in a higher cost for
the materials budget but a lower unit cost to the
processing budget. The potential tension needs to
be addressed and resolved in light of SUL's
bottom line, not merely the selector's or the
processing department's bottom lines. The
partnerships needed to support the ongoing
resolution should begin during
implementation.
Similarly, the charge to create rich and
lasting access mechanisms to the collections
requires Technical Services to stress
preservation and binding standards; bibliographic
standards; clean and consistent databases; and
exportability of data to other systems, or to a
future local system. The immediate needs of
service units for timely delivery of material to
patrons may appear in conflict with the other
facet. SUL should institutionalize the shared
responsibility for quality and timeliness by
designing jobs in the course of implementation
which include more training and cross-training
and allow split assignments. A well trained staff
is crucial to realizing the cost savings
presented here.
SUL will need these partnerships in place as
it faces issues such as:
- choice of principal vendors for shelf-ready
books and Cataloging & Metadata Services
- attempt to reduce the number of book
vendors
- push to have more materials acquired from
qualifying vendors as part of the profile
plans
- non-returnability of profile plan
items--whose budget gets charged for
de-selected material?
Much of what is presented here is newly
evolving, cutting edge service. Vendors are
willing to partner with us, so long as their
investment meets their business needs. The
investment in service and data exchange will be
high on both sides. There must be a mutual
commitment to clear specifications, feedback,
monitoring, and open communication.
In addition, it is to our advantage to
minimize the number of vendors we use to supply
current trade publications. There is major
overhead involved to build relationships for
on-line ordering, for data import/export, and for
receipt of shelf-ready materials. The more
vendors with whom we have to work, the more this
overhead is compounded.
Though the bottom line costs for the Libraries
will be dramatically lower in the redesigned
environment, service units will experience
increased work related to unpacking cartons for
shelf-ready monographs, catalog maintenance, and
for unpacking and checking in serials. Staffing
levels and space needs to support these functions
must be assessed as part of implementation.
It is imperative as the redesigned processes
begin for central Technical Services to provide
expert support, training, monitoring, and
feedback to all units. The policies and
procedures, developed in accordance with national
standards and consistently applied in response to
local needs, should be broadly understood and
implemented. Technical Services can coordinate
development of new policies and procedures in
response to new and changing needs. A
well-staffed Help Desk might be used to support
service unit needs for advice on every aspect of
the acquisition-to-access process.
Expert staff in central Technical Services
facility might continue to be responsible for
some subsets of processing activity. There will
continue to be a need for consolidated expertise
for some language and format specialties; for
fiscal management; and for vendor relations,
including: contract negotiation, quality control
sampling and feedback, and approval plan
management.
The redesigned environment will demand a much
more strenuous program of quality control (QC)
than currently exists. The shift to vendor
services and to automated services, and the
reduction of checking steps will put processes
and databases at greater risk for error.
Reengineering drives us to rid current processing
of duplicate steps, multiple searching, and
hand-offs. However, these duplicative steps
currently function as the greatest part of our
de facto quality control "system."
Informal quality control measures must be
replaced by systematic, regular, and
institutionalized quality monitoring procedures
that are valued and afforded by the entire
organization.
Throughout recent cycles of SUL's considering
process decentralization, the loss of the quality
control offered by a centralized processing staff
has been passionately debated. The Team suggests
that decentralized processing can be successfully
managed if all parties direct their passions to
sharing the commitment both to the concept of
continuous training and to dedicating resources
to quality monitoring.
As the transition begins, a high number of FTE
are needed from all library units (Technical
Services, Public Services, Collections, Systems,
Facilities) to monitor quality and completeness
of shipped cartons, shelf-ready materials, and
data streams. In the new partnerships with our
major vendors, staff will need to work together
to monitor and improve error rates, and
efficiencies. There is legitimate concern from
Public Services units that redesigned processes
(even for those that remain centralized) will
shift the burden for quality monitoring to them.
Our commitment to the integrity of our
collections and to our data require that the
implementation plan include re-allocation of
additional staff to Public Services units to
perform any add-on work.
As issues related to transition taper off, the
Team sees the need for continuing commitment to
QC monitoring via dedicated FTE, either as
defined percentages of several positions, or as a
single Quality Control Officer. Continual
training and re-training of staff responsible for
these processes in all units responsible are
sine qua non in the new environment. As with
Quality Control, the commitment to training must
be supported with dedicated staff resources,
either as percentages of several positions or as
a Training Officer. The Team recommends that
savings from the redesigned process be invested
in at least 2 FTE for this work.
Two major changes in fund management are
fundamental to implementing the schematic
redesign and other process changes. The essence
of the changes is to allow SUL to pay its bills
at the aggregated account level and then to
manage endowed funds at a local level. These
points represent significant implementation
issues that should be resolved very early in the
next phase.
The first change is that fund assignment for
approval materials is a function of
newly-constituted approval subprofiles, based on
location or selector. For example, an item that
matches Stanford's Yankee Book Peddler subprofile
for the Engineering Library has the fund 3NPE001
assigned automatically. Yankee supplies Stanford
with this fund number as part of the stream of
data transmitted to SUL in advance of receipt of
the book; the invoice is paid using this fund.
The need to eventually adjust the hit against a
fund (e.g., item belongs in another library; item
is rejected) determined at the Selector Review
Shelf is addressed briefly in New Process
Description for Process Changes 1 and 2.
The second change requires a rethinking in the
handling of endowed book funds. With general
support and encouragement from University budget
officers who are attempting to move the
University in this direction anyway, the Team
proposes pooling the available income from most
endowed book funds into the operational budgets
assigned to each selector. For example, proceeds
from British and American History endowed
accounts 3NLA306, 3NLA308, and 3NLA310 will be
consolidated and added to the operational account
for British and American History, 3NLA001. Book
plating and stewardship are managed locally,
outside the University accounting function.
An obvious requirement for this approach is to
determine the extent of current need and to
invent new means for controlling and reporting
the endowed dollars to managing donors'
stewardship expectations. Sidebar conversations
with some directors and curators have encouraged
the Team that they would like to revisit handling
of endowed funds and stewardship, regardless of
the reengineering discussions.
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Last modified:
August 8, 2005 |
