Library Services

Since 2000, R2 has worked with more than 100 academic and research libraries, library consortia, and the organizations that serve them. Our work is directed at increasing efficiencies in the selection-to-access workflow for all streams of content: books, journals, A-V, Government Documents, gifts, Archives & Special Collections. In addition, we seek to assure that new workflows, such as those for e-resources, institutional repositories, and interactions with college and university enterprise systems are well designed and optimized for automation.

Fundamentally, R2 seeks to help library organizations create additional capacity from within existing staff and operations and to realign that capacity with the library's own priorities. R2's overriding professional interest is to help libraries adapt and compete effectively as they face changing user expectations, and as they shift their emphasis from print to electronic formats, and from commonly-held to unique content.

R2 was founded on the conviction that libraries need to reinvent their operations, organizations, and services to demonstrate their value to their users and their host institutions and to compete effectively with Google and other channels for the discovery and delivery of information. We believe that excellent user services rest on a foundation of excellent collections and technical services.

R2 Services for Libraries and Consortia:

• Workflow Analysis and Redesign
• Sustainable Collection Services
• Accelerated Strategic Planning
• Organizational Redesign
• Onsite Project Management

Workflow Analysis and Redesign

Since 2000, R2 Consulting has conducted selection-to-access workflow analyses in more than 90 libraries. These projects encompassed academic libraries from four-year colleges to the largest ARL members, from public and private institutions in the US, Canada, and the UK, to libraries specializing in historical or health sciences information.

R2's workflow projects tend to proceed along the following lines:

Preparation: Based upon a list provided by R2, the Library staff provides R2 with relevant documentation, including statistics, annual reports, departmental task lists and procedures, information on the materials budget, fund structure, collections policies, etc. In advance of the initial site visit, R2 will use this material to orient themselves to the Library's current practices. R2 anticipates that at least one or two pre-visit telephone conference calls between project managers and the R2 consultants will be required to maximize the effectiveness of the onsite visit.

Site visit: Two consultants from R2 will spend one to five days onsite, conducting interviews and gathering further information. The interview schedule will be created in coordination with the Library's designated project managers. The intent is to assure that all stakeholders, including administrators, subject liaisons, acquisitions, serials and cataloging staff, have a chance to be heard, and for R2 to understand the current situation in as much detail as possible. R2 usually begins its site visits with an "all personnel" meeting during which the R2 consultants present an environmental scan of the changing library and information landscape, and introduce our methodology to library staff. The specific schedule for each onsite day can be adjusted according to the needs of the Library.

Analysis and report writing: R2 then organizes and analyzes the information and perspectives gathered, applying a combination of business-oriented principles (such as creating a "mainstream", and controlling quality through sampling) and practices we have seen work well in other libraries. R2 then drafts a report which may contain a description of the Library's current practices, as well as R2's recommendations for change.

Conference call: After delivery of the draft report, R2 will schedule a conference call with the Project Team, to correct errors or misunderstandings existing in the draft report and to answer questions. After the conference call R2's written report will be put in final form and transmitted to the Library.

Return visit: Most libraries elect to have the R2 consultants return to present their observations and recommendations to the library staff. The return visit typically involves a morning meeting with the library's project leaders, which is spent pre-viewing and adjusting the all-staff presentation. Then an afternoon presentation is conducted for all interested staff, with discussion and Q&A following.

R2 projects are typically begun and completed within a 6-week period. There are, of course, many variations of the process described here, depending on the needs of an individual library. These are typically worked out during the proposal process.

In the course of our many workflow projects, R2 has identified a number of problems faced by virtually all libraries. At the top of the list are the processes associated with weeding and offsite storage. These tasks have rarely been assigned priority in the past, but filling shelves and diminishing use of print have begun to change that. Unfortunately, de-selection decisions and the record maintenance tasks generated by those decisions are time-consuming and highly inefficient, especially for monographs. R2's article "Weeding: The Time Is Now" outlines some of the issues.

The Problem
In most libraries, physical space is at a premium. Not only are library shelves full, but the stacks themselves take up an inordinate amount of valuable space, especially in an era when library materials budgets and user preferences are increasingly claimed by electronic resources. Reputable studies indicate that as many as 40% of the individual print volumes in academic library collections never circulate. These low-use print collections occupy space that could be redirected to higher-value uses such as collaborative study spaces, information commons areas, writing centers, and even coffee shops.

Given the combination of relatively low usage and the pressing space concerns in many libraries, there is a compelling case to reduce the physical footprint of print collections, either by moving material to remote storage or discarding it entirely.

This process is already well underway for print journals, in part because reliable and well-archived electronic surrogates exist for many titles and because large backfiles of bound journals can free significant space quickly. But ultimately, books, videos and other monographic formats occupy far more shelf space, and library staff need to dramatically expand their efforts at "weeding" this material.

However, some libraries, such as research libraries, also have a mission to retain and archive little-used material, "just in case" it becomes a topic for research in the future. De-selection must be pursued with care, to assure that future scholars will have access to important content. Therefore, in most cases, the library staff members responsible for weeding are the very same people who are responsible for selection, reference, library instruction and information literacy. In this context, and because of the innate conservatism of libraries, weeding often winds up a low-priority task. It is also labor-intensive, as few batch-oriented or rules-based tools exist. De-selection tends to be a title-by-title process. When pursued in this manner, the process is time-consuming and progress incremental at best. New tools are needed that can support careful, rules-based de-selection at relatively high volume.

The Solution
R2 has extensive experience with creating efficiencies in selection, and believe that many of the techniques that support selection and acquisition of print materials could be adapted to de-selection and withdrawal. These include a rules-based approach, which we have dubbed the "disapproval plan", which is fully described in another article written for the January 2009 issue of Against the Grain. R2 is in the process of developing these tools to support weeding and offsite storage decisions, and to enable batch record maintenance for deletion of item records, suppression or deletion of bib records, and removal of holdings from WorldCat.

The SCS Proposition in a Nutshell

• Many libraries have full or filling stacks (and offsite facilities).
  
• 40-50% of print monographs have never circulated even once.
  
• Circulation per student FTE continues to decline in most libraries.
  
• Users want space for study, collaboration, information commons, cafes.
  
• Library additions or new buildings are expensive long-terms solutions---and are difficult to justify when so much space is devoted to low-use/no-use print.
  
• Weeding and offsite storage can free prime space with little impact on access.
  
• Significant and controlled weeding can eliminate the need for construction.
  
• Each library needs to define its "carrying capacity" for print, and manage collections not to exceed that level.
  
• Weeding and storage decisions for monographs involve a labor-intensive, title-by-title process, requiring significant time from high-level staff.
  
• New tools (rules-based, batch-oriented) are needed. R2 proposes to build them.
  

Making the Case for Sustainable Print Collections
For many libraries, it will first be important to communicate the need for increased attention to weeding. R2's seminar on Rethinking Library Resources: Sustainable Print Collections in a Digital World offers libraries an opportunity to begin discussions locally.