[MNASIS-L] FW: Some cullings from my files....

[Ann Treacy]

Hi folks!

Thanks to everyone who attended the speaker series on Tuesday. Special
thanks to Jerry Baldwin, who was great. It was interesting even for those of
us not in a traditional library setting to hear about how he measured ROI.

Here is paper her mentioned - even if you didn't attend, I think you'll
enjoy it:

Mn/DOT Library Accomplishments
http://www.elseviersocialsciences.com/transport/trupdate/article2.html 

Below are other notes that Jerry kindly sent our way.  Ann

Ann Treacy
Treacy Information Services
1841 Fairmount Ave
St Paul MN 55105
612-670-3087
www.treacyinfo.com
atreacy at treacyinfo.com 


-----Original Message-----
From: Jerry Baldwin [mailto:jerry.baldwin at dot.state.mn.us] 
Sent: Wednesday, August 10, 2005 11:23 AM
To: denisecumming at earthlink.net; atreacy at treacyinfo.com
Subject: Some cullings from my files....

.. relating to topics discussed at last night's session.  One of my favorite
dictums is "The best defense is a good offense."  The cullings come from
notes I have sent from time to time to my bosses and/or colleagues.  Thanks
again for the invite to blather on about my favorite topic.  Oh, and the
wine, also!

__________________________________________________________________________
Date: 	12/2/04 3:11PM
Subject: 	Independent Verification

This morning, one of my correspondents sent me the following note:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
"The effect of public science is quite important. On average, exposure to an
additional 1000 scientific papers authored in a locality by individuals at
public institutions has about the same effect on a firm's patent count as an
additional $1 million of R&D  expenditures."
Source
Does Locale Affect R&D Productivity? The Case of Pharmaceuticals
Margaret Kyle
FRBSF ECONOMIC LETTER, Number 2004-32, November 12, 2004
http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2004/el2004-32.html#subhe
ad4

It would appear that investing in efforts to get current knowledge
circulated can be valued at $1,000,000/1000 = $1,000 per paper circulated.
If you assume a time and distribution cost of, say, $50 per paper for
review, etc, the b/c = 20:1. Not too shabby! 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Even though entirely different approaches were taken to get there, that
dollar figure coincides, after adjusting for inflation, closely with the
number I used in my ROI study of Mn/DOT Library
(http://www.elseviersocialsciences.com/transport/trupdate/article2.html) as
noted below.  The difference between the 20:1 cited in the note and my 12:1
benefit:cost ratio estimate probably can be attributed to my inclusion of
overhead costs.

"Professionals report substantial savings as a result of reading; average
savings are nearly $600 per reading of journals, books and internal reports.
These savings, relative to the cost of acquiring and using information,
yield a return-on-investment ratio of about 10.2 to 1." 
(Special Libraries: Increasing the Information Edge, Jose-Marie Griffiths
and Donald W. King, 1993)

So, for anyone who wants to do an ROI analysis of your library services, you
now have two, independent sources to justify taking the number of items you
provide through circulation, ILL and other document delivery for any given
time period, multiplying it by $1,000, then dividing by your total budget
for the same time period.  The resulting number gives you a rough estimate
of your benefit/cost ratio based on only a portion of your total services.
__________________________________________________________________________
Date: 	12/8/04 11:09AM
Subject: 	The most effective search engines...

Slowly, but surely, it's becoming understood.

http://www.jhu.edu/gazette/2004/06dec04/06brody.html
__________________________________________________________________________
Date: 	3/29/04 12:05PM
Subject: 	Quote for the Day

"My guess is about 300 years until computers are as good as, say, your local
reference librarian in doing searches.  But, we can make slow and steady
progress and maybe one day we'll get there."

Craig Silverstein, Chief Technology Officer, Google, Inc., "CBS Sunday
Morning," March 28, 2004 
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/25/sunday/main608672.shtml
__________________________________________________________________________
Date: 	12/6/04 2:48PM
Subject: 	What it takes to get it done

One of the things that has struck me throughout my career is how difficult
it is to explain to management that cataloging and indexing are not trivial
tasks and that they require considerable investment in labor and resources
in order to be effective.

This morning, I was alerted to an interesting article that talks about
what's behind that "deceptively simple, white, Web page that contains a
single one-line text box and a button that says Google Search," including:
------------------------------------------------------
One of the largest computing projects on the planet, arguably employing more
computers than any other single, fully managed system (we're not counting
distributed computing projects here)
200 computer science PhDs, and 600 other computer scientists. 
Up to 2,000 PCs in a cluster. 
Over 30 clusters. 
One petabyte of data in a cluster (that's 1,000,000,000,000 bytes)
Sustained transfer rates of 2Gbps in a cluster. 
Source:  http://www.zdnet.com.au/insight/software/0,39023769,39168647,00.htm
------------------------------------------------------

And, yet another amazing tidbit, in spite of all that, nearly two-thirds of
the items included in MTKN libraries couldn't be found using Google, as my
paper at http://www.dot.state.mn.us/library/mtkn.html showed.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transportation Libraries Catalog now available at www.mtkn.org !
__________________________________________________________________________
Date: 	1/31/05 6:38PM
Subject: 	The Internet and Search

For some reason, this recent report ("Search Engine Users: Internet
searchers are confident, satisfied trusting - but they are also unaware and
na*ve,"  Pew Internet & American Life Project,
http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Searchengine_users.pdf) brought back to
me a comment made by one of the policy study panel members that he could
"find whatever I need on the Internet.

The biggest problem for folks trying to instill efficiency in our
organizations is the time wasted as a result of that confidence and naivite.
Just today, I had a customer (Mn/DOT employee, salary + bennies $45, per
hour), come to the reference desk and say, "I've spent a couple hours
noodleing on the Internet, but I can't find anything.  I'm looking for
something that compares the energy content of gasoline and ethanol."  The
first listed item on my first Google search on the topic was a table by the
USDOE showing the energy content of a number of alternative fuels.  Estimate
of cost of using library to find needed information (salary, bennies and
overhead), $4.00, or approximately 1/22 of what was actually invested due to
the customer's misplaced confidence.  Repeat that once a month for each of
the 2,000 knowledge workers of Mn/DOT and you get an avoidable cost of about
$2,000,000 or quadruple the library's budget.
__________________________________________________________________________
Date: 	4/7/03 12:08PM
Subject: 	The Cost of "Free" Information

This morning a friend alerted me ot an article that includes the quote
"American companies spend $107 billion a year paying their employees to
search for free information."  The article also states, " ...research shows
that more than two-thirds of the publications that are most often used by
knowledge workers do not have Web sites."  This is right in line with the
study I did that showed 65% of recent reports abstracted in TRIS are not
available on the Internet (http://www.dot.state.mn.us/library/mtkn.html). 
The article is on the Web at
http://cincinnati.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/stories/2003/04/07/focus4.html.

__________________________________________________________________________
Date: 	5/1/03 10:03AM
Subject: 	Even the techies are catching on

>From the latest issue of PC Magazine:

Go Back to the Library

Library reference departments are still great sources of information, even
in today's online environment. . .  Just as libraries have paid for books
and periodicals, they pay a price for the corresponding online versions. For
this reason, access to these materials is restricted, and you won't be able
to use them without permission. . . .  [L]ibraries provide remote access to
their communities via IP address or user name and password.  Usually users
have to configure their browsers and provide their library ID numbers to
access the databases from home. . .  . Most libraries have Web pages
describing available online resources, giving you an idea of the subject
areas their online collections cover.  Once you get to a library, ask a
reference librarian to help you get started, since each library's
collections and policies are unique.
. . . .
Remember that while you may find large quantities of information though
regular search engines, there's no guarantee that it's quality information.
Anyone can put up a Web page.  Library databases are created by well-known
publishers and are evaluated carefully by librarians before they are
purchased. 

Source:  http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1049510,00.asp
__________________________________________________________________________
Date: 	7/2/03 10:06AM
Subject: 	Library Marketing

One of the most common comments made about libraries is that potential
customers don't understand what we do, so we must not do a very good job of
marketing.  Based on the following excerpt from a newsletter, that would
make libraries not much different from other organizations.

Marketing Madness? 
Here's an interesting statistic: 70 percent of marketers recognize that
their target customers either do not know their company at all, or know the
name but do not know what it stands for. That statistic comes from a poll
that Lior Arussy
<http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=3071>, a CRM
magazine contributor and an authority on customer service, conducted during
a recent presentation.
__________________________________________________________________________
Date: 	7/30/03 11:33AM
Subject: 	Information Seeking Study

A news item in CRM (Customer Relationship Management) eWeekly, titled,
"Helping Employees Help Themselves," reported on an interesting study:
_________________
Automated solutions can answer 80 percent of customer and employee queries,
but what about the remaining 20 percent?  To determine how companies share
information and provide help to employees, the study surveyed 157
respondents from companies with at least $50 million in revenue across
various industries working in sales, marketing, finance, research and
development, and manufacturing. One of the study's main takeaways is that
more than one third of the workweek is spent answering intrusive questions,
which contributes to "huge productivity losses." According to the study, 32
percent of the typical workweek is spent helping others resolve questions. 

Surprisingly, 54 percent of the questions in the workplace have not been
answered before or documented in a knowledge base. Additionally, 88 percent
of the respondents state their company relies on informal processes to get
their questions answered. 

Therein lies the problem, the report maintains: When a knowledge management
system fails, obtaining the correct answer usually involves such disruptive
tasks as an email blast, instant message interruption, or asking a
colleague. The solution, the report claims, is effective expertise
management that includes knowledge sharing and other more efficient ways to
answer questions, find expertise, or obtain necessary information in a
timely fashion.
Source:
http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=3366&TopicID=9
_________________

To my knowledge no study has ever identified any system or service that has
"more efficient ways to answer questions, find expertise, or obtain
necessary information in a timely fashion" than a fully functioning library.
__________________________________________________________________________
Date: 	7/7/04 11:16AM
Subject: 	On Web Services

In light of our meeting on this topic yesterday, I thought you might find
the following item of interest:

Ten things Google has found to be true
http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/tenthings.html
__________________________________________________________________________
Date: 	4/15/05 4:07PM
Subject: 	Transportation Headlines

Fiscal 2005 information technology spending by state and local governments:
$48 billion
http://www.governing.com/digit.htm

Total employees in state and local government (2003) 15,760,451
http://ftp2.census.gov/govs/apes/03stlus.txt

Annual IT spending per employee, approximately $3,000

Annual Mn/DOT library services spending per employee, approximately $125

If information services were funded at the same level as information
technology, Mn/DOT Libary annual budget would be approximately $14,400,000
__________________________________________________________________________
Date: 	8/2/05 3:12PM
Subject: 	Librarians - For Efficiency and For Freedoms

Workforce reductions have made workers busier and have required them to wear
more hats, meaning the "extraneous" task of gathering information must be
done as efficiently as possible - or totally handed off, in some cases.
There is a 17 percentage point drop (from 68 percent then [2001], to 51
percent now) in users who prefer to seek out their own information. Some of
this is a shift toward a preference for regularly scheduled updates
("alerts") (16% to 18%), but the lion's share is a return to preference for
intermediation in information gathering  Over the four-year period studied,
there are big increases in preferences for asking others on staff, hiring an
outside firm, or turning information tasks over to the company library.
Part of the explanation for this movement away from a self-seeking
preference is the coincident realization on the part of users that the open
Internet is not the be all and end-all.
Source:
"Information Management Best Practices:  Changing User Needs Require Service
Revisions" Outsell, Inc., InfoAboutInfo Briefing, v.8, May 13, 2005
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Let me say a word as I close. One of the most unlikely groups became so
important in this debate--the American Library Association. I cannot recall
a time in recent memory when this organization showed such leadership. Time
and again, they came forward to tell us that they wanted to protect the
privacy of their patrons at libraries across America who might come in and
take out a magazine or book, and they certainly didn't want to do that with
the knowledge that the Government could sweep up all of the library records
and sift through them to see if anybody had checked out a suspicious book.
...I think they really did 
good work on behalf of our Constitution and our rights and liberties
guaranteed under the Bill of Rights.
  
I wish to dedicate any success we have with this revision of the PATRIOT Act
to the American Library Association and all those who stood with them in
asking that we make meaningful changes to the act without eliminating the
important provisions that continue to make America safe.
Source: 
Sen. Richard Durbin (IL) on the Senate floor during discussion of the USA
PATRIOT and Terrorism Prevention Reauthorization Act of 2005, Congressional
Record, July 29, 2005, S9561.
__________________________________________________________________________
Your messages should be:
lively and compelling-do they make readers see the benefit in taking action?

stripped of "library" jargon 
focused on what's in it for the customer 
designed to inform and build trust 
based on a clear mission and vision of the library as key to the success of
the organization 
Source:  The SUV Idea, Susan S. DiMattia 
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA332540.html?display=searchResults&st
t=001&text=dimattia
__________________________________________________________________________
Date: 	9/3/02 3:38PM
Subject: 	FYI - Interesting Report

I just finished scanning a new report by Wendy Pradt Lougee, UofMN's new
library director.  It's titled "Diffuse Libraries:  Emergent Roles for the
Research Library in the Digital Age," that's worth a scan by anyone
interested in libraries and our current efforts at doing something about the
current situation in transportation libraries.  I've culled some of her
pithier statements and copied them below.  The full report is available at
http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub108/pub108.pdf

[core library missions] building collections, maintaining access, and
providing service.

[Library fundamentals] information acquisition, access, use, and
preservation.

The challenge is to make resources seamless without making the library's
role invisible.

There is... evidence of a shift from publication as product to publication
as process.

[T]here are likely to be further changes in the library's information
management functions and in its role as an agent in scholarly communication.

The role of the library moves from manager of scholarly products to that of
participant in the scholarly communication process.

Libraries usually bring expertise in information dissemination and use,
rather than contribute to the editorial or evaluative aspects of publishing.

[S]ustaining relationships among stakeholders becomes an essential activity.

Metadata developments generally reflect an extension of cataloging practices
to new dimensions of content and access. Libraries are seeking to understand
how these new access strategies might better serve target user communities.

The transformation of libraries to fulfill more diffuse roles... reflects a
shift in perspective both for the library and for the other stakeholders in
this arena.

[T]he library's assumption of new and expanded roles actually attracted new
funding-an affirmation that in some cases action must precede explicit
institutional support.
__________________________________________________________________________
Date: 	7/23/02 2:27PM
Subject: 	NCHRP Synthesis 300

One of the presentations at the recent AASHTO RAC meeting in Kalispell was
by Scott Sabol, author of "Performance Measures for Research, Development
and Technology Programs," NCHRP Synthesis 300.  As part of the study leading
up to the report, they conducted a survey to obtain the perceptions of
customers of DOT research programs.  Reporting on the results of that
survey, he wrote:

"One item derived from the customer responses was the usefulness of the
library function of the RD&T program.  In an age where information is
required ever more quickly, it is clear that operating units within DOTs
appreciate the ability of the research program to be a clearinghouse of
useful information.  This issue may be underrecognized by many research
managers, who themselves are adept at finding information in a timely
manner."  NCHRP Syn. 300, p.23.