NHS libraries in the East of England decided that, when it came to choosing which e-journals to subscribe to for their users, the national deal would only be part of it. They agreed exactly what they wanted and went direct to the publishers to negotiate for single titles rather than bundles. Joan Lomas and colleagues explain.
The NHS is a complicated organisation that changes constantly and this can cause difficulties particularly for libraries that work across boundaries. The absence of a regional library unit in the East of England meant that a different approach to co-ordinating and developing our library services was needed. Our solution was to organise ourselves into an alliance and to instigate projects and services for the benefit of all NHS and social care staff that we serve. The NHS Eastern Counties Library & Knowledge Services Alliance (Eclaksa) has been operating successfully for six years.
In 2006, we began an e-journals project, our most ambitious to date. Key reasons for the decision lay in changes to the NHS National Framework Agreement for libraries and the impending renegotiation of the NHS National Core Content Collection.
Other factors included:
- a need for improved access to high-quality, relevant healthcare journals
- duplication of many titles in the Eclaksa libraries
- a need to move towards electronic access
- a need to rationalise the storage of paper copies across the Eclaksa libraries
- a need to find a cost-effective solution to delivering resources to dispersed communities of NHS staff
- an acknowledgement that the existing nationally purchased bundle of electronic journals was not fully meeting our users’ needs.
The National Core Content
The NHS National Framework Agreement (NFA) is a framework for purchasing books, journals, e-books, e-journals and databases for the NHS. It ensures certain standards of delivery of products, services and prices for suppliers that are selected to be part of the NFA. Prior to 2007 there were separate NFAs for each type of resource but the NHS Purchasing & Supplies Agency, together with lead librarians in England, re-negotiated all the separate agreements into a single framework agreement.
Up to March 2008 the National Core Content was made up of a selection of databases provided by Dialog Datastar and a bundle of electronic journals provided by the aggregator Proquest. These resources had been in place since 2003.
Following feedback from NHS librarians about the need for a smaller selection of high-quality electronic journals to support NHS staff, it was decided to purchase a selection of titles nationally rather than a bundle.
There were also proposed changes to the National Library for Health search engine which would mean that literature searches and access to e-journals would be made available via a single NHS route. This meant that, if the supplier changed, the end-user would not have to get to grips with a new end-user interface.
The East of England wish list
A couple of Eclaksa sub groups had already started to look at replacing heavily duplicated print journals with electronic subscriptions and we decided to bring the work of these two groups together into the EoE journals project. The aim was to:
- identify heavily duplicated print titles
- l identify the cost of the print subscriptions across the EoE
- provide equity of access for all NHS and social-care staff in the EoE, particularly for those who work in the community or who work too far from their nearest NHS health library
- reduce duplication
- provide electronic access via NHS Athens authentication
- obtain one free print journal for each electronic subscription, that would be held as archival copies in libraries across the EoE
- look at alternative methods of delivering access to articles such as the pay-per-view model which would enable our users to buy the content they required when they needed it rather than purchase a complete subscription. We thought that this might be the solution for less heavily duplicated print titles.
Back in 2006 we were very aware of the changes that were due to happen nationally and we decided to develop our collection of electronic journals alongside the re-negotiation of the NFA and the deliberations surrounding the content that would eventually be provided by the NCC.
We decided to pull together our own ‘wish list’ of titles ahead of the announcement by the NCC; then, after the announcement, we could remove any titles from our list that were being bought nationally and order what was left. Our work was helped by having one of our group members (Lyn Edmonds) on the National Content and Collection Development Group. She was able to provide feedback nationally on our selection to help in the decision-making process. We were also able to provide some comparative pricing information to the NHS Purchasing & Supplies Agency for the NFA.
Our project was different because we wanted to buy single titles direct from the publishers rather than buying publisher bundles. We wanted to decide which journals to buy rather being told by the publisher which journals we could have. Bundles may be the cheaper option but they may not be the most cost-effective way of providing electronic access to journals for our users.
We began by gathering a group of interested librarians into the group. We were fortunate to be able to draw on the services of Andrea Wilson, who works independently and was able to collate all the data that we needed to inform our decision making. We also commissioned the company Content Complete to obtain quotations based on a template of our requirements and to help us check the licences. The expertise and support of the Content Complete team, particularly that of Caroline Mackay, were very useful.
Once we had identified the heavily duplicated titles and the costs of all the titles, the list was refined further. The librarians on the project group represent all types of libraries in the NHS in the region so we hoped that our colleagues would trust our judgment in selecting the titles. We discarded titles that did not fully meet our criteria and scored and weighted the others. Attempts were made to cover as many specialities as possible in the final list of titles in order to meet the needs of all professional groups. This was difficult because of the narrow choice of titles in speciality areas and also because not all those titles are available electronically.
The NCC decision
When the NCC decision to buy the British Medical Journal and BMJ group of titles, together with the American Medical Association group of titles, was announced, we were delighted because this suited our plans perfectly. We removed these titles from our wish list and then ordered the rest.
In the NHS any order in excess of £90k must go out to tender if the supplier is not part of the NFA. This was the case with the Blackwell’s titles. We were, however, able to avoid this requirement by purchasing them through an agent that is included in the NFA – Swets. The rest we have purchased direct.
Titles purchased
We had always aimed for a start date of January 2008 for rolling out the e-journals. After more than a year of hard work, deliberation and a successful bid to the Strategic Health Authority for additional funding, the 53 journals (including the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine) which were our top priority were indeed activated in January. We were also able to purchase some additional titles that were tied into some of our continuing print subscriptions, taking our total of electronic journals up to 70.1
We selected individual titles from 12 different publishers and they are accessible direct from the publishers’ websites with links set up on the National Library for Health website, the Eastern Electronic Library website2 and the Eden (Eastern Document Exchange Network) site.
In addition, we purchased the BMJ group of titles for three months, until the NCC subscription started, and Proquest for continuity.
Value for money
Our Strategic Health Authority supported the project on the condition that we provided evidence that the titles were being used and that they were introduced to improved patient care. We have now started a robust series of marketing initiatives in order to inform EoE staff of this facility.
We are monitoring the use of the journals and any that aren’t providing value for money will be exchanged for different titles that might prove more popular. We didn’t want to get tied into two- or three-year deals until we had a better idea of the usage of the titles we selected. So our subscriptions run for one year, January-December 2008. In July/August we will be looking very carefully at what to renew and what not to renew and what to buy instead. Next time we hope to conclude longer deals with capped prices, and to persuade each publisher to adopt the NHS model licence for e-journals instead of having the many and varied licences that we have had to sign up to this year.
We also hope to encourage the publishers to make things easier by standardising the login arrangements.
References
1 The list of titles can be viewed at www.eel.nhs.uk/eel/whatsinthebox.htm
2 www.eel.nhs.uk
Joan Lomas (joan.lomas@nhs.net) is Library, Information and Learning Resources Manager, East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust, and Chair of the East of England e-journals project group. Other members are: Judy Cane, Lyn Edmonds, Ian Mather, Hannah Prince, Janet Reynolds, Karen Rigby, Rosie Stark, Andrea Wilson, Zena Woodley.
Updated: 07 July 2008