We recently completed a cost study of the OSU Libraries’ FY2011 resource sharing services (excl. Health Sciences, Law, and Regional libraries) using a tool developed by colleagues at the University of Kansas and University of Nevada-Las Vegas.   The information gathered will be combined and compared with other libraries’ data to determine new national average costs to provide resource sharing services to patrons.  Several of Ohio State’s CIC partners have also agreed to participate in the project.  The last major study to measure resource sharing costs was an ARL initiative using 2002 data.  Once the new national study is completed and the results published, we at OSU will be able to compare our costs with the national average as well as the average resource sharing costs of similar large universities.

The cost areas of the study include Circulation services where a user pages a book and chooses to pick it up at a library ($2.03) or have it delivered to their campus office/dorm ($2.78) i.e. zmail.  OhioLINK PCIRC data is costed out as well:  both borrowing for our users ($3.06) and lending to OhioLINK patrons ($3.84).  For Interlibrary Services, the study examines document delivery ($7.83) as well as borrowing ($8.63 for copies; $18.85 for loans) and lending ($0.47 for copies; $2.70 for loans).

The OSU Resource Sharing Cost Summary can be found at:
http://library.osu.edu/staff/administration-reports/ResourceSharingCostSummaryFY2011.xlsx

Average costs are determined for the total cost of each service with two different analyses:  1) dividing the costs by all the requests received (yellow column); and 2) just by the number filled (green columns).  In ILS Lending, we charge some libraries, so we determined an average payment from borrowing libraries which allowed us to calculate our Net Average Cost:  a measure of our subsidization of the service.   The Total Average Cost Per Request Filled is also broken down into its components (e.g. staff/student wage costs, equipment costs, shipping, supplies, etc.) on the right side of the chart.

So what did the study tell us or confirm?

• Staff and student workers account for the largest portion of nearly every request cost.
• Local circulation and PCIRC are less expensive then obtaining items through interlibrary loan, underscoring the value of our local collections and OhioLINK partnership.
• Electronic delivery (as opposed to traditional snail mail) reduces shipping costs for document delivery, borrowing, and lending copies.  

A big thank you to all staff in the OSU department libraries, Thompson Circulation, Interlibrary Services, the Libraries Business Office and Mail Services that answered questions for Tony and Brian in the past month.  The time and thought you put into your responses helped increase the accuracy of our institution’s data and were very much appreciated.