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Redirecting Periodicals in the Academic Library: AStanford University Case StudyXan Arch aa Acquisitions Department , Stanford University , Stanford, CA, 94305Published online: 02 Jan 2009.

To cite this article: Xan Arch (2008) Redirecting Periodicals in the Academic Library: A Stanford University Case Study,Technical Services Quarterly, 26:1, 36-43, DOI: 10.1080/07317130802225571

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Technical Services Quarterly, Vol. 26:36–43, 2009

Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 0731-7131 print/1555-3337 online

DOI: 10.1080/07317130802225571

Redirecting Periodicals in the AcademicLibrary: A Stanford University Case Study

XAN ARCHAcquisitions Department, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305

In 2005, Stanford University Libraries (SUL) transferred, or ‘‘redi-

rected,’’ all subscriptions for titles published in the United States

(U.S.) and the United Kingdom (UK) to a new vendor. The total

number of titles redirected was approximately 6,000. This case

study examines the processes used in this large batch transfer and

provides recommendations for other libraries considering periodi-

cal transfers.

At some point, many libraries choose to transfer large portions of theirsubscription business from one vendor to another. This may be becausea vendor becomes financially unstable or goes bankrupt, or the library mayseek better service. The practice of transferring subscriptions will becomemore common in the future as mergers and acquisitions in the library-vendorindustry lead to market domination by a few large vendors. These vendorshave the resources to offer advanced services for libraries, such as shelf-ready processing and comprehensive management of electronic journals. Totake advantage of such services, many libraries will decide to transfer thebulk of their subscriptions to a new vendor.

In the spring of 2005, Stanford University Libraries (SUL) undertook aproject to transfer, or ‘‘redirect,’’ their U.S. and UK subscriptions to a differentvendor. The number of subscriptions transferred was nearly 6,000. In theabsence of significant literature available on large-scale redirects of this kind,most of the processes and workflow had to be invented by SUL acquisitionsstaff. The resulting transfer process and the problems encountered alongthe way may provide guidance for libraries choosing to undertake similarlarge-scale redirect projects.

Address correspondence to: Xan Arch, Acquisitions Department, Stanford University,

Stanford, CA 94305. E-mail: xanadu@stanford.edu

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Redirecting Periodicals in the Academic Library: A Stanford University Case Study 37

GETTING STARTED

SUL uses the SirsiDynix Unicorn Integrated Library System (ILS). When theredirect project was initiated, one staff person from the serials receivingdepartment was promoted to a full-time, year-long term position as thePeriodical Redirect Coordinator. Additional staff members were deployedpart-time toward the end of the project to assist with updating serial controlrecords. This project began in June 2005, only a few months before the2005/2006 renewal season, a factor that imposed some time limitations onthe procedures involved. SUL’s goal was to cancel all orders with the formervendor at the end of the 2005 fiscal year (August 31, 2005) and have thecalendar year 2006 orders in place with the new vendor at that time.

Identify Titles

Before beginning the redirect process, SUL needed to determine which titleswere on order with the former vendor. In order to produce a working list, thelibrary systems staff ran a report in the ILS for all 2005 orders coded for thisvendor, separated between the vendor’s U.S. and UK branches. The resultingreports were exported to Microsoft Excel, creating a 5,100-line spreadsheetfor U.S. titles and 2,300-line sheet for UK titles. The spreadsheet includedcolumns for title, ISSN, purchase order number, and serial control ID. Thelibrary acquisitions team examined the list to eliminate firm orders, suchas orders for back issues and other orders not suitable to be redirected asperiodicals.

The library team then created four new columns in the spreadsheets(see Figure 1). The first added column, labeled VENDOR, was added forindication of cancellation or redirect to a different vendor. This provided theability to sort the list and extract orders not suitable for the new vendor,either because they were cancelled or because they were among the fewdesignated to be ordered with a different vendor. Orders that were redirectedto other vendors included titles published outside the U.S. and UK, andtitles that were better handled by a standing-order vendor. The next addedcolumn, labeled STOP, was for the last payment made on each order, in orderto communicate to the new vendor the proposed starting date of the newsubscription (see Figure 1). The third addition, labeled UPDATED, containsinitials of the last person working on each title and the date of update; thisprovided a way to track updates to the spreadsheet. The last added columnis labeled NOTES. The entries in this column, made before the sheet was sentto the new vendor, included notes indicating different shipping addressesand, in cases where the order was for a multi-title package or membership,a list of the titles included on that order.

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Vendor Stop Updated

Serialcontrol

ID PO # Order type Title ISSN Notes

2005 20061122 oa LIB-612 2ACN1502 SUBSCRIPT Journal A xxxx-xxxxV.27, 2005 20060309 oa LIB-617 3ACG7435 SUBSCRIPT Journal B xxxx-xxxx Ship to separate campus1998 20060601 oa LIB-621 116425F98 SUBSCRIPT Journal C xxxx-xxxx2005 20060310 oa LIB-633 2ACJ7991 PACKAGE Multi-title

packagexxxx-xxxx Includes Journal D and

Newsletter XVendor X 2005 20050822 aea LIB-636 1APT2371 SUBSCRIPT Journal E xxxx-xxxx

V.24, 2005 20060228 oa LIB-65 3ACL8767 SUBSCRIPT Journal FCancel v.13 20060425 oa LIB-663 1APD7488 SUBSCRIPT Journal G xxxx-xxxx

2005 20061128 oa LIB-665 4ACN4368 COMBO Journal H xxxx-xxxx

FIGURE 1. Periodical redirect spreadsheet example

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Redirecting Periodicals in the Academic Library: A Stanford University Case Study 39

Identify Transfer Point

To communicate the start date of the new subscription orders to the newvendor, the SUL payments department entered the last payment made foreach order into the STOP column of the spreadsheet. This work was donetitle by title, using significant staff overtime hours. Most titles were last paidin 2005, but some last payments were for years or volumes prior to that, ifthe title was behind in publication. This payment data was also later usedto create notes in the ILS indicating stop dates for the old orders and startdates for the new orders, for use by Stanford staff to determine how to claimmissing periodical issues.

Involve the Vendor

After the spreadsheets were examined and filled out with payment infor-mation and notes, SUL sent the new vendor abbreviated versions of theExcel spreadsheets that included title, publisher, ISSN, order type, paymentdata, and notes. The sheets also included the ILS purchase order numberthat corresponded to the former subscription because, given the renewaldeadline for 2006 subscriptions, there was no time to create new purchaseorder numbers before sending the spreadsheets to the new vendor. Thevendor entered the data into their database and placed the orders with thepublishers to start with 2006. An unforeseen benefit of sending the formerpurchase order numbers was that, even after the vendor entered the neworder numbers into their database, these old numbers were invisible but stillsearchable in the vendor database and thus provided another avenue fortroubleshooting the transferred titles.

The Redirect Process

Immediately after the redirect spreadsheets were sent, the questions startedcoming in from the new vendor. An important part of the SUL side of thetransition was designating one person, in this case the Redirect Coordinator,to receive questions and answer them or forward them to the correct person.The Redirect Coordinator was very experienced and comfortable with navi-gating both the vendor database and the library spreadsheets, and was ableto answer vendor and SUL staff questions about the redirect. Additionally,the notes on the transfer spreadsheets were entered by one person, theRedirect Coordinator, so there was no risk of conflicting reports or versions.The new vendor also designated a single contact person on their staff whowas responsible for communicating with SUL’s Redirect Coordinator and fordistributing work within the vendor’s organization.

One crucial responsibility of the new vendor was asking questions abouttitles and ISSNs. Since the spreadsheets did not include full bibliographic

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40 X. Arch

data, many titles appeared similar. Some did not have ISSNs recorded. Inorder to ensure the correct title was ordered, the vendor sometimes had toask for more information. This interaction was streamlined by limiting thepoint of contact to the Redirect Coordinator and her counterpart in the newvendor’s organization.

Creating New Orders

Several batch processes in the ILS were central to the transfer process. Firstwas an automatic cancellation of all active orders with the old vendor at theend of fiscal year 2005. This ensured that these orders would not roll into thenext fiscal year. The cancel process also created a note field in the old orderrecord, listing the stop date (last payment made) of the former order. Thispayment data listed in the order was important for problem solving as theproject continued. Next, the SUL systems department created new purchaseorders in fiscal year 2006 for all transfer titles. These new orders included anote field containing the old purchase order number and the start date of thenew order, also for problem solving. The new purchase order numbers weresent to the new vendor on an Excel spreadsheet that included the formerorder numbers and the titles. The new numbers were loaded into the vendordatabase by matching the former order numbers.

Serial Control Notes

The final batch process was the creation of two notes in the ILS serialcontrols to guide the claiming of missing issues and to trigger the re-linkingof these controls to the new vendor. The SUL systems department used thespreadsheets of titles from the transfer to create these serial control notes.The first note displayed the word ‘‘ReDirect’’ prominently upon entry intothe serial control for a transferred title, thus alerting the serials receiving unitthat this title was part of the transfer project. The second note, also displayedprominently in the serial control, listed the stop date of the old order and thestart date of the new order. When an issue of a title was received, the serialsreceiving specialist checked the date to determine which vendor sent it. Ifit was the first issue from the new order, the piece was sent to the RedirectCoordinator to link the control to the new vendor. In the Unicorn ILS, afterthe re-linking, the future expected serial issues had to be re-predicted inorder to make sure that claiming could be done correctly through the ILSsystem. When the control was re-linked, the Redirect Coordinator added theword COMPLETE to the ReDirect note field to indicate that future issuescould be received and claimed normally. When the transfer project is fullycompleted, these notes will be removed from the serial control.

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Redirecting Periodicals in the Academic Library: A Stanford University Case Study 41

PROBLEMS

As the project progressed, unforeseen problems arose that required SULstaff and the library vendors involved in the redirect to find creative solu-tions.

Packages and Memberships

Though SUL staff had made an effort to clarify the packages and member-ships, the sheer number of orders transferred had left some multi-title orderswithout explanatory notes; several of these became problematic. Large orga-nizations often have several package options, but the ILS title information forSUL specified only that a package from that organization was on order. Forexample, the Association of Computing Machinery offered five different printjournal packages and two different electronic packages. A spreadsheet linethat said ‘‘Package/Association of Computing Machinery’’ was not sufficientto instruct the new vendor which package to order, and they risked choosingthe wrong package. Often the new vendor asked for more information,but sometimes the problem was not caught until a title that had formerlyarrived on a package stopped coming because a different package had beenordered.

Titles received on packages often did not have a unique purchase orderbecause they were paid on the main package record. Therefore, the batchprocess that created notes on the serial controls, because it was done usingthe main transfer spreadsheets of 2005 orders, did not add notes to thesecontrols. Serials receiving staff often did not realize that these dependenttitles were part of the redirect project. These titles were caught only whenstaff claimed missing issues with the old vendor, and the claims were rejectedby the old vendor because they no longer had an active order on file forSUL. As these package titles were found, the Redirect Coordinator createddummy order records for them with notes clarifying their relationship withthe main package for future problem solving.

Payments Gaps and Overlaps

Another unforeseen problem was changes in start and stop dates of thesubscriptions. In cases where SUL had paid the former vendor through 2005but the title was delayed, the former vendor sometimes credited the 2005payment back to SUL. The new vendor was instructed to start with 2006, sothis credit created a gap in the subscription. SUL staff members then neededto contact the new vendor to request that the start date be backdated tocover the missing issues.

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Titles with Online Access

A problematic area for the new vendor was the coded order types sentwith the transferred titles (see Figure 1). For serials, SUL has the ordertypes SUBSCRIPT (subscription) and STANDING (standing order) as wellas a few other types to indicate titles that come with electronic access.COMBO designates a print subscription that includes free electronic access,and COMBO-CHG is used for titles for which SUL pays an additional chargeto receive electronic access along with print. In many cases, updating theseorder types in the ILS had not kept pace with changes in subscription modelsfrom the various publishers. Therefore, the new vendor often had questionsabout such cases as titles marked SUBSCRIPT that actually included freeelectronic access, and thus should be a COMBO. Many titles changed optionswith 2006 as well, and these became the source of many incoming questions.

Eventually, to allay the confusion, SUL designated a matrix of publisherdefaults. A separate document was sent to the new vendor indicating thatfor certain publishers, SUL always wanted the print plus online access, andfor other publishers, SUL wanted print only or only the basic free onlineaccess. This helped the new vendor place subscriptions with the publisherson SUL’s behalf without having to request confirmation for each decision.

Lapsed Titles

At all stages of the transfer process, badly lapsed titles were discovered. Forsome of these, no issues had been received since the start of online check-invia Unicorn in 1999. These lapsed titles were found through the paymentsdata because no payments had been made on a title for several years orby the Redirect Coordinator in the course of examining the spreadsheet.When discovered, these titles were funneled from the Redirect Coordinatorto an acquisitions librarian who functioned as a liaison between TechnicalServices and Collection Development and Services. The liaison librarianthen requested title-by-title decisions from the subject bibliographers andforwarded their responses to the coordinator to proceed with the redirect orclose the record for the title. While this process was time-consuming, SULdid not want to redirect these lapsed titles without investigation, because theunexpected burden on the library budget could be difficult for some fundmanagers. If a title had not been received in five years, it was possible thatit was not needed for the collection.

RECOMMENDATIONS

For a library undertaking a large-scale periodical transfer, time is the biggestresource. The more problem solving that can happen before the spread-sheet is sent to the new vendor, the smoother the transfer process will be.

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Redirecting Periodicals in the Academic Library: A Stanford University Case Study 43

Memberships and packages are important to examine for complications and,whenever possible, a note about what titles are included in the package ormembership will make sure no titles are left behind. Establishing publisherdefaults for electronic access means that the new vendor will be able tocorrectly set up subscriptions without requesting confirmation.

Dedicated staffing is also important for a project of this scale. Becausea large volume of communication is necessary and many departments atthe library and at the vendor must contribute to the process, the flow ofinformation must be directed through specified staff in order to protectagainst data loss and confusion. If one or two staff members are able towork on the project full-time, they will serve as a resource for the rest of thelibrary staff and a single point of contact for the vendor.

CONCLUSION

Beyond the initial reasons that a library chooses to redirect its periodicalbusiness, a major added benefit is the review of the ILS database that isnecessary to make this kind of change. For many organizations, the movefrom catalog cards to an online database was hurried and chaotic, andthe database records that resulted were often imperfect. The process oftransferring titles to a new vendor means that these titles are handled moreclosely by staff, resulting in database clean-up and the updating of recordsto the current standards. As SUL staff worked on the transfer process, theydiscovered ceased titles, cancelled titles never properly updated, packagesthat were not represented coherently, and subscriptions that were neversupplied. In order to make orders clear to the new vendor, or to take titles outof the redirect process, staff corrected errors in ILS records or claimed badlylapsed subscriptions. After the transfer was complete, many serial recordswere easier to understand for both staff and patrons, and many titles wereresurrected from lapsed orders.

A large redirect process is a serious undertaking for any library andrequires a significant expenditure of time and money. You will get to knowyour new vendor and quickly learn what it is like to work with them. Youwill delve deeper into your own database than you have done before. If theresult is better service for the library patrons and better records in the librarydatabase, the effort is worthwhile.

Received for review: October 1, 2007Accepted for publication: November 5, 2007

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