The Paperless Dream

The acquisitions challenge at the Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL) is one shared by librarians across the country: How to move from an outdated, paper-driven collection development process into a streamlined, automated model. The solution may lie in an innovative approach launched a year ago, when

The new system gave LAPL the opportunity to use innovative technology to speed up the delivery of materials throughout all the facilities. It also afforded a closer look at the process LAPL used for collection development and materials selection.

Define labor-intensive

For the past 35 years, like many large public libraries, LAPL has developed, refined, and maintained a complex collection development process. This mix involved staff cooperation and input, hands-on materials selection and review, and lots and lots of paper. The library built its collection as a joint effort among branch, central library, and acquisitions staff, as well as the adult, young adult, children's, and multilingual coordinating offices that created the selection lists. Staff members from both the central library and branches attended monthly meetings to view sample items, read reviews, and place orders. They were provided with detailed annotations and clippings from major book reviewers, including Library Journal . This enabled branches to order materials based on the unique needs of their community.

All of the items available for order during a given month were listed in printed selection lists that sometimes reached 140 pages. Putting together the documents, with brief annotations, was itself a major feat of self-publication. Branch staff would then mark their selections, and these would be sent via interoffice mail to the acquisitions department. Once there, they would be entered into the Libris 2020 acquisitions system. The process demanded lots of organization and hard work.

Change but still collaborate

Library administration wanted an alternative that would address two key issues: printing costs and the multiple steps from materials ordering to arrival at the branch. Steve Newcomer, director of information technologies and collections, points to other issues: "The challenge facing LAPL was to find a way to automate the materials selection process and integrate it with our acquisitions and cataloging systems without diminishing the collaborative nature of our current collection development process." Any automated system for selection would have to maintain that collaborative environment.

It was also essential that the online method allow complex and often lengthy lists to be created simply and quickly. Librarians needed to navigate these lists easily and make selections based on online reviews, dust-jacket display, and table of contents information. Inputting the choices on the branch level needed to be fast and effortless, and branches wanted a way to monitor funds without the complication of seeing the orders for other branches. Finally, the selection lists and orders needed to be easily downloaded into the LAPL integrated library system (ILS) database.

The ILS fit

LAPL uses CARL.Solution automation software as its ILS. With the implementation of CARL.Solution Serials and Acquisitions software to replace the LIBRIS system, it seemed a natural fit to use TLC/CARL's Online Selection and Acquisitions (OSA) product for collection management.

OSA is a vendor-neutral, web-based collection management module that can be used in standalone mode, linked to other ILS acquisitions systems, or deep-linked to TLC's Library.Solution, CARL. Solution, or CARLX ILS product line. It is designed to support both centralized and decentralized workflows and can now support a full suite of acquisitions functions such as order, receive, invoice processing, fund accounting, EDI, and reports. OSA has been in use since 2003, but LAPL was the first marriage between a CARL.Solution site and OSA.

Staff from LAPL and TLC/CARL worked together to document current workflow for collection management and to begin to think about how OSA might be modified. It became apparent quickly that "OSA, with a few programmatic 'tweaks,' nicely suited our needs," Newcomer said.

TLC/CARL was charged with developing a method to link the LAPL OPAC with OSA to give the coordinators a way to know what titles on the list were already in the LAPL database. As a result, the ability to pull the LAPL call number as well as number of holds for a title was put into OSA. This means that at a glance staff can see what titles are in demand and select more copies as that demand rises. This information, along with reviews, annotations, and cover art, provides the branches with all of the benefits of the review room right there at their fingertips. The enhanced title information enables staff to make better selection decisions, particularly for prepub and fiction titles not displayed at the monthly book inspection meetings.

OSA 1.9, delivered in summer 2004, had enough of the major changes to allow LAPL to move forward with online selection. But the even greater challenge for the library was to work with hundreds of staff members to change their routines. Transitioning from a totally paper, manual selection process to an online method has difficulties, despite the obvious benefits.

Many presentations were made to demonstrate the ease of using OSA and to emphasize the speed with which the branches would receive materials. In addition, LAPL conducted a series of hands-on OSA training sessions over the course of several weeks to get staff familiar with the mechanics of the new tool.

Implementation

Branch staff at LAPL used OSA for the first time during their July 2004 order meetings. Each branch had been given a unique set of logons and passwords for access to OSA. Administrators are able to logon at higher levels to check the orders for all agencies under their charge. The latest release of OSA (version 2.5) further enhances the staff member's ability to identify quickly titles for order by pulling format information and price from uploaded vendor files. LAPL can also make use of new features like limited sharing of selection lists by review level. This allows coordinators to construct their lists well ahead of the monthly order meetings and collaborate with other departments on selections offered before releasing the lists to the agencies.

Once the time frame for selection has passed, acquisitions staff can download the lists directly into the CARL.Solution database, and orders are created using the 945 tag of the MARC record. "Orders for multiple agencies are now placed with the click of a button," says Giovanna Mannino, adult services coordinator for LAPL. "It's a vast improvement over the labor-intensive process that required acquisitions staff to collate 80 individual order sheets and manually input the orders."

Further setup of electronic ordering through the acquisitions module enables orders to be placed and confirmed with vendors in less than a day. The possibilities for using OSA at LAPL continue to grow as TLC enhances the product. The implementation of an electronic solution to collection management at LAPL has indeed eliminated the volumes of paper once needed to produce a single month of orders.

Martina Ziegenfuss is Library Automation Consultant, Los Angeles Public Library