I am not involved in collection development, so I can't speak to the financial
issue. But I would expect the answers to depend on a lot of information we
don't have:
* Is the OA content created by the organization or just collected by it?
* How much content is there? How much more will be created/included?
* What is the subject scope of the content?
* What is the nature of the content? Original research? Subject matter review?
Commentary? Book/article/media reviews? Technical information? News? Classroom
materials? Subject trivia?
With a complete lack of information on the nature of this project, I'm not sure
anyone could answer your questions.
Steve McDonald
[email protected]
-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Michelle Urberg
Sent: Thursday, April 13, 2023 3:38 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [External] [CODE4LIB] Acquisitions and Collection Development
Expertise Requested
Dear Code4Lib Community,
I am hoping to get some feedback from experts in library acquisitions and those
who do collection development.
I am working on a project with a client who is interested in providing open
access content to libraries and we are discussing potential business models to
ensure that they can continue developing their content for the foreseeable
future. They are a non-profit (501c3) organization.
Understanding that open access content is not really "free", is there a
circumstance in which libraries would pay a fee to support this organization?
Any fee associated with a "subscription" would be largely directed back at
developing the platform and enhancing content for the organization. The content
would be area specific to the humanities and arts, directed to a particular
segment of a university or college community, but its contents would be freely
available to everyone.
So questions I have are these:
1) If there was a fee for this content, how much would be acceptable? Would
that fee be FTE dependent?
2) Would the online content space need to be enhanced from what is freely
available on the internet to be of use to the university to be worth a
"subscription"? (e.g. a robust database search with particular metadata or some
sort of visualization or knowledge graph)
3) Would a given university or college want to have the option to contribute to
this content hub (this is not unlike Science Open, but the content scope is
more specialized and with particular arts and humanities content)?
Happy to field further questions about this project if you email me!
Thanks for your time! I am very excited about this organization I am working
with and would love to see this content space a reality for university use.
Best,
Michelle Urberg
--
Michelle Urberg, PhD, MSLIS
Independent Consultant
Data Solve LLC
Find me on LinkedIn <https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelleurberg/>!
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