Rush (Purchase Express) Orders

Purchase Express Task Force Report and Recommendations

Task Force: Heidi Dodson, Dave Griles, Leslie Johnston, Paul Rittelmeyer, Annette Stalnaker, Dawn Waller, Gary Treadway (chair)

Introduction

In 1999 the Committee for Library Priority 3C developed and implemented processes aimed at "Obtaining any title requested by students or faculty members within an average of one week of their requests." Certain materials were exempted from this goal: electronic databases or data files, which may require licenses, etc.; new serials subscriptions; requests for rare books and manuscripts; and requests for materials not yet published. While selectors continued to use their discretion as to whether to purchase a requested title, it was decided that all requests for books costing less that $25 should be honored. The 3C reports and executive summary can be found at http://staff.lib.virginia.edu/3C/

The 3C Committee developed workflow and procedures to achieve this service level and the 7 day goal was incorporated into the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) targets for turnaround time aimed at processing and filling user requests. The BSC metric establishes 7 days as the target for filling user requests for new books. Library Management Information Services (MIS) recently reported that in fiscal year 2003 we fell short of achieving the 3C goal or the BSC metric, that only 17 % of new books requested by patrons were received in 7 days. A closer analysis of the MIS titles revealed that some requests (not yet published and foreign imprints) in the sample should actually have been excluded from the Purchase Express process. Nevertheless, even after taking this into account, it was still clear that the Library missed the goal by a wide mark.

The present task force was appointed to investigate current procedures and practices for filling Purchase Express requests. It was charged with identifying areas of slowdown, reviewing the reasonableness of the BSC metric, and recommending changes to policies and procedures in order to expedite filling purchase requests and meeting the metric. The task force reviewed the 1999 Library Priority 3C Committee recommendations for User Request-Selector Review and for User Request-Order Action; the RUSH Guidelines, Standards and Procedures for Library Materials; and the current Balanced Scorecard targets for Metric U.4a, which states "Provide Convenient and Timely Access to the Library's Collections: Turnaround Time for Processing and Filling User Requests." It also closely reviewed the statistical sample provided by MIS and amplified by Acquisitions.

Analysis of the Statistics

The committee felt that the statistics initially supplied by MIS were not detailed enough to give us a clear picture of where problems in the Purchase Express workflow might lie. For example, there was no indication of the time it took selectors to send requests to Acquisitions, or the time taken by Acquisitions to place orders, nor the number of not yet published (nyp) and foreign titles included in the sample. As a result, MIS supplied additional information aimed at providing some of these details, but there were problems with this data, mainly associated with the date used in determining when orders were actually placed.

To remedy this, Acquisitions assumed the task of examining the order/claim/receipt record for each title in the sample, compiling information on when requests were received from selectors, when orders were actually placed, the number of nyp and foreign titles in the sample, and noting any additional information explaining delays at the vendor's end (see the sample and analysis of each title, attached). Of the 100 titles sampled, 25% were either foreign titles or not yet published (nyp), two categories of material either explicitly or implicitly excluded from the Purchase Express process by the 1999 3C Committee. Of the remaining 75 titles, 17 (22%) were received within 7 days. In addition, of the 100 titles sampled, 25% of the requests were generated on weekends, when as many as 2 or 3 days could be lost before a selector reviewed them and sent them to Acquisitions for ordering; the same issue applies for titles received by Acquisitions on weekends. 38% of titles in the sample were sent to Acquisitions by subject librarians within one day of their receipt by the selectors, but the remaining titles sometimes languished for days or months before reaching Acquisitions. "Time ordered to time received" indicated that, for the 83 titles not received in 7 days (which includes foreign and nyp titles), 68 (81%) took 7 days or longer to be supplied by vendors. Looking at an additional two days supply time, 51 (61%) took 9 days or longer to be supplied.

Cataloging appears to process Purchase Express materials quickly. Of the 83 titles which did not meet the goal, 65 were cataloged on the same date they were eventually received, 3 before they were received (shelf-ready), 5 one day after receipt, etc.

While all of this additional information did not radically alter the ultimate delivery time for each title as recorded in the initial MIS sample, it did give a more accurate and useful picture of what happened at each stage between the initial patron request and the moment when the material arrived in Acquisitions. The committee feels that care should be taken in the future regarding what MIS will measure in the Purchase Express process, and that there should be close cooperation between MIS and Acquisitions in analyzing the data that is obtained [see Recommendation 6, below].

Recommendations

It has become obvious to us that the Library strayed from the intentions of Purchase Express's founders almost from the beginning, by a general lack of oversight and monitoring, by including foreign and not yet published imprints in the mix, and by not clearly conveying to subject librarians (especially the ones who came on board at a later time) the philosophy behind Purchase Express and their role in making it work. The Purchase Express goal remains to obtain any domestic (U.S.) title which has been published, that is requested by a UVA faculty, student or staff member, within 7 days of their request. The task force has developed the following recommendations aimed at clarifying the Purchase Express process:

1. Educate all subject librarians, and other involved staff, of the Purchase Express policy and the philosophy behind it. Provide them with updated guidelines, procedures, and FAQ's (see attached), which should be available on the Acquisitions web site. New subject librarians will be educated about the policy by their Coordinators. The MIS sample of problem titles, plus anecdotal evidence, indicates that in the past not all subject librarians uniformly understood that most purchase requests from patrons were to be treated as Purchase Express. Some selectors failed to act on these requests in a timely manner, sending them to Acquisitions days, weeks, or even months after first receiving them. They sent only 38% of the requests in the MIS sample to Acquisitions within one day of receiving them. Some selectors applied interpretations of whether a title should be acquired by Purchase Express that were outside the spirit of the policy. Still others did not use Purchase Express unless the patron explicitly asked that the request be rushed. Some of this confusion is understandable, given the turnover in subject librarians that has occurred in recent years, and the lack of general oversight of Purchase Express. In addition, there are instances in which delays will inevitably result because the librarian must get back to the requestor for additional information, etc. Still, we can do much better if everyone realizes that all requests from patrons for published domestic titles (whether received on the Purchase Request form, via email, telephone, or conversation) should be treated as Purchase Express and sent to lib-orders@virginia.edu, with the subject line RUSH, within one work day of receipt. Requests for foreign titles are addressed in Recommendation 4, below.

2. The Purchase Request form should be redesigned to allow subject librarians who are going to be absent to route it to colleagues: We recommend that the script of the Request form be simplified and written to allow subject librarians to route their incoming purchase requests to colleagues. When subject librarians are going to be away for a period of time, such as vacations, conferences, etc., they should arrange for coverage of their incoming purchase requests by another subject librarian. It would be ideal for each librarian to be able to re-route the forms themselves instead of having to ask staff in Communications to make the changes. This would become part of the same routine as setting up "out of the office" email and voice mail messages.

3. Collections Group should be in charge of insuring that Purchase Request forms are correctly routed and that routing is changed in response to the reassignment or departure of subject librarians. The task force discovered that some Purchase Request forms were still being routed to staff that have retired or moved to jobs in other areas of the library. These routing problems have been corrected, but obviously they have had an impact on timely processing of user requests.

4. Revise the current Priority 3C Goal and Balanced Scorecard Metric U.4.a to reflect the recommendations of the 1999 Priority 3C Committee:

Purchase Express should explicitly focus on ordering and obtaining domestic (U.S.) titles, which have been published, within the time established by the Balanced Scorecard Metric. The 1999 Priority 3C Committee's recommendations acknowledged (in 'User Request-Order Action') that all non-UK foreign titles "are generally not received within an average of seven (7) days", but this reality was never explicitly recognized in the formally stated goal of acquiring "any title requested by students or faculty" within an average of one week. At present we believe it is not possible to acquire foreign titles within one week, and the MIS sample indicates that these titles accounted for 26% of the failure rate. In addition, not yet published (nyp) titles were among the materials explicitly excluded from Purchase Express treatment by the Priority 3C Committee. The goal should be re-worded to reflect these two realities: "Obtain any domestic (U.S.) title which has been published, that is requested by UVA students, faculty, or staff, within 7 days of their requests." This does not mean that requests for foreign titles should be slighted. Subject librarians should send them to lib-orders@virginia.edu , with the subject line RUSH, within one work day of receiving them. They should be expedited by subject librarians, Acquisitions, and Cataloging with the recognition that we can hurry the process at our end, but are at the mercy of foreign vendors, international mail, shipping delays, etc. However, foreign and nyp titles should not be included in future samples used by MIS to measure compliance with the Balanced Scorecard metric.

The task force recommends that the Balanced Scorecard Metric U.4.a's targets be adjusted by the Balanced Scorecard Committee to more realistically acknowledge the issues involved in acquiring requested titles quickly . Metric U.4.a addresses the turnaround time for processing and filling user requests. It states that book requests should be filled in 7 days 90% of the time for complete success in meeting the metric, or 80% of the time for partial success in satisfying the metric. We feel these percentage targets are not realistic and should be lowered. They do not take into account trying to obtain materials from obscure publishers, or shipping delays beyond the control of Acquisitions. Nor do they realistically address the fact that requests made on weekends will not be seen by subject librarians until two or three days after they are submitted. Roughly 25% of the MIS samples of failed titles were submitted by patrons on weekends. In addition, titles arriving in Acquisitions late on Friday afternoon will not be received until the following Monday. Revising the targets will acknowledge these realities.

5. Revise the "Rush Guidelines and Standards" recommendation that selectors review purchase requests within 3 hours to a recommendation that they review requests within 1 work day. The original suggestion that subject librarians review requests within three hours of receiving them was regarded from the beginning by many as unrealistic, and it has become more so as people have taken on additional responsibilities because of staff reductions. Subject librarians should be strongly encouraged by Collections Group and by the Purchase Express guidelines to process requests as soon as they are received, but no later than one work day after receiving them.

6. MIS should work with Acquisitions to develop more relevant Purchase Express
statistics. The Balanced Scorecard should only measure titles covered under the Purchase Express guidelines established by the Priority 3C Committee, i.e. foreign titles and not yet published titles should be excluded from measurement of Purchase Express performance against the Metric. Acquisitions staff amplified the MIS sample's statistics so the task force could use them more effectively. The type of statistics compiled by Acquisitions, showing performance at each stage of the process, should be incorporated into the measurement of Purchase Express. Querying users in our regular patron surveys about their experiences with materials requests will be beneficial. In addition, Collections Group should work with Communications and MIS in developing timely random automatic polling of patrons who have made Purchase Express requests.

7. The Collections Group should assume oversight of Purchase Express.
Purchase Express has not been reviewed since it started in 1999, and there has been no group charged with overseeing it. We recommend that the Collections Group take responsibility for developing and monitoring the policies, processes, and documentation of Purchase Express in the future. Collections Group can play a valuable role in insuring that subject librarians and their coordinators are adequately educated about the Purchase Express policy and goals, and can revise and clarify the policy as circumstances require.

 

Approved by Collections Group: March 17, 2004