When I started work at MoDOT one of the first things I did was read through my predecessors quarterly reports. Normally, this would have been an unnecessary (and tedious) task, but fortunately it wasn’t the case. Her narrative prominently outlined my library’s return on investment.

The catch is that she cited a 2003 report which needed both an update and expansion.

Sometime in the next year the Transportation Connectivity Pooled Fund will offer some financial help to update the report. Or provide a similar service. But, given a Congressional re-authorization bill in the works, the Pooled Fund being in it’s final year, and the transportation library community’s attention held in multiple places I feel like it’s a good time to evaluate what an updated report could look like as applied to my library. A new version may never be put out, but any quantification of services will undoubtedly take a similar approach. In this post, I use statistics from my library, current literature, and Jerry Baldwin’s MnDOT report (the one mentioned earlier) to provide a set of figures showing MoDOT’s library return on investment; June to August 2009.

Let’s take a look at the numbers.

My regional consortia, the Midwest Transportation Knowledge Network, measures seven key performance areas, six if you discount items loaned to other libraries. These are:

• Inter-library Loans.
• Items Copy Cataloged.
• Original Items Cataloged.
• Total Items Circulated.
• Short Reference Questions Answered.
• Detailed Reference Questions Answered.

Certainly, the MTKN doesn’t measure all areas of performance but these are the ones that are readily quantifiable.

Inter-library Loan

This quarter my library borrowed 54 items from other libraries at no cost. This can be attributed to reciprocal lending agreements. Now, it’s difficult to tell exactly how much money was saved, but lending can be broken into four areas of worth: rare historical items, technical trade items, transportation specific publications, and newspapers/magazines. These distinctions serve a practical purpose in addition to a descriptive one. Costs per item can be  comparatively broken down along with specific item types.

• Rare and Historical = $250.00 (One item was borrowed this quarter dating to 1876 and only two known copies are available. A similar book by the same author indicates a comparable cost.)
• Technical Standards = $75.00 (Averaged from a sample of ASME drafting standards.)
• Transportation Literature = $45.00 (Averaged from a sample of NCHRP reports.)
• Newspapers/Magazines = $1.00 (Based on the general cost of a single issue newspaper or magazine.)

Multiplying these numbers by appropriate cost averages we find that: 1 x $250.00 = $250.00, 12 x $75.00 = $900.00, 35 x $45.00 = $1,575, and 6 x $1.00 = $6.00. Summed together this totals a savings of $1,906.00. Given that my library has no acquisition budget, and it  paid nothing to borrow these items, this number represents an avoided costs for MoDOT as a whole.

Note: Costs for shipping, time, and overhead are not included into this formula. Sample averages are intended to be representative but are not based on a comprehensive market evaluation. Still, they are very much in line with Jerry Baldwin’s evaluation which assumed a cost of $50.00 per item.

Cataloging

Cataloging, essentially, amounts to complex data entry using the MARC format.  This quarter, my library cataloged 986 items and performed original cataloging for 90 more. It takes a good cataloger thirty minutes to process an original item and five minutes to copy catalog one. Using these self-identified numbers  MoDOT’s library spent 127.1 hours on data entry (assuming 90 x 30 minutes = 45 hours plus 985 x 5 minutes = 82.1 hours). Additionally, a 2004 article titled “Factors Affecting Cataloging Time” which surveyed Carnegie Mellon University complements this assessment.

Multiplied by the Librarian’s salary of $18.00 an hour MoDOT received $2287.80 in value added service.

To go a step further, there are two common approaches to data entry. First, and relatively well known, is on-line indexing which occurs when independent search engines “crawl” public websites. Thanks to a recent IBM study and IDC whitepaper, however, we know that the amount of information available on the web will multiply tenfold from 2006 to 2011. That said, manually entering, controlling, and standardizing information using MARC can been seen as a viable supplemental investment. MARC’s degree of specificity is geared to researchers and it’s longevity proves that it can do the same job it has for years.  Time value accounted for, MARC cataloging provides a unique and safe service to MoDOT.

Note: CMU’s internal survey noted that: 82% of all items were cataloged in under 15 minutes, 14% of all items were cataloged in 15-30 minutes, and 4% were cataloged in 30 to 60 minutes. My numbers fall into these representative areas.

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In my next post I’ll move on to circulation and reference services return on investment then sum my library’s total value together.

Case in point: Discretionary funding for transportation improvements.

Yesterday, I had a question at work regarding when the U.S. Department of Transportation would be able to release discretionary funding to the States. Thanks to an online version of the ARRA, the newly created Recovery.gov, and several other online resources I was able to find out exactly when the funding would be open for competitive bidding. Mind you, this let me sort through a 400 page legal document in 10 minutes.

If the Federal Government can keep this up then as someone who does this for a living I might just be impressed.