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| Tony Ferguson |
Measuring Up to Success in Hong Kong
A hot topic among today’s librarians is just how to obtain meaningful
library measures in the electronic age. Which measures are the most meaningful
for the library itself and for other stakeholders, such as faculty and
university administrations? Library Connect’s Alex Lankester, Head of Account
Development, Elsevier Singapore, interviews Tony Ferguson, Librarian,
University of Hong Kong, to find out his views on the subject.
LC: As a librarian, what are some of the important differences working
in Hong Kong as opposed to Europe or the US?
Tony Ferguson: I am not sure if there really are any great differences.
I have worked at a number of universities in North America: from Brigham
Young, to Texas A&M, to Columbia and now the University of Hong Kong. All
these institutes have similar coursework requirements, teach doctoral and
masters programs, and have ambitious university administrations who want
libraries to do big things on tight budgets. I’ve found university cultures
are perhaps stronger than transnational borders.
That said, I do think interpersonal relationships are different in Hong Kong.
American culture tends to be somewhat more confrontational. This doesn’t mean
everyone simply agrees with each other in Hong Kong. There are, of course,
differences of opinion but the means of approaching these differences are very
different here. What might be called “straightforward” in the US could be
considered ill mannered or rude here.
Another notable difference is the way librarians approach licensing
negotiations. In Hong Kong negotiations are a high art form. I sometimes feel
sorry for vendors and think, “If I were them I would give up in the first
hour.” People here will hold out for sixteen months if that is what it takes.
LC: Do you find the faculty influence on the acquisitions process to be
stronger in Hong Kong or North America?
Ferguson: At Hong Kong University, faculty influence is much stronger
than in North America. In North America, because of the “publish or perish”
mentality, the faculty simply did not have time to be heavily involved in book
selection. This reality has only recently become eminent here and it is not
uniformly shared. I still have faculties who are against librarians making
selections without asking first for their approval. I would say about a third
of the faculty think they know the needs of the end user much better than the
librarians and they want to be in a command and control position. In places
such as Columbia the faculty has to demonstrate at all times that they are
leaders in their academic field so they simply don’t have time to browse
through brochures and spend time assessing the acquisitions policy.
LC: So, was this a re-adjustment for you?
Ferguson: I have always strongly believed we should build collections
to meet user needs. In my mind the faculty involvement here is just another
amplification of user need. Having been a librarian for 37 years, I see the
high level of faculty involvement here as similar to the faculties I worked
with 30 years ago in the US and, in the future, I think this will change in
Hong Kong.
LC: In Hong Kong do you experience the same type of budgetary pressures
as in North America?
Ferguson: We have the same squeezes, but in North America I had the
benefit of working at two private universities where we did not need to worry
about what the legislature was going to do every year. At private universities
with healthy budgets and strong endowments you are insulated from the ups and
downs of the economy. At state universities, my peers were at the mercy of
state legislature and massive swings in higher education budgets.
Hong Kong University is a government sponsored university so had I been here
prior to the global economic down turn, I would have thought, “Gosh this is
really wonderful.” However, I arrived here after the down turn and the economy
is only now just recovering. University support in general is still down, so I
am experiencing the kind of pressures faced by state run universities in the
US. In the past three years we have suffered from 3%, 4% and 5% budget cuts.
Conversely, across the border in China proper, budgets are growing.
LC: What criteria do you use to measure the success of your library?
Ferguson: User satisfaction is a key measure. Annually we do some kind
of user satisfaction survey in addition to a large biannual survey. We include
quantitative and qualitative questions and give people the space to write
criticisms, comments and compliments. Last year more than 2,000 people
responded to our online questionnaire. We take comments, classify them
according to topic, and brainstorm in focus group meetings with both students
and faculty on how to move forward. User surveys are critical to us and help
inform our future strategic direction.
We also benchmark ourselves against 15 other universities in Australia, New
Zealand, the UK, Asia and North America. We assess factors such as dollars
spent overall per FTE student and faculty, dollars spent for collections,
staffing, circulations and more. In short, we are trying to assess dollar
ratios to see if we are spending a reasonable amount in comparison to our
benchmarked libraries, and whether we are getting as much out of our staff in
terms of circulations, and so on.
LC: Which success metric do you consider to be the most crucial measure?
Ferguson: We put the most weight and value on the end user satisfaction survey
and see this to be the most informative measure.
LC: Have success measures changed since the introduction of electronics?
Ferguson: Obviously, the ability to do online surveys has made a big
difference. In addition to our annual surveys, we’re able to run smaller
surveys and really drill down and scrutinize how the library’s resources are
being used. The delivery of electronic user statistics has also greatly
changed things. When you see tens of thousands of articles being downloaded it
does make a difference, and tells you that you are doing something good.
LC: What components of your libraries’ performance are particularly
hard to measure?
Ferguson: Quality of service is difficult to measure. We can get an
overall feeling for this from end user satisfaction questionnaires on
circulation or reference desk performance, but this is hard to quantify.
Likewise, how do you really measure the quality of your collection? We had 1.4
million books circulated last year which is pretty good for 18,000 total
students but that still doesn’t tell you about the quality of the individual
books.
LC: Do metrics influence your buying decisions?
Ferguson: Statistics on what is read and not read, especially for
serials, are critical. For the past three years, we have been assessing
re-shelving statistics on unbound periodicals and providing these to our
faculties when asking them to consider cutting duplicates to print and
electronic subscriptions.
Our next step will be to scrutinize the publisher “big deals.” This will be
more difficult as we have tended to be a big deal serials buyer. I happen to
be in favor of the big deal because my experience has shown me that librarians
do the best they can in predicting what will be used and not used but at the
end of the day, the user decides. But if our budget is cut another 5% next
year we will be back to assessing our statistics with a vengeance — and they
will make a big difference in our buying decisions and willingness to continue
with the big deal.
LC: Do you find this kind of statistical information helpful when
asking for additional funds from your university administration, and how much
is this information taken into account by the administration?
Ferguson: It hasn’t helped here because the annual question is, “How
much can we cut you by?” so we don’t need to go to that level of granularity.
We raise the issue of journal and book price increases in general but that is
about it. Our main argument is simply, “Please don’t continue to cut us
otherwise we cannot pay our bills.” My experience is that university
administrators don’t have time to listen to long stories, and statistics
invariably lead to long stories.
LC: What channels do you use to communicate information about library
successes?
Ferguson: We have a bi-monthly online newsletter, Focus, produced
internally. We have to be in the public relations business to ensure that our
library gets the necessary levels of support. We send print copies to the top
30 university decision-makers and distribute the electronic version to
thousands of people. We also communicate our successes through our annual
report and to the senate library committee, chaired by the Deputy University
Vice Chancellor.
LC: With the library profession changing and developing as it is, what
do you see as being important skills for library managers such as yourself
into the future?
Ferguson: Flexibility is crucial — being open-minded and understanding
that we are in the information business, not the book business. Just that one
thing goes a long way and I am constantly amazed that some librarians don’t
get it — they still think they are in the cataloguing or shelving business! We
are in the business of meeting user needs and that is it. If our vocational
processes get in the way of that, we have to change and be flexible. You have
to be with it electronically; in many ways that can be hard for a person like
me who is 60 years old. But today’s librarians can’t frown on things such as
blogs and wikis. They are now part of the job.
LC: Separate from how the library measures its success, in what ways
does the university administration measure the library's success?
Ferguson: They love things like “We are the biggest!” so size does
matter. With 2.3 million book volumes and 26,000 e-journals we can say we are
the biggest library in Hong Kong. One of my goals in the next year is to reach
the one million e-book figure, which globally will be unique. The
administration likes us to be number one. This is very important for the
profile of the university when recruiting faculty and students. However, they
would like us to achieve this on less money, of course.
LC: How does faculty perceive success of the library?
Ferguson: Faculty are really supportive and like the fact that we have
more than doubled the number of e-journals from 8,000 to 26,000 in the past
three years. But they are frustrated we don’t have enough space. We add about
110,000 volumes each year and we send to remote storage another 110,000
volumes each year. So, we have the traditional library need for more space. We
are trying to address this in Hong Kong by putting together a joint storage
facility such as the shared storage facilities in North America, and we’re
looking to build another building. Across the border in China, the libraries
are building frantically. But we have less space in Hong Kong.
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