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Moving Materials Physical Delivery in LibrariesEdited by Valerie Horton and Bruce Smith American Library Association Chicago 2010... Valerie Horton became the first director of the Color

Moving Materials Physical Delivery in Libraries

Edited by Valerie Horton and Bruce Smith

American Library Association

Chicago 2010

Valerie Horton became the first director of the Colorado Library Consortium, a statewide

provider of courier ser vice, continuing education, cooperative purchase, and other library support ser vices, in November 2004 She was previously director of the Mesa State College library and head of systems at New Mexico State University During her tenure in New Mexico, Valerie received an ALA International Fellowship and spent a year in the Republic

of Trinidad and Tobago, where she consulted with the Office of the Prime Minister on automating the country’s public, school, and government libraries She started her pro-fessional career as a systems librarian at Brown University after graduating from the University of Hawaii in 1984

Bruce Smith is the delivery ser vices coordinator for the South Central (Wisconsin)

Library System (SCLS), which provides ser vice to its fifty-two member libraries in seven counties and also serves as the primary statewide library delivery ser vice for the Wisconsin Libraries’ Delivery Network Previous to his fourteen years at SCLS, Bruce spent six years

in the transportation business in the areas of building supply, grocery, and expedited package delivery

While extensive effort has gone into ensuring the reliability of information appearing in this book, the publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, on the accuracy or reliability of the information, and does not assume and hereby disclaims any liability to any person for any loss or damage caused

by errors or omissions in this publication.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Moving materials : physical delivery in libraries / edited by Valerie Horton and Bruce Smith.

p cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8389-1001-6 (alk paper)

1 Direct delivery of books—United States 2 Library materials—Transportation—United States 3 Interlibrary loans—United States 4 Library cooperation—United States—Case studies

I Horton, Valerie II Smith, Bruce, 1967–

Z712.M68 2010

Copyright © 2010 by the American Library Association All rights reserved except those which may

be granted by Sections 107 and 108 of the Copyright Revision Act of 1976.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8389-1001-6

Printed in the United States of America

14 13 12 11 10 5 4 3 2 1

iii

Preface v

Part One The Current Landscape of Physical Delivery

1 Delivery: The Forgotten Function 3

Valerie Horton

2 Factors Influencing Delivery Options 11

Valerie Horton and Brenda Bailey-Hainer

3 Physical Delivery Ser vice Orga nization 24

Bruce Smith

Part Two Library Delivery Service Models

4 Creating an In-House Delivery System 31

Bruce Smith

5 Outsourcing Delivery Ser vices 41

Valerie Horton and Greg Pronevitz

6 Contractual Vendor Relations 66

David Millikin and Brenda Bailey-Hainer

Part Three Managing Physical Delivery Services

7 Routing and Materials Management Systems 89

Bruce Smith and Valerie Horton

8 Growth Management Solutions 105

Valerie Horton, Ivan Gaetz, and Bruce Smith

9 Managing Participating Libraries’ Relationships 119

Valerie Horton

10 Managing the Delivery Ser vice 130

Valerie Horton, Lisa Priebe, and Melissa Stockton

iv COnTenTS

Part Four The Future of Physical Delivery

Lori Ayre and Jim Myers

12 Connecting Courier Ser vices 172

v

Our decision to write a book about library physical delivery developed out of the confluence of three factors In Denver in September 2006 more than 125 people involved in library delivery from the United States and Canada met to share their successes and frustrations This conference was the first time that any group had met solely to discuss physical delivery Those who attended learned there was a wealth of information to be shared concerning the topic

The second factor was our discovery that there is nearly no professional erature related to the field On occasion a book or article on electronic delivery mentions physical delivery, but only in passing The bibliography in this book contains several unpublished documents and press releases that make up the bulk

lit-of current physical delivery information in the prlit-ofessional literature

The final factor was the staggering realization of the sheer number of items libraries are picking up, sorting, and delivering Speaker after speaker at the 2006 conference spoke about the millions of items they were shipping each year Large public libraries with numerous branches are moving ten, twelve, or even twenty million items a year Many libraries are running out of funds for mailing inter-library loan transactions because of the growth in requests OCLC reports that it will pass ten million transactions a year, growing at a staggering rate of 100,000 transactions a year

In Wisconsin, the delivery ser vice Bruce Smith runs is shipping eleven lion items annually The wear and tear on his delivery equipment, personnel, and library materials is a constant problem Smith’s shop runs a fleet of twenty-four trucks that provide direct delivery to 194 libraries and 119 outreach locations, logging in 750,000 miles a year With a staff of twenty-four full-time employees and twenty part-time drivers, Smith has firsthand experience in dealing with all the issues related to managing an in-house delivery system

mil-In 2004, Valerie Horton took over the management of the Colorado Library Courier, a delivery system that had been in place since the late 1980s Horton’s

vi PReFaCe

first year was spent consolidating the state’s delivery under one pricing model and a single delivery vendor Horton’s second year was spent recovering from that vendor’s going out of business Colorado’s library courier delivers five million items to four hundred libraries statewide

In preparing for this book, we toured numerous delivery ser vices, talked to dozens of people at conferences and by phone, and participated in a national sur-vey (discussed elsewhere in this book) We have accumulated a substantial amount

of experience in dealing with physical delivery operations, but to make sure the book’s coverage is comprehensive and offers as many points of view as possible

we have called on the expertise of nine other contributors For their tions, we thank Lori Ayre, Brenda Bailey-Hainer, Robin Dean, Ivan Gaetz, David Millikin, Jim Myers, Lisa Priebe, Greg Pronevitz, and Melissa Stockton We also thank the three vendors who gave of their time to help us build an understanding

contribu-of the logistics industry: Becky Atcheson (then contribu-of RR Donnelly Logistics), Ken Bartholomew (American Courier), and David Millikin (OCLC) We hope this book increases the dialogue and information available to managers who deal on

a daily basis with the physical delivery of library materials

Part One

The Current Landscap e

of Physical Delivery

as running a medium-sized branch? In the coming chapters we explore the rent state of library delivery, from home delivery through outsourcing with com-mercial carriers.

cur-Public libraries had become common in larger cities by the late 1800s, with branch libraries opening early in the twentieth century Borrowing between libraries started early as well, with the ALA first publishing the U.S Interlibrary Loan Code in

1917 and adopting it in 1919 Throughout the twentieth century, resource sharing evolved and expanded to meet patron needs in a more cost-effective manner

Resource sharing involves three elements: discovery, request, and delivery

Discovery is identifying where an item is located—usually through a citation from a print source, a standard interlibrary loan (ILL) transaction, a consor-tium’s global catalog, or any number of Internet searches Some states now offer statewide ILL systems, making it much easier to discover the contents of small

It is difficult to think of a topic in current librarianship that is deader than the mail delivery of library books Few librarians have given this subject even a moment’s thought For many years, the literature

on the subject has been nil.

Robert T Jordan, 1970

4 PaRT One: THe CuRRenT LanDSCaPe OF PHySICaL DeLIVeRy

library collections which in the past where not part of OCLC WorldCat or other union catalogs

The second piece in the resource-sharing process is the request for the item Again, in a standard ILL transaction using a ser vice like OCLC or a statewide ILL system, the request function is part of the ser vice’s software design With con-sortium borrowing, either the software has a custom borrowing module such as Innovative Interfaces’ INN-Reach system or the consortium may turn on a hold function across all library collections in the global catalog In either case, direct patron borrowing allows the patron rather than library staff to make the request for an item from another library

The final piece of the transaction is the delivery Traditionally, ILL has been through the U.S Postal Ser vice, but with the advent of consortium borrowing numerous library delivery ser vices have developed across the country

Despite this long history of resource sharing, the profession has spent little time studying, exploring, or writing about delivery, with the exception of elec-tronic delivery This lack of formal literature on physical delivery has required

us to develop several categories of library delivery systems for use in this book These categorizations are meant to provide a basis for analyzing the spectrum of delivery activities occurring in libraries and consortia today

OrganizaTiOnaL MODELS OF DELiVEry

To understand library delivery, a manager needs to understand the orga nization and financing options available for various delivery methods and models There are several ways of categorizing delivery ser vices One is to look at who is provid-ing the actual delivery, such as the post office, overnight commercial carriers like FedEx, regional commercial carriers, or in-house fleets Another is to orga nize the systems by which regions are served In this scheme, delivery can be divided

by city or county borders, regional areas within a state, state boundaries, state systems, or national delivery

multi-The first and most traditional form of delivery between noninternal branch systems is the U.S Postal Ser vice (USPS) The USPS has long been used to ship library materials between unassociated libraries across the country and the world

In some states, the USPS is the only delivery method available for sharing items between libraries

Internal branch delivery is long established and is probably the best known method of delivery by library patrons In its most traditional application, internal

DeLIVeRy: THe FORGOTTen FunCTIOn 5

branch delivery is used between public library branches or within a university system Typically in this model the public library owns a fleet of in-house trucks

or vans and pays drivers to run regular routes between the branch buildings For colleges and universities, the library shares space on an existing delivery ser vice run by the main institution

As library consortia and regional library systems have grown and launched union catalogs, they have likewise created delivery systems to support resource sharing These delivery ser vices expanded to include libraries at considerable dis-tances from the originating source and also different types of libraries Regional delivery serving libraries within a relatively close proximity is common, such as deliveries to all the libraries in an urban and related suburban areas But many delivery ser vices have expanded to cover entire states and even to cross multiple state borders

Commercial overnight carriers such as FedEx and UPS are used by many library systems and consortia to provide rapid delivery Pennsylvania uses UPS

to deliver half a million items statewide each year Many academic consortia use overnight carriers because speed is important, particularly for medical and research-oriented institutions Though commercial overnight carriers are expen-sive, the ability to track an item anywhere during the process and the guarantee

of overnight delivery make them a popular option

Most libraries use multiple delivery systems For instance, a large academic library might use the USPS for out-of-state and international ILL, a regional cou-rier for a local consortium, and an overnight commercial ser vice to connect to other research institutions

Delivery ser vices often use multiple methods as well For example, MINITEX delivers directly to libraries and regional delivery hubs in Minnesota and North and South Dakota This region includes some libraries physically isolated from major population centers and freeways and with very low ILL borrowing rates Direct delivery to these small libraries is not cost-effective, so MINITEX uses

a combination of UPS and USPS for a small percentage of its overall delivery MINITEX also links with the Wisconsin delivery ser vice to share items, primarily OCLC ILL transactions across state borders

One fact is clear: delivery decisions are always made on the basis of local conditions For instance, having access to a garage and shipping space may well lead an orga nization to purchase a fleet of trucks; lack of that same garage space may lead an orga nization to an outsource solution The delivery speed necessary

to meet a researcher’s demand drives delivery to an expensive but rapid night commercial carrier The existence of several regional commercial carriers

over-6 PaRT One: THe CuRRenT LanDSCaPe OF PHySICaL DeLIVeRy

influenced Colorado’s decision to use a vendor to provide statewide delivery; the absence of regional carriers despite similar terrain has made it difficult for Idaho

to provide the same ser vice Local circumstances directly affect the nature of a library’s delivery ser vices

inTErnaLLy ManagED DELiVEry VErSuS OuTSOurCED

COMMErCiaL PrOViDErS

What conditions make building an in-house delivery system desirable? Managing

a fleet of trucks and drivers requires the upfront capital to purchase equipment and the ability to manage complex personnel, routing, and equipment mainte-nance issues The orga nization that chooses in-house delivery is making the com-mitment to run numerous routes typically five days a week in all types of weather and road conditions

What makes a library system choose this option? Two main factors influence this decision First, the expanded ser vice often builds from a structure already in place to delivery within a large municipal branch system This branch delivery infrastructure can easily be expanded to include nearby suburban libraries with minimal additional costs and problems From there it can expand across larger regions or an entire state

The second reason in-house managed delivery is chosen is that the delivery system has complete control over routes and the frequency and timing of internal deliveries A large central library may need two or three deliveries a day to man-age volume, and those items must arrive at specific times when staff are available For many larger library systems in particular, which deal with millions of transac-tions, having internal control is crucial for efficient operations

An alternative to in-house delivery is outsourcing to a commercial carrier Knowledge of the logistics industry is needed to select a vendor and maintain a productive relationship Employees of the carrier companies often have a differ-ent worldview and culture from that of library employees So why do libraries choose outsourcing? Many orga nizations are either not equipped to manage an internal fleet or do not want the responsibility Also, external vendor solutions can be cost-effective because the cost of library delivery may be shared, for exam-ple, with film, banking record, office supply, and pharmaceutical deliveries The trade-off for shared delivery is less control of routes and delivery times

The decision of which type of delivery to choose (USPS, commercial night ser vice, in-house delivery, or outsourcing to regional carriers) is complex