Schaff: Libraries should implement, cut costs with technology

College administrators like sniffing for ways to save a buck. College administrators like sniffing for ways to save a buck. Not like that’s ever been questioned, but it’s especially true now — cornered by appropriation-reducing politicians and the rising costs of providing higher education, university budget overseers are primed to jump at any savings opportunity.

To this end, many have chosen to pool resources with surrounding schools or outsource their traditional functions to private firms. Here’s another seldom-discussed idea: bringing technology into campus libraries.

That’s weird, you might say. Doesn’t keeping university facilities in-tune with the latest technological advancements carry a hefty price tag? Yes, and it’s possible — as some economists have famously argued — that the ongoing race to equip might be contributing to the much-maligned higher-ed cost explosion. But that doesn’t mean “technifying” deserves no place in the playbook of administrators itching to do “more with less.” A recent development in library collection services suggests, at least in this case, the opposite. In defense of chopping-block-positioned academic programs and professors’ salaries, I think this library technology is a potential cost-saving measure that should be given due consideration.

The online publication Inside Higher Ed reported last week on the concept of Patron-Driven Acquisition, or PDA (although free, publicly displayed affection doesn’t improve a college’s bottom line). PDA is an unconventional model of large-scale book collection that a new report published by D.C.-based consulting firm The Education Advisory Board projects will dominate collegiate libraries in the future. The Board’s report describes PDA as a demand-based offering of eBooks, a system through which publishing companies grant students access to their entire catalogs of eBooks but only make schools pay for books that students most regularly access — not unlike the pay-per-swipe deal between Pitt and Port Authority. Grand Valley State University in Michigan has test-driven the PDA model, and according to Inside Higher Ed, the savings were striking. When Grand Valley students accessed 6,289 eBooks in 2009, only 343 were requested enough to reach the purchase threshold. When applied in a more comprehensive sense, the EAB argues, such a system could potentially free up a significant amount of cash.

Now I always hesitate when mortals claim to hold the future in their hands. Consider once-popular statements like “housing prices will increase forever” and “the world will end on [insert past date set by a now-discredited religious figure],” and you’ll get the picture. But whereas the future role of PDA in libraries across the college spectrum should be understood as uncertain, its demonstrated prospect is encouraging.

Let’s face it — in the age of Google and eReaders, monolithic stone buildings filled with stacks of paper-and-glue bindings collecting dust over time seem like excellent candidates for accusations of inefficient use of space and energy. In contrast, proper implementation of PDA would require minimal space allotment, save for a few servers and “information” kiosks, and the labor costs needed to maintain growing physical inventories would suddenly vanish.

And it’s much more than that. PDA could protect both administrators and students from the risks of speculation. At the moment, libraries, with limited purchasing resources, are forced to speculate as to what titles will be demanded in the future. Like any gambling activity with defined risk, bets go sour — expensive books regularly sit on shelves for months without a single check-out. Students also suffer from speculation risk when they have to wait for desired books to arrive from other libraries when their own haven’t bet on stocking them.

Although counterintuitive, by setting the stage for a free-market equilibrium in books, PDA has the potential to save all parties from speculative risk. In the hypothetical scenario where eBooks are interchangeable with hard copies, PDA would match up every student consumer with the demanded material, instantaneously. One person’s use of an electronic document doesn’t impede another’s, and thus PDA would avoid the overflow of supply and unquenched demand that characterize current library inventories, saving university dollars along the way.

Surely, there are problems with PDA. For one, there’s something to be said about maintaining a physical record of mankind’s accomplishments — that’s why PDA might fit best at smaller schools, as opposed to big research institutions like Pitt. A related issue is that a market system could cause books with low demand but high societal value — such as Baruch Spinoza’s 1677 philosophical work “On the Improvement of the Understanding,” for instance — to fall into oblivion.

But these problems aren’t insurmountable, especially considering how, to a certain extent, most universities are already doing this. Whether demand-based or not, the subscriptions they pay for currently provide millions of students with access to academic journals and other periodicals. As cost-cutting zeal continues, administrators would not be mistaken to consider adding “books” to that list.

Write Matt Schaff at matthew.schaff@gmail.com.