How to manage a virtual library?

Introduction

The Andalusian Public Health System Virtual Library (Biblioteca Virtual del Sistema Sanitario Público de Andalucía, BV-SSPA) was created in June 2006, after being determined by the II Quality Plan in the key process Guarantee the Knowledge Exchange into the Health System which was established by the Strategy IV, Knowledge Management, 2005-2008.

It is a government strategy with its own budget and management with the aim of rationalizing the subscriptions into the Andalusian Health System and democratizing the health professional access to qualify scientific information, regardless of the professional workplace.

Andalusia is a wide region with more than 8 million inhabitants, more than 100,000 health professionals for 41 hospitals, 1,500 primary healthcare centres, and 28 centres for non-medical attention purposes, and the Virtual Library was created to cover all these Health Services. Before the set up of the BV-SSPA, every centre had its own budget and management decisions concerning scientific resources, with the creation of the BV-SSPA both management and budget were centralized. 

Objectives

With this work we pretend to analyze if the results after these six years have reached the expectations from an economic point of view and determine if we can really offer a benefit to the Andalusian Health Professionals and Society in general.  We will demonstrate the following:

• The BV-SSPA has supposed a cost reduction.
• It has resulted in Economics of Scale, as we have every year more resources and services investing a minor proportional amount of money.
• In terms of Efficiency it has implemented more services than the System had before its creation, with a lower budget.

Methods

The BV-SSPA was appointed the only intermediary for contracting electronic resources destined to the Andalusian Health System. This had some consequences which have to be analyzed:

• Hospitals are not allowed to subscribe any resources.
• Services are offered for the whole System.
• A remote access system has been created.
• Tools to give more visibility to the Public Health System have been developed.
• Negotiations techniques have changed as the BV-SSPA is stronger than individual hospitals.

Results

• The amount of 2,431 electronic journals, 8 data bases and other scientific information resources at the disposal of the Andalusian Health System Professionals and available worldwide requiring only an internet connection. Before the BV-SSPA, 5,267 titles were subscribed by hospital and 2,967 of them were subscribed repeatedly (by two or more hospitals), this represented more than 55%. The rationalization of the subscription investment has been reached.
•  The establishment of several important scientific services for the whole territory of Andalusia, not only for big hospitals.
• The use of appropriate tools through Web 2.0 and Social Media to be acknowledged by most National Health Professionals.

Conclusions

It has been demonstrated that the BV-SSPA has become the Central Unit for purchasing, offering librarian services and a reference for users in terms of knowledge management, but from the point of view of business it has also obtained the following results:

• Cost-Effectiveness: Its budget for subscriptions is lower than the hospitals’ former one by a 30% and now more electronic resources are available.

• Economics of Scale: Near 95,000 health professionals can access the Virtual Library in 2012. Before its creation professionals from small hospital and Primary Care centres were not able to access to scientific information subscribed by big hospitals.

• Efficiency: Besides the central electronic purchasing, other services were created for the System, without increasing the expenses:

• Remote access to all the library resources independent of the user’s location. The BV-SSPA usage increased by a 147% in 2008, when it was installed.

• The Document Supply Service implemented in 2009.

• The Institutional Repository which contains the whole intellectual, scientific output generated by the Andalusian Public Health Professionals as a result of their healthcare, research or managing activity.

• The development of an application to study the Andalusian Health System Scientific Output.

• The visibility of the Andalusian Health System reached thanks to the BV-SSPA, through the numerous events in which it participates and organizes such as the 2^nd. European National Digital Libraries of Health Conferences and the National Conference of Health Science Information and Documentation held in Cadiz in 2010; and its profile in social media where it can be contacted by citizens and health professionals all over the world.

• Negotiation with electronic resource suppliers is much more advantageous as the BV-SSPA is stronger to deal with them thanks to its consolidated budget, its managing independence and its visibility.

The economic crisis Spain is presently facing obliged the BV-SSPA to take advantage of its experience in electronic resource business which has been acquired through all these years, and its capacity to adapt to new circumstances. As a result, the BV-SSPA has demonstrated that it is powerful enough to deal with suppliers and obtain the best results for its investment.

Once again it has transformed the risk that the financial economic situation supposes into an opportunity to show that a Virtual Library can not only be efficient but sustainable too. As many other projects, and Organizations into the Spanish Government the BV-SSPA budget has been cut down for the year 2012 and it has been necessary to look for a solution which allows us to give the best service to our users.

What BV-SSPA has planned is to reduce its collection to most cost-effective journals. A statistic analysis of this collection was made during 2011, obtaining downloads of every journal. As it is explained before, dealing with electronic resources’ supplier has become easier and easier for the Library through the years of functioning, and consequently the following achievements have been reached in general:

• Journals with less than 100 downloads have been removed from our collection.
• Accordingly, our electronic resources’ cost has been reduced in 10%.
• This reduction allows us to face the economic difficulties without decreasing the quality service offered to our users and this is the feedback we are obtaining.