It seems odd to me for the library to charge individual departments for
special projects. Although I realize it can make sense and be reasonable
in some cases, I think there are some dangers.
I mean, the library is already funded to provide services to the rest of
the university, right? EVERYTHING we do serves other schools and
departments, that's what we do, almost all our customers are internal.
Different universities have different ways of accounting for this -- the
individual schools or departments may already have budget line items
moving cash from their budget to the libraries, or the university may
just take care of it.
But either way, it's usually flat rate, pay for the libraries budget.
The Business School doesn't get better service than the Philosophy Dept
because they've got a bigger budget; nor are schools/departments usually
'charged back' because their undergrads use the reference librarians
more than other depts/schools.
Likewise, some features we develop serve some department/schools more
than others. If we realized there was a need to search/facet by MeSH
(NLM Medical Subject) headings, and we weren't doing that yet, but we
had the capability to do it -- would we only add that feature if the
Medical School paid us?
I realize that all of our universities are increasingly trying to
subject their components to market discipline, making everything be a
fee-based transaction. I think our professional ethics should be to
resist this -- it's true we can't do everything we might want and need
to prioritize -- but I think our professional ethics in a university
library should be against giving better service to those parts of the
university which can pay more.
But, really, I just put this out as something to think about. I realize
that in some cases it can make sense, and be reasonable and ethical. But
I think care is warranted.
Another thing to beware of with software development in particular -- is
that software going to be running on your servers, are you expected to
maintain it as well? We who develop software realize that software is
hardly ever "one and done", software (like libraries, Ranganthan's last
law) is a "growing organism", it takes constant care and feeding. Even
if no features are ever added (and certainly people WILL ask for
changes), it takes constant operational care just to keep the thing
running, including patching dependencies for security vulnerabilities,
as well as simple operational/hardware expenses, etc. If you charge per
project the end, but are responsible for maintaining the software
indefinitely, that doesn't work even from a strictly budgetary perspective.
With digital collections, for instance, if possible I think it'd make a
lot more sense to support as part of the libraries mission and general
budget, say, an general Omeka installation that anyone can use to create
their own 'exhibition', and/or a general Repository that anyone can use
to store their digital artifacts, rather than charge individual projects
per-project to "develop" (and then charge more per-year to
maintain/support?). Even just on basic financial sustainability grounds.
On 6/6/2012 4:24 PM, Eric Larson wrote:
> Hi Rosy,
>
> Thanks for your reply. I would greatly appreciate seeing your spreadsheets.
>
> We do an honorable amount of project estimation and time-tracking here,
> too. We always draft a "Memorandum of Understanding" -- an agreement for
> what work the library will provide on the project and a timetable for
> completing said work -- with our digital collection project clients. We
> try hard to stay focused on the deliverables in that document, but
> there's always some feature creep in development work.
>
> We do not have plans to "charge back" for development services, but
> wondered if other schools worked in such a way. The recent success of
> our new library catalog launch and future digital collection platform
> (Hi Blacklight folk) has momentarily increased interest in our
> born-digital digital collection efforts. There's also a campus-wide
> effort here at UW-Madison to raise awareness for "Educational
> Innovation" opportunities that might generate new revenue streams for
> the university. We're not used to charging for our services in the
> library, but some hypothetical partnerships could present the
> opportunity. I'm sure other public institutions are doing similar
> what-if revenue exercises:
> http://edinnovation.wisc.edu/
>
> Thanks again and I'll ping you off list to chat more.
>
> Cheers,
> - Eric
>
>
> On Jun 6, 2012, at 11:28 AM, Rosalyn Metz wrote:
>
>> Hey Eric,
>>
>> At GW we've been doing some cost estimates for projects. Essentially we
>> pull together the team, figure out the different tasks that need to be
>> accomplished, determine who will be working on those tasks, estimate
>> hours
>> necessary to do the work, and then use salaries to calculate the cost.
>>
>> Right now we're primarily doing this for digitization projects, but I've
>> had experience doing this at other jobs (not in libraries) with dev
>> projects. There are a couple of caveats to this though:
>>
>> - *estimating time takes practice to perfect*. a lot of the time people
>> aren't really sure how long something is going to take until they've
>> started thinking about how long things actually take. and really, you'll
>> only know how long things take if you keep track of your time. that can
>> open up a can of worms, but in this case i like to frame it as you're
>> just
>> doing it to ensure that a project isn't more work than you expected.
>> - *ensure that you're organized up front*. as anyone can tell you,
>> scope creep kills a project. before you begin estimates you'll want to
>> make sure that you know what the scope of the project is. its
>> important to
>> sit down with the group you're charging and really discuss the
>> project. we
>> use tito's project one pagers to outline what it is that we're doing and
>> what it is that we're not doing. sitting down and talking to the
>> stakeholders helps us really understand what they want, and provides us
>> with the opportunity to say no if something is impossible, takes too long
>> given the deadline, or whatever.
>>
>> If you want, I have some spreadsheets that I use to create estimates. I'm
>> happy to send them your way. And if you want I can skype with you or
>> something and talk you through what they each do (because I don't
>> think its
>> readily apparent).
>>
>> Let me know,
>> Rosy
>> ---------------------------------------------------
>> Digital Project Manager
>> Gelman Library
>> The George Washington University
>> f: 202.994.7439
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 4:17 PM, Eric Larson
>> <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
>>
>>> Any academic libraries out there doing consulting or application
>>> development work for hire on their campuses? -- not freebie work, but
>>> where
>>> actual money exchanges across campus accounting lines.
>>>
>>> I would be curious to hear how you go about pricing out your
>>> services, or
>>> if you have a selection process for the work you choose to perform.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> - Eric
>>>
>>> --
>>> Eric Larson
>>>
>>> Web Application Developer
>>> Shared Development Group
>>> University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries
>>> [log in to unmask]
>>>
>
> --
> Eric Larson
> Digital Library Consultant
> UW Digital Collections Center
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
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