How to Support Diverse Libraries in a National Network?

1 Introduction

Academic libraries in Switzerland are caught between their mission to provide the scientific community with seamless access to scientific information and the politically defined decentralisation of the higher education institutions hosting them. They therefore have a long history of collaborative efforts, made possible with the advent of automation in the 1970s and continuously developing since then.^[1] The creation of the centrally managed national library platform swisscovery, together with the founding of the independent service provider SLSP Ltd., marked the next milestone on the road to centralised provision of and accessibility to scientific information in Switzerland.

However, today’s centrally operated cloud-based library system selected for the creation of the new library platform and the centralised organisation of the Swiss Library Platform also have collateral effects on the libraries’ existing processes and require a newly defined division of cooperation between SLSP and the libraries.^[2]

In this article, we will give a short overview of the system architecture of swisscovery and the organisation of customer management at SLSP. We will review the status quo of the current support model and, based on the experience of the last two years, provide an outlook on the necessary adjustments.

2 A Very Diverse Library Landscape

Due to the political structure of Switzerland with its 26 Cantons^[3] and four linguistic regions, the academic library sector is very diverse. First, many libraries with an academic mission also include the other functions of a patrimonial and even public library. In several cases, the university library is at the same time also the cantonal library, being subject to the obligation to collect publications made on the cantonal territory and making them accessible to a wider public. In contrast to this, libraries of universities of applied sciences nearly exclusively serve their academic staff and students. Concomitantly, a second aspect concerns the differences in target user groups: with their multiple mission, academic libraries often have very diverse user groups, from students and academic staff to interested private users and school pupils.

Moreover, due to cantonal and organisational differences, the academic libraries tend to be very different in size, ranging from one-person libraries to large university libraries with over 100 employees. Added to this is a broad diversity of small, specialized libraries with a scientifically interesting collection, leading to a comparatively high number of independent libraries with limited staff.

These differences in size and remit lead to very diverse organizational cultures, exacerbated by the cultural differences proper to each linguistic region. In fact, the way to collaborate between libraries is very different in the German-speaking and the French-speaking part of the country. This is not only due to historical reasons, linked with the heritage of the former library network, but also has a more deeply rooted cultural origin: while the German authority data (GND) is the result of a collaborative effort of the DACH-countries, the Bibliothèque de France mainly defines the French IDREF. As a result, the handling of authority data in the German- and French-speaking part of Switzerland is organised in a very different way.

All these factors make Switzerland’s library landscape arguably one of the most complex in Europe, especially considering the short distances involved. Not surprisingly, this also leads to a high complexity of the libraries’ network.

3 A Unique System Architecture

To build swisscovery, Alma was introduced as a library management system and Primo VE as a discovery tool; both are cloud-based products of Ex Libris. Given the size and complexity of the network, it was necessary to develop a system architecture in Alma that would meet the needs of both smaller libraries with a few employees and larger libraries with more than 100 employees in three linguistic spaces and 26 cantons, while allowing common resources to be shared among all libraries.

This was achieved by creating an overlying “Network zone” (NZ) with 30 underlying “Institution zones” (IZ). The way SLSP uses the network zone to centralize functionalities is also new for the system provider Ex Libris, as they go beyond the management of bibliographic data in a common library platform. As of today, this makes swisscovery a unique product worldwide.^[4] Currently, swisscovery lists more than 40 million books, series, journals and non-book materials as well as more than 3 billion electronic articles and has been accessed more than 24 million times in 2022. The 495 libraries participating in swisscovery legally belong to 80 institutions, the SLSP contractual partners. The libraries and their responsible institutions are technically distributed across the 30 institution zones in Alma. Within the platform, it is possible to configure the IZs to a certain degree according to the needs of the libraries. This allows for greater autonomy in customising Alma and Primo VE to institutional needs but, depending on the degree of customisation, may require differentiated support. SLSP therefore envisioned two models for managing IZs, depending on the expertise and resources available at the institution(s) within the IZ:

• Self-managed IZs (operated by system librarians of the institutions themselves)

• SLSP-managed IZs (operated by SLSP in a centralised manner)

The self-managed IZs make up the majority of the IZs (19 from 30). These are mainly the larger libraries. Smaller libraries, on the other hand, belong to SLSP-managed IZs. The membership criteria of the libraries that together form an SLSP-managed IZ can be very different: similar legal institution, similar library type, geographical proximity, library size, similar user groups, historical reasons due to previous network organisation, singularity of libraries (e. g. federal courts), sharing of local services, same language. The distinction between self-managed and SLSP-managed IZs became necessary because smaller libraries with five employees or less usually do not have enough resources to carry out IZ-specific configurations themselves, whereas larger institutions can usually rely on several functional area experts, system librarians or IT specialists, as well as already existing superordinate organisational structures. Moreover, the self-managed IZs will want to customise the configurations to their needs by themselves, without having to rely on the guidance and support of SLSP. This gives them the required autonomy to adjust their system to their main patrons’ requirements.

4 Customer Management as a Challenge

Due to its high degree of centralisation in the NZ, the swisscovery system architecture cannot be compared with other existing library networks. Therefore, in setting up a customer management structure, SLSP was faced with the challenge of providing support for a huge library network that is very heterogeneous and diverse. Actually, a target group-specific and needs-based support system had to be set up for almost 500 libraries, with over 2500 librarians working with the library system.

4.2 Customer Communication and Collaboration

SLSP works with different support and communication channels, each of which serves a specific purpose and covers specific needs.

SLSPhere is the collaboration platform of SLSP that provides technical documentation and up-to-date information for libraries to work with Alma and Primo VE, as well as the training material created by SLSP for all functional areas^[6] of the library system. SLSPhere has about 2600 registered users (library staff). SLSP announces news via a blog post feature. An automated function allows library staff to be notified by email each time a new blog post has been published. Blog posts on SLSPhere are provided in three official Swiss languages and in English. As an optional billed service, SLSP offers the possibility for IZs to have their own separate space within the collaboration platform. This gives IZs the opportunity to use their space as their own documentation platform and as an internal exchange tool within the IZ.

Another channel provided by SLSP for barrier-free and low-threshold cross-IZ exchange and networking is the so-called “Online Forum”, a space within the collaboration platform SLSPhere. In the forum all library staff are encouraged to exchange ideas, information, best practice examples and to network with their colleagues across the SLSP community.

Customer care calls have been established shortly after go-live and take place two times a year for the exchange between SLSP and the coordinating function of self-coordinated IZs. Priority topics are the management of the IZ, cooperation with SLSP, internal processes and project planning in the IZ, processes between network zone and institution zone.

Since May 2022, SLSP has also been hosting the on-site SLSP Forum in addition to the online communication channels. The event takes place twice a year and is catering to selected representatives of all SLSP customer libraries.

Fig. 1:

Matrix organisation of the support at SLSP

5 Review of the Current Support Model

Two years after launching swisscovery, the time has come to evaluate and redesign the support structure that was put into place already before the go-live of the platform. This review comes in an appropriate time, as the service contract applicable to the first productive phase of swisscovery needs to be renewed. In addition, after two years in operation, sufficient feedback from the libraries has been gathered and experiences gained in the daily support business to allow for an experience-based redesign of the support processes.

Currently, every member library is entitled to unfiltered first level support provided by SLSP. However, in the first two years since swisscovery went live, it has become apparent that the various institutions make a different use of this service level, for various reasons. Many self-coordinated IZs have set themselves up internally in such a way that they make a triage in-house and only pass on to SLSP support issues that they cannot solve themselves. They have usually arranged it in a way that only certain people within the institution create tickets in SLSP Support. Other self-managed IZs, on the other hand, do not select their requests in advance and let all their library staff directly create a ticket in SLSP Support. Since it is possible to share a support ticket either within one’s own IZ or even with the whole SLSP, other colleagues can add comments to issues raised by the creator of the ticket. This feature can be very useful as it makes information and solutions available to a broader audience, thus spreading knowledge in the library community. However, in certain tickets, a considerable number of comments and remarks are added by other colleagues, some of which were not related to the issue reported in the original ticket. In some cases, further issues were included, and discussions initiated, which resulted in further comments from the community. It has also been experienced that the ticketing system is sometimes used as a channel for strategic or political questions that cannot be answered at the operational level of the technical support, leaving the support agents puzzled on how to deal with such issues. This has become a challenge, as the ticket system SLSP Support is explicitly not a discussion and exchange platform, but primarily offers technical support for one of the functional areas of the library system.

6 Libraries’ Expectations and the New Role of SLSP

As shown in the section above, the support is used by customers in different, not always intended, ways. Why is this the case? This leads us to the question of the actual support needs of the libraries and their expectations regarding the role of SLSP.

SLSP has clearly been established as “a service provider for libraries” that “collaborates with them to run the national library platform swisscovery”.^[8] SLSP ensures system operation for the connected libraries, i. e., the provision of the library management software (Alma and Primo VE by Ex Libris) and offers other central services related to the use of the system (user management, authentication, SLSP Courier, Bursar, etc.).^[9] The services, in turn, are divided into basic services, which are covered by an annual contribution, and optional services, which are subject to a cost of unit fee. In addition to offering an integrated library management system and a portfolio of connected services, SLSP provides technical support to the libraries connected to swisscovery. Based on the experience of collaborating and exchanging with the customers, as well as from the feedback in the support, it became clear that the perception about the role and responsibilities of SLSP vary significantly from customer to customer. For some libraries, the current role of SLSP as a library service provider falls short of the expectations of being an agent of the libraries and working like the network office of a library consortium.^[10] However, the positioning of a classical library consortium or a library service provider is fundamentally different. A classical library consortium is characterised by the fact that it takes over the coordination of many subject areas in the library sector. On top of that, it generally assigns additional tasks regarding political matters that affect the members of the consortium. It is difficult to define a clear-cut field of activity for a library consortium, but as a rule, a consortium is based on committee work (with representatives of the consortia members in the different committees) and is actively involved in the creation and maintenance of rules and standards, e. g. regarding resource management.

A library service provider, on the other hand, primarily provides products and services, especially technical services that are developed in the context of a library management system. The staff in most academic libraries in Switzerland, especially in the large German-speaking part, is historically used to work inside a consortium, and to interact with agents of the consortium, often colleagues from one or several of the consortium libraries. With the advent of SLSP, the familiar ways of interacting of library staff do not fit its mission as a service provider. This leads to a misunderstanding that can only be resolved by clearly defining and communicating the respective roles of SLSP and the libraries, and the expectations associated with them.

7 The Way Forward: Customer Segmentation and Expectation Management

For further improvement of the customer relationship, change management aimed at providing adequate services and support that is more efficient is required. Therefore, a common understanding of SLSP responsibilities and the role of libraries in swisscovery is an important first step. SLSP responsibilities are framed by its mission statement and the terms of service contract. The revision of the service contract therefore provides an opportunity to communicate clearly the responsibilities of SLSP and its contract partners, so that a common understanding of each other’s roles and associated expectations can be achieved. Expectations can only be met once this point has been clarified, and ultimately lead to greater customer satisfaction.

Once the roles and associated tasks have been clearly set, the focus can be set on improving and implementing a more efficient customer support. For this, a sensible customer segmentation needs to be defined to determine which mode of support can be offered to a specific customer group. As a reminder, SLSP works with two different IZ models: SLSP-managed IZs and self-managed IZs. In retrospective, the policy to offer first level support without previous triage for all has not proved efficient, as it does not take into account the diversity of the connected libraries.

First level support without previous triage is appropriate for SLSP-managed IZs, as local-specific configurations at IZ level cannot be carried out by the IZs themselves and the predominantly smaller libraries belonging to an SLSP-managed IZ often do not have such detailed expert knowledge. However, offering first-level support without doing a first triage in-house for the self-managed IZs is neither economic nor reasonable as self-managed IZs have the possibility to make their own local-specific configurations tailored to the needs of their IZ community. This gives them more autonomy than SLSP-managed IZs. On the other hand, the library service provider is not familiar with the specific local conditions and configurations, and therefore cannot support the self-managed IZs without one or several agents familiarising themselves in detail with the specific local conditions. In this case, however, the synergies gained through central management of the service requests are lost again through the higher compartmentalisation that would be necessary within the central organisation. As a result, direct support by SLSP can only be provided if there is a high degree of standardisation in the management of an IZ, which is the case with SLSP-managed IZs, or with self-managed IZs that filtered their requests in-house before. Therefore, it makes economic sense to offer support to the self-managed IZs for issues they forward after a first in-house triage to SLSP Support, instead of a fully-fledged first-level support. This already has been recognised by some self-managed IZs, which have put into place an internal form for their own internal triage of first-level support and turn to SLSP Support only when the issues cannot be solved within the IZ. Moreover, repetitive issues can be avoided if a pre-selection is provided in-house at the self-coordinated IZs. Large libraries usually have enough functional area experts who can use their knowledge to help other staff members of their IZs and thus build up internal knowledge. In addition, these experts are very familiar with the local specifications they have made and often can solve corresponding requests themselves in a more efficient way than the central library service provider can. This also allows the libraries to get a better overview of the issues and needs within their institution. The first two years of experience with SLSP Support show that the self-managed IZs that have organised a local first layer of support (triage) create a significantly lower number of tickets compared to the self-managed IZs that forward all issues without preselection to SLSP Support.

Fig. 2:

The two support models of SLSP

8 Two Equivalent Support Models

It seems obvious that a centrally provided first-level support can only be efficiently implemented with a high degree of standardisation, as is the case for SLSP-managed IZs. On the other hand, offering diverse customisation possibilities to the self-coordinated IZs comes at the price of these libraries having to implement a triage or filter layer within their own institution. While each IZ is free to choose its own support model, it makes sense that larger institutions forming their own IZ would use their in-house resources to acquire more knowledge over the system and thus increase the degree of freedom and customisation for their institution.

As regard to costs, these two models are equivalent. Indeed, especially in recent experience, the tickets forwarded by IZs with a first layer of internal triage in place are usually more complex and require much more effort to solve the tickets forwarded by SLSP-coordinated IZs. In addition, the tickets of the self-coordinated IZs more than often lead to debates among the community on the possible solutions to a problem. Moderating those discussions is a task that takes up time from the support agents. In consequence, one cannot argue that the self-coordinated IZs should be compensated for preselecting issues that they solve by themselves, as the two models are different in their application, but equivalent in efforts and costs. Those self-managed IZs that have already organised themselves in this way create a significantly lower number of tickets compared to the self-managed IZs that use SLSP Support as their direct support channel. Reducing the number of transferred tickets through triage, thus avoiding tickets being transferred back to the institution, leads to added value for all, as it reduces the overall administrative effort.

9 Conclusion

After two years of operation of swisscovery, it can be stated from a technical point of view that the implementation of a common library management system and the establishment of a national network for most of the libraries’ business processes have been successful, and that the regular operations are running without major interruptions. However, some areas remain where, due to the complexity of the Swiss library landscape, there is disagreement about the level of standardisation of services (e. g., fulfilment services) and about the respective responsibilities of the libraries and SLSP (e. g. resource management). Notwithstanding the technical achievements, the role of SLSP as a library service provider still needs to be more firmly anchored within the Swiss academic library community. Moreover, obvious differences between library types and capabilities, mirrored in the two models of SLSP-coordinated and self-coordinated IZs, should be acknowledged without automatic adequation demands, as the two models are equivalent as far as operational effort is concerned, and lead to more overall efficiency. Two years after the go-live of swisscovery, reaching a common understanding about these issues remains an important task at the strategic-political level and requires the willingness of all involved parties to create a solid working basis for the operations of the Swiss Library Service Platform.

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