Challenges and Opportunities for E-Resource Management

Jill GroggE-Resources LibrarianUniversity of AlabamaSeptember 23, 2007

Fun with Acronyms• DLF ERMI – Digital Library Federation

Electronic Resource Management Initiative• ER – Electronic Resources• ERMS – Electronic Resource Management

Systems• ER in L – Electronic Resources in Libraries• SUSHI – Standardized Usage Statistics

Harvesting Initiative

Common mission

• Make as much available in as many places as possible WHILE

• Managing all the technology, tasks, and data necessary to facilitate such ubiquitous access.

• In other words: The right resource for the right person at the right time.

The myth of multitasking

• Hal Pashler, a professor at the University of California, San Diego: "If you talk on the cell phone and drive to work, you don't crash the car, but you may forget where you parked it."– October 12, 2006, Bob Faw,

correspondent for NBC Nightly News Report, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15225042

Translated to e-resources

• OCLC/RLG databases switched from the Eureka platform to the FirstSearch platform in September … I scanned this email announcement while talking to my boss about our three-year renewal for ScienceDirect … so what are the chances I will remember or even process that the OCLC/RLG switch requires some action on my part?

We’ve acknowledged and addressed the problem

• Volume of e-resource materials collected in libraries has reached critical mass that prohibits traditional title-by-title management.

• Thus, traditional tools (ILS) used to manage e-resources are not in and of themselves effective.

• Digital Library Federation Electronic Resource Management Initiative initial report released in August 2004 (http://diglib.org/standards/dlf-erm02.htm)

To understand where we are going…

Let’s examine where we have been (and for some of us, still

are).

Self-disclosure

More self-disclosure

Information held hostage

Fantasy vs. Reality

Pandora’s Box

Examination of local e-resource

workflow

Collaboration of library departments

Prioritization of ERMI data elementsLibrary mission for ER

access and discovery

Responsibilities for data entry

Recipe for successful ERM

• System to:– manage the entire life cycle of an electronic resource– performs a variety of functions– facilitate workflow processes– eliminate duplicative efforts – help all users lose ten pounds

• Honest workflow analysis + flexible people + efficient tools = SUCCESS

ERMS Implementation Choices

• Administrative metadata• Collection development / management /

evaluation info• Licensing / terms of use information• Public display• Incident tracking / reporting• Acquisitions / financial data• Queues / ticklers / other workflow “helpers”• And more ….

Interoperability

“Interoperability is a much bandied about term these days. It is a very broad term that covers many of the issues that impinge on the effectiveness with which heterogeneous information resources can co-exist …

Interoperability, continued

… To achieve the goal of seamless integration for the user requires significant collaboration and partnerships; and the use of standards and the implementation of common protocols is key to success ...

Interoperability, final thoughts

• … as important [as technical interoperability] is the semantic interoperability … and libraries themselves need to consider the human/political interoperability as well as international and intercommunity interoperability.”

– Jenny Walker, Online Conferentie NederlandApril 5, 2000; also published as “Open Linking for Libraries: the OpenURL Framework,” in New Library World 102, no. 1163/1164, 2001, pp. 127-133

Successes! (and challenges)

• ERMI itself, ERMI Phase II• SUSHI• Ticklers and reminders for specific workflow tasks• Reallocating disproportionate number print staff

to ER / addressing compartmentalization, gatekeeping

• Knowledge management of administrative metadata and other e-resource collection management information

Electronic Resource ManagementReport of the DLF ERM Initiative

– Timothy D. Jewell– Ivy Anderson– Adam Chandler– Sharon E. Farb– Kimberly Parker– Angela Riggio– Nathan D. M. RobertsonDigital Library Federation, Washington, D.C., 2004,

http://www.diglib.org/pubs/dlf102/

Challenges (and successes!)

• Licensing information• Amorphous ER workflow issues (non-linear

processes) – seeing the “invisible”• Continued reliance on outside tools• Pulling data from ERM and pushing to context-

sensitive user groups• Reporting functionality• Data maintenance• Many more opportunities for standards

Most Popular

• Cross-population of data from varied systems which leads us back to …

Interoperability

No publisher is an island, no information cannot be improved by enriching its context. (Pardon

the double negative.)-- Elsevier’s Karen Hunter, 1998

Interoperability Redux

Future discussions

• DLF ERMI 2, NISO workshops and committees, LE Working Group, and other less formalized initiatives

• Electronic Resources in Libraries Forums– NASIG, ACRL, ALA, LITA– http://www.electroniclibrarian.org/forum– Article summarizing past year’s forums

forthcoming

Questions?jgrogg@ua.edu