Challenges and Opportunities for E-Resource Management

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Challenges and Opportunities for E-Resource
Management

• Jill Grogg
• E-Resources Librarian
• University of Alabama
• September 23, 2007

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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

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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.

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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/1
  5225042

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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?

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Weve 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)

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• To understand where we are going
• Lets examine where we have been (and for some
  of us, still are).

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Self-disclosure
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More self-disclosure
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Information held hostage
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Fantasy vs. Reality
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Pandoras Box
Responsibilities for data entry
Collaboration of library departments
Prioritization of ERMI data elements
Examination of local e-resource workflow
Library mission for ER access and discovery
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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

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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 .

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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

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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 ...

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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

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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

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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. Robertson
• Digital Library Federation, Washington, D.C.,
  2004, http//www.diglib.org/pubs/dlf102/

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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

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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.)
• -- Elseviers Karen Hunter, 1998

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Interoperability Redux
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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 years forums
  forthcoming

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Questions?jgrogg_at_ua.edu