The 1st Electronic Resources & Libraries Conference: A Supplemental Report
| Date | 01 July 2006 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/07419050610692244 |
| Published date | 01 July 2006 |
| Pages | 6-11 |
| Author | Jake Carlson |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
The 1st Electronic Resources & Libraries
Conference: A Supplemental Report
Jake Carlson
6LIBRARY HITECH NEWS Number 6 2006, pp. 6-11, #Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 0741-9058, DOI 10.1108/07419050610692244
Although there were a multitude of
presentations on a variety of subjects at
the Electronic Resources & Libraries
(ER&L) conference, three clear
patterns emerged. First, librarians who
oversee electronic resources face major
challenges in managing these resources
and providing information about them
to their internal customers, library staff
and administration. Second, these
librarians also face challenges in
building and maintaining appropriate
electronic collections for their external
customers, the faculty, staff and
students they serve at their institutions.
Finally, there was a lot of discussion
around using technology to address
these challenges and to meet the needs
of both internal and external customers.
One technology in p articular, Electr onic
Resource Management Systems
(ERMS), was an especially hot topic.
There are many ERMS being used in
libraries today. The primary purpose of
an ERMS is to help librarians manage
electronic resources throughout their
``life cycle'', from the discovery of a
resource, to trial access, acquisition,
and ongoing maintenance. They do this
by providing a repository to store the
importantdetails and related information
about the library's electronic products
in a single, central location. Many other
reasons for creating or purchasing an
ERMS were cited in several of the
presentations at the ER&L conference.
They included: creating authoritative
data for electronic resources, the
standardizationof inputting information,
facilitation of troubleshooting and
documenting incidents, tracking what is
and is not permitted under the license
agreement and making this information
available to the people who need it,
providing access to electronic
resources, and keeping closer track of
usage statistics and making better use of
them.
Several libraries saw the need for
such a system early on and developed
their own ERMS. In a presentation
entitled ``Yours mine and ERMS:
electronic resource management in a
consortial environment'', Brad Baxter
and Katie Gohn from the University of
Georgia discussed how the Georgia
library consortium, Galileo, created a
home grown ERMS, Galileo Local
Resource Integration (GLRI) to address
the needs of its member libraries.
Creating a home grown ERMS was
especially difficult in a consortial
environment that includes academic,
public, school and other types of
libraries. Although Galileo manages
hundreds of different resources for its
members, the individual members
select for themselves the specific
resources they want to provide to their
users. In addition, members also make
individual purchases for their
institutions outside of the consortium.
In building GLRI, Galileo had to allow
institutions to function independently
and customize their own information,
including their own metadata. At the
same time, GLRI had to provide enough
of a framework for Galileo to create,
standardize, manage and share
information about the resources it
provides. GLRI also has to be simple
enough that non-programmers who
manage a library's electronic resources
would be able to use it effectively.
Galileo's solutions were to allow
institutions to manage resources in
Galileo created menus, to provide
metadata to individual institutions that
could be shared and copied, and to
provide the ability in GLRI to create
special menus. Galileo is still working
on encouraging member libraries to
implement GLRI. Not all libraries were
able to attend training sessions so
Galileo has arranged for individualized
training over the phone and through the
web. Not all libraries have had staff
who were able or willing to take on the
task of learning and using GLRI.
Galileo has taken on the responsibility
of managing the GLRI system for
institutions as needed after the initial set
up until a staff member could be
recruited to be trained to take it over.
Managing electronic resources
effectively often requires a large
amount of staff involvement beyond the
librarian who is directly charged with
the task. How to involve staff and
distribute the work of managing
electronic resources, especially among
staff that lack technical expertise, was a
common theme of many of the
presentations. Monica Pereira and
Diana Hartle, two members of the
University of Georgia's science library,
provided details on how they use GLRI
and have created manageable
workflows for their staff. The
University of Georgia subscribes to
over 500 resources which makes it
impossible for two librarians to oversee
every aspect of managing these
resources. Furthermore, other staff
members have more knowledge of the
details for particular resources or more
knowledge of certain events
surrounding the resource such as
vendor contacts, proxy configuration,
usage statistics, etc. In order to involve
other staff in a manner that would
utilize their skills and abilities
effectively, new workflows had to be
created. Building these workflows
required reviewing the policies and
procedures that were in place and
defining clear responsibilities for each
stage of a resource's lifecycle and
which staff would be directly involved.
Although these new policies and
procedures have been put into place,
there are some staff who are still not
comfortable in using GLRI and have
not yet adapted to it. The two presenters
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