Recent Developments in Electronic ResourceManagement

Sponsored by SIG LT

Rafal Kasprowski, ModeratorAssistant Electronic Resources Librarian, University of Houston, M.D. Anderson

Library, 114 University Libraries, Houston, TX 77204-2000. rkasprowski@uh.edu

Ivy AndersonE-Resource Management and Licensing, Harvard University Library, 1280Massachusetts Ave., Suite 404, Cambridge, MA 02138. ivy_anderson@harvard.edu

Barbara WeirSystems and Data Management, McCabe Library, Swarthmore College,Swarthmore, PA 19081. bweir1@swarthmore.edu

Ted FonsInnovative Interfaces, Inc., 5850 Shellmound Way, Emeryville, CA

94608. tfons@iii.com

The management of electronic resources relies increasingly on the effective uses oftechnology and the ability to integrate the processes involved and standardize theways in which they are performed. Topics of interest in this field include licensing,resource administration, user authentication, resource sharing, and usage datacollection. Recently attempts have been made to integrate these functions into singlepackages (electronic resource management systems), as open-source and usage-datastandards are being developed. The session on electronic resources managementorganized by SIG-LT will provide insight into the challenges of this branch oflibrarianship and present its recent progresses.

Program Topic

As the number of electronic resources has increased over the last ten years, their effectivelicensing and deployment has become more complex, and the need manage them in asystematic and uniform manner more pressing.

Already in the print environment, the cataloging of serials was more elaborate than formonographs and their acquisition subject to rapidly rising costs. This trend has continued in theonline environment and presents additional issues associated with the management ofelectronic resources in general. A library’s electronic collections can fluctuate dramatically aschanges in licensing agreements between publishers and libraries often affect access to notonly current content but also to backfiles subscribed to in the past. The availability of certain titlescan change without prior notice as aggregators may drop some content from their collections,while the practice of packaging journals regularly results in redundancy, often from the sameprovider. To provide transparent access to users throughout these changes, linking to allavailable content must be optimized and maintained at the subscription level. New technologies,such as electronic archiving influence the dynamics between libraries and information providers,which contributes to the unpredictability of access rights in the future. With rapidly rising costsand limited budgets, retrieving online usage statistics effectively is particularly important tocease unused subscriptions. Moreover, online subscriptions require adequate local and remoteuser authentication to ensure that rightful users alone access licensed content. Keeping track ofvarying access conditions, changing licensing terms, subscription renewal dates, authentication,and usage statistics in the fluid and increasingly complex online environment called for anintegrated management approach.

Several libraries began developing their own home-grown systems for managing electronicresources, incorporating for example information on spreadsheets and web pages intodatabases. The importance of developing technology and content standards was beingaddressed, notably by the Digital Library Federation’s Electronic Resource ManagementInitiative (DLF ERMI) formed in 2001. In August 2004, this task force produced a report on ERMstandards resulting from its collaboration with libraries and integrated library system (ILS)vendors. Currently, an increasing number of vendors are marketing their own ERM modules,integrated within their ILS or stand-alone, many of which have been built according to DLF ERMIspecifications. Libraries that developed their own ERM systems are migrating data to systemsdeveloped by vendors or letting vendors take over the further development of their systems asmaintenance costs have reached unsustainable levels.

The three invited speakers will attempt to provide a thorough overview of this dynamic area ofthe information profession and explain how the new systems address the ERM issues raisedabove. They represent key players in the field of electronic resource management:standardization bodies, librarians and ILS vendors.

Discussion