Electronic Resource
Management in Libraries:
Research and Practice
Holly Yu
California State University, Los Angeles, USA
Scott Breivold
California State University, Los Angeles, USA
I N FORM AT I ON SCI EN CE REFEREN CE
Hershey • New York
Acquisitions Editor:
Development Editor:
Senior Managing Editor:
Managing Editor:
Copy Editor:
Typesetter:
Cover Design:
Printed at:
Kristin Klinger
Kristin Roth
Jennifer Neidig
Sara Reed
Erin Meyer
Sean Woznicki
Lisa Tosheff
Yurchak Printing Inc.
Published in the United States of America by
Information Science Reference (an imprint of IGI Global)
701 E. Chocolate Avenue, Suite 200
Hershey PA 17033
Tel: 717-533-8845
Fax: 717-533-8661
E-mail: cust@igi-global.com
Web site: http://www.igi-global.com
and in the United Kingdom by
Information Science Reference (an imprint of IGI Global)
3 Henrietta Street
Covent Garden
London WC2E 8LU
Tel: 44 20 7240 0856
Fax: 44 20 7379 0609
Web site: http://www.eurospanonline.com
Copyright © 2008 by IGI Global. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or distributed in any form or by
any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without written permission from the publisher.
Product or company names used in this set are for identiication purposes only. Inclusion of the names of the products or companies does
not indicate a claim of ownership by IGI Global of the trademark or registered trademark.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Electronic resource management in libraries : research and practice / Holly Yu and Scott Breivold, editors.
p. cm.
Summary: “This book provides comprehensive coverage of the issues, methods, theories, and challenges connected with the provision of
electronic resources in libraries, with emphasis on strategic planning, operational guidelines, and practices. Its primary focus is management
practices of the life-cycle of commercially acquired electronic resources from selection and ordering to cataloging, Web presentation, user
support, usage evaluation, and more”--Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-59904-891-8 -- ISBN-13: 978-1-59904-892-5 (ebook)
1. Libraries--Special collections--Electronic information resources. 2. Electronic information resources--Management. I. Yu, Holly. II.
Breivold, Scott.
Z692.C65E425 2008
025.2’84--dc22
2007036853
British Cataloguing in Publication Data
A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.
All work contributed to this book set is original material. The views expressed in this book are those of the authors, but not necessarily of
the publisher.
If a library purchased a print copy of this publication, please go to http://www.igi-global.com/reference/assets/IGR-eAccess-agreement.
pdf for information on activating the library's complimentary electronic access to this publication.
Table of Contents
Foreword ............................................................................................................................................xiii
Preface ................................................................................................................................................. xv
Acknowledgment .............................................................................................................................. xxii
Section I
Historic Overview, Strategic Planning, and Usage Statistics
Chapter I
History of Electronic Resources ............................................................................................................ 1
Dalene Hawthorne, Emporia State University, USA
Chapter II
Strategic Planning for Electronic Resource Management ................................................................... 16
Melissa Holmberg, Minnesota State University, Mankato, USA
Bobby Bothmann, Minnesota State University, Mankato, USA
Chapter III
Electronic Usage Statistics ................................................................................................................... 29
Pat Hults, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA
Section II
Worklow Management and Competencies of Electronic Resource Librarians
Chapter IV
Selecting, Acquiring, and Renewing Electronic Resources ................................................................. 48
Smita Joshipura, Arizona State University, USA
Chapter V
Sharing the Albatross of E-Resources Management Worklow ........................................................... 71
Jodi Poe, Jacksonville State University, USA
Mary Bevis, Jacksonville State University, USA
John-Bauer Graham, Jacksonville State University, USA
Bethany Latham, Jacksonville State University, USA
Kimberly W. Stevens, Jacksonville State University, USA
Chapter VI
Process Mapping for Electronic Resources: A Lesson from Business Models ................................... 90
Marianne Aii, California State University, Northridge, USA
Chapter VII
Evolving Roles for Electronic Resource Librarians .......................................................................... 105
Debra Engel, University of Oklahoma, USA
Sarah Robbins, University of Oklahoma, USA
Section III
Copyright and Licensing
Chapter VIII
The Evolution of License Content ..................................................................................................... 122
Trisha L. Davis, The Ohio State University, USA
Celeste Feather, The Ohio State University, USA
Chapter IX
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources .............................................................................. 145
Aline Soules, California State University, East Bay, USA
Donna L. Ferullo, Purdue University, USA
Chapter X
Tactics and Terms in the Negotiation of Electronic Resource Licenses ............................................ 174
Kincaid C. Brown, University of Michigan, USA
Section IV
Working with Electronic Resources
Chapter XI
Working with Database and E-Journal Vendors to Ensure Quality for End Users ............................ 194
Heather Christenson, California Digital Library, USA
Sherry Willhite, California Digital Library, USA
Chapter XII
One-Stop Shopping for Journal Holdings .......................................................................................... 213
Janet Crum, Oregon Health & Science University, USA
Chapter XIII
Beyond OpenURL: Technologies for Linking Library Resources .................................................... 235
George Boston, Western Michigan University, USA
Randle J. Gedeon, Western Michigan University, USA
Chapter XIV
Authentication and Access Management of Electronic Resources .................................................... 250
Juan Carlos Rodriguez, California State University, Sacramento, USA
Bin Zhang, California State University, Sacramento, USA
Chapter XV
Using Consistent Naming Conventions for Library Electronic Resources ....................................... 275
Diana Kichuk, University of Saskatchewan, Canada
Section V
Electronic Resource Management Systems (ERMS)
Chapter XVI
Standards, the Structural Underpinnings of Electronic Resource Management Systems ................. 295
Ted Koppel, ExLibris Inc., USA
Chapter XVII
Challenges and Potentials of Electronic Resource Management ........................................................ 306
Yvonne Wei Zhang, California State University, Pomona, USA
Chapter XVIII
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems .................................................................. 322
Margaret Hogarth, University of California, Riverside, USA
Viki Bloom, University of California, Riverside, USA
Chapter XIX
The Impact of Locally Developed Electronic Resource Management Systems ................................ 350
Marie R. Kennedy, University of Southern California, USA
Chapter XX
The Future of Electronic Resource Management Systems: Inside and Out ...................................... 363
Ted Fons, Innovative Interfaces Inc., USA
Chapter XXI
In the Eye of the Storm: ERM Systems Guiding Libraries’ Future ................................................... 374
Ted Koppel, ExLibris Inc., USA
Compilation of References .............................................................................................................. 383
About the Contributors ................................................................................................................... 409
Index ................................................................................................................................................... 414
Detailed Table of Contents
Foreword ............................................................................................................................................xiii
Preface ................................................................................................................................................. xv
Acknowledgment .............................................................................................................................. xxii
Section I
Historic Overview, Strategic Planning, and Usage Statistics
Chapter I
History of Electronic Resources ............................................................................................................ 1
Dalene Hawthorne, Emporia State University, USA
Traces the history and major developments of electronic resources in libraries in the United States.
The chapter discusses the rapid changes and underlying issues which have affected the evolution of
library electronic resources from the 1960’s to the early 2000’s. It is the author’s hope that this historic
overview may lead the reader to a better understanding of the current situation and provide lessons for
the future.
Chapter II
Strategic Planning for Electronic Resource Management ................................................................... 16
Melissa Holmberg, Minnesota State University, Mankato, USA
Bobby Bothmann, Minnesota State University, Mankato, USA
Addresses the subject from the perspective of planning, policy, and worklow management issues experienced by libraries. The authors suggest ideas and methods to address these management challenges.
Chapter III
Electronic Usage Statistics ................................................................................................................... 29
Pat Hults, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA
Provides an overview which includes methods of deining, collecting, and using usage data. A survey of
some of the systems of estimating journal usage in the print environment is followed by a description
of the development of electronic usage practices. The important contributions of the COUNTER and
SUSHI projects are reviewed, along with examples of other ways statistics can assist in decision-making
throughout a product’s life cycle.
Section II
Worklow Management and Competencies of Electronic Resource Librarians
Chapter IV
Selecting, Acquiring, and Renewing Electronic Resources ................................................................. 48
Smita Joshipura, Arizona State University, USA
Provides an in-depth analysis of the worklow for electronic resources from selection to acquisition. It
addresses major steps, processes, procedures, and issues in selecting and acquiring electronic resources
and covers the selection process including tools, challenges, and selection criteria.
Chapter V
Sharing the Albatross of E-Resources Management Worklow ........................................................... 71
Jodi Poe, Jacksonville State University, USA
Mary Bevis, Jacksonville State University, USA
John-Bauer Graham, Jacksonville State University, USA
Bethany Latham, Jacksonville State University, USA
Kimberly W. Stevens, Jacksonville State University, USA
Illustrates that while management of electronic resources is often seen as a strictly technical services
endeavor, it should be approached as a multifaceted process requiring all areas of the library. This chapter
offers a detailed account of how one library handles the electronic resources management worklow
collaboratively.
Chapter VI
Process Mapping for Electronic Resources: A Lesson from Business Models ................................... 90
Marianne Aii, California State University, Northridge, USA
Bases its research on the premise that existing electronic resource management guidelines are conceptually linked to actual management situations. This chapter describes how a business and industry method
called process mapping can be applied to the management of electronic resources in libraries. A case
study is presented to illustrate the process.
Chapter VII
Evolving Roles for Electronic Resource Librarians .......................................................................... 105
Debra Engel, University of Oklahoma, USA
Sarah Robbins, University of Oklahoma, USA
Examines the emergence of the electronic resource librarian specialty within academic libraries as a
result of increasing demands for library professionals trained in the planning, selecting, implementing,
and evaluating of electronic resources. The authors discuss the core competencies of these positions by
analyzing job advertisements published in the College & Research Libraries News and The Chronicle
of Higher Education between July 2001 and June 2006. Implications for library education and organizational structures are also discussed.
Section III
Copyright and Licensing
Chapter VIII
The Evolution of License Content ..................................................................................................... 122
Trisha L. Davis, The Ohio State University, USA
Celeste Feather, The Ohio State University, USA
Provides a comparative analysis of 35 licenses created prior to 2000 (and their 2006 equivalents) to reveal
how license agreements have evolved to meet the principles set forth in recent years by the American
Association of Law Libraries, the International Federation of Library Associations, and the NorthEast
Research Libraries. The results of the study indicate that efforts in the library community to encourage
the development of licenses that meet the needs of most institutions are having a positive impact.
Chapter IX
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources .............................................................................. 145
Aline Soules, California State University, East Bay, USA
Donna L. Ferullo, Purdue University, USA
Begins with an examination of the sections of copyright law that impact electronic resource management.
Copyright is discussed in relation to particular types of electronic resources and their unique characteristics
and challenges. The chapter incorporates information gathered from a survey of professionals working
in a variety of libraries—providing a practical view of how librarians are approaching copyright in the
daily reality of their increasingly electronic environments.
Chapter X
Tactics and Terms in the Negotiation of Electronic Resource Licenses ............................................ 174
Kincaid C. Brown, University of Michigan, USA
Provides the reader with an overview of basic contract law as it relates to electronic resource licensing.
The chapter also discusses the negotiation process as well as license agreement terms and clauses. By
sharing tips and lessons learned in the negotiation process, the author hopes to provide librarians with
a practical understanding of the resource licensing process.
Section IV
Working with Electronic Resources
Chapter XI
Working with Database and E-Journal Vendors to Ensure Quality for End Users ............................ 194
Heather Christenson, California Digital Library, USA
Sherry Willhite, California Digital Library, USA
Describes how the California Digital Library (CDL) supports the thousands of electronic journals,
databases, collections and reference works that are licensed by CDL on behalf of the ten campuses of
the University of California (UC). It indicates that three key components were vital to CDL’s success:
involvement of librarians at all campuses; internal processes for working with vendors; documentation
which emphasizes technical standards and best practices.
Chapter XII
One-Stop Shopping for Journal Holdings .......................................................................................... 213
Janet Crum, Oregon Health & Science University, USA
Advocates providing a uniied, seamless, interface for the full range of journal literature available to
library patrons. The author reviews the tools available for making journal collections accessible, and
then analyzes the categories of journal literature to which a library could provide access. It closes with
a brief look at future trends that will affect the ability of libraries to provide coherent, seamless access
to journal literature.
Chapter XIII
Beyond OpenURL: Technologies for Linking Library Resources .................................................... 235
George Boston, Western Michigan University, USA
Randle J. Gedeon, Western Michigan University, USA
Provides an overview of the existing techniques for reference linking of scholarly research materials
and discusses some of the new techniques designed for advanced linking. The discussion also includes
information about the impact of Web and Library 2.0 tools on resource linking.
Chapter XIV
Authentication and Access Management of Electronic Resources .................................................... 250
Juan Carlos Rodriguez, California State University, Sacramento, USA
Bin Zhang, California State University, Sacramento, USA
Opens with a discussion of the need for libraries to provide users with local and remote access to electronic resources. It discusses authentication and authorization mechanisms currently in use by libraries, their parent organizations and electronic resource providers. The chapter concludes with a look at
considerations and directions libraries and e-resource providers may take in the future to provide secure
and seamless access to electronic resources.
Chapter XV
Using Consistent Naming Conventions for Library Electronic Resources ....................................... 275
Diana Kichuk, University of Saskatchewan, Canada
Points out that there are no accepted standards governing naming electronic resources in A to Z lists or electronic resource management (ERM) systems. Current practice supericially resembles cataloging standards and
guidelines, but is substantially ad hoc, and reliant on local adaptation and innovation. The issues related to naming
electronic resources are discussed and a draft set of principles and conventions is offered.
Section V
Electronic Resource Management Systems (ERMS)
Chapter XVI
Standards, the Structural Underpinnings of Electronic Resource Management Systems ................. 295
Ted Koppel, ExLibris Inc., USA
Built to manage all steps in the lifecycle of an electronic product, ERM systems must interoperate with
existing integrated library systems (ILS), public service, and inancial software already in use within the
library. The importance of ERM standards is discussed, including efforts like SUSHI and the License
Expression Work Group to deine new standards and protocols for ERM systems.
Chapter XVII
Challenges and Potentials of Electronic Resource Management ........................................................ 306
Yvonne Wei Zhang, California State University, Pomona, USA
Discusses problems encountered at an institution during the installation and utilization of ERM systems,
such as Ex-Libris SFX and III ERM. The author’s objective is to provide readers with a balanced understanding of ERMS pros and cons from a librarian’s perspective.
Chapter XVIII
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems .................................................................. 322
Margaret Hogarth, University of California, Riverside, USA
Viki Bloom, University of California, Riverside, USA
Discusses the Electronic Resource Management Initiative reports, various library-developed systems,
and how existing and developing standards help with the continued development of ERMS and with
their integration into integrated library systems.
Chapter XIX
The Impact of Locally Developed Electronic Resource Management Systems ................................ 350
Marie R. Kennedy, University of Southern California, USA
The development of “home grown” tools at several academic institutions is traced, with a focus on the
aspects of how the systems are unique to each university. As a result of locally development systems,
community-wide efforts to identify key elements for managing electronic resources have begun to
emerge.
Chapter XX
The Future of Electronic Resource Management Systems: Inside and Out ...................................... 363
Ted Fons, Innovative Interfaces Inc., USA
Examines ways in which collection analysis and other functionality might be facilitated by the use of
data stored in electronic resource management systems. The author suggests that as ERMS evolve, their
utility should expand to include collection analysis as well as the source for critical access and license
data for patrons wherever they access the library’s electronic resources.
Chapter XXI
In the Eye of the Storm: ERM Systems Guiding Libraries’ Future ................................................... 374
Ted Koppel, ExLibris Inc., USA
Describes how libraries have struggled to rethink policies, procedures, systems, and their own roles,
to meet the information seeking and research demands of their patrons. The chapter discusses ways
in which ERMS should evolve to help libraries meet the challenges of the future. They conclude that
ERMS represent the “new ILS”—the next “heart” of library management systems, and believe that it’s
imperative libraries direct ERMS development in ways that support and advance, rather than undercut,
their missions.
Compilation of References .............................................................................................................. 383
About the Contributors ................................................................................................................... 409
Index ................................................................................................................................................... 414
xiii
Foreword
I am delighted and honored to provide a foreword for this ine collection of richly informative articles
on a wide array of topics within the emerging ield of electronic resource management. I think the book
will be just as useful to relative beginners as to those like me who have been working in this area for
some time.
It is no longer news that libraries continue to invest more and more heavily in e-journals, e-journal
back iles, “traditional” databases, e-books, and newer types of e-resources of every description—or
that something like 500 libraries have now purchased and are implementing e-resource management
(“ERM”) systems to help them manage these collections more effectively. As director of the Digital
Library Federation’s E-Resource Management Initiative that helped shape many of these systems, I
came to realize during “phase one” of that project both how complex they need to be in order to support the many different facets of ERM work and how lexible they will need to be to adapt to changing
technologies, business models, and other variables we may now only dimly envision.
With such a challenging and unpredictable environment, what is needed is a collection of articles that
strikes a balance between providing background and practical information for the “here and now” and
helps build toward and bring order to the future; this volume succeeds in doing this remarkably well.
To focus briely on some immediate and practical organizational concerns, several articles discuss such
crucial issues as worklows, roles and collaboration, or explore how strategic planning or less familiar
approaches like “process mapping” can be used to promote orderly and eficient operations. Others deal
thoroughly and helpfully with more readily deined but still challenging problems like processing and
making optimal use of usage statistics for decision-making, how to present journal holdings, or how to
work productively with vendors on quality control issues—even across a large and complex consortium
like the University of California’s.
Few will dispute that another important and problematic area for libraries, publishers and vendors
these days is licensing; while licenses must be understood and negotiated in the present, evolving business
models and legal developments are likely to have serious implications for the future environment that
libraries will work in. Serious and continuing attention must therefore be paid by librarians to this part
of the landscape, and those seeking a deeper understanding of it will be pleased to see three substantive,
complementary articles that deal, respectively, with the evolution of license terms over the last several
years, the role of copyright, and the negotiation process.
The book also provides much of interest on what might be called the “technical” front, as well.
There are, for example, two helpful articles concerning ERM systems—as well as excellent discussions
of linking technologies and authentication. In addition, there is a nice survey of standards relevant for
ERM systems that describes and explains the important existing and emerging ones and provides useful ideas about how new standards might further simplify and automate needlessly time-consuming
tasks. Lastly, two additional articles focus more directly on and discuss possible but achievable ERM
xiv
“futures”—including one that argues that ERMs can and will provide the core or essential functionality
for future integrated library systems.
That is quite a remarkable notion, since not many years ago there was a pervasive sense among librarians involved in managing electronic resources that they were on their own and had to “make things
up as they went along!” Now it seems much clearer that there is irm ground to stand on while we deal
with our day to day management and operational issues, and one of the great strengths of this collection
is that it helps solidify that place while contributing a basis for intelligent discussions and planning for
the future. That is no mean accomplishment!
Tim Jewell
University of Washington Libraries, USA
June 2007
Tim Jewell has coordinated the Digital Library Federation’s Electronic Resource Management Initiative—which has helped
to encourage and shape the development of electronic management systems and related data standards—since its inception
in 2002. He is currently director of information resources, collections and scholarly communication with the University of
Washington Libraries in Seattle, where he has worked since 1983. Active in regional consortium activities for a number of
years, he also served as visiting program oficer for electronic resources at ARL from 1996 to 1998. He holds an MLS from
SUNY-Albany and an MA in sociology from Pennsylvania State University.
xv
Preface
Since the advent of Dialog in the 1960’s, the proliferation of computer-based bibliographic resources
has dramatically changed the way library collections are processed and accessed. In the 1980’s, we
witnessed the parallel development of online and CD-ROM databases. Then, with the entrance of the
World Wide Web in the early 1990’s, came a radical shift in the way users access information and vendors responded by developing new Web-based platforms and search interfaces. In the early years of the
new millennium, further developments such as meta (cross-interface) database searching, link resolvers,
openURL standards, and so forth began to emerge.
These developments, coupled with the new expectations of the Internet-savvy user, affected all types
of libraries who had to rapidly shift from print-based to electronic resources. Whether the electronic
resource comes from a commercial publisher or a local digitization effort, this trend is also rapidly
changing library operational and organizational practices. Along with the increase in electronic resource
acquisitions, librarians have had to quickly adapt and address an ever complex set of new challenges and
changes related to: worklow management and planning; selection and acquisition procedures; copyright
and license negotiation; cataloging practices; public access interfaces; and utilization of usage statistics.
Libraries must now come to terms with how to better evaluate, acquire, store, and manage this wealth
of electronic resources. The proliferation of electronic resource management systems (ERMS) presents
an additional problem for libraries, that must now develop in-house resource management solutions or
acquire one of a myriad of emerging turn-key solutions and implement them in an evolving organizational setting.
Many librarians and managers have begun to understand that issues related to electronic resource
management are far-reaching, complex, and changing the very nature of what we collect and how our
users access it. A typical scenario for acquiring print resources in an academic library for example, might
involve the selection of materials by subject-specialist librarians or bibliographers; order placement by
library acquisitions; cataloging and processing by library technical services; and shelving by the circulation unit. In the electronic realm, this traditional worklow could potentially be an entirely different
process or be handled in whole or in part by an ERMS.
Electronic resources may take many forms, from e-books or journals to full-text resources from
aggregators, or index/abstract databases from publishers. The way in which electronic resources are
managed is becoming more distinct from print with new approaches to planning, tasks, worklow and
communication. The planning process encompasses policy-making, budgeting, and stafing. Tasks may
include things like setting up trials, license negotiation, authentication, troubleshooting, evaluation, and
renewal. Worklow covers the entire process from initial product consideration, making the resource
available to patrons, to renewal or cancellation. Communication includes a variety of interactions from
local administrators to vendors, IT staff, public service personnel, and users.
xvi
In conducting a literature review on this subject, we found a number of “how-to” manuals or guides,
but few comprehensive research volumes on the topic of electronic resource management in libraries.
Several of these texts are worth exploring however, and provide useful information to librarians involved
with electronic resource management. A summary of some of the key texts follows.
In an attempt to be as inclusive as possible, Jewell (2001) identiies ten primary issues and practices
in Selection and Presentation of Commercially Available Electronic Resources: Issues and Practices,
a report published by the Digital Library Federation (DLF) and Council on Library and Information
Resources (CLIR). From a broad perspective, Jewell stresses two fundamental factors to sustainability
of electronic resources: pricing and management operation. He examines emerging strategies for exerting economic pressure within the marketplace for electronic resources. He also points out that because
substantial staff time is required, sustainability is an important operational issue. Jewell’s report was
one of the most comprehensive available at the time of its publication in 2001.
Building an Electronic Resource Collection: a Practical Guide by Lee and Boyle (2004), discusses
the reasons for buying electronic resources, and provides information on delivery options, collection
development policies, and usage evaluation. They also present an overview of the major technical issues
that arise when working with electronic resources, such as: remote versus local access, authentication,
linkage services, and archiving issues.
In his Buying and Contracting for Resources and Services, A How-to-do-it Manual for Librarians,
Anderson (2004) emphasizes the importance of establishing successful vendor relations. The book provides insightful and noteworthy tips on building and maintaining the library-vendor relationship.
Discussions on management, assessment, budgeting and planning, collection development, acquisitions, licensing, and more can be found in Conger’s Collaborative Electronic Resource Management:
from Acquisition to Assessment, published in 2004. The author emphasizes the disruptive effect of digital
resources on worklow as library professionals strive to address an array of management challenges.
She points out that “digital resources, by their nature, have proved to be slippery and their management
requires innovation, creativity, and collaboration” (Conger, 2004). She suggests that, “a discussion of
electronic resource management quickly becomes a discussion of the overall management of a typical
library” (Conger, 2004). The author demonstrates how the management of electronic resources its into the
new collaborative management model that relies on learning more than control to respond to change.
In E-Metrics for Library and Information Professionals: How to Use Data for Managing and Evaluating Electronic Resource Collections, White and Kamal (2006) introduce electronic usage statistics
(e-metrics). Section 3 of the book in particular, focuses on how to use and customize vendor-supplied
data, and how to build local metrics.
The revised edition of Selecting and Managing Electronic Resources, A How-to-Do-It Manual for
Librarians, by Gregory and Hanson (2006), provides a list of useful selection tools and includes a
“Selection criteria worksheet for electronic resources,” which serves as a model for libraries in need of
implementing such procedures.
The most comprehensive effort on electronic resource management can be found in the Report of the
Digital Library Federation Electronic Resource Management (DLF ERMI) Initiative. ERMI grew out
of Jewells’ research discussed earlier. In May 2002, the National Information Standards Organization
(NISO) and DLF sponsored a workshop on Standards for Electronic Resource Management. Participants
included librarians as well as representatives from EBSCO, Endeavor, ExLibris, Fretwell Downing,
Innovative Interfaces, SIRSI, and Serials Solutions. The main purpose of the workshop was to bring
librarians, publishers, and vendors together to create and test standards for electronic resource manage-
xvii
ment. ERMI incorporated information from the workshop and went on to develop common speciications
and tools for managing license agreements, related administrative information, and internal processes
associated with collections of licensed electronic resources. The report and working documents from this
initiative provide detailed speciications, standards, and best practices; invaluable for drafting system
speciications, directing vendor development efforts, and informing librarians. These guidelines have
now been largely adopted by commercial ERMS vendors.
These publications, along with numerous published journal articles, provide a framework for the
management of electronic resources in libraries. We believe there are many important issues and questions still to be explored in this ield, however. For example: why do many institutions continue to be
reactive rather than proactive, lack policies and procedures, and retain antiquated worklow systems for
the handling of electronic resources? We believe to fundamentally address these concerns, administrators, library professionals, and support staff, need to more fully understand the issues and challenges
associated with the provision of electronic resources and the importance of proper management and
strategic planning.
This book provides comprehensive coverage of the theories, methods, and challenges, research and
practices connected with the provision and management of electronic resources in libraries. It can serve
as a practical guide that emphasizes and supports strategic planning, operational policies and procedures,
worklow and organizational structure. It addresses strategic planning for electronic resource management from the perspective of planning, policy, and worklow management. It also provides an authoritative analysis of electronic resource management systems including their challenges and trends, and the
latest development in electronic resource management standards, such as SUSHI and COUNTER, and
the impact of Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 applications. The book also provides a comprehensive review of
the evolving license terms, practices and agreement negotiation techniques of electronic resources, and
impacts of copyright in relation to electronic resources and their unique characteristics and challenges. It
examines evolving roles and core competencies for electronic resource librarians as a result of increasing demands for library professionals trained in the planning, selecting, implementing, and evaluating
of electronic resources. Discussions are also provided on practical issues encountered by librarians that
have not been well addressed in the literature, such as naming conventions for electronic resources, or
the various types of authentication and authorization mechanisms currently in use.
In an attempt to provide the reader with comprehensive coverage of the core topics related to electronic resource management, this book consists ive sections including an historic overview, strategic
planning, and usage statistics; worklow management and competencies of electronic resource librarians; copyright and licensing; working with electronic resources and electronic resource management
(ERM) systems.
Chapter I “History of Electronic Resources” traces the history and major developments of electronic
resources in libraries in the United States. The chapter discusses the rapid changes and underlying issues
which have affected the evolution of library electronic resources from the 1960’s to the early 2000’s.
It is the author’s hope that this historic overview may lead the reader to a better understanding of the
current situation and provide lessons for the future.
Chapter II “Strategic Planning for Electronic Resource Management” addresses the subject from the
perspective of planning, policy, and worklow management issues experienced by libraries. The authors
suggest ideas and methods to address these management challenges.
Chapter III “Electronic Usage Statistics” provides an overview which includes methods of deining, collecting, and using usage data. A survey of some of the systems of estimating journal usage in the
xviii
print environment is followed by a description of the development of electronic usage practices. The
important contributions of the COUNTER and SUSHI projects are reviewed, along with examples of
other ways statistics can assist in decision-making throughout a product’s life cycle.
Chapter IV “Selecting and Managing Electronic Resources” provides an in-depth analysis of the
worklow for electronic resources from selection to acquisition. It addresses major steps, processes,
procedures, and issues in selecting and acquiring electronic resources and covers the selection process
including tools, challenges, and selection criteria.
Chapter V “Sharing the Albatross of Electronic Resources Management Worklow” illustrates that
while management of electronic resources is often seen as a strictly technical services endeavor, it should
be approached as a multifaceted process requiring all areas of the library. This chapter offers a detailed
account of how one library handles the electronic resources management worklow collaboratively.
Chapter VI “Process Mapping for Electronic Resource Management— A Lesson from Business
Models” bases its research on the premise that existing electronic resource management guidelines are
conceptually linked to actual management situations. This chapter describes how a business and industry
method called process mapping can be applied to the management of electronic resources in libraries.
A case study is presented to illustrate the process.
Chapter VII “Evolving Roles for Electronic Resource Librarians” examines the emergence of the
electronic resource librarian specialty within academic libraries as a result of increasing demands for library
professionals trained in the planning, selecting, implementing, and evaluating of electronic resources.
The authors discuss the core competencies of these positions by analyzing job advertisements published
in the College & Research Libraries News and The Chronicle of Higher Education between July 2001
and June 2006. Implications for library education and organizational structures are also discussed.
Chapter VIII “The Evolution of License Content” provides a comparative analysis of thirty-ive
licenses created prior to 2000 (and their 2006 equivalents) to reveal how license agreements have
evolved to meet the principles set forth in recent years by the American Association of Law Libraries,
the International Federation of Library Associations, and the NorthEast Research Libraries. The results
of the study indicate that efforts in the library community to encourage the development of licenses that
meet the needs of most institutions are having a positive impact.
Chapter IX “Copyright Implications and Applications for Electronic Resource Management” begins
with an examination of the sections of copyright law that impact electronic resource management. Copyright is discussed in relation to particular types of electronic resources and their unique characteristics
and challenges. The chapter incorporates information gathered from a survey of professionals working
in a variety of libraries—providing a practical view of how librarians are approaching copyright in the
daily reality of their increasingly electronic environments.
Chapter X “Negotiating Licenses for Electronic Resources: Tactics, Terms, and Process” provides the
reader with an overview of basic contract law as it relates to electronic resource licensing. The chapter
also discusses the negotiation process as well as license agreement terms and clauses. By sharing tips
and lessons learned in the negotiation process, the author hopes to provide librarians with a practical
understanding of the resource licensing process.
Chapter XI “Working With Database and E-Journal Vendors to Ensure Quality for End Users”
describes how the California Digital Library (CDL) supports the thousands of electronic journals,
databases, collections and reference works that are licensed by CDL on behalf of the ten campuses of
the University of California (UC). It indicates that three key components were vital to CDL’s success:
xix
involvement of librarians at all campuses; internal processes for working with vendors; documentation
which emphasizes technical standards and best practices.
Chapter XII “One-Stop Shopping for Journal Holdings” advocates providing a uniied, seamless,
interface for the full range of journal literature available to library patrons. The author reviews the tools
available for making journal collections accessible, and then analyzes the categories of journal literature
to which a library could provide access. It closes with a brief look at future trends that will affect the
ability of libraries to provide coherent, seamless access to journal literature.
Chapter XIII “Beyond OpenURL: Technologies for Linking Library Resources” provides an overview of the existing techniques for reference linking of scholarly research materials and discusses some
of the new techniques designed for advanced linking. The discussion also includes information about
the impact of Web and Library 2.0 applications.
Chapter XIV “Authentication and Access Management of Electronic Resources”
opens with a discussion of the need for libraries to provide users with local and remote access to electronic resources. It discusses authentication and authorization mechanisms currently in use by libraries, their parent organizations and electronic resource providers. The chapter concludes with a look at
considerations and directions libraries and e-resource providers may take in the future to provide secure
and seamless access to electronic resources.
Chapter XV “Using Consistent Naming Conventions for Library Electronic Resources” points out that
there are no accepted standards governing naming electronic resources in A to Z lists or electronic resource
management (ERM) systems. Current practice supericially resembles cataloging standards and guidelines,
but is substantially ad hoc, and reliant on local adaptation and innovation. The issues related to naming
electronic resources are discussed and a draft set of principles and conventions is offered.
Chapter XVI “Standards: The Structural Underpinnings of Electronic Resource Management Systems.” Built to manage all steps in the lifecycle of an electronic product, ERM systems must interoperate with existing integrated library systems (ILS), public service, and inancial software already in use
within the library. The importance of ERM standards is discussed, including efforts like SUSHI and the
License Expression Work Group to deine new standards and protocols for ERM systems.
Chapter XVII “Challenges and possibilities in the time of ERMS” discusses problems encountered
at an institution during the installation and utilization of ERM systems, such as Ex-Libris SFX and III
ERM. The author’s objective is to provide readers with a balanced understanding of ERMS pros and
cons from a librarian’s perspective.
Chapter XVIII “Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems” discusses the Electronic
Resource Management Initiative reports, various library-developed systems, and how existing and
developing standards help with the continued development of ERMS and with their integration into
integrated library systems.
Chapter XIX In “The Impact of Locally Developed Electronic Resource Management Systems” the
development of “home grown” tools at several academic institutions is traced, with a focus on the aspects
of how the systems are unique to each university. As a result of locally development systems, community-wide efforts to identify key elements for managing electronic resources have begun to emerge.
Chapter XX “The Future of Electronic Resource Management Systems: Inside and Out”
examines ways in which collection analysis and other functionality might be facilitated by the use of
data stored in electronic resource management systems. The author suggests that as ERMS evolve, their
utility should expand to include collection analysis as well as the source for critical access and license
data for patrons wherever they access the library’s electronic resources.
xx
Chapter XXI “In the Eye of the Storm-ERM Systems Guiding Libraries’ Future” describes how
libraries have struggled to rethink policies, procedures, systems, and their own roles, to meet the information seeking and research demands of their patrons. The chapter discusses ways in which ERMS should
evolve to help libraries meet the challenges of the future. They conclude that ERMS represent the “new
ILS”—the next “heart” of library management systems, and believe that it’s imperative libraries direct
ERMS development in ways that support and advance, rather than undercut, their missions.
In order to provide up-to-date coverage of research, practices, and challenges related to electronic
resource management in libraries, we invited researchers and practitioners to submit proposals describing their suggested topics and contributions in the ield. All proposals were carefully reviewed by the
editors for suitability in scope and coverage. Each chapter submission was then subject to a double
blind, peer review process.
We hope that this book helps library managers, professional librarians, and library personnel involved
in electronic resource management come to a realization that with the increase in electronic resources,
the types of processes libraries have traditionally employed in print collections are no longer suitable,
and the worklow of electronic resources has a tremendous impact on the overall structure, strategic
planning of the library. It also helps to learn how libraries can manage electronic resources in a more
streamlined worklow and collaborative effort. It assists in foreseeing key issues and challenges encountered during the installation and utilization of ERM systems, and impacts of the Web 2.0 and Library
2.0 tools on resource linking, and the latest development in tracking usage statistics of electronic resources. It is our sincere hope that the research and analysis by our expert contributing authors provides
a comprehensive and practical tool with which to better understand electronic resource management in
research and practice.
Holly Yu and Scott Breivold, California State University, Los Angeles, USA
REFERENCES
Anderson, R. (2003). Buying and contracting for resources and services: A how-to-do-it manual for
librarians. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers.
Conger, J. E. (2004). Collaborative electronic resource management : From acquisitions to assessment.
Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.
Curtis, D. (2005). E-journals : A how-to-do-it manual for building, managing, and supporting electronic
journal collections. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers.
Gregory, V. L., & Hanson, A. (2006). Selecting and managing electronic resources: A how-to-do-it
manual for librarians. New York: Neal Schuman Publishers.
Jewell, T. D. (2001). Selection and presentation of commercially available electronic resources: Issues
and practices. Digital Library Federation & Council on Library and Information Resources. Retrieved
November 16, 2007, from http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub99/contents.html
Jewell, T. D., Anderson, I., & Chandler, A. et al. (2004). Electronic resource management: Report of
xxi
the DLF ERM initiative. Washington, DC: Digital Library Federation. Retrieved November 16, 2007,
from http://www.diglib.org/pubs/dlf102/
Lee, S. D., & Boyle, F. (2004). Building an electronic resource collection: A practical guide. London:
Facet Publishing.
White, A. C. (2006). E-metrics for library and information professionals : How to use data for managing
and evaluating electronic resource. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers.
Scott Breivold is an associate librarian at California State University, Los Angeles. He is the University Library’s Media,
Communications, & Arts Librarian and oversees the Music & Media Center. He recently took on the role of Library Web Administrator, and will be responsible for coordinating the development and maintenance of the library’s web site. As a member of the
web team, he played a lead role in the library’s current site design, OPAC interface, and online Information Literacy Tutorials.
He has presented at local and national conferences on topics ranging from media collection development to library web and
tutorial design. He is the editor of Howard Hawks: Interviews published by the University of Mississippi Press in 2006.
Holly Yu is an associate librarian and Electronic Resources Coordinator and reference librarian at the University Library,
California State University, Los Angeles. She is responsible for providing overall coordination for all aspects of library electronic resources, including selection, budgeting, contracts, troubleshooting, remote access, and more. As the former Library
Web Administrator, she coordinated the development and maintenance of the library’s web site. She also provides curricular
support, library instruction and reference service to students and faculty. She is the editor of Content and Worklow Management for Library Websites: Case Studies, and has authored and co-authored articles on library web interface design. She has
presented at American Library Association conferences and regional conferences, as well as the Internet Librarians’ conference on the topics of web site usability and library web development. She is active in the Library Information & Technology
Association (LITA) and the American Library Association (ALA).
xxii
Acknowledgment
The editors would like to acknowledge the assistance of all involved in the compilation and review
process for this book, without whom this project could not have been accomplished.
We are grateful to the exceptional members of our Editorial Advisory Board: Adam Chandler, coordinator, service design group of the Information Technology and Technical Services of the Cornell
University; Sharon E. Farb, director of Digital Collections Services of the UCLA Libraries; Lisa A.
Moske, director of System-Wide Electronic Information Resources for the California State Universities;
Kimberly J. Parker, head, Electronic Collections of the Yale University Library; and Angela Riggio,
head, Digital Collection Management and Digital Collections Services of the UCLA Libraries.
Many thanks go to our dedicated team of reviewers, several of whom also served as contributing
authors: Ivy Anderson, director of collections for the California Digital Library; Kitti Canepi, head,
Information Resources Management of the Morris Library at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale;
Ellen Finnie Duranceau, scholarly publishing and licensing consultant for the MIT Libraries; Sharon E.
Farb, director of Digital Collection Services at UCLA; Kristine Ferry, research librarian for business at
the University of California, Irvine; Ted Fons, senior product manager for Innovative Interfaces Inc.;
Patricia Hults, coordinator of technical services for the Research Libraries of the Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute; Smita Joshipura, acquisitions librarian at Arizona State University; Marie R. Kennedy, head,
Metadata and Content Management, Norris Medical Library of the University of Southern California;
Ted Koppel, Verde product manager for the Ex Libris Group; Lisa A. Moske of California State Universities; Marvin Pollard, uniied information access systems project manager for the California State
Universities; Angela Riggio of UCLA; Juan Carlos Rodriquez, director of Library Systems & Information Technology, California State University, Sacramento; Robert M. Russell, electronic resources
coordinator, Northern State University; and Aline Soules, library faculty and professor, California State
University, East Bay.
We greatly appreciate the publishing opportunity and efforts of our team at IGI Global Publishing.
We especially want to thank Kristin Roth, our development editor for this project, for her invaluable
assistance, guidance, and patience throughout this entire process.
Special thanks go to Tim Jewell, one of the pioneers of the electronic resource management realm,
for inspiring this project and generously offering to write the foreword.
Finally, but most importantly, we wish to thank all of our insightful and expert authors for their excellent contributions to this book and to the ield of library electronic resource management.
Section I
Historic Overview, Strategic
Planning, and Usage Statistics
1
Chapter I
History of Electronic Resources
Dalene Hawthorne
Emporia State University, USA
ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the history of the development and use of electronic resources in libraries in the
United States. It provides an overview of the major developments in the ield with a focus on library
catalogs, electronic databases, e-books and e-serials. The chapter is intended to convey the broad sweep
of change that has characterized these electronic resources from the 1960’s to the early 2000’s, as well
as a sense of the underlying issues that remain the same. The author hopes that an understanding of the
history of the development and use of these resources may lead to a better understanding of the current
environment and provide inspiration for the future.
INTRODUCTION
The library profession recognized the potential
of computers to make library resources more
accessible early in the development of computer
technology. Librarians were often enthusiastic
and sometimes early adopters of technology. The
use of electronic resources in libraries began with
the development of the machine-readable cataloging (MARC) format in the mid-1960’s, a full 30
years before the introduction of the World Wide
Web and its subsequent ubiquity. Bibliographic
databases became available at approximately the
same time.
Libraries provided access to data sets such as
census and survey data as early as the 1970’s. Dur-
ing the microcomputer revolution of the 1980’s,
libraries acquired software and data on diskettes
and offered databases on CD-ROM. Databases on
CD-ROM began to contain full text. Search interfaces became more straightforward and simpler
to use. Online catalogs became more common,
and libraries began to offer them through the
pre-World Wide Web Internet.
Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web
in 1990. The subsequent development of the Mosaic browser in 1992 led to widespread use of the
Web beginning in 1993. The graphical interface
and the later development of Web search engines
such as Yahoo! made resources on the Internet
more accessible to average patrons.
Copyright © 2008, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
History of Electronic Resources
Web-based electronic resources were widely
available beginning in the mid-1990’s. Libraries offered Web-based catalogs, bibliographic
and full-text databases, electronic journals, and
eventually electronic books through the Web.
Patrons no longer had to go to the library to do a
signiicant amount of their research.
This chapter is intended to convey the broad
sweep of change that characterized the development of library electronic resources from the
1960’s to the early 2000’s as well as a sense of
the underlying issues that remain the same. An
understanding of the development of library catalogs, databases, electronic serials and electronic
books may lead to a fuller understanding of the
current environment and provide inspiration for
the future.
ONLINE CATALOGS
Electronic resources began to dramatically change
the way patrons accessed library resources in the
mid-1960’s. The card catalog, a standard ixture
in libraries for a century, faced its demise. One
of the major developments during the 1960’s
was machine-readable cataloging (MARC). The
MARC format dramatically changed the way
library resources were processed and accessed.
The library professionals who created MARC
recognized the need for automation and a supporting data standard at a critical juncture in the
development of technology, and took the necessary steps and risks to develop one. The lexible
and expandable MARC format demonstrated the
foresight and vision of those who developed it
over 40 years ago.
BACKGROUND
MACHINE-READABLE CATALOGING
The pursuit of electronic resources by libraries
was driven by the core values of library science.
It is possible to recognize in Ranganathan’s ive
laws of library science the motivation that drove
libraries to incorporate electronic resources into
services and collections. Paraphrased to better suit
electronic resources, the laws read: resources are
for use, every person his or her resource, every
resource its user, save the time of the user, and
the library is a growing organism (Ranganathan,
1963).
Each technological development in library
electronic resources during the 20th century
was intended to make access to resources more
direct, convenient, and timely for the user. The
implementation of electronic resources made the
library a growing organism as libraries adapted
processes and reorganized staff repeatedly to
accommodate the changes inherent in the use of
constantly changing technology.
2
In 1964, the Council on Library Resources commissioned a study about capturing cataloging data
in machine-readable form. A report called The
Recording of Library of Congress Bibliographic
Data in Machine Form resulted from the study,
and was used as the basis for the irst Conference on Machine-Readable Catalog Copy in
1965. Participants at the conference determined
the requirements for a machine-readable record
and discussed how it might be used in libraries.
The Library of Congress’ Information Systems
Ofice developed and distributed a report based
on this meeting titled A Proposed Format for a
Standardized Machine-Readable Catalog Record
(Avram, 1968).
During a second conference held at the Library
of Congress, the MARC Pilot Project was conceived. Planning for the project began in February
1966. The MARC I format was created, codes
for place of publication, language, and publisher
were developed, computer software was designed,
History of Electronic Resources
and procedures were developed and documented
(Avram, 1968).
In November 1966, the Information Systems
Ofice of the Library of Congress began to distribute magnetic tapes of MARC records to 16
libraries that agreed to participate in the pilot
project. The tapes contained English language
Library of Congress catalog records that were
formatted in MARC I. During the pilot project,
the Library of Congress converted 35,000 records
(Avram, 1968). Some of the libraries that participated in the pilot project were able to use MARC
records to automate some aspects of their library
operations. Some of the pilot libraries, however,
struggled with a lack of computer programming
knowledge as well as a lack of experience with
complex bibliographic data (Torkington, 1974).
The pilot project oficially ended June 30, 1967,
but distribution of records continued into 1968
(Avram, 1968).
The Library of Congress decided that the pilot
project was an overall success and began to work
on the MARC II format in March 1967, while the
pilot project was still being carried out. The MARC
II format was developed based on feedback from
libraries that participated in the pilot project. The
Information Sciences and Automation Division
of the American Library Association formed a
Machine-Readable Cataloging Format Committee
to review the MARC II format (Avram, 1968).
MARC II was designed to serve as a communication or exchange medium. The Library of
Congress began general distribution of MARC
II records in March 1969. Responsibility for
creating MARC records was transferred from
the Library of Congress’ Information Systems
Ofice to a newly created department called the
MARC Editorial Ofice. At irst, coverage was
limited to American imprints, but this was later
expanded to include current English language
imprints. By the end of 1972, the MARC database
contained more than 300,000 records, and projects to develop MARC systems began in several
other countries including Great Britain, France,
Italy, West Germany, the Netherlands, and Japan
(Torkington, 1974).
The development of the MARC format laid
the foundation for libraries to share bibliographic
data. Databases and services were subsequently
created to support that sharing.
SHARED CATALOGING
The Ohio College Association hired Frederick
G. Kilgour in 1967 to establish the Ohio College
Library Center (OCLC), which was the world’s
irst computerized library network. In 1971
OCLC introduced a shared cataloging database,
now called WorldCat, to support 54 academic
libraries in Ohio. This online cataloging system
allowed libraries to achieve dramatic cost savings
by sharing bibliographic records. One library
could create an online bibliographic record and
other libraries could use that same record to create cards with local information for their print
catalogs. The Alden Library at Ohio University
increased the number of books it cataloged by
a third and simultaneously reduced its staff by
17 positions in the irst year of use. Word of this
increase in eficiency spread, and the network
quickly expanded to include libraries from all 50
states and around the world (Librarian…educator…historian…entrepreneur, 2006).
ONLINE PUBLIC ACCESS
CATALOG (OPAC)
In 1975, Ohio State University Libraries installed
computer terminals in its main lobby so that
patrons could directly search its library control
system without help from a librarian intermediary. The library control system became one of the
early online catalogs. The catalog was searchable
by author, title, author and title, call number, and
Library of Congress subject headings. There was
also a computerized shelf list that patrons could
3
History of Electronic Resources
browse (Norden & Lawrence, 1981). Most of the
library systems that were available in the 1970’s
performed a single function, such as circulation,
and this information was also made available to
library patrons.
Computer-output-microform (COM) catalogs
were another alternative to the card catalog that
developed as a result of shared online cataloging. Libraries that used these catalogs generally
had large collections (over 25,000 volumes, with
a growth rate of at least 1,000 titles per year),
needed the catalog in at least 20 locations, and
were having dificulty managing the logistics of
maintaining a card catalog because of the large
volume (Boss & Marcum, 1980). COM catalogs
enjoyed only a brief period of popularity due to
patrons’ clear preference for online catalogs over
microform.
Online catalogs began to replace existing library card catalogs in signiicant numbers during
the 1980’s. A study of users’ reactions to four of
these systems indicated that the users preferred
online catalogs to card catalogs (Moore, 1981).
This clear preference led to further development
of the online catalog. Online catalogs provided
more advantages to patrons than simply improved searching capabilities. These systems
were integrated with acquisitions and circulation processing so that added information about
on-order, in-process, and up-to-date circulation
status information was available to patrons for
the irst time (Horny, 1982).
By 1989, 50% of all library systems purchased
had a patron access catalog that was implemented
(Boss, 1989). Many card catalog cabinets were
discarded or sold. To ease the transition between
card catalogs and online catalogs, online catalogs
were designed to mimic the functionality of the
card catalog. Text-based catalogs were available
remotely using the TELNET protocol, but only
relatively sophisticated computer-using library
patrons accessed library catalogs this way. That
changed signiicantly with the advent of the World
Wide Web.
4
WEB-BASED CATALOGS
Vendors developed Web-based versions of online
public access catalogs to satisfy the demand of
librarians, but these catalogs replicated text-based
catalogs, which were in turn based on the card
catalog. Web-based catalogs, although presented
through a graphical interface, relied on Boolean
searching, which was “still a retrieval technique
designed for trained and experienced users” (Antelman, Lynema, & Pace, 2006, p. 128).
Many libraries added catalog records for Web
pages, but it quickly became clear that it would
be impossible for librarians to catalog the Web
in the way they had traditionally described print
resources. Before librarians could fully respond
to this new technology, the irst Web search engines such as Aliweb, WebCrawler, and Lycos
and Web directories such as Yahoo! were created.
Libraries became more selective about adding
catalog records with links to Web resources and
focused more on electronic resources for which
the library paid.
Some libraries created catalog records for
individual titles in Web-based databases, only to
ind that database vendors’ title lists changed frequently, causing signiicant cataloging backlogs
and inaccurate links that were frustrating to users.
Other libraries created html lists of electronic
journals and databases rather than catalog records.
As databases and electronic journals proliferated,
this task became a time-consuming chore. In
response to both the need for catalog records and
what were often referred to as A-Z lists, vendors
emerged that provided services that tracked the
individual electronic journals from databases and
supplied MARC records for libraries to load into
their databases.
In many cases, the library catalog was no longer
the main discovery tool for library patrons. The
catalog became for many users simply a way to
look up call numbers for items they found elsewhere. Despite the fact that researchers in information retrieval developed several experimental
History of Electronic Resources
catalogs, such as RLG’s Red Light Green, that
provided features such as spell checking, subject heading and keyword suggestion, and term
weighting, these features were not incorporated
into catalogs developed by library vendors (Antelman et al., 2006)
Libraries grappled with ways to incorporate social computing into their Web presence. Podcasts,
blogs, and wikis appeared on library Websites.
Ratings, social tagging, and reviews were included
in library catalogs by vendors. Still, many patrons
overlooked the library catalog.
In May 2005, The North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries purchased Endeca Technologies’ Information Access Platform (IAP) and
made a new catalog available using this software
in January 2006. The new catalog allowed NCSU
to offer its patrons relevance-ranked results, new
browsing capabilities, and improved subject access (Antelman et al., 2006). The NCSU catalog
caused such a stir in the library world that vendors
began to create search platforms with similar
capabilities.
Standards development, which started with
the MARC format, continued to be critical in the
new Web environment. Librarians used XML and
developed metadata schemas to describe collections. Metadata schemas and the metadata they
carried made it possible for search engines to ind
and expose these collections to users through
digital Web-based libraries. METS (metadata
encoding and transmission standard), MODS
(metadata object description schema), and EAD
(encoded archival description) became familiar
to catalogers and archivists. An XML version of
MARC was created, along with crosswalks to
and from these different schemas, to allow data
to be converted from one to another. These new
metadata schemas were used to markup online
collections of born-digital works as well as digitized photographs, artwork, musical scores, and
historical documents.
Many libraries found themselves at the beginning of the 21st century with the unenviable task
of maintaining multiple catalogs and systems of
information, including Web-based catalogs for
traditional sources, A-Z lists of electronic serials
and databases, and digital repositories. Patrons
found themselves with a sometimes confusing
and overwhelming array of resources with no
clear path to searching them all.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATABASES
While the MARC format was under development
at the Library of Congress, the irst electronic
bibliographic databases were being created on the
opposite coast. These databases were originally
created to provide access to scientiic and government information resources. The irst Dialog
database software was created under Roger K.
Summit’s leadership at Lockheed in 1966 (Dialog
invented online, 2006). Lockheed and BunkerRamo both won funding to develop software that
NASA could use to access its database. Lockheed
won the contract in 1967 and retained the rights
to the Dialog software it created. In 1968, System
Development Corporation (SDC), led by Carlos
Cuadra, won a contract from the United States
Ofice of Education for research and dissemination of educational information (ERIC). In 1969,
SCD created a retrieval program for the National
Library of Medicine called ELHILL, which was
the precursor to MEDLINE (Bjorner & Ardito,
2003).
Computer-based bibliographic services revolutionized bibliographic research in the 1970s.
The ramiications of this revolution continued
to impact libraries and electronic resources into
the 21st century. In The Electronic Library: Bibliographic Data Bases, 1978-79, Christian (1978)
attributed the development of these databases in
great measure to issues around scholarly communication. These issues included the proliferation
of journals and journal articles due to tenure and
promotion requirements, increased discipline
5
History of Electronic Resources
specialization, and signiicant price increases for
scholarly journals.
Another driver in the development of these
databases was the trend in the publishing industry
toward computer-aided production techniques.
Techniques such as photocomposition left publishers with a by-product in the form of machinereadable bibliographic data that could be sold to
supplement traditional product lines. Finally, the
National Science Foundation’s Ofice of Science
Information Service (OSIS) was legally charged
with fostering and disseminating scientiic and
technical information through technological
transfer. “OSIS funded the foundation of new information services and regional centers to provide
data base services on a not-for-proit basis; the
conversion to computer-readable form of a number of substantial iles of scientiic and technical
bibliographic data, and a host of other signiicant
innovations” (Christian, 1978, pp. 2-3).
Online information retrieval was a new concept for many libraries, but one that coincided
with the core library values of saving the time
of the user and providing access to information.
Convey (1992) deines information retrieval as
“the searching for, and the retrieving of, selected
information from the data held on a computer.”
In the early days of online access to databases,
connections were made through leased telephone
lines. In 1972, Tymnet set up a commercial telecommunications network, and database providers
began offering services via the network (Bjorner
& Ardito, 2003).
By 1975, there were already more than 100
machine-readable databases, although less than
half of those were available online. Many of them
were distributed on magnetic tape and the tapes
were searched from a local computer. By the late
1970’s, the number of databases had grown to more
than 360 and there were at least 40 abstracting
and indexing services (Christian, 1978).
These databases were very expensive to
use. In the mid 1970’s, Lockheed Information
Systems and System Development Corporation
6
(SDC) were the two major nationwide vendors of
collections of online databases. The average cost
of each online search for bibliographic citations
was approximately $50.00 per search. By late
in the decade Bibliographic Retrieval Services
emerged and offered competitive rates for highvolume users. Lockheed and SDC were forced
to lower their prices to remain competitive, and
prices dropped to an average of $25.00 per search
(Christian, 1978).
Because of the high cost per search and the
arcane searching protocols that varied from
database to database, searches had to be carefully constructed using Boolean logic before the
search was conducted. This was not something
that could be done by the uninitiated layperson.
Jobs were redeined. Reference librarians became
gatekeepers to this information and were called
online searchers or information brokers.
Some libraries charged their patrons fees for
database services. This was a controversial topic
at the time and there was much emotional debate
about whether it was appropriate, especially in
public libraries. The entire library community,
partly due to the cost of these resources, did not
immediately embrace databases. However, resource sharing in the form of consortial purchasing
became more common in this decade and helped
make it possible for more libraries to provide
access to these databases. Since the content of
most of the databases at the time was scientiic
or technical in nature, most of the libraries that
used these databases were academic or special
libraries, although a few large public libraries
provided access to these databases.
The rate of change in the use of library electronic resources began to increase during the
1980’s. Databases were designed for the end
user, licensing of electronic resources became
common, and the full text of articles began to
appear in databases.
History of Electronic Resources
CD-ROM DATABASES
Vendors began to distribute electronic databases
on compact disc-read only memory (CD-ROM) in
the mid 1980’s. CD-ROM technology was touted
as the “new papyrus” (Roose, 1988). Vendors
also designed interfaces for the end user for the
irst time. The irst commercially available CDROM product designed speciically for libraries
was Library Corporation’s BiblioFile. BiblioFile
contained Library of Congress MARC cataloging
records and was exhibited at the American Library
Association’s midwinter meeting in January of
1985 (Eaton, MacDonald, & Saule, 1989).
Databases on CD-ROM quickly became popular for several reasons. CD-ROM databases with
user-friendly interfaces put online searching into
the hands of the end user. Patrons no longer had
to request the assistance of a librarian to gain
access to these electronic resources, resulting in
a service model that was more closely aligned
with core library values than mediated searching.
Another beneit to CD-ROM databases was that
users could search them as much as they wished
without concern for per search or per minute
charges. Libraries could budget more easily for
database use since they did not have to predict
the amount of online searching that would be
requested.
Optical discs provided high-density storage
compared to other media available at the time, such
as loppy discs and magnetic tape. They were also
more durable and could not be altered or erased
(Tenopir, 1986). Library patrons stood in line to
use Magazine Index through the InfoTrac interface
on CD-ROM. The ability to print citations from a
computer rather than having to write them down
was very convenient for patrons (Roose, 1988).
When full-text began to be offered on CD-ROM
products in addition to bibliographic citations,
these products became even more popular.
While there were advantages to this new media,
there were also some disadvantages. It was more
costly for libraries to start using CD-ROM data-
bases since they had to invest in a computer and
CD-ROM drive for each database they purchased,
at least before CD-ROM networking was developed. The annual lease for each database could be
quite expensive, especially in the beginning when
database producers were trying to establish pricing
formulas. Therefore, libraries had to determine
whether the CD-ROM database would be more
cost-effective or provide more value than online
searching of the same database before they could
justify purchasing one. After some years, prices
became lower as information providers became
more comfortable with the medium and perceived
the need to increase their subscriber bases.
Some librarians had concerns about investing
large sums of money in the computer hardware
required to use these databases when with some
foresight it was possible to imagine that another
medium might soon replace CD-ROM technology (Roose, 1988). CD-ROM databases were not
updated as frequently as online databases could
be, since the CD-ROMS had to be produced,
copied and shipped to the library. Some databases
were updated monthly, some quarterly, and others annually.
Along with the introduction of CD-ROM databases, librarians found themselves dealing with
a new purchasing model that they were somewhat
slow to accept. Vendors frequently offered these
CD-ROM database products as annual serials
subscriptions, although some were available for
outright purchase. The result of purchasing databases on a subscription basis was that instead
of buying a resource that could be added to a
library’s collection indeinitely or paying for an
online search on demand, libraries paid signiicant
amounts of money for data that was leased for a
limited time (Pooley, 1990).
Librarians were faced with having to interpret
complex, legal documents generally referred to as
license agreements. These documents speciied
terms which libraries were required to enforce.
These included terms such as whether out-ofdate discs had to be returned to the publisher,
7
History of Electronic Resources
the conditions for single- or multiuser access,
the conditions under which lost or damaged discs
might be replaced, and whether or how much data
could be downloaded from the CD-ROM product
(Pooley, 1990). Librarians and their institutions
identiied objectionable clauses in these licenses
and worked with publishers to ind more favorable
alternatives. One of these objectionable clauses
required libraries to monitor the number of print
copies that could be made or the amount of data
that was downloaded. Librarians who worked in
state institutions had to be aware of state laws
that dictated which state’s laws would be used to
govern the agreement or where a contract-related
lawsuit would be held and then negotiate license
agreements to meet those requirements (Nissley,
1990). License agreements continued to be of
concern into the early 2000’s.
One of the early disadvantages of CD-ROM
technology was that libraries had to dedicate a
workstation, which generally included a computer, CD-ROM drive, and printer, to each copy
of a database. The development of networking
hardware and software and CD-ROM servers,
colloquially referred to as jukeboxes, gave libraries
the ability to offer more than one database at each
workstation. Libraries were also able to remove
the CD-ROM discs themselves from public areas,
which reduced problems with ‘missing’ discs.
However, these networks were dificult to design
and install, and could be quite temperamental. The
networks generally had to be set up and managed
by a network administrator, and often added to
the overall cost of these databases to libraries
(Flanders, 1990).
ONLINE DATABASES
Online databases were still very much in use in
the 1980’s. Full-text articles began to be added to
online bibliographic databases toward the middle
of the decade, which made these databases even
more useful. Online searching at this time was
8
generally done via the TELNET protocol and
private, for-proit networks, not the Internet.
Some of the disadvantages to using online
databases during the late 1980’s did not change
signiicantly when these databases became available on the World Wide Web. These disadvantages
included the dificulty of identifying and locating
relevant sources, the problem of each resource
having a different search interface, and the dificulty of moving search results from one system
to another for consolidation and analysis (Lynch
& Preston, 1990).
WEB-BASED DATABASES
Once the Web became available, online database
interfaces were improved to make searching easier. More full text and multimedia became available. However, because most of these resources
were subscription based and licensed, libraries
were responsible for controlling access to these
databases. In addition, these resources were part
of the deep Web, along with the library catalog,
and it was not possible to discover them with Web
search engines. Since most users started looking
for information with these search engines, they
were not inding these expensive and very useful
resources. Librarians responded with expanded
library instruction, A-Z lists, searchable databases
of databases, and MARC records in the catalog,
but this issue continued to be of great concern
into the early 2000’s.
Early in the development of Web-based databases, access to them was controlled through the
use of logins and passwords. It quickly became
clear that this was an awkward, if not impossible,
way to manage access to Web-based databases.
Authentication by IP (Internet protocol address)
became the main method used by libraries and
database providers to provide resources to computers in the organization, and libraries used proxy
servers to authenticate remote users. Library
information became easily accessible to patrons
History of Electronic Resources
outside the library, which led to a greater demand
for full-text resources.
The problem of the appropriate copy of a fulltext resource began to be of concern to librarians.
Library patrons performed searches and often
found only the options to purchase an article from
the database provider or request it through interlibrary loan. All too often, the library had the full
text of the article available in another electronic
resource or in a print collection. Most patrons
did not know enough about library resources to
anticipate that they might ind that resource immediately and at no direct cost to them in another
of the library’s databases.
Some database providers cooperated with each
other to create links from bibliographic records
in one database to full-text in another database,
but these partnerships were relatively few. When
the OpenURL speciication became available in
1999, link resolvers were developed to utilize
OpenURL to provide the most appropriate copy of
a resource to library patrons. Link resolvers used
a knowledge base to store information about the
library’s resources. When a search was performed
in a database, another search was conducted in
the background against the library’s knowledge
base. The patron was presented with options
for retrieving the resource, fulilling the core
library values of providing the speciic resource
required by a speciic user and saving the time
of the user.
Various metasearch or federated search
engines were developed in the late 1990’s, but
none provided truly satisfactory results. This was
primarily because each database provider labeled
ields differently and search mechanisms behaved
differently. Many libraries invested in metasearch
engines even though they required improvement
because these metasearch engines furthered the
core value of saving the time of the user.
In the 2000’s, Google and Microsoft helped
libraries expose database and electronic journal
collections through the use of link resolvers,
openURL and services such as Google Scholar
and Microsoft LiveAcademic.
ELECTRONIC SERIALS
Internet
Experimental electronic journals were available as
early as 1982 through the Electronic Information
Exchange System (EIES), which was sponsored
by the Division of Information Science and
Technology of the National Science Foundation.
There were four prototypes of electronic journals
available on this system. The four prototypes
included a newsletter, a “paper fair” which was a
totally unrefereed journal, a peer-reviewed journal
where articles were published when they were
ready, and an interactive journal that consisted of
inquiries, responses, and briefs (Turoff & Hiltz,
1982). Electronic journals continued to be created, mainly in scientiic ields, and were made
available through ftp and gopher sites, but their
proliferation was destined to await the development of the Web.
Some types of serials, such as newletters,
were distributed by electronic mail and fax in
the 1980’s and early 1990’s, but this was only
practical for shorter serials with limited graphics.
The primary method for libraries to access serials electronically during this time was through
aggregated databases.
World Wide Web
The Web became the environment where electronic serials lourished. Hitchcock, Carr, and
Hall found that there were 115 e-journals in existence in 1995. Within the next three years, the
same authors discovered 1,300 electronic journals
(Hitchcock et al., as cited in Cole, 2004). Serials
publishers were fearful of the potential loss of
revenue stream, but beneited from the experience
of online database providers and learned to use
9
History of Electronic Resources
subscriptions and licensing terms to make libraries
responsible for controlling access to e-journals
in the same ways libraries authenticated patrons
who used online databases.
Initially, many publishers offered online access free with a print subscription. While many
publishers continued to offer this model into the
early 2000’s, others charged an increased price for
print plus online or a somewhat reduced price for
print only or online only journals. Some publishers
offered special pricing for libraries that purchased
large “packages” of journals, often referred to as
“The Big Deal.” Many smaller libraries found
these packages to be completely unaffordable.
Some larger libraries decided that “The Big Deal”
was unacceptable because the high number of
low-usage titles that were often included in them
did not seem to justify the overall cost.
Electronic serials were available to libraries
in a variety of ways. Some publishers offered
their journals through their own sophisticated
and proprietary search and retrieval platforms on
the Web. Other publishers offered their journals
through platforms such as Project MUSE and
Highwire Press. Project MUSE began in 1993
with Johns Hopkins University Press titles and
later added titles from other nonproit publishers (General overview, 2007). Highwire Press, a
division of Stanford University Libraries, offered
over 1,000 electronic versions of high-impact
journals in partnership with scholarly societies,
university presses and publishers by 2007. Still
other publishers offered their journals through
subscription vendors or on simple Websites.
The open access movement took shape during
this time in response to decades of double-digit
price inlation and the early promise of the Web
to provide free access to information. This movement advocated making scholarship, especially
that which was paid for by public institutions,
available freely on the Web. The viability of the
economic models to support open access was
not proven by the early 21st century. Open access business models in general either charged
10
the author or the author’s institution or grantor
a fee to publish an article. BioMed Central and
the Public Library of Science were examples of
early open access publishers.
By 2004, the number of e-journals was estimated at 30,000 titles (Cole, 2004). Such growth
clearly demonstrated the popularity of electronic
journals. There were some disadvantages to this
medium, however, that were not yet resolved.
Electronic dissemination in itself did not solve
the problem of the rising cost of serials, although
the open access movement sought to limit costs
or move the costs from libraries to the entities
that generated the research. In fact, as publishers invested in hardware and programming to
make their journals available on the Web, costs
continued to rise. In addition, there were no
established worklows between publishers, vendors, and libraries to manage electronic serials,
and libraries were ironically forced into manual
processes to track acquisition and access provision. Some libraries created databases to better
manage these processes, and vendors responded
to the efforts of the Digital Library Federation’s
Electronic Resource Management Initiative by
creating products such as electronic resource
management (ERM) systems. Still, electronic
resource management worklows were very immature when compared with the imperfect, but
well-established processes for print serials.
ELECTRONIC BOOKS
Internet
Project Gutenberg was the irst electronic book
project. It focused on documents and books that
were in the public domain. Project Gutenberg
began in 1971 at the Materials Research Lab at
the University of Illinois. Michael Hart began the
e-book project in part to ill up the spare time of
computer operators in the lab. The philosophy
behind this project was to create texts that were
History of Electronic Resources
easy to use and inexpensive to create. Every book
was freely available to the public on the Internet,
and then on the Web. This was accomplished by
using volunteers and by creating the iles in “plain
vanilla ASCII” (Hart, 1992). Volunteers converted
the original ASCII iles to other formats such as
html and .pdf as there was demand for them.
CD-ROM Books
The irst commercial packages of electronic books
became available at about the same time as other
CD-ROM products. The Library of the Future was
one of these products, and it contained about 300
public-domain literary works in ASCII format,
and sold for $695.00 in 1991 (Mullin, 2002). As
late as 2007, The Library of the Future 4th edition
was listed on Amazon.com and contained more
than 5,000 titles. Customer reviews were very
favorable, and seemed to focus on the amount of
information available on one disc as well as the
usability of the software, but the item was no longer
available. It was still available on eBay at the same
time for $32.00. Other popular electronic book
collections on CD-ROM included reference works
such as the International Dictionary Unabridged
on CD-ROM, published by Merriam-Webster Inc.
in 2000. It included a thesaurus and illustrations
as well as multimedia functions such as audio
pronunciations and interactive features such as
bookmarks and spelling help.
Despite these early success stories, books
did not make the swift transition from print to
electronic that was predicted by many in the late
1990’s. There seemed to be a variety of reasons
for this, but the one most often cited was that reading books on a backlit screen was an unpleasant
experience for many people. There was even some
confusion about the deinition of what an e-book
was during this period, as both the reading devices
and the text were referred to as e-books.
In addition, there were obvious advantages to
electronic serials and databases over their print
equivalents, which included the ability to search
for and retrieve information more quickly and easily than in print and the ability to do these things
from any location. These advantages did not seem
to transfer as readily to electronic books, with the
notable exception of reference books. While the
improved search and retrieval advantages of the
electronic format helped users ind the books they
wanted to read, they usually wanted to read them
in print. Most people in the transitional generation between the print world and the electronic
world printed items of any real length that they
wanted to read. Articles and database records
tended to be much shorter and therefore less
expensive to print in terms of paper and toner. It
was also easier to handle one-sided printouts of
15 pages that could be stapled together than to
carry around one-sided unbound printouts of a
several-hundred-page book.
There were potential advantages to electronic
books, both for publishers and readers. By the
1990’s, most books were born digital and had to
be transformed into print at a fairly signiicant
cost. In addition, it was often wasteful to print
copies in advance. Gall (2005) wrote, “It is estimated that 10 percent of texts printed each year
are turned to pulp, although, fortunately, many are
recycled. The BBC reported that more than two
million former romance novels were used in the
construction of a new tollway.” Gall also pointed
out that the cost of printing caused specialized
titles to become out-of-print quickly because fewer
copies were printed. So, one potential beneit
of electronic books was that publishers would
not have to estimate the number of copies of a
particular book that would be sold in advance.
Some potential advantages to electronic books
for readers included the ability to carry several
books at once in a small space, a potential beneit
to students and travelers, the fact that e-books
required little or no space on shelves, and that
they could be used with text-to-speech software
(Gall, 2005).
The potential advantages to electronic books
were undermined in part by the early business
11
History of Electronic Resources
models used to sell them. Most of the early commercial business models for electronic books
were focused on sales to individuals, and usually
tied customers to a particular e-book reader. Ebook readers themselves were expensive, costing
from $300 to $700 each, and consumers could
only purchase e-books that were available in
the proprietary format for that particular reader.
Additionally, the iles could not be transferred to
another reader of the same type, but could only
be used on the speciic reader to which the ile
was originally downloaded. So, for example, a
family that purchased two readers was not able
to buy one e-book and share it between e-book
readers. The RocketBook was an early example
of this business model.
Publishers selected these business models
precisely because it made it very dificult to
copy or share an e-book. Most publishers were
concerned about losing revenue to ile sharing.
This in turn made it particularly dificult for
libraries to offer e-books to their patrons. Many
libraries invested in e-book readers such as the
RocketBook, and downloaded several titles to
each reader. The problem with that model was
that as long as that reader was checked out, none
of the e-books on the reader were available for
other patrons to read.
There were some publishers, however, namely
The National Academy Press, The University of
California Press, and Baen Books, who saw ebooks as a way to increase print book sales. The
National Academy Press, for example, made all
of their titles freely available to download and
after doing so sold more print copies of those
same books than it did before they were available online (Mullin, 2002). Baen Books, which
published mostly science ictions books, created
the Baen Free Library where it offered authors
the option to put copies of their books online.
Baen limited authors to one or two books in a
series or four or ive books overall so that less
known authors would have a better chance to be
discovered by potential readers (Flint, 2000). This
12
program began in 2000 and was still in existence
in early 2007.
NetLibrary joined the e-book market in late
1998 and developed yet another business model
that was based on the way libraries check out one
copy of a book to one patron. ebrary joined the
market at about the same time, and with a similar
business model. Libraries and businesses could
purchase collections of electronic books that
were hosted on the company’s server. Patrons
associated with the institution could check out
electronic books for a period of time. Printing
was deliberately set up to be inconvenient, and
software controls prevented users from printing
more than a few pages at a time. Publishers that
worked with these companies insisted on a one
book, one patron model rather than a simultaneous user model, once again out of fear of losing
the print revenue stream.
There was signiicant upheaval in the electronic
book market during the dot.com bust of the early
21st century, and very few of the original electronic
book publishers survived. NetLibrary was rescued
by OCLC, which already had an agreement with
NetLibrary to archive each customer’s collection
of e-books. ebrary also continued to operate, but
most of the big names in e-books in the late 1990’s
were gone by 2001.
After 2000, the e-book market gradually began
to regenerate. New companies such as Mobipocket, which became a subsidiary of Amazon.
com, and OverDrive entered the market with
business models that were not hardware speciic.
OverDrive developed a business model that was
library friendly. Libraries purchased speciic ebooks or digital audiobooks and provided links to
these electronic books in their catalogs. Library
patrons checked these books out for a period of
time, using the OverDrive software, and downloaded them to their computers or MP3 players.
In 2004, Google entered into partnership with
major libraries to digitize their print book collections and make them searchable through Google
Book Search http://books.google.com/. Titles
History of Electronic Resources
that were out of copyright were made available
in their entirety. Titles still under copyright displayed bibliographic information and perhaps the
table of contents and a few pages of text (Google
milestones, 2006).
Sony developed a new e-book reader that it
released in 2006. The new Sony Reader used E
Ink screen technology, which for the irst time did
not rely on backlighting and provided a screen
resolution similar to print. The new readers supported various ile types including .pdf and even
Word documents. It also allowed users to listen to
MP3 iles at the same time they were reading an
e-book. The cost was still over $300 for the reader,
but the E Ink technology seemed to address one
of the major objections to e-books, which was the
issue of readability.
While electronic books did not dramatically
change the way people read by the early 21st century, they did offer one more way to search for
and ind information quickly. As a result, these
resources were more successful in academic
libraries than with the public or public libraries.
FUTURE TRENDS
It seems apparent that library catalogs must evolve
quickly if they are to remain an integral piece of
the library electronic resources puzzle. Vendors
have already begun to respond to innovative
efforts such as the NCSU catalog by creating
library portals that include federated searching,
relevance ranked results, and improved browsing
capabilities.
It is almost certain that databases will continue
to increase in both number and type of content.
Users will continue to demand full-text resources.
Federated searching and linking must continue to
improve, and libraries will encourage the further
development of these tools. Libraries will continue
to work to make their resources available where
their users can ind them through Google and
other Web search engines.
Electronic journals will continue to proliferate
and it is likely that they will evolve as the Web
becomes the primary publication medium. For
example, T. Scott Plutchak, speaking at the 2006
North American Serials Interest Group 2006
conference, suggested that the serials container,
that is the title, volume and issue number, and
publication date, will become less important
because publishing on the Web allows individual
articles to be published as they are ready. If open
access develops into a successful and accepted
mode of publishing, more scientiic and scholarly
information will be freely available to all.
Except for reference works, electronic books
will likely only become popular when e-book
readers become more similar to print books and
when the price of these devices drops signiicantly. As mentioned earlier, E Ink technology
may be the key to that development. Or perhaps
the generation that has grown up with the Web
will ind e-books acceptable as they exist. Then
again, it might be that books will have to evolve
to better suit the technology.
Until there are adequate means for archiving
electronic resources, it would be irresponsible
of the library community as a whole to move
exclusively to electronic serials and books. The
community must come to some consensus about
how to archive these resources. In 2005, the National Archives faced the challenge of archiving
government documents and awarded a contract to
Lockheed Martin to develop a system to preserve
documents created by any United States government entity in any format (Reagan, 2006). Perhaps
this project will present a solution to this dificult
problem that libraries can implement.
CONCLUSION
This brief history of library electronic resources
demonstrates that librarians provide access to
electronic resources as a way to realize core library
values. While certain problems have persisted
13
History of Electronic Resources
throughout the development of these resources,
such as the inability to adequately search across
a variety of resources, there is hope that these
problems will be resolved with time and effort
from librarians and vendors. It is certain that
whatever new electronic resources or ways of
accessing them become available in the future,
libraries will enter the fray with both enthusiasm
and trepidation, along with the will to provide
the best possible resources and services to their
patrons.
REFERENCES
Antelman, K., Lynema, E., & Pace, A.K. (2006)
Toward a twenty-irst century library catalog
[Electronic version]. Information Technology and
Libraries, 25(3), 128-39.
Avram, H.D. (1968). MARC: The irst two years.
Library Resources & Technical Services, 12(3),
245-250.
Bjorner, S., & Ardito, S.C. (2003). Online before
the Internet: Early pioneers tell their stories [Electronic version]. Searcher, 11(6), 36-46.
Boss, R.W. (1989). Current uses of automated
systems: A review and status report. In A.P.
Trezza (Ed.) Changing technology: Opportunity
and challenge (pp. 99-102). Boston: G.K. Hall
& Co.
Boss, R.W., & Marcum, D.B. (1980, SeptemberOctober). The library catalog: COM and on-line
options. Library Technology Reports, 16, 443527.
Christian, R. (1978). The electronic library: Bibliographic data bases, 1978-1979. White Plains,
NY: Knowledge Industry Publications, Inc.
Cole, L. (2004). Back to basics: What is the ejournal? The Serials Librarian, 47(1/2), 77-87.
14
Convey, J. (1992). Online information retrieval: An
introductory manual to principles and practice (4th
ed.). London: Library Association Publishing.
Dialog invented online information services.
(2006). Retrieved November 10, 2007, from
http://www.dialog.com/about/
Eaton, N.L., MacDonald, L.B., & Saule, M.R.
(1989). CD-ROM and other optical information
systems: Implementation issues for libraries.
Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press.
Flanders, B.L. (1990). Spinning the hits: CDROM networks in libraries [Electronic version].
American Libraries, 21(11), 1032-1033.
Flint, E. (2000). Introducing the Baen Free Library.
Retrieved November 11, 2007, from http://www.
baen.com/library/home.htm
Gall, J.E. (2005). Dispelling ive myths about
e-books [Electronic version]. Information Technology and Libraries, 24(1), 25-31.
General overview. (n.d.). Retrieved November
11, 2007, from, http://muse.jhu.edu/about/muse/
overview.html
Google milestones. (2006). Retrieved November
11, 2007, from http://www.google.com/corporate/
history.html#2005
Hart, M. (1992). Gutenberg: The history and philosophy of Project Gutenberg by Michael Hart.
Retrieved November 11, 2007, from http://www.
gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:The_History_
and_Philosophy_of_Project_Gutenberg_by_Michael_Hart
Horny, K.L. (1982). Online catalogs: Coping with
the choices. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 8(1), 14-19.
Librarian…educator…historian…entrepreneur.
(2006). NextSpace, 3, 2-7.
Lynch, C.A., & Preston, C.M. (1990). Internet access to information resources. In M.E. Williams
History of Electronic Resources
(Ed.), Annual review of information science and
technology (Vol. 25, pp. 263-312). Amsterdam:
Elsevier Science Publishing B.V.
Ranganathan, S.R. (1963). The ive laws of library science. Bombay, India: Asia Publishing
House.
Moore, C.W. (1981). User reactions to online catalogs: An exploratory study. College & Research
Libraries, 12(4), 295-302.
Reagan, B. (2006, December). The digital ice age
[Electronic version]. Popular Mechanics, 183(12),
97-94, 139.
Mullin, C. (2002). A funny thing happened on
the way to the e-book [Electronic version]. PNLA
Quarterly, 67(1), 20-27.
Roose, T. (1988, October 15). Computerized reference tools of the next decade: Taking the plunge
with CD-ROM. Library Journal, 113, 56-61.
Nissley, M. (1990). CD-ROMs, licenses and librarians. In M. Nissley & N.M. Nelson (Eds.), CDROM licensing and copyright issues for libraries
(pp. 1-17). Westport, CT: Meckler Corporation.
Tenopir, C. (1986, March 1). Databases on CDROM. Library Journal, 111, 68-69.
Norden, D.J., & Lawrence, G.H. (1981). Public
terminal use in an online catalog: Some preliminary results. College & Research Libraries,
12(4), 308-316.
Pooley, C. G. (1990). CD-ROM licensing issues.
In M. Nissley & N.M. Nelson (Eds.), CD-ROM
licensing and copyright issues for libraries (pp.
31-43). Westport, CT: Meckler Corporation.
Torkington, R.B. (1974). MARC and its application
to library automation. In M.J. Voigt (Vol. Ed.),
Advances in librarianship (Vol. 4, pp. 1-23). New
York: Academic Press Inc.
Turoff, M., & Hiltz, S.R. (1982). The electronic
journal: A progress report [Electronic version].
Journal of the American Society for Information
Science, 33(4), 195-202.
15
16
Chapter II
Strategic Planning for Electronic
Resource Management
Robert L. Bothmann
Minnesota State University, USA
Melissa Holmberg
Minnesota State University, USA
ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses electronic resource management from the perspectives of planning, policy,
and worklow issues experienced by libraries. Many libraries attempt to transfer and incorporate the print worklow onto electronic resource management. The result is a feeling of chaos
and lack of control. The challenges, methods, and impacts on electronic resource management
perceived by libraries are described. The authors suggest methods and ideas to address these
topics that may help libraries create a sense of order for electronic resource management.
INTRODUCTION
An overarching theme with electronic resource
management is the rapid growth of electronic
resources. Because of this growth libraries are
experiencing issues related to time management,
stafing, and the time-honored task of deliberating
the set-up of logical worklow systems for such
resources. Unlike the traditional library worklow
of ordering and paying for print resources, cataloging those items, and processing them for the
shelves—a worklow in which the different library
units know their roles and responsibilities—most
libraries consolidate all things electronic such as
A-Z title lists, federated search engines, e-journals,
abstract-and-indexing databases, dark archives
and electronic resource management tools, and
allow an electronic resources librarian to handle
most, if not all, responsibilities from pre-order
activities to access set-up and maintenance.
When all these activities are left in the care
of one or two people in a library, many of these
librarians are unsure what to do. Chaos reigns.
The managers of electronic resources are putting
Copyright © 2008, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
Strategic Planning for Electronic Resource Management
out ires rather than conducting ire prevention
activities and education. They need to break down
the chaos into pieces that can be controlled and
managed. They need to let some ires rage and
work on preventing the next ones from happening. They need to step away, get some fresh air,
and ind some calm in the chaos.
This chapter reviews electronic resource
management, deined as overseeing all aspects
of electronic resource management from pre-selection activities such as trials and initial vendor
inquiries to renewal/cancellation decisions, from
the perspectives of planning, policy, and worklow issues experienced by many libraries. Each
of these topics discusses some of the challenges
perceived by libraries, the methods libraries use to
address these challenges, and the impact of these
challenges on electronic resource management.
BACKGROUND
Electronic resource management may be deined
in various ways. The deinition may be as narrow
as an A-to-Z list of serial titles (Marshall & Kawasaki, 2005), a focus on an approach to budget
management (Jasper & Sheble, 2005), or a broader
concept like a content management system to create Web pages, provide administrative functions,
and track license agreements (Brown, Nelson,
& Wineburgh-Freed, 2005; Robbins & Smith,
2004). While there is a great deal of literature
devoted to various types of electronic resources,
particularly to electronic journals (Burrows, 2006;
Curtis, 2005; Curtis, Scheschy, & Tarango, 2000;
Fowler, 2004; Islam & Chowdhury, 2006), very
little has been written about electronic resource
management in a more holistic sense, with the
exception of two books on the topic.
Conger’s (2004) book provides an in-depth
discussion on collaborative learning, management of staff, and group participation related to
electronic resources work. She addresses leadership and management, budgeting as planning, the
infrastructure and tools of electronic resource
management, as well as cataloging and technology
needs. The purpose of the book is to instruct library
professionals on the incorporation of electronic
resource assessment as a continuing learning
process, and how to use that learning process to
make electronic resource management more stable
within a library. Gregory’s (2006) revised edition
of Selecting and Managing Electronic Resources
provides descriptions and checklists for policies,
selection, budgeting, cataloging and access, and
assessment. It supplies a number of details that
are helpful in the formation of effective electronic
resource management worklow.
As Collins (2005) notes, the growing number
of electronic resources requires more sophisticated worklows and is changing the nature of
work for many professional librarians into that
of worklow managers for updating and maintaining A-to-Z lists, vendor MARC records, and
openURL. She foresees the electronic resource
management tools as a means to allow the OPAC
to become the comprehensive access point for
library resources again. In particular, Collins
stresses the importance of implementing various management tools and allowing lexibility in
cataloging practices and worklow, such as what
a library will accept in the OPAC. For example,
brief MARC records may be a better option for
the cataloging of electronic resources because they
allow for a faster, timelier entry into the system
that also streamlines the cataloging worklow
(Curtis, 2005, pp. 288-289).
Beyond the cataloging part of the electronic
resources worklow, there are other worklow
functions unique to electronic resources management. These tasks include licensing, access
set-up, troubleshooting, link maintenance, interdatabase linking (e.g., between catalogs, abstractand-indexing databases, federated search tools,
openURL resolvers), vendor negotiation—the list
is extensive, but has been summarized by Curtis
(2005, pp. 97-98) from Duranceau and Hepfer’s
survey results (2002) on electronic resource
17
Strategic Planning for Electronic Resource Management
management stafing. Obviously worklow for
electronic resources is quite different from the
traditional resource management worklow.
The traditional library worklow for tangible
resources such as monographs, serials, audio, and
video materials is a systematic process of review
and selection by subject bibliographers, order
placement with a vendor and veriication upon
receipt by acquisitions, description and processing
by catalogers, and proper shelving by circulation.
This low from one library unit to another works
well for tangible resources and much of this work is
accomplished through the use of paraprofessional
library employees (Congleton, 2002). Professional
librarians oversee the process, assign much of the
routine work to paraprofessionals, and typically
resolve problems or complete professional work
such as the assignment of funds to budgets or
the creation of original catalog records (Graves
& Arthur, 2006). This worklow also may be
managed entirely within a library’s integrated
library system (ILS) for the purposes of order
tracking, budget encumbrances and payments,
catalog access, and inventory.
The ILS is ideal for this worklow management because it has been constructed with this
worklow in mind. The ILS can alert a library
when the receipt of a resource is overdue, display all of a library’s holdings accessible in the
catalog, and inform the patron via the catalog of
the availability of a particular resource through a
status notice in the circulation system. With the
exception of computer software, tangible library
resources require very few extraordinary treatments for the purposes of acquisition, catalog
access, and circulation.
Electronic resources, however, do not it
well within this traditional worklow. Resource
selection, ordering, and payment may be easily
managed within the traditional ILS worklow, but
the similarity ends there. Once an order is placed,
there is no mechanism in an ILS to notify a library
of nonreceipt or the availability of a resource to
the library user. There is nothing tangible for
18
acquisitions to send to cataloging for the provision of access. The ILS cannot handle licensing
issues or patron authentication, and many look
to the electronic resource management system
(ERMS) to ix the gaps in what the ILS can do
(Allgood, 2006; Harvell, 2005).
While a library may provide a catalog record
for an electronic resource, the nature of many of
these resources such as abstract-and-indexing
databases or full-text aggregators may be “lost”
in the catalog for the purposes of patron use.
Thus many libraries provide access to aggregators and indexing databases from their library’s
Website, often from some kind of pathinder or
guide to electronic resources (Brown, Nelson,
Wineburgh-Freed, 2005; Shorten, 2006), as well
as providing additional full-text access points
via openURL, creating yet another difference in
the worklow.
The variety of resources encompassed in the
idea of electronic resource management is also
very different in nature from traditional resources.
Libraries are faced with products that aide in
resource access for patrons such as A-to-Z lists,
openURL servers, and abstract-and-indexing databases, federated search engines, and resources
that provide full-text content such as a publisher’s
electronic-journal content, journal-content platforms such as Project MUSE® or JSTOR,® and
content aggregators such as Ebsco’s Academic
Search Premier. Yet there are other products
not used by library users that also fall into the
realm of electronic resources. These resources
include analysis tools such as Gold Rush reports
or OCLC’s collection analysis, ERMS, and proxy
servers or other authentication tools.
With all of these choices, each with different
beneits and unique issues, it becomes dificult
for libraries to effectively plan the management
of these resources. Libraries are faced with the
challenges of strategically planning and managing
their collections of electronic resources, providing
cross-training or redundancy to cover temporary
and permanent staff changes, and designing new
Strategic Planning for Electronic Resource Management
worklows for electronic resources, rather than
adapting from print policies and procedures.
To get a sense of where libraries stand in electronic resource management, the authors conducted an informal survey (Bothmann & Holmberg,
2006) that was posted to the ERIL discussion
list. Forty respondents completed the survey and
another seventeen respondents provided partial
responses. The survey consisted of 26 multiplechoice and open-ended questions. The questions
posed in the survey asked electronic resource
librarians to identify resources for which they have
planned, developed procedures, and documented
their worklow. Additionally, the survey requested
comments on the challenges and the impacts related to planning, procedures, and documentation.
Demographic questions included library size and
type, electronic resources offered, total numbers of
professionals and paraprofessionals, and numbers
of professional and paraprofessional librarians
involved with electronic resources.
The results of the survey revealed four common
themes related to electronic resource management that libraries perceive as challenges. These
themes include lack of adequate stafing levels,
constant change in resources, budget issues, and
communication with vendors, colleagues, and
users. The survey responses present the many
distinctions in management that are different
from the worklow designed for print resources.
Electronic resources come with demands that may
also be barriers to some libraries. These demands
include licensing issues and patron authentication,
bibliographic control and access questions, and
overall management for purchases, renewals, and
license tracking.
Excluding electronic journal titles, many
respondents indicated that they now provide access to a great number of electronic resources,
typically between 50 and 250 separate resources.
Regardless of size, most of these libraries employ only one to three professional librarians to
manage electronic resources, often with little or
no paraprofessional support. Thus these tasks
fall to a few librarians to manage upwards of 50
different license agreements, vendors, renewals,
statistics, veriication of access, authentication,
and catalog access, as well as any other aspects
of work entailed by electronic resources.
PLANNING
Planning for electronic resources is perhaps the
most important and least practiced activity in
libraries. Electronic resources present a number
of challenges to the traditional library operations
and worklow that must be addressed in order
to provide smooth management. The challenges
faced by many libraries include operational issues
such as the number of staff assigned to electronic
resource management duties, staying in-step with
technological and vendor changes in electronic
resources, budgeting limited resources for the
acquisition of resources, and communication with
vendors and amongst librarians and administrators. Other challenges relate to access issues such
as management tools like openURL knowledge
bases, federated searching, catalog records, and
authentication.
Stafing for electronic resources is perhaps
the biggest challenge most libraries face. The
results of the authors’ survey indicate that the
majority of libraries, regardless of total staff size,
typically have only one or two professional librarians involved in electronic resource management.
Paraprofessional involvement varied widely with
one-third having no paraprofessional involvement, a tenth having more than ive, and the rest
having one to three paraprofessionals involved in
the worklow. In response to challenges related to
planning for electronic resources, one librarian
answered: “How can you plan if you don’t have
enough people to do the work?”
Some libraries address the challenge of limited
stafing by distributing work among existing staff,
prioritizing projects according to staff availability,
and emphasizing the need to invest more staff time
19
Strategic Planning for Electronic Resource Management
in the electronic resource environment. Others
have developed a team structure to meet the staffing need, delegating speciic tasks to paraprofessionals. Another common technique is to create
a committee of individuals to examine choices
for a particular resource, narrow the choices and
present a limited set of options from which the
library may choose. However, once a resource is
chosen, the investigation often continues as libraries research alternatives and new technological
developments for a given resource.
Respondents indicated that the impacts of
stafing issues center on training and time. One
respondent said “when the organization of the
worklow is not managed eficiently and completely, it is nearly impossible to teach others in
how to manage it.” One library indicated that
stafing levels prevent them from implementing
many resources, thus limiting their choices only
to those resources that come with vendor back-end
management. Implementing new technologies,
such as openURL, can be labor-intensive and
take time away from other job responsibilities.
Some libraries indicated time-management issues related to developing in-house management
tools which then have little or no support once
completed, and spending too much time on things
that could be better addressed with “out-of-box
software.”
Change was another planning challenge indicated by respondents. One librarian commented,
“just about everything related to e-resources
management changes too quickly to do any planning,” and another said they do not have time to
plan; “instead we play catch-up all the time.”
Many libraries use various tools to address the
challenges of electronic resource changes. One
method is to use a shared email system and a
database of tasks to track and manage changes in
resources. Other libraries only implement those
services that can be supported by their small staff
size or that have signiicant vendor support. Still
others limit the number of vendors from whom
they acquire electronic resources to help limit the
number of changes.
20
Respondents indicated that the budget available for the acquisition of resources was another
planning challenge. “Some planning (e.g., purchasing new tools/services) requires money that
isn’t available,” is one comment that demonstrates
this theme in survey responses. Other libraries
noted that cancellation of some resources is the
only way to acquire a new resource. Libraries
address their budgetary issues by diverting funds
from their print resource budgets or rearranging
budget priorities when necessary. Cancellation of
microform or print subscriptions duplicated by
online content was one method of rearranging the
budget. Another option is making use of consortial opportunities and discounts. Many libraries
indicated constant requests to administration for
more money.
The fourth major challenge cited by respondents was communication related to knowledge
and understanding of electronic resources. Vendor communication is often frustrating because
some try to work with librarians to improve their
products and services and to create win-win
situations, while other vendors are simply trying
to earn a particular dollar amount. Publishers
who are breaking into the electronic resource
environment sometimes create communication
problems as they lack an understanding of the access requirements libraries have (e.g., openURL,
IP authentication). Couple these issues with
an often-mistrustful attitude on both sides and
communication becomes a big issue in electronic
resource management.
Communication with administrators usually
involves justifying the expense of resources, proving the need for resources, and obtaining budgetary support. Communication with users typically
involves instruction on the use of resources and
re-instruction as the resource interfaces constantly
change. However, communication with other librarians tended to be the most problematic issue.
Communication issues with fellow colleagues
cited by electronic resources librarians were the
acceptance of the need for particular resources,
Strategic Planning for Electronic Resource Management
a lack of realistic expectations of what one electronic resource librarian can do with the large
number of resources and vendors, as well as of the
technological capacities of electronic resources,
agreement on resource needs, and assistance with
the work from other staff.
Libraries address communication through
various methods, such as asking questions on
discussion lists, developing promotional materials
for librarians to use for patron instruction, and
sending continuous emails to library staff about
projects and tasks related to electronic resources.
With regard to vendor communication issues,
some librarians and vendors can overcome the
challenges. Librarians must simply keep working at communication until they ind a style that
works and until they can discern which vendors
have problematic representatives and which have
problematic organization cultures. Whenever
possible, librarians should meet with the representatives and develop the communication and
partnership. And, whenever possible, support
those vendors who try to work with librarians
and quit supporting those who do not. It is also
worth ensuring that vendors meet with library
administration, even if that meeting is brief. This
can help with administration understanding any
vendor representative problems as well as communicating the importance of the vendor’s product
by the administration showing some interest.
The responses from libraries regarding planning for electronic resources demonstrate the
reactive nature of electronic resource management, rather than work deined by any sort of
plan. While it is not necessary and is probably
impossible to create any kind of comprehensive
plan, most libraries would beneit from developing
a prioritized list of goals for electronic resources
to guide their work. Creating a small electronic
resources committee of key players in a library’s
electronic resource management work is the irst
step in a good planning process. These key players
should come from various divisions of the library,
such as public services, cataloging, and systems,
as well as a library’s electronic resources librarian, when such a role exists.
A irst task of the committee should be to identify all of the staff involved in electronic resources
worklow, from administrative support personnel
to administrators (Mi & Sullenger, 2006). Often
some of the work created from electronic resource
management may be accomplished by a rigorous
examination of staff workload and reassignment
of duties to create a core group of individuals to
focus on electronic resources within the existing
organizational structure. Librarians should always
make note of repetitive tasks that may be delegated
to paraprofessionals and begin delegating that
work. Another option is to evaluate and plan for
a major reorganization of library units, which
may or may not be feasible depending upon the
current staff size and the organizational structure
(Curtis, 2005, 98-99). Regardless of the path a
library takes, the examination of speciic tasks
in relation to existing positions is a beneicial
exercise for assessing the current situation and
planning for the future.
For budgetary concerns, the committee may
create a list of electronic resource types, such as
A-to-Z lists, openURL, assessment tools, abstractand-indexing databases, full-text databases, and
so forth. The list may be used to identify and
prioritize what a library has, what it needs but is
lacking, and what it wants to have but is not essential for service to patrons. Inquiries and cost
quotes are easy to obtain from vendors and may
be added to the list to show the dollar amounts
required to obtain a desired resource. Although
such an exercise does not achieve acquisition of the
desired resources, it provides an easy plan libraries
can use if and when funding is available. A comprehensive assessment of the materials budget,
particularly of serial subscriptions may provide a
number of opportunities for targeted cancellations
to free funds for desired resources.
Another important task for an electronic resources committee is to work on communication
issues. Identifying speciic people to interact with
21
Strategic Planning for Electronic Resource Management
vendors aides in communication and understanding for both libraries and vendors. Another important communication task is the development
of a vision, deinition of common goals related to
a library’s mission, and the involvement of staff
(J. White, 2005) in the process. Communicating
changes and new developments in a variety of
different ways, such as email, newsletters, staff
meetings, and one-on-one interaction helps staff
to feel like they are in the loop and a part of the
process.
By creating an electronic resource committee, nonelectronic resource librarians can gain a
greater understanding not only of the complexity
of managing these resources, but also of the many
ways others unintentionally sabotage the management of electronic resources. Often fear is at the
root of these various biases: librarians refusing to
attend training to avoid realizing how little they
know; librarians complaining constantly about the
problems with electronic resources and wearing on
the morale of those managing them; or librarians
working hard to limit the number of resources to
either limit the number of interfaces they need to
keep up with or to protect the much smaller print
budgets. Having more librarians, such as those
on an electronic resource committee, seeing these
biases can possibly build more support and morale
for those managing the resources. Furthermore,
librarians may start to realize the dificult situation
they have placed electronic resource librarians
in: we never tell collection developers that they
can only order books and other materials from
only 10 publishers; we do not complain incessantly about how bad a particular book is; we do
not ignore librarians when they are pointing out
how helpful a particular reference book is for
certain questions. By overcoming the different
biases and fears, more librarians can participate
in the management of electronic resources, will
understand the various issues and the impact of
these on the library’s services, and hopefully
will strive to view electronic resources within
the larger organizational planning process. For
22
example, librarians across the board could start
considering:
•
•
•
How much time should a library invest
in its Website for displaying its electronic
resources, if it believes it will migrate to a
next-gen OPAC
Whether to add a next-gen OPAC or a federated search tool upon reaching a threshold
for electronic resource interfaces (when
librarians and patrons start complaining
frequently, the library has probably reached
the threshold)
Which tool(s) are needed to improve services,
access, and management;migration to these
tools; and internal and external training,
including instructing patrons at the desk,
in drop-in sessions, via traditional instruction sessions, through online tutorials, and
promotions of these new resources
POLICIES
The development and use of policies is critical in electronic resource management and
for communicating a library’s goals. Policies
set guidelines of practice that aid in electronic
resource management (H. White, 2005). Aside
from collection development policies, libraries
need policies that address issues such as types
of resources to support, licensing issues, and
user access. Other policy topics include how and
which resources should be cataloged, placed in a
content management system or subject guide, or
added to an ERMS.
Stafing and time are one of the challenges that
libraries face with policy development. Libraries
indicated that the lack of suficient staff requires all
of their time for managing electronic resources and
does not allow any time for the consideration and
development of policies. Change was also cited as
a problem for policy development because vendors,
products, and staff opinions are inconsistent and
Strategic Planning for Electronic Resource Management
change too often. Decisions are often made when
there is not an ideal solution, which causes the
need to remake a decision after seeing how things
work out or when the technology evolves to meet
a library’s needs. Communication is another barrier to policy development, particularly because
of the time required to educate other librarians
on the issues.
Respondents addressed policy challenges
in differing ways. Less than half of the respondents have developed any particular policy, and
most policies relate to electronic resource trials,
inclusion of resources in the A-to-Z list, and the
addition of resources with access restrictions.
Some libraries create task forces to deal with
policy development issues. Others send emails
with justiications for decisions, or simply deal
with issues as they arise rather than creating and
following a speciic policy.
The perceived impact of a lack of policies
on electronic resource management was also
varied. Some respondents see policy writing as
cumbersome and time-consuming. Others felt that
policies may be too restrictive or may make some
management tasks more dificult. Still others feel
that there is no way to create a universal policy or
that their management practice is non-standard
and therefore their policies would not be valid.
Another impact of the lack of policy development
indicated in survey responses was the pressure
to keep up with peer institutions, which a policy
might prohibit or even become meaningless if the
administration does not buy into the policies.
While at times painful and time consuming,
policy and procedure development are essential
for electronic resource management. The time
invested in the creation and writing of documentation will provide beneits now and in the future. A
library that has a policy concerning the requirements of speciic types of electronic resources
can use that policy to eliminate investigation or
consideration of vendor products that do not meet
desired standards. For example, if your policy
states that only those resources that are openURL
compliant will be added to your collection, then
time can be saved by not adding nonopenURL
resources. Additional policies that libraries may
want to consider writing include:
•
•
•
•
•
Who can contact vendors under what circumstances?
What sorts of troubleshooting should be
done prior to contacting vendors?
Should you go with the lowest cost vendor
every year or should you try to stay with
fewer vendors?
What will you do about password-protected
resources: not use them at all; use them by
only via mediated access; use a scripted
Webpage to display passwords (and if so,
how often will you change those passwords);
program your proxy access to input the
passwords upon local authenticated access
Will you provide access via OPAC and/or
Website: all electronic resources only via
Website or via both; just ebooks in the OPAC
the others on the Website
While many would like to write a policy and
consider it done, librarians must remember that
what works now may not be feasible as more
electronic resources are added to a collection.
Thus, strategic planning, worklow, and policies
remain intertwined.
Furthermore, communicating this decision to
the vendor lets them know the speciics of what
your library desires in a resource, and may inluence their development of the product. Another
reason to create policy and procedure documents is
to assist with training and answering of questions.
Brisson (1999) and H. White (2005) both note the
beneits of documentation for these purposes,
and describe methods libraries can use in the
development of documentation. However, once
documented, it is also important to maintain and
update those documents. As Wisniewski (2006)
observes, the largest beneit from an intranet for
online documentation is the allowance of all par-
23
Strategic Planning for Electronic Resource Management
ticipants to be authors. Some libraries have begun
using this methodology for communication and
documentation through Web logs and wikis for
documenting and instructing technical services
worklow (Traill & Huismann, 2004).
WORKFLOW
Related to planning and policy development,
worklow and the documentation of the worklow
is a crucial aspect of electronic resources management. Some of the librarians who responded to our
survey indicated that they documented part or all
of their electronic resource management worklow
in order to determine what is not getting done.
Others did so to create consistency, particularly
in terms of requests from other librarians. Others found the documentation to be comforting to
other employees, even if the worklow changed
and made the documentation outdated. Some
found documentation necessary to ensure each
step is completed in a particular process, to better
prepare for staff changes and leaves, or to begin
a database trail. Still others believed documenting the worklow led to a better understanding of
what is going on and improved communication of
worklow tasks to others in the library.
While the reasons for documenting the worklow are numerous, several libraries perceived
compelling reasons to not take on this task.
Some believed the worklow is too cumbersome
to document. Others work in libraries in which
most electronic resource management is done on
a case-by-case basis because there are too few
common issues to make worklow documentation
relevant. Some cited lack of time and personnel,
while others indicated that the organizational
culture precludes the documentation process (e.g.,
no one documents anything; cannot use the documentation in benchmarking; turf issues). Some
also stated that the worklow is still undetermined
and therefore cannot be documented.
24
Starting the worklow documentation process
can be daunting because some sections can be
problematic. For example, licensing is something
that is done at all libraries, regardless of whether
they accept all licenses as is or actually negotiate
every one before signing. While most libraries
have written or verbal priorities, few actually
have lines drawn in the sand that will prohibit
them from signing an agreement with a vendor.
As such, writing the worklow for license negotiations can be dificult when it is far from an ideal
situation and when it is beyond what most librarians thought they would be doing when getting
their MLS degree. Furthermore, every vendor
seems to have different requirements, both legal
and technical, that make a documented worklow
quite dificult to develop or follow. Conger (2004,
pp. 127-132) stresses the importance of developing guidelines and provisions for licensing to
assist electronic resource librarians with vendor
negotiation. Documentation allows librarians the
ability to reference speciic needs and to verify
speciic aspects of a license when questions arise.
Gregory’s (2006, pp. 79-101) chapter sections on
licensing include a number of considerations and
helpful questions for any library to development
documentation on licensing.
Once the licenses are signed, other worklow
issues present themselves. How do libraries communicate license information to their patrons, to
their own staff in other units, to their administrators? Should they cut and paste the exact terms of
the license into an ERMS or Web page, or should
they interpret the terms and rewrite them in more
understandable language? Should libraries only
communicate to one group and not the others?
What if the library does not have an ERMS—how
can information be tracked and updated easily? If
a library does have an ERMS, how will the shortstaffed area populate and maintain the ERMS?
Will a library ever be able to retrospectively add
in the terms from ongoing licenses that were
negotiated ive years ago? Should libraries start
with those and work their way up to the licenses
Strategic Planning for Electronic Resource Management
negotiated this iscal year? As these questions
suggest, documenting aspects of worklow may
involve a number of tough questions to answer;
however, leaving these questions unanswered
will only allow the confusion and lack of control
many libraries have about electronic resource
management to grow.
Control, or lack thereof, also inluences the
documentation of worklow. When parts of the
worklow are outside the realm of electronic resources management, it is dificult to document
that worklow. When other librarians and staff
do not agree with the current worklow, documenting it can generate some heated discussions.
The constant change through acquisitions and
mergers in the vendor and publisher realm, new
or changed license terms, new statistics metrics
and/or accessibility, and the myriad other things
that affect electronic resources management
worklow daily all contribute to the feeling of not
having any control.
Despite the dificulties and barriers to documenting worklow, libraries must do so if for no
other reason than to help the new people that
will inevitably manage the electronic resources.
A library’s current state of electronic resource
management chaos may dictate the starting point
for documentation of worklow. For example, if
a library is unsure of what is not getting done,
start with an outline of the entire lifecycle of
electronic resources, from pre-selection activities
to renewal/cancellation (for assistance with this
task, see the Digital Library Federation’s ERMI
worklow in appendix B [Jewell, et al., 2004]).
In the outline, also list who is currently doing
each activity and note which areas are lacking
assigned responsibility. Such an exercise may
help with reassignment of responsibilities among
library staff or possibly provide justiication for
increasing staff size. The outline will also point
out tasks that are not currently being done, are
not assigned and not attended to consistently, or
even point out tasks that are superluous. If on
the other hand the electronic resources staff ind
that certain steps are forgotten, then documenting those particular procedures in the worklow
will help bring more control and organization to
that worklow, from which a library may create
a checklist of activities that must be completed
and further standardize the workload.
If a library can maintain an ERMS, the tool can
be helpful with improving worklow. Currently,
the different ones offer different features. Some
libraries are choosing their OPAC vendor’s ERMS
to help them manage the acquisitions module,
payments, and so forth. Others are choosing an
ERMS that is from another vendor to have access
to other features or to have the ERMS interact
better with their selected openURL and/or federated search tool. Eventually, librarians would like
to see ERMS, federated search, ILS, openURL,
and statistics all interacting seamlessly. For now,
libraries must discern what their greatest needs
are (worklow knowledge is helpful here) and to
then select the ERMS that will help cover those
needs best. Some advantages to ERMS, if maintained, include:
•
•
•
Multiple staff can access information about
vendors and decisions: so, if a library has
decided to cancel several databases for a
more comprehensive one, that decision can
be documented in the ERMS and save folks
the challenge of remembering what they did
and why or of searching through meeting
minutes to ind the explanations
Vendor usernames and passwords can be
stored in a central place
Information about trials can be included
CONCLUSION
Many libraries currently have some variation of
the electronic resources librarian as a professional
position. The placement of this position within
the organizational structure often varies. Some
libraries place the position in public services,
25
Strategic Planning for Electronic Resource Management
others in technical services (Ginanni, 2006), and
some centralize the work of electronic resources
management, whereas others have the workload
distributed throughout the organization (Fischer
& Barton, 2005). Too many libraries appear to
make little or any use of paraprofessional staff
for routine electronic resource worklow tasks.
And many libraries are caught between the
print and the electronic worlds of information
organization, with a primary focus on acquiring
and holding print resources (McDonald, 2006).
Their organizational and worklow structure is
heavily inluenced by the print worklow and
little attention has been given to reforming that
structure for electronic resources, as evidenced by
the survey responses regarding planning, policies
and worklow.
Planning, policy making, and documenting
worklow and procedures are intertwined activities that are hallmarks of professionals. Ignoring
them, waiting for the ideal situations to arise, and
hoping for best practices to arise will not prevent
the inevitable need for libraries to begin treating
electronic resource management now before the
perceived chaos of electronic resources takes over
and inhibits user services and access. Libraries
must regularly work towards creating policies,
documenting their worklow, and planning in
all areas of electronic resource management.
Attending a workshop can upstart the process.
Writing some outlines on the plane home, while
everything is still fresh in the mind, can start
wonders at libraries. Gathering some colleagues
together with a particular task in mind or pounding
something out during a slow hour on the reference
desk or a really boring meeting can also get a new
leaf turned over.
Managing electronic resources need not be
the daunting, chaotic state that so many libraries
described in their survey responses. As librarians,
we have an afinity to structure and order that is
clearly evident in our print resources worklow.
What we have to remember is that this order did
not just happen—our predecessors created that
26
order. We as electronic resources librarians can
also create that order and eficiency for the electronic resources era we now enjoy. We simply
have to address one issue at time, one policy at
a time, one worklow task at a time, chip away
at the chaos we perceive and if not order, then
at least a clear path, with documented decisions
and policies will develop out of this process and
lead to better electronic resources management.
Just remember to keep communicating with all
interested and biased parties along each step. It
will be the only way to discern our best practices
as a profession in this new area of librarianship.
REFERENCES
Allgood, J.E. (2006). Friend or foe?—Digital
resources within library collections. Against the
Grain, 18(2), 24-30.
Bothmann, R.L., & Holmberg, M. (2006). Electronic resources planning and management.
Unpublished electronic survey conducted on ERIL
from 27 November to 1 December 2006.
Brisson, R. (1999). Online documentation in
library technical services. Technical Services
Quarterly, 16(3), 1-19.
Brown, J.F., Nelson, J.L., & Wineburgh-Freed,
M. (2005.) Customized electronic resources management system for a multi-library university:
Viewpoint from one library. In G. Ives (Ed.),
Electronic journal management systems: Experiences from the ield (pp. 89-102). New York:
Haworth Information Press.
Burrows, S. (2006). A review of electronic journal
acquisition, management, and use in health sciences libraries. Journal of the Medical Library
Association, 24(1), 67-74.
Collins, M. (2005). The effects of e-journal management tools and services on serials cataloging.
Serials Review, 31, 291-297.
Strategic Planning for Electronic Resource Management
Conger, J.E. (2004). Collaborative electronic
resource management: From acquisitions to assessment. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.
Congleton, R. (2002). Re-evaluating technical
services worklow for integrated library systems.
Library Collections, Acquisitions, & Technical
Services, 26(4), 337-341.
Curtis, D. (2005). E-journals: A how-to-do-it
manual for building, managing, and supporting
electronic journal collections. New York: NealSchuman Publishers.
Curtis, D., Scheschy, V.M., & Tarango, A.R.
(2000). Developing and managing electronic
journal collections: A how-to-do-it manual for librarians. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers.
Duranceau, E.F., & Hepfer, C. (2002). Stafing for
electronic resource management: The results of a
survey. Serials Review, 28(4), 316-320.
Fischer, K.S., & Barton, H. (2005). The landscape
of e-journal management. Journal of Electronic
Resources in Medical Libraries, 2(3), 57-63.
Fowler, D.C. (Ed.). (2004). E-serials collection
management: Transitions, trends, and technicalities. New York: Haworth Information Press.
Ginanni, K. (2006). Talk about: E-resources librarian to the rescue? Creating the über librarian:
Turning model job descriptions into practical positions. The Serials Librarian, 50(1/2), 173-177.
Graves, T., & Arthur, M.A. (2006). Developing
a crystal clear future for the serials unit in an
electronic environment: Results of a worklow
analysis. Serials Review, 32(4), 238-246.
Gregory, Vicki L. (2006). Selecting and managing
electronic resources: A how-to-do-it manual for
librarians (Rev. ed.). New York: Neal-Schuman
Publishers.
Harvell, T.A. (2005). Electronic resources management systems: The experience of beta testing
and implementation. In G. Ives (Ed.), Electronic
journal management systems: Experiences from
the ield (pp. 125-136). New York: Haworth Information Press.
Islam, M.S., & Chowdhury, M.A.K. (2006). Organisation and management issues for electronic
journals: A Bangladesh perspective. Malaysian
Journal of Library & Information Science, 11(1),
61-74.
Jasper, R.P., & Sheble, L. (2005). Evolutionary
approach to managing e-resources. In G. Ives
(Ed.), Electronic journal management systems:
Experiences from the ield (pp. 55-70). New York:
Haworth Information Press.
Jewell, T.D., Anderson, I., Chandler, A., Farb, S.E.,
Parker, K., Riggio, A., et. al. (2004). Electronic
resource management: Report of the DLF ERM
initiative. Washington, D.C.: Digital Library Federation. http://www.diglib.org/pubs/dlf102/
Marshall, S.P., & Kawasaki, J.L. (2005). The
master serial list at Montana State University:
A simple, easy to use approach. In G. Ives (Ed.),
Electronic journal management systems: Experiences from the ield (pp. 3-15). New York: Haworth
Information Press.
Mi, J., & Sullenger, P. (2006). Examining worklows and redeining roles: Auburn University and
the College of New Jersey. The Serials Librarian,
50(3/4), 279-283.
Robbins, S., & Smith, M. (2004). Managing eresources: A database-driven approach. In D. C.
Fowler (Ed.), E-serials collection management:
Transitions, trends, and technicalities (pp. 239251). New York: Haworth Information Press.
27
Strategic Planning for Electronic Resource Management
Shorten, J. (2006). What do libraries really do
with electronic resources? The practice in 2003.
In A. Fenner (Ed.), Integrating print and digital
resources in library collections (pp. 55-73). New
York: Haworth Information Press.
Traill, S., & Huismann, M. (2004, September).
Beyond books: Blogs at the University of Minnesota. Unpublished work; poster presentation at the
2004 OLAC Conference, Montréal, Canada.
28
White, H. (2005). Documentation in technical
services. The Serials Librarian, 49(3), 47-55.
White, J. (2005). Effecting change in periodicals
service: Management models and a process. Serials Review, 32(1), 22-25.
Wisniewski, J. (2006, March/April). Getting a
handle on content. Online, 52-54.
29
Chapter III
Electronic Usage Statistics
Patricia Hults
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA
ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of electronic usage statistics, including methods of deining, collecting,
and using the data. A survey of some of the systems of estimating journal usage in the print environment
is followed by a description of the development of electronic usage practices. The important contributions of the COUNTER and SUSHI projects are reviewed, along with issues in the management and
use of electronic statistics. Examples of ways these statistics can assist in decision making throughout
a product’s life cycle are included, as well as other ways usage statistics can prove useful. The chapter
concludes with a brief look at the use of statistics in the bibliomining process.
INTRODUCTION
Unless you have a mathematical bent or are one of
those individuals who ind satisfaction memorizing the major league baseball stats, the topic of
user statistics is not immediately intriguing. In
fact, it can be mind numbing and tedious, but user
statistics are extremely useful, particularly now
that we are able to get real, meaningful information—they cannot be ignored. This chapter will
start with an examination of early, pre-electronic
usage statistics. It will then look at the development of electronic statistics, including both the
COUNTER and SUSHI standards. Management
issues in collecting and using these statistics
will be explored. Some of the applications of
these data will be discussed, in the context of
an electronic product’s life cycle. The value of
usage statistics beyond just product evaluation
will also be covered.
Generations of librarians have struggled to ind
ways to practically measure usage of the material
they so carefully select. The information on just
how many times a book or journal was used is
critical in both selection and retention decisions,
and in broader collection development strategies.
Without a sense of how many times something
is used, it becomes impossible to evaluate its
worth.
Copyright © 2008, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
Electronic Usage Statistics
BACKGROUND
Books have always presented less of a problem.
You could count the number of times a book was
checked out, whether you were counting circulation cards or looking at automatically generated
circulation statistics. There was still the bugaboo of in-house use, but there were signiicant
amounts of real circulation data available. Journals presented a much larger challenge. Not only
were many libraries organized so that journals
were never checked out and sat on open shelves;
journals came both bound and in single issues,
so that the unit of count was unclear. Indexes,
while oficially in book format, generally never
circulated and therefore their use was as hard to
quantify as it was for journals.
Because librarians are an ingenious group,
all sorts of methods were devised to estimate inhouse use of journals and books and in general
to evaluate the worth of a particular title. These
efforts ranged from using photocopying requests
(Cooper & McGregor, 1994), making correlations
between check-outs and in-house use (Walter,
1996), counting journals left on study carrels and
near photocopy machines (Bader & Thompson,
1989; Chen, 1972), sticking voluntary usage log
sheets on journal protective covers (Konopasek
& O’Brien, 1982), and more. Some librarians
sent their work-study students skulking in the
stacks, trying to measure the ratio of actual vs.
recorded use.
Other efforts included using external criteria such as journal impact factors and citation
analysis (McCain & Bobick, 1981; Rice, 1979).
The journal impact factor is a measure of the
number of times a journal is cited in published
articles. Interestingly, at least one recent study
examining electronic usage and impact factor
found no correlation between impact factor and
local use of the journals. Duy and Vaughan (2006)
examined use of electronic journals from three
major vendors; the American Chemical Society,
Elsevier, and Wiley, and they found there was not
30
a correlation between impact factor of a particular
journal and actual use of that journal on their
campus. What they did ind more predictive was
a local citation igure, calculated by determining
how many times a speciic journal was cited in
articles by campus faculty.
DEVELOPMENT OF ELECTRONIC
STATISTICS
Librarians continued the tradition of ingenuity
when journals, books, and databases began to be
available in electronic format, and they quickly
began trying to extract more reliable statistics
from the new medium. Before publishers began
supplying usage information, librarians explored
other sources including institutional Website logs,
statistics supplied by A-Z list providers, and those
generated by link resolvers. While each of these
offered interesting insight into patterns of use, they
fell far short of accurately and fully capturing the
information librarians sought. Unless an institution had loaded the product on its own server, it
was clear that publishers would be the primary
suppliers of usage statistics. Initially this data
varied widely in what was being measured, and
many times, what was being measured was fairly
meaningless. An example is the number of pages
called up from anywhere within the publisher’s
site, including help pages, menu pages, and so
forth. This type of count served only to create
an inaccurate impression of use.
In response to pressures from librarians and for
their own internal management needs, publishers
began attempting to measure journal usage. Some
began to supply pages that captured the number of
downloaded iles from a particular site. This was
progress, but it was still very messy. Article and
chapters were often divided into multiple iles to
reduce download time and each component of a
single article might be counted as an individual
use, greatly inlating overall usage rates. One
publisher’s response to statistics requests was to
Electronic Usage Statistics
provide the raw data log (Table 1). At least one
hapless librarian ended up manually parsing and
counting the log iles to come up with a reasonable statistic.
It was becoming clear that to realize the
promise of electronic statistics, some sort of
standardization was imperative. Professionals in
both the library and the publishing world began
to systematically approach the issue.
The JSTOR user group was an early participant
in laying out the desired elements of e-statistics,
beginning the work in 1997 (JSTOR, 1998). In
1998, that work was expanded when the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC,
1998) released “Guideline for Statistical Measures
of Usage of Web-based Indexed, Abstracted, and
Full Text Resources.” Such recommendations
started laying out just what elements would be
needed to give meaningful information.
Even with these guidelines, information received from publishers continued to be highly
variable. A count of article usage or number of
database searches sounds straightforward, but
the way these were calculated could be very different. An article count might vary depending
on how the article was segmented, whether links
to graphics were a separate count, how printing
and downloading the article was counted, how
repeated use of an article within a short time was
counted, whether articles linked to outside the
publisher’s Website were counted and how. Even
what constitutes an article could be variable. Business resources tend to supply statistical graphs,
company data, and other type of information that
falls outside the standard deinition of an article.
In fact, at the time this chapter was written,
business full-text information remains one of
the most problematic subject areas for obtaining
standardized user statistics.
Session and search counts also had their inconsistencies. How were repeated logins by the
same user within a short time counted? How were
searches that include more than one database
counted—as one search or two or more? It gets
even more complicated when federated searching
is thrown into the mix. A single federated search
Table 1. Raw log ile of downloads
SIADS
1
1
/SIADS/articles/40473PDF
Jul 13 14:36:28 2003
SIADS
1
1
/SIADS/articles/40473PDF
Jul 13 14:36:30 2003
SIADS
1
1
/SIADS/articles/40473PDF
Jul 13 14:36:38 2003
SIADS
1
1
/SIADS/articles/40473PDF
Jul 13 14:36:54 2003
SIADS
2
171
/SIADS/articles/39830PDF
Jul 14 15:20:06 2003
SIADS
2
171
/SIADS/articles/39830PDF
Jul 14 15:20:10 2003
SIAP
5
1604
/SIAP/articles/31271PDF
Jul 14 15:50:35 2003
SIAP
5
1604
/SIAP/articles/31271PDF
Jul 14 15:50:38 2003
SIAP
5
1604
/SIAP/articles/31271PDF
Jul 14 15:50:41 2003
SIAP
1
337
/SIAP/articles/30631PDF
Jul 14 15:57:00 2003
SIAP
1
337
/SIAP/articles/30631PDF
Jul 14 15:57:03 2003
SIAP
1
337
/SIAP/articles/30631PDF
Jul 14 15:57:06 2003
SIREV
4
761
/SIREV/articles/97006PDF
Jul 14 21:51:31 2003
SIREV
4
761
/SIREV/articles/97006PDF
Jul 14 21:51:34 2003
SIREV
4
761
/SIREV/articles/97006PDF
Jul 14 21:51:38 2003
SIREV
1
53
/SIREV/articles/38305PDF
Jul 15 18:39:24 2003
31
Electronic Usage Statistics
may generate 20 or more searches (Pesch, 2004).
How do you count these?
Another problem was that the way a particular
publisher produced its usage data might change,
creating signiicantly different statistics as the
method of count was revised. If your publisher
changed the way statistics were calculated, the
library may have to go back to reharvest data in
order to get some consistency, if the older data
was available in the new format at all. Another
variable was the amount of retrospective data provided by the publisher, impacting how frequently
statistics needed to be harvested. The reliability of
the publisher providing the data also determined
the frequency of pulling those statistics. While
publisher statistics were evolving, it behooved an
institution to harvest frequently to avoid losing
data altogether.
The method of providing the statistics also
varied widely, some publishers allowing user
generated reports, others limited to requests sent
to the publisher, some available only through the
consortia manager. The format of the reports, even
those containing comparable information, could
differ widely, requiring signiicant intervention
to be useful.
By 2000, less than half of publishers offering
electronic journals provided usage statistics (Luther, 2000, p. 1), but the momentum was building.
In 2000 and 2001 several signiicant studies and
papers were released addressing the issue of standardized statistics for electronic products. 2000
saw Judy Luther’s “White Paper on Electronic
Journals Usage Statistics,” and the initiation of
the ARL (Association of Research Libraries)
E-Metrics Project. In 2001 ARL released its
phase II report (Shim, McClure, Fraser, Bertot,
Dagli, & Leahy, 2001) and the IMLS (Institute
of Museum and Library Services) published its
report, “Developing National Public Library
Statistics and Performance Measures for the
Networked Environment,” (Bertot, McClure, &
Ryan, 2000). Other initiatives occurring during
this time frame included those by the National
32
Commission on Libraries and Information Science
and NISO’s revision of the Z39.7 standard. These
early efforts were the background in which the
COUNTER Project (Counting Online Usage of
NeTworked Electronic Resources) emerged out
of work being done by PALS (Publishers and
Librarian Solutions).
The PALS usage statistics working group
began laying the framework COUNTER would
codify. The group initially developed a code of
practice including identiication of data elements,
deinitions of these elements, report format recommendations and recommendations on delivery
method (JISC, n.d.). This work evolved into the
COUNTER Project, which received its own
identity in 2002. Its remarkable success is due
in large part to its collaborative nature, involving
librarians, publishers, and professional societies.
The irst release of the code of practice appeared
in January 2003. To insure long-term development
of the standards, COUNTER was incorporated in
the United Kingdom later in 2003. By 2006, due
in large part to the COUNTER Project and the
earlier work it stands upon, virtually all major, and
many smaller publishers provided standardized
reports—a phenomenal turn around.
The standards have elegance to them. They
are not complicated statistics, although producing them can be challenging. They are based on
the concept that it is better to have simple, useful
statistics that can be provided by all publishers and
understood by all users, than complicated reports
beyond the scope of many publishers (Shepherd,
2004). This strategy has paid off producing a
large number of COUNTER compliant publishers in a remarkably short time, 51 at the time of
this writing.
Release 1 covered only journal and database
reports. It answered the basic questions of how
a search and an article download are deined,
what a report should contain, in what format it
should be available, and how frequently it should
be produced. When publishers became compliant
with these standards, it started to become pos-
Electronic Usage Statistics
sible to compare and evaluate across publisher
platforms, although there is still work to be done
to insure consistency across platforms (Davis &
Price, 2006).
Release 2 of the code of practice for journals
and databases did not expand on the set of data
elements. Rather, it reined the content of reports,
and most signiicantly, spelled out very carefully
the steps necessary to prove compliance. For these
standards to be widely accepted there needed to
be a method to verify that any particular publisher
was in fact, counting what COUNTER speciies
as standard.
The auditing method includes very speciic protocol to that end. First a vendor notiies
COUNTER that it would like to be authenticated
as compliant. The reports are then tested at an
approved test library to verify the accuracy of the
reports. Only when the test library is satisied is
the vendor certiied compliant.
Once a vendor has achieved compliant status
as veriied by a test library, it has 18 months to
complete an audit. This audit includes very speciic
instructions on the types of tests to be performed.
These include speciications of the number of
searches or downloads to be done, and the time
intervals between searches and downloads, which
are then matched against the usage report provided
by the vendor. After the initial audit, annual audits are required to maintain compliant status.
For Release 2, vendors must be initially audited
by June 30, 2007, with annual audits required
beginning in 2008 (COUNTER, n.d.).
Along with release 2 for journals and databases, release 1 for books and reference works
appeared in 2006. Like the code of practice for
journals and databases, the basic elements of
the statistics were deined. Electronic book and
encyclopedia statistics are even more challenging, since the basic unit of use is not as discrete
or easily deined as a journal article. Along with
deining these data elements, the necessary content
of a report was also laid out, paralleling journal
and database reports.
Although COUNTER has gone a long ways to
standardize and make useful statistics provided
by publishers, there are still some limitations.
COUNTER does not addressed the problem of
restricting statistics to those generated only by
the subscription in question. At least one major
publisher regularly includes uses of journals
temporarily turned on for promotional use
and downloads of titles generated within the
institution’s IP range, but not subscribed to by
the institution. An institution can end up with
usage igures for journals it does not subscribe to,
but that are subscribed to by individuals within
the IP range, such as researchers or professors.
If there are multiple subscriptions to the same
journal by both the library and individuals, all the
usage igures go into the same report. Filtering
out data for journals not subscribed to is tedious
and becomes even more problematic as statistical
gathering becomes automated.
COUNTER has decided that requiring publishers to indicate subscription status would complicate statistical compilation too much. Given the
variety of ways institutions have access to journals,
such as package deals, current subscriptions and
archival subscriptions, and the increasing number of journals that are a combination of open
access and fee based, it would be prohibitively
complicated to try and sort these access methods
out. (P. Shepherd, personal communication, Dec.
14, 2006).
Another problem identiied by Davis and Price
(2006) is the fact that the publisher platform design
and functionality can change the usage count.
They studied the ratio of HTML to PDF downloads within publisher platforms. The ratio was
consistent from journal to journal, but changed
from platform to platform. They also examined
one journal mounted on two different platforms
and conirmed that the platform varied the format
ratio. Some platforms force users into the HTML
version irst, which then links to the PDF. Other
platforms allow users to pick the full-text format
from the citation or abstract level, thus reducing the
33
Electronic Usage Statistics
number of HTML downloads and consequently
total downloads.
Platforms also interface with URL resolvers
and indexes differently. Some link directly to the
PDF, others link to a higher level of the journal
and force more downloads to navigate to the
PDF. These varying methods inluence the total
number of downloads. Davis and Price suggest
using a normalization factor when attempting to
compare use across platforms.
Although usage statistics have improved
signiicantly, you only have to go through the
exercise of pulling the same statistics for a year
you have already harvested once before to realize that there is still a lot of lux in the reliability
and availability of the data. The author recently
did just that, in preparation for this chapter,
and found a disconcerting lack of consistency.
One-half year of the data for one publisher was
inexplicably missing. Most probably, the publisher
would be able to recreate that data, if requested,
but on occasion data is just lost. One or two other
publishers had corrected errors in previously
supplied statistics, a good thing, but which led
to inconsistency with data gathered and used a
year before. Other publishers had recently become
COUNTER compliant and the format and count
of data had changed accordingly. Experiences like
these lend support to including other criteria in
evaluation of electronic products.
Outside the scope of COUNTER is the problem of the sheer volume of statistics coming
from multiple sources and in different packages.
Library staff have began spending signiicant
time pulling the reports from various sites and
trying to merge them into a uniied report covering statistics from all the electronic sources
of the library. Bordeaux (Bordeaux, Kraemer,
& Sullenger, 2005) reported spending 16 hours
per month pulling and compiling data; the staff
of the author’s institution spends an average 14
hours per month. As library holdings migrate
to electronic format, more and more electronic
statistics will be available, requiring more staff
time to process the data.
34
At the same time standards for electronic
statistics were being developed, a parallel movement was occurring around electronic resource
management elements. ERMI (the Digital Library
Federation’s Electronic Resource Management
Initiative) began deining the elements necessary
for an effective electronic resource management
system. ERMI evolved into ERMI2 which included requirements for usage data intake and
reporting. COUNTER had deined the statistical
elements and reporting format; ERMI2 began
looking at protocols to move that data into an
ERM. While the data itself was now standardized,
the way of moving it around was not.
In the summer of 2005 a small group met to
start addressing this problem. The group included
three librarians (Ivy Anderson, California Digital Library; Adam Chandler, Cornell University
Library; and Tim Jewell, University of Washington Libraries) and representatives from four
companies (Ted Fons, Innovative Interfaces, Inc.;
Bill Hoffman, Swets Information Services; Ted
Koppel, Ex Libris; and Oliver Pesch, EBSCO
Information Systems) (Chandler & Jewell, 2006).
Their efforts evolved into SUSHI (Standardized
Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative), soon
operating under the wing of NISO. The initial
group expanded to include additional publishers
and automation system vendors. SUSHI began
developing a protocol to allow automated harvesting of statistics from a variety of publishers,
based on COUNTER standardization and using
an XML envelope.
The basic concept of SUSHI is simple. An
ERM system should be able to automatically
request, receive, and integrate statistics provided
by a site, without human intervention. XML was
selected as the best, most lexible wrapper for this
interchange. The ERM should be able to generate
a request, identifying the institution requesting the
data, specifying the date range needed, and the
address to send the data. The ERM formulates the
request, puts all the needed information into an
XML ile, and sends the ile off to the site provid-
Electronic Usage Statistics
ing the statistics. The site should be able to receive
this information, pull the requested COUNTER
compliant data, pop it into an XML ile and send it
back to the originating ERM. If there is a problem,
an error message should be sent. The ERM should
then be able unwrap the report and load it into
its databank. Finally, the ERM should be able to
generate appropriate reports, although this inal
step is outside the SUSHI protocol, which only
deals with the transfer of information to and from
the ERM and the publisher. Currently SUSHI 1.0
protocol allows for the retrieval of any COUNTER
report, including previous COUNTER releases.
The XML schema developed was designed to be
easily expanded to include additional COUNTER
reports as they are developed.
In 2006 NISO and COUNTER came to a
formal agreement, in a memorandum of understanding outlining which organization would
take care of what. NISO, through SUSHI, will
maintain the XML schema. COUNTER will
maintain the COUNTER standards and will list
SUSHI compliant publishers and vendors on its
Website (SUSHI, 2006). NISO currently offers
toolkits on its Website for publishers interested
in participating in SUSHI.
Vendors are just beginning to move toward
offering statistical harvesting features in their
ERMs. A handful of vendors currently have
released this feature, but the wave of the future
is automated harvesting, as publishers offer both
standardized reports and report transmission
formats.
MANAGEMENT OF ELECTRONIC
STATISTICS
There are some issues that need to be addressed
for an institution to effectively manage the collection and analysis of user statistics. First, you
must identify which products you want to track.
Since electronic use is becoming a major component of most “gate counts,” you want to collect as
many as practical, particularly with the growing
inclusion of these statistics in national annual
surveys. But, do you track each direct journal
you subscribe to outside of your packages? Such
tracking entails signiicant staff time. If you are
looking at a major cancellation project, can you
afford not to have them? Do you only collect
statistics that are COUNTER compliant? This
leaves you with a great deal of uncounted use.
How do you count those products that provide
statistics that are not COUNTER compliant, yet
are evidence of signiicant use?
Second, staff must be assigned the task of
collecting them. This requires training staff on
how to get to the statistics and identifying what
particular type of statistic to collect. COUNTER
compliant sites are generally easier to navigate,
but the exact location of the statistics you want to
gather can reside several pages into a publisher’s
statistical interface, and may move around as publishers revise their Web pages. For nonCOUNTER
sites, screen shots of selected data elements may
be needed to ensure consistency of just what
data is to be recorded. While the amount of time
spent gathering statistics decreases as publishers
move to providing them in COUNTER format,
the overall time increases as more and more
publishers provide them. Eventually, when all
publishers provide statistics in both COUNTER
and SUSHI compliant form, and all institutions
have electronic resource management systems
that can automatically harvest them, that effort
will become much less onerous, but this future
will not be quickly seen.
Even COUNTER compliant statistics proit
from having an alert eye looking at them. One
red lag is a sudden, very high peak in usage,
which may be the result of automatic downloading software, usually constituting illegal use as
spelled out in the product license. Publishers
fairly frequently notify subscribers when there
has been a problem with a certain segment of their
user statistics and that they may be recalculated.
When a publisher becomes COUNTER compli-
35
Electronic Usage Statistics
ant, they often continue to provide the old format
of statistics. Staff needs to monitor statistics and
adjust to format changes. If a publisher includes
statistics for titles not subscribed to by the institution, you may want those weeded out.
Once statistics are gathered, they need to be
compiled in a meaningful way. Most institutions
use spreadsheets at this point. The challenge is
creating a spreadsheet that allows you to meaningfully present quite a range of statistics types, both
COUNTER and nonCOUNTER. The author’s institution currently uses a spreadsheet that divides
statistics into searches, serial downloads, e-book
downloads, other full-text, and other. Each product
must be assigned a category and tracked. As the
number of electronic products mount, this can be
challenging. The annual ACRL statistical survey
now asks for number of sessions, searches, and
full-text article downloads, as deined by COUNTER. Since not all publishers provide COUNTER
compliant statistics, you may want to indicate on
your spreadsheet which ones are compliant.
Another decision to be made is how long you
want to preserve these statistics. Ideally, you want
to use them to look at use of both a particular
product and overall use over time. How do you
insure that the statistics from ive years ago will
be there when you want to do that analysis? Even
with ERMs warehousing statistics, there are
likely to be limitations on the number of years
of storage.
USE OF ELECTRONIC STATISTICS
At this point user statistics are reasonably reliable
and meaningful, at least compared to even two
years ago. What we do with these statistics, what
information they tell us and how we put them to
work to improve different functions of the library
is the next question. As Mercer (2000) states, “Important decisions about the nature of our individual
libraries are made based on performance factors
that often support what we intuitively believe to
36
be true” (¶ 2). The metrics of electronic use may
supplant, or will at least supplement, traditional
library statistics such as door counts and circulation igures. It is obvious that physical visits
to libraries are dropping dramatically as use of
electronic materials increases. Proof that users,
regardless of their method of access, are using
library materials and using them heavily, will be
important information for those who decide the
fate of library budgets.
Subscriptions have a natural life cycle and
statistics are helpful in each stage. It is not immediately obvious how statistics can be useful
in the selection of a product. Since you do not
have the product, you obviously do not have usage statistics. Hahn and Faulkner (2002), of the
University of Maryland Libraries, have developed
a method of using usage statistics, if the package
or journal being considered has similarities to
a subscription already held by the institution.
First they evaluate an existing collection, developing three metrics: average cost per article,
average cost per use, and content-adjusted use.
They feel the quantity of articles published in
a year, and the use of those articles, are helpful
in evaluation. As shown in Table 2, they have a
licensed collection with a known price, number
of published articles, and number of downloads of
those articles. From this they calculate the average
cost per article (price divided by total number of
articles), average cost per access (price divided
by number of downloads), and content-adjusted
use (number of accesses divided by number of
articles.) Average cost per article can also be
calculated for the candidate collection. In this
instance, the candidate collection has a higher
cost per article—a higher total cost and lower
number of articles published.
The authors recognize this is not suficient
information for evaluating a collection and have
developed three additional benchmarks: costbased usage, content-based usage, and cost per
access at the content-based usage (Table 3). The
cost-based usage determines the number of yearly
Electronic Usage Statistics
Table 2. Comparison of candidate collection to licensed collection
Licensed
Collection
Price
Candidate
Collection
$10,000
$25,000
Total number of online articles as of the end of the year
50,000
45,000
Total annual number of full-text accesses to the articles
in the collection
25,000
Unknown
Average cost per article (cost/# articles)
$.20
$.55
Content-adjusted use (accesses/# articles)
0.50
Unknown
Average cost per access (price/accesses)
$.40
Unknown
Table 3. Use of benchmarks to compare candidate collection and licensed collection
Licensed
Collection
Price
Candidate
Collection
Benchmark
$10,000
$25,000
Total number of online
articles as of the end of
the year
50,000
45,000
Total annual number of
full-text accesses to the
articles in the collection
25,000
Unknown
Average cost per article
(cost/# articles)
$.20
$.55
Content-adjusted use
(accesses/# articles)
0.50
Unknown
22,500 uses needed
to match contentadjusted use (contentbased usage)
Average cost per access
(price/accesses)
$.40
Unknown
$1.11
Cost if contentadjusted use met
(cost per access at
content-based usage
level)
accesses, or downloads, the candidate collection
will need in order to meet the same average cost per
access as the licensed collection. This is calculated
as the price of the candidate collection divided
by the cost per access of the licensed collection,
in this case $25,000 divided by $.40 = 62,500
accesses. Content-based usage is the number of
articles in the candidate collection multiplied by
the content-adjusted usage of the licensed collection. This gives the number of full-text accesses
62,500 uses needed
to match average cost
per access (cost-based
usage)
needed to match the content-adjusted use (number
of accesses divided by number of articles). In
this case it is 45,000 multiplied by 0.50 = 22,500
uses. The inal benchmark is cost per access at
the content-based usage level. This calculates
the cost per access if the content-based usage is
achieved. This is calculated using the candidate
collection price divided by the content-based
usage benchmark; $25,000 divided by 22,500 =
$1.11.
37
Electronic Usage Statistics
Obviously other factors need to be included
into the evaluation of a potential product. But
this method allows an estimation of the quantity
of use required for a product to match a similar
product in cost effectiveness.
Another use for statistics when evaluating a
potential purchase occurs when archives are being considered, particularly when used with other
information such as that provided by Tenopir and
King (2000, p.188). They analyzed the pattern
of use of a journal broken down by article age.
Scientists made up the demographic group they
were studying and it is likely that discipline of
the user would affect these patterns. However, a
later examination of three studies on journal usage (King, Tenopir, Montgomery, & Aerni, 2003),
which included nonscientiic faculty, provided
results that roughly approximated their original
inding (Table 4). About 58.5% of the use of a
journal involves articles that have been published
within the last year.
If a library already subscribes to a journal, their
data could be used to project usage of archives,
particularly for a scientiic or technical ield. For
example, let us look at Journal A. A subscription
to Journal A includes the current 2 years, costs
$2000.00, and generated 250 downloads within
the last year. This represents a cost per article of
$8.00 ($2000 divided by 250). These downloads
Table 4. Age and use of articles
38
Age of article
Percent of
use
1
58.5
2
12.3
3
6.2
4-5
7.7
6-10
9.3
11-15
1.5
>15
4.6
represent about 70.8% of the total expected use of
the publication (58.5% the irst year and 12.3% the
second year). If all years were available the projected use would be 353 downloads (250 divided
by .708). The archives are priced at an annual fee of
an additional $150.00. Use can be predicted to be
29.2% of the projected total use, for an estimated
archival use of 103 articles per year. The cost per
article is then calculated at $150.00 divided by
103, for a cost of $1.46 per article.
In another example, Publisher A offers an
archival package that includes four journals, with
coverage up to 1998. The institution’s current
subscription to those journals generated 1326
downloads in one year, covering a publication
period of 8 years, and representing 90.3% of expected use, using Tenopir and King’s chart, with
a little extrapolation for the 6-10 year span. If all
years were available, you can predict a total use
of 1468 (1326 divided by .903). The cost of the
current subscriptions is $8,752 (combined cost of
the four journals) divided by 1326 uses results in
a cost of $6.60 per article download. The archival package has an initial cost of $8,000 with an
annual maintenance fee of $350. The projected
annual use is 142 articles (1468 downloads times
9.7%). Using the average cost of $6.60 from the
current subscription, it would take about 9 years
before the initial cost is recovered (142 times $6.60
for an annual cost of $937.20, $8000 divided by
the annual cost). But a comparison of document
delivery costs should also be made. Assuming
$30.00 per document requested, a ball-park document delivery charge, 142 documents requested a
year would generate a total annual cost of $4,260.
This makes that initial cost of $8000.00 begin to
look much more cost effective.
Obviously, usage statistics can play a prominent role in the evaluation of an existing library’s
subscription. The literature frequently warns of
relying too heavily on statistics, but truthfully, reliable statistics are taking some of the guess-work
out of evaluation. Clearly, they are not the only
criteria, factors such as the size of the program a
Electronic Usage Statistics
journal supports, a journal’s importance to its ield,
publishing patterns by the institution’s faculty,
membership on editorial boards by faculty, and so
on, all need to be considered, but for the irst time,
we have some real data to frame decisions.
An emerging evaluation standard is the cost
per article download. It is a relative igure and
only has meaning in comparison to other cost
per article calculations from the institution or in
comparison to document delivery costs. Within
that context, it is a very helpful metric. Kraemer
reports creating an annual evaluation overview
which includes a complete list of usage and cost
per usage, a list of both high and low cost per use
products, and a list of high demand titles generated from interlibrary loan requests (Bordeaux,
Karmer, & Sullenger, 2005). Such analyses set
a useful framework in which to place renewal
decisions.
Cost per use is also helpful when evaluating
a package subscription. A question that is often
raised is whether it is better use of your money
to subscribe to a package deal or to pick off the
high use titles and subscribe to them individually.
A straightforward examination of this question
can be made.
The cost per use of the package is easily calculated. In the example represented in Table 5, the
package deal comes with a requirement to maintain existing subscriptions to titles carried by the
publisher. The total cost of the package is thus the
package cost and the associated subscription costs.
This igure, divided by the total usage, gives you
the cost per use of the package. Looking at your
individual title usage, arranged from high use to
low, you could then calculate the point at which
the total of individual title subscriptions would
equal your package total. In this case, the cost
of twenty journals with the highest use roughly
matches the total package costs. These journals
account for only 44.5% of the overall usage. Since
use is not highly concentrated with a few journals,
it clearly is more cost effective to subscribe to the
whole package. With other packages, where use
is concentrated in fewer journals, it may turn out
that picking off the high use journals is more cost
effective. In either case your usage igures allow
a methodical decision.
Occasionally, because of inancial set backs,
an institution may be required to conduct a cancellation project. Here too, user statistics can be
of great assistance. In the following scenario,
shown in Table 6, an institution has a projected
electronic expenditure of $406,483. Unfortunately, the available allocation is $203,000. How
can those funds be spent to maximize the return?
There are several criteria that could be useful,
such as total number of journals subscribed to,
total number of article downloads, availability
of articles through alternative sources such as
document delivery, subject coverage of retained
journals, and feedback from faculty.
Taking a methodical look at usage is helpful.
Cost is projected for the next year as increasing
8%. In our example, direct subscriptions represent
only 7.7% of the total number of titles, but account
for 51.4% of article downloads. Perhaps we should
save all direct titles, leaving just enough to also
pay for package B. This option, option A, leaves
us with 16.3% of our titles and 52.4% of article
downloads.
How about concentrating on packages, which
tend to give a broader depth of subject coverage?
All packages exceed our limit; instead let us drop
package B, option B. In this coniguration we
retain 83.7% of our titles but only 47.56% of the
article downloads.
Then we can try dropping one of the pricier
packages and picking up more direct titles. Option
C, in which we drop package A, leaves us with
61.26% of journals and 74.21% of downloads,
while option D, all packages except F, returns
70.51% of titles and 71.54% of downloads.
You can continue to calculate the percent of
article downloads and the percent of titles saved
for each combination of packages and direct
titles. Table 7 summarizes the results of the four
options above.
39
Electronic Usage Statistics
Table 5. Analysis of individual journal performance within a publisher’s package
Article
down
-loads
% total
use
Direct cost
Cumulating
Cost Total
Cumulating
Use Total
Jrnl A
297
5.1%
$630.00
$630.00
297
5.1%
$2.12
Jrnl B
289
4.9%
$489.00
$1,119.00
586
10.0%
$1.69
Jrnl C
281
4.8%
$333.00
$1,452.00
867
14.8%
$1.19
Jrnl D
237
4.1%
$366.00
$1,818.00
1104
18.9%
$1.54
Jrnl E
187
3.2%
$3,540.00
$5,358.00
1291
22.1%
$18.93
Jrnl F
167
2.9%
$4,504.00
$9,862.00
1458
24.9%
$26.97
Jrnl G
134
2.3%
$3,137.00
$12,999.00
1592
27.2%
$23.41
Jrnl H
133
2.3%
$1,566.00
$14,565.00
1725
29.5%
$11.77
Jrnl I
99
1.7%
$1,246.00
$15,811.00
1824
31.2%
$12.59
Jrnl J
91
1.6%
$276.00
$16,087.00
1915
32.7%
$3.03
Jrnl K
87
1.5%
$2,858.00
$18,945.00
2002
34.2%
$32.85
Jrnl L
85
1.5%
$314.00
$19,259.00
2087
35.7%
$3.69
Jrnl M
85
1.5%
$1,200.00
$20,459.00
2172
37.1%
$14.12
Jrnl N
77
1.3%
$627.00
$21,086.00
2249
38.5%
$8.14
Jrnl O
67
1.1%
$2,456.00
$23,542.00
2316
39.6%
$36.66
Jrnl P
64
1.1%
$1,717.00
$25,259.00
2380
40.7%
$26.83
Jrnl Q
63
1.1%
$1,193.00
$26,452.00
2443
41.8%
$18.94
Jrnl R
60
1.0%
$1,561.00
$28,013.00
2503
42.8%
$26.02
Jrnl S
52
0.9%
$942.00
$28,955.00
2555
43.7%
$18.12
Jrnl T
50
0.9%
$5,522.00
$34,477.00
2605
44.5%
$110.44
Jrnl U
48
Title
Jrnl V
47
Jrnl W
47
Jrnl X
45
Jrnl Y
44
Jrnl Z
43
Publisher A:
Total # of journals
Total article downloads in year
Package cost
Required subscription cost
Total cost
Cost/use
40
844
5,848
$8,765
$24,367
$33,132
$5.67
% Total
Use
Direct
Cost/Use
Electronic Usage Statistics
Table 6. Various characteristics of current subscriptions (Electronic Product allocation: $203,000)
Available
Ingenta?
Available
ECO?
#
Jrnls
% total
Jrnl titles
Article
Downloads
2005
% Total
down
loads
yes
yes
844
31.99%
5,848
6.71%
Package B
no
coming
227
8.61%
905
Package C
partial
no
43
1.63%
6,720
Package D
yes
yes
123
4.66%
4,070
4.67%
$8,598.00
$2.11
$9,285.84
Package E
no
yes
528
20.02%
3,679
4.22%
$30,353.88
$8.25
$32,782.19
Package F
no
no
670
25.40%
21,148
24.26%
$100,599.40
$4.76
$108,647.35
2,435
92.30%
42,370
48.60%
$194,825.28
$4.60
$210,411.30
203
7.70%
44,813
51.40%
$181,548.35
$4.05
$196,072.22
2,638
100.00%
87,183
$376,373.63
$4.32
$406,483.52
Package
Package A
Total
packages
Direct subscriptions
Total packages & direct
Total number of Journal
titles
2,638
Total Number of Article
Downloads 2005
87,183
FY06 Cost
Cost/
Use
2006
Projected
cost (8%<)
$33,132.00
$5.67
$35,782.56
1.04%
$6,322.00
$6.99
$6,827.76
7.71%
$15,820.00
$2.35
$17,085.60
Option A: Package B, all direct journals
Total cost
$201,064
Package B
$6,827
Total Number of titles
1,616
Direct subs
$196,072
Total Number of Direct Titles
25
$202,899
Total Number of articles downloaded
64,697
Total cost
Total Number of titles saved
430
% of article downloaded
74.21%
Total Number of Direct Titles
203
% of direct titles saved
12.32%
Total Number of articles downloaded
45,718
% of total titles saved
61.26%
% of article downloaded
52.44%
% of direct titles saved
100.00%
Option D: all packages except F,
% of total titles saved
16.30%
as many directs as possible
All packages except F
Option B: All packages, except B
All packages, except B
$101,763
Direct subs w/ cost/use<$19.00 (95
titles and 41,148 downloads) $100,546
$203,583
$202,309
Total Number of titles saved
2,208
Total cost
Total Number of Direct Titles
0
Total Number of titles saved
1,860
Total Number of articles downloaded
41,465
Total Number of Direct Titles saved
95
% of article downloaded
47.56%
Total Number of articles downloaded
62,370
% of direct titles saved
0.00%
% of article downloaded
71.54%
% of total titles saved
83.70%
% of direct titles saved
46.80%
% of total titles saved
70.51%
Option C: All packages except Package A, as many direct
journals as possible
All packages except A
$174,628
Direct subs w/ cost/use<$3.20 (25
titles and 28,175 downloads) $26,435
41
Electronic Usage Statistics
Table 7. Summary of options
Option
Titles saved
% titles
saved
article
downloads
% article
downloads
saved
A
430
16.30%
45,718
52.44%
B
2,208
83.70%
41,465
47.56%
C
1,616
61.26%
64,697
74.21%
D
1,860
70.51%
62,370
71.54%
When you have two option with a close
percent of article downloads saved, you need to
remember that the count of article downloads
still has a signiicant error factor. option C and
option D, at 71.54% and 74.21% are essentially
equal in number of downloads. You would then
look at the total number of titles saved, the range
of subject areas served, and the programs you are
supporting.
A recent cancellation project at the author’s
institution included a review of proposed cancellations by faculty. Several of the faculty identiied
particular titles as critical to their ield of study.
The actual use of those titles was shockingly low;
some of them fewer than 10 downloads per year.
Perhaps the faculty had their own subscriptions,
an argument against continuing an institutional
subscription if it is redundant. Were those particular journals so signiicant that they were worth
the high cost per article download, or was it an
example of identifying what faculty think should
be critical, rather than what is actually used?
Usage statistics can also be used in negotiating
deals for publisher packages, both for individual
institutions and consortia. A library or consortia
that can demonstrate high use or low use enters
bargaining from a knowledge base, always a
good position when negotiating. Usage statistics
can also be used to distribute cost, either across
a consortium, or within a multicampus arrangement.
42
Besides being useful in evaluation of library
materials during different parts of their life cycle,
statistics can also be helpful in understanding
how patrons use electronic material. They can
provide insight on how to improve products, Web
pages leading to those products, library training
material, and how to most cost effectively buy
those products.
Philip Davis (2002) conducted an interesting
analysis of usage patterns within a consortium.
He reported that title usage clustered by three
types of institutions; large research, medical, and
liberal arts. He suggested—based on usage patterns—consortia organized by institutional type
rather than geography, may prove more effective
purchasing agents. Studies such as these will help
institutions to develop their buying models more
thoughtfully.
Other studies are being done using deep log
analysis, sometimes called data mining. Nicholas, Huntington, and Watkinson (2003) did an
extensive study in which they examined log iles
of users accessing Emerald and Blackwell titles.
These logs identiied the IP address of each hit,
recorded exactly which pages were hit, and how
long a user stayed on a certain page. From this they
reached several interesting conclusions. First, they
discovered that the usage pattern of users coming
from an institution that subscribed to the whole
package differed from the pattern of use by users
whose institution subscribe to only selected titles.
There was a signiicant increase in the number
Electronic Usage Statistics
of titles consulted from the package subscribers
versus individual subscribers. They were also
able to record the number of repeat visitors and
the number of requests by one user in a particular
session. The rate of hits on abstract pages, HTML
and PDF pages, and printing requests pages were
identiied. Also, load data identifying use by day
and time of day was captured. These statistics
were useful to the authors in identifying patterns
of use, looking at the preferred sequence of types
of pages, preferences between HTML and PDF
pages, and in identifying the end result sought by
patrons, usually a printed PDF. The data would
also be useful in looking at server and telecommunication capacity of the publisher.
Davis and Solla (2003) conducted another
study using deep log analysis, this time examining
behavior of patrons using chemical journals. These
logs captured IP address and type of article downloaded, HTML or PDF. From the data collected,
the authors were able to identify which campus
departments were using the journals studied, and
to what extent. They were also able to describe
journal use patterns, by number of titles accessed
and the number of articles downloaded by each
user. From this the authors identiied a correlation
between the total number of downloads and the
estimated user population. They were also able
to examine the effect a few heavy users can have
on overall usage rates.
FUTURE TRENDS
As usage statistics become more and more standardized and easier to obtain, increasing numbers
of institutions will collect, analyze and undoubtedly give statistics greater weight in the evaluation process. There will be the expectation that
all providers of library electronic products will
make compliant statistics available. Indeed, the
availability of such statistics is already becoming
a selection criterion for new products.
New products are appearing on the market to
facilitate the gathering and analysis of electronic
product user statistics. Services such as EBSCO’s
ScholarlyStats and Thomson’s Journal Use Reports collect, compile, and produce a variety of
reports generated from the user statistics pulled
from multiple sources speciic to the particular
library. The Thomson product further enriches
these reports with journal citation and institutional
publication data to provide more depth in the
reports generated. These tools will undoubtedly
prove useful for libraries coping with the challenges of managing user statistics from a variety
of sources. It remains to be seen whether these
products will continue to be viable in the long
term as more and more institutions are able to
automatically harvest their own data and become
more versed in the use of the statistics.
But beyond the straightforward issues of
obtaining and using statistics in the evaluation
of products, user statistics will increasingly be
utilized in more sophisticated analysis of library
activity. This trend can already be seen in the deep
log studies currently being conducted.
These techniques are beginning to extend
into what Scott Nicholson (2006) and others call
bibliomining. Similar to data analysis movements
in other ields of study, strands of information
from areas previously considered unrelated are
being pulled together and new connections made.
Bibliomining takes the results of deep log analysis,
adds it to other data, such as user demographic
information and library services information. The
Penn Library Data Farm (Data Farm University of
Pennsylvania Library, n.d.) is an example of bibliomining at work. The Data Farm makes available
a variety of statistics, such as COUNTER data,
gate counts, survey results, and Web log analysis,
as well as providing some canned and customizable reports. Its stated goal is to be “a repository
of quantitative information developed to aid the
measurement and assessment of library resource
use and organizational performance. In its design,
this repository is multipurpose, providing space
43
Electronic Usage Statistics
to assemble, process, integrate, analyze, and disseminate data” (¶ 1). Additional information on
the developing ield of bibliomining is available at
the Bibliomining Information Center, maintained
by Dr. Scott Nicholson (2005).
CONCLUSION
In summary, usage statistics have come a long way
in reliability, standardization, and ease of collection, thanks to efforts by librarians, publishers, and
library system vendors working in collaboration.
The standards codiied by both COUNTER and
SUSHI will help insure the quality of statistics
and lead to improvements in both the statistics
themselves and the method of gathering them.
Despite these advances, there are still issues of
stability, consistency, and the inluence of different publisher platforms on usage rates. The time
required to gather and process these statistics
will continue to be signiicant for the near term,
but are well worth the effort. Statistical information improves evaluation and decision making
throughout the life cycle of electronic products,
including new purchases, renewals, and cancellation projects. More than just a product evaluation
tool, they help us improve access to and use of
electronic materials. Statistics enhance our ability
to understand how and who uses our libraries, and
how they use the products the libraries offer.
REFERENCES
Bader, S. A., & Thompson, L. L. (1989). Analyzing
in-house journal utilization: An added dimension in decision making. Bulletin of the Medical
Library Association, 77(2), 216-218.
Bertot, J. C., McClure, C. R., & Ryan, J. (2000).
Developing national public library statistics and
performance measures for the networked environment: inal report (ERIC Document Reproduc-
44
tion Service No. ED447803). Washington, D.C.:
Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Bordeaux, A., Kraemer, A. B., & Sullenger, P.
(2005). Making the most of your usage statistics.
The Serials Librarian, 48(3/4), 295-299.
Chandler, A., & Jewell, T. (2006). Standards
– libraries, data providers, and SUSHI: The Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative.
Against the Grain, 18(2), 1-2.
Chen, C. C. (1972). The use patterns of physics
journals in a large academic research library.
Journal of the American Society for Information
Science, 23(4), 254-265.
Cooper, M. D., & McGregor, G. F. (1994). Using
article photocopy data in bibliographic models
for journal collection management. Library
Quarterly, 64(4), 386-413.
COUNTER : Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources (n.d.). Retrieved
November 11, 2007, from http://www.projectcounter.org
Data Farm University of Pennsylvania Library
(n.d.). Retrieved November 11, 2007, from http://
metrics.library.upenn.edu/prototype/about/indexHTML
Davis, P. M. (2002). Patterns in electronic journal
usage: Challenging the composition of geographic
consortia. College and Research Libraries, 63(6),
484-497. http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/
crljournal/backissues2002b/november02/davisPDF
Davis, P. M., & Price, J. S. (2006). eJournal interface can inluence usage statistics: Implications
for libraries, publishers, and Project COUNTER.
Journal of the American Society for Information
Science and Technology, 57(9), 1243-1248.
Davis, P. M., & Solla, L. R. (2003). An IP-level
analysis of usage statistics for electronic journals in chemistry: Making inferences about user
Electronic Usage Statistics
behavior. Journal of the American Society for
Information Science and Technology, 54(11),
1062-1068.
Duy, J., & Vaughan, L. (2006). Can electronic
journal usage data replace citation data as a
measure of journal use? An empirical examination. The Journal of Academic Librarianship,
32(5), 512-517.
Hahn, K. L., & Faulkner, L. A. (2002). Evaluative
usage-based metrics for the selection of e-journals.
College and Research Libraries, 63(3), 215-227.
International Coalition of Library Consortia
(ICOLC) (1998, November). Guidelines for statistical measures of usage of web-based indexed,
abstracted, and full text resources. Retrieved
November 11 2007, from http://www.library.yale.
edu/consortia/webstatsHTML
JISC (n.d.). Usage statistics working group.
About usage statistics working group. Retrieved
November 11, 2007, from http://www.jisc.ac.uk/
aboutus/committees/working_groups/working_groups_disbanded/usage_stats_group.aspx
JSTOR Web Statistics Task Force (1998, April).
Guidelines for statistical measures of usage of
web-based resources. Retrieved November 11,
2007, from http://www.library.yale.edu/~kparker/
WebStatsHTML
King, D. W., Tenopir, C., Montgomery, C. H.,
& Aerni, S. E., (2003). Patterns of journal use
by faculty at three diverse universities. D-Lib
Magazine, 9(10).
Konopasek, K., & O’Brien, N. P. (1982). A survey
of journal use within the undergraduate library at
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
ED 225601.
Luther, J. (2000). White paper on electronic journal usage statistics. Washington, D.C.: Council on
Library and Information Resources. http://www.
clir.org/PUBS/reports/pub94/contentsHTML
McCain, K. W., & Bobick, J. E. (1981). Patterns
of journal use in a departmental library: A citation analysis. Journal of the American Society for
Information Science, 32(4), 257-267.
Mercer, L. S. (2000). Measuring the use and value
of electronic journals and books. Issues in Science
and Technology Librarianship, 25. http://www.
istl.org/00-winter/article1HTML
Nicholas, D., Huntington, P., & Watkinson, A.
(2003). Digital journals, big deals and online
searching behaviour: A pilot study. ASLIB Proceedings, 55(1/2), 84-109.
Nicholson, S. (2006, May 15). Balancing evidencebased librarianship and protecting patron privacy
through the bibliomining process. Paper presented
at the Eastern New York ACRL Chapter 2006
Spring Conference. Retrieved November 11, 2007,
from http://www.enyacrl.org/acrlkeynote.ppt
Nicholson, S. (2005). Bibliomining: Data mining
for libraries. Retrieved November 11, 2007, from
http://www.bibliomining.com/
NISO (n.d.). FAQ for the standardized usage
statistics harvesting initiative (SUSHI) (Draft).
Retrieved November 11, 2007, from http://docs.
google.com/View.aspx?docid=d2dhjwd_63tkkwf
NISO (n.d.). NISO standardized usage statistics
harvesting initiative (SUSHI). National Information Standards Organization. Retrieved November
11, 2007, from http://www.niso.org/committees/
SUSHI/SUSHI_comm.html
Pesch, O. (2004). Usage statistics: Taking emetrics to the next level. The Serials Librarian,
46(1/2), 143-154.
Rice, B. A. (1979). Science periodicals use study.
Serials Librarian, 4(1) 35-47.
Shepherd, P. T. (2004). COUNTER: Towards
reliable vendor usage statistics. VINE, 34(4),
184-189.
45
Electronic Usage Statistics
Shim, W., McClure, C. R., Fraser, B. T., Bertot,
J. C., Dagli, A., & Leahy, E. H. (2001). Measures
and statistics for research library networked
services: Procedures and issues. ARL E-metrics
phase II report. Washington, D.C.: Association
of Research Libraries. Retrieved November 11,
2007, from http://www.arl.org/stats/newmeas/
emetrics/phasetwopreface.pdf
SUSHI for librarians and content providers.
Recording of Webinar presented May 17, 2006.
Retrived November 11, 2007, from https://niso.
46
webex.com/niso/onstage/tool/record/viewrecording1.php?EventID=277481065
Tenopir, C., & King, D. W. (2000). Towards
electronic journals: Realities for scientists,
librarians, and publishers. Washington, D.C.:
SLA Publishing.
Walter, P. L. (1996). A journal use study: Checkouts and in-house use. Bulletin of the Medical
Library Association, 84(4), 461-467.
Section II
Worklow Management and
Competencies of Electronic
Resource Librarians
48
Chapter IV
Selecting, Acquiring, and
Renewing Electronic Resources
Smita Joshipura
Arizona State University, USA
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to provide in-depth and comprehensive coverage of the worklow for
electronic resources (e-resources) from selection to acquisition. Along the way, it addresses major steps,
processes, procedures, and issues in selecting and acquiring e-resources and acts as a teaching tool for
librarians who would like to learn best practices for managing the life cycle of e-resources. This chapter
covers various facets of the selection process, including tools, challenges, and criteria, and provides a
checklist for collection development librarians for evaluating the resources. It also addresses acquisitions worklow from veriication of a resource to ordering and acquiring the product and provides an
additional checklist for acquisitions librarians for reviewing license agreements.
INTRODUCTION
In the last decade, there has been a sharp rise in the
number and complexity of e-resources in library
collections. Moreover, use patterns are shifting
from print to electronic materials. Because of
the proliferation of e-resources and user preferences for the electronic format, these resources
are becoming essential mainstays of any library
collection. Today’s e-resources consist of wide
varieties of materials including journals, books, indexes, abstracts, encyclopedias, reference books,
aggregator databases, and full-text or partially
full-text databases. As these resources change
at a very rapid pace and as libraries continue to
build larger collections of e-resources, inding
ways to manage them effectively, from selection
to licensing, is becoming a major challenge for
librarians.
This chapter covers various aspects of the
life cycle of e-resources and emphasizes major
steps for the librarians involved in the worklow
of selection and acquisition. The objective of this
chapter is to include methods of handling these
resources and to provide a practical and valuable
tool for librarians in any library.
Copyright © 2008, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
Selecting, Acquiring, and Renewing Electronic Resources
BACKGROUND
Selection of information sources is the core collection development function, and the primary
objective of the selection decision for any format
is fundamentally the same: satisfying user needs.
With the advent of e-resources, job responsibilities
of selectors have changed drastically. In the past,
selectors recommended new titles on an individual
basis using traditional selection criteria such as
quality, relevance, use, and cost (Welch, 2002).
Selectors analyzed faculty and user requests for
new titles and made requests to add to the collection. But in the cyber world, the role of selectors has
changed remarkably as e-resources have expanded
and developed. Selectors must now address new
issues as part of the selection and management
processes, issues such as easy and quick accessibility for users, continuous content evaluation
and technological and legal concerns.
Similarly, due to the overwhelming growth
and availability of a variety of electronic products, the worklow of acquisitions has changed
signiicantly, becoming more complex. Though
the acquisitions process is closely connected to
collection development in any type of library, it has
distinct functions. The primary responsibility of
the acquisitions department is getting the materials
needed by the library’s users in the most desired
format and in the most eficient and economical
manner. Thus, acquisition is deined as the technical process of ordering, receiving, and paying for
an item after the intellectual decision to purchase
an item has been made (Chapman, 2004). Even
though the process of identifying, ordering, and
paying for materials such as books, serials, and
media is very similar to that of electronic formats,
the life cycle of e-resources is more convoluted
than that of print resources. It requires additional
levels of details including tracking, recording, and
reviewing the license and business terms, and
investigating variable pricing ranges. Acquiring
information for an electronic product is often much
more time-consuming than for print resources. It
requires more time for decision making at every
step as well as higher levels of skills and knowledge among staff (Wilkinson & Lewis, 2003).
Also, it can require additional budget allocations
due to higher subscription costs than for print
collections. Due to the increase in the number
of electronic formats, acquisition librarians are
no longer just an expert in acquiring materials,
having knowledge about publishers and book
vendors, and identifying incomplete citations as
well as inding out-of-print materials. Now they
are also responsible for solving more creative
problems in the areas of collection development,
licensing, cataloging, technology and other issues
related to e-resources (Kennedy, 2004).
Finally, the renewal and cancellation of serial
subscriptions are a systematic recurring process
in any type of library. Due to high inlation rates
for serial subscriptions in all formats, shrinkage
of budgets or buying power, and the emergence
of new products, selectors are required to assess
their collections for potential cancellations during
the renewal process. Several traditional criteria
are considered for reviewing serial subscriptions,
such as low usage data, signiicant inlation rates,
cost per issue, type of publication, relevancy,
quality, duplication in other formats, and coverage
in index and abstracting services (Foudy & McManus, 2005). Evaluating e-resources is equally
important, and similar criteria can be applied for
such a process.
Even though some processes remain the same,
the role of collection development and acquisitions
librarians has been transformed by e-resources.
Moreover, an electronic resources (ER) librarian/coordinator has emerged who may carry
out various responsibilities of the acquisitions
librarian.
49
Selecting, Acquiring, and Renewing Electronic Resources
SELECTION OF ELECTRONIC
RESOURCES
Collection Development Policy
Selecting and adding e-resources for the collection becomes easier for the selectors when a
collection development policy is in place. Such
a policy provides a framework for decision-making and is a necessary planning tool, the use of
which leads to consistent, informed decisions. It
is a blueprint for the selectors and helps them to
ensure uniformity in procedures and appropriate
balance in the library collection. As more and more
e-resources are acquired, it is wise to integrate
these products into the library’s overall policy. The
three main purposes of a collection development
policy include informing, directing, and protecting (Gregory & Hanson, 2006). The purpose of
informing is to serve as a communications vehicle
for the library’s staff, administrators, and various
constituencies. The purpose of directing is to serve
as a guideline for the selectors to maintain balance
in the collection for its users. It also serves as a
training document for new collection development
librarians. The purpose of protecting is to serve
as a means of justifying the selection to the users.
The policy serves as a supporting document for
the library against challenges to its procedures
and resources. To maintain currency, the policy
should be reviewed and revised periodically.
There are various components to be considered
in developing a collection development policy:
1.
2.
3.
4.
50
It should articulate the institutional mission
of the library, the purpose of the policy, and
the audience for whom it is developed.
It should describe the community served,
including users, academic programs, offcampus users, and their needs.
It should provide criteria and guidelines for
the selectors.
It should identify selection tools appropriate
for the library.
5.
It should address access versus ownership
issues as to whether electronic access is suficient to meet the user’s needs or whether
the library should add print subscriptions.
6. It should include guidelines for weeding,
cancellation, retention, preservation and
replacement of resources.
7. It should include cooperative collection
development issues such as the role of consortia.
8. It should include general guidelines for licensing requirements for e-resources such
as the number of authorized users at a time,
remote access availability, and whether it
allows for various library services such as
interlibrary loans and digital reserves.
9. It should cover the process by which selection
recommendations or decisions are made, that
is whether selections are made by committee
or by individuals.
10. It should include expectations from providers
with regard to training, technical support,
compatibility with existing platform, and
so forth.
Examples of electronic collection development
policies can be found at: http://www.ala.org/ala/
rusa/rusaourassoc/rusasections/codes/codessection/codescomm/colldevpolicies/electroniccollectionpolicies/electronicpolicies.htm.
Selection Process
The selection of any e-resource is a three-step
process, which includes identiication/discovery,
evaluation and inally the decision to select the
product.
Identiication of Electronic Resource
The discovery of e-resources is challenging due
to a rapid increase in the availability of resources.
A variety of tools can be used to make sound
selection decisions. Examples of selection tools
Selecting, Acquiring, and Renewing Electronic Resources
include trial offers and demonstrations from the
publisher/vendor, faculty/patron suggestions,
discussion lists, peer library Websites, and vendor
exhibits at conferences. For trials of the product,
vendors of e-resources allow users of the library,
including library staff, faculty, and students, to
use the resource and to examine and evaluate its
content without cost for a limited period of time.
Inviting vendors to demonstrate an e-resource in
the library gives selectors an opportunity to ask
questions and discover details about various features of the product. Another way to discover new
resources is to ask librarians already subscribing
to a product about their experiences. Various listserves such as COLLDV-L (listproc@usc.edu) and
ERIL (http://www.joanconger.net/ERIL/aboutus.
html) help in identifying new e-resources. The
following are other selection tools that help the
selectors during the identiication process:
Publishers’ catalogs received from various
publishers/vendors.
Published reviews in various print and electronic sources such as Library Journal, American
Libraries, and Choice.
Charleston Review (http://www.charlestonco.
com/), which contains critical reviews of Web
products.
Scout Report (www.scout.cs.wisc.edu/scout/
report), which provides reviews of valuable resources on the Web.
NewJour (http://gort.ucsd.edu/newjour/), an
electronic discussion list hosted by the University
of California, San Diego, which helps to identify
new electronic journals.
Electronic Journal Access (http://www.coalliance.org/ejournal), managed by the nonproit
Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries, which
provides listings of electronic journals on the
Web. These listings are available directly from
publishers, professional societies, or smaller entities. Titles in aggregator databases are generally
excluded.
WorldCat (http://oclc.org/worldcat) helps to
ind bibliographical details as well as availability
in other libraries worldwide.
Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory. Ulrich’s is
the world’s premier periodicals reference source
providing essential bibliographic, descriptive,
and access information. It is available in print
and online and is published by R. R. Bowker.
http://www.bowker.com.
Serials Directory, which provides access to
the most up-to-date and accurate bibliographical
information as well as current pricing structures
for popular serials. It is available in print and
electronic format and is published by Ebsco.
http://www-us.ebsco.com
Evaluation of Electronic Resources
Once the resource is identiied, evaluation of the
product is the second most critical step for selectors. Evaluation helps the selectors determine
the cost, the reliability of the content provider,
and most importantly the authoritativeness of
the resource. A selection tool such as a trial or
demonstration of the product by the provider, as
well as reviews in print and electronic sources,
helps in evaluating the product and leads to sound
decisions. Traditionally with print resources, the
selectors consider the credentials of the author,
currency, intended audience, accuracy, ease
of use, reputation of the publisher, the subject,
cost and the curriculum or research needs of
students/faculty/patrons. They also use methods
such as citation analysis, user surveys, and so
forth. However, with e-resources the selector
must consider additional elements such as easy
access to the content, coverage, search capability and functionality of the interface; quality of
technical support; method of pricing; and provisions of licensing agreements. Thus, the typical
evaluation process for e-resources has many
facets, and following the various selection criteria
is vital for selectors.
Evaluation Criteria
The evaluation criteria mentioned next should
be considered:
51
Selecting, Acquiring, and Renewing Electronic Resources
Content: For content evaluation, the selector
reviews the content of the electronic format
and compares it with the print counterpart, if
available, to ind out about coverage in full
text; availability of retrospective material;
authoritativeness to determine the accuracy
of the content, and completeness of content
such as access to graphs, tables, illustrations,
and advertisements. Also, it is important
to check for duplication of the content in
other e-resources, especially in the case of
electronic journal packages.
Currency: It is important to ind frequency
of updates, archiving availability, and content embargos. Some providers impose one
or two year embargos or moving walls on
full-text access to journals. The moving wall
represents the length of time between the
last issues available in an electronic package with the most recent publication of the
journal.
Reputation: Selectors should investigate the
reputation of the provider before choosing
a product. It is essential to investigate the
business practices of the providers, their
responsiveness to problems, and their reliability with peers.
Indexing: Selectors should consider whether
or not the electronic product is well indexed.
Impact Factor: It can be important to consider the impact factor for evaluating journal
titles using journal citation reports and local
journal utilization reports, if available. Such
sources provide systematic and objective
data to evaluate the use and reputation of
journals.
Ease of Access: Selectors should evaluate
the functionality of the product, such as
ease of access for users, by comparing the
electronic to the print format, if available.
Also selectors should evaluate the various
interface features such as stability, possibility of customization, searching options
52
such as Boolean and proximity operators,
field-specific searching, availability of
thesaurus, and downloading options such
as e-mailing and printing, which add value
for the users.
Cost: Cost considerations for e-resources
can be confusing. Some products are monographic or serial in nature and the cost varies
accordingly. The cost may also vary according to the number of simultaneous users/
ports/passwords, remote access, and so forth.
The pricing plans are not standardized between vendors, but may be standardized for
individual vendors. Content providers may
offer special deals for consortia members
as a whole, and the pricing varies based on
the number of full time students, materials
budget, authentication of users, simultaneous use, and remote access for users.
Technical Support: E-resources are sometimes dificult and intimidating to use, unlike print resources, which do not require
training. Thus, technical support is an important criterion to consider when selecting
a resource. It is important to determine if the
product is compatible with existing hardware
and software, the lexibility of the software
to accommodate users with disabilities or
compliance with the Americans with Disability Act (ADA), the operating platform,
and training availability for staff, online
help, and detailed help pages for the users
of the product.
Licensing Agreement: Though reviewing a license agreement is not considered
a selector’s job, it is important to carefully
consider the general agreement such as various restrictions, access to archived information, deinition of authorized users, use for
distance education, off-campus access, and
availability of usage statistics.
Selecting, Acquiring, and Renewing Electronic Resources
Challenges for Collection
Development Librarians
The aforementioned evaluation criteria introduce
new and unique challenges for the selectors.
Moreover, the following factors would add more
demands on the selectors during the selection
process.
There are various types of e-resources such
as electronic books, electronic journals, reference sources, and full text databases. Each one
is unique and is considered differently during the
selection process.
Many products are multidisciplinary in nature,
which requires more than one selector in the selection decision process. In such incidences, selectors
have to work collaboratively with selectors from
other disciplines.
Selection of an e-resource requires more interaction between various library departmental
staff, such as technical services for legal and
access issues, technology for compatibility, and
reference/public services for training and ease
of use. Sometimes consortia deal with relatively
low cost drives the selection process because the
content provider offers special discounts on certain products. Many times, the consortia’s special
deal requires a quick response and supersedes the
routine selection approach. Thus, selectors have
to prepare themselves to work in teams and to
cooperate with other libraries.
Another issue is lack of perpetual access to
e-resources. A majority of e-resources is licensed
for a limited time. Thus, at the end of the license
period, if the selector decides to cancel the subscription, it results in a loss of access to the content.
Thus, preserving and archiving e-resources adds
different problems for selectors.
Moreover, the content of the resource may
change over time and require periodic review by
the selectors. It requires a continuous evaluation
process by the selectors, which is a time consuming job. There can also be serious duplication of
the content across databases, resulting in a waste
of purchasing power. Duplication and availability
of content from various sources add confusion
to users as well as to the selectors. Therefore,
selectors must consider very carefully the impact
of these issues.
As more and more of a library’s acquisitions
budget is devoted to e-resources, selectors often
have to curtail the purchase of monographs or
cancel some print subscriptions. Due to an increase
in the demand of users for e-resources, selection
becomes more user-driven.
Finally, greater inancial risk due to the high
cost of e-resources requires extra care in selecting
and handling. It is a inancial liability to commit
a large amount of money to a technology that
may be outdated quickly or a product that may
be replaced by better alternatives. Sometimes
a content provider may not be reliable, which
also increases the inancial risk. As a result, the
impact of a wrong selection decision can be farreaching.
Selection Decision
All the evaluation criteria and challenges for
e-resources must be considered while making
the inal selection decision. With the increase in
costs and decrease in budgets, it is vital for the
selectors to make sound purchasing decisions for
e-resources. As e-resources continue to evolve
and change, selection of these resources requires
the selectors to consider the decision consciously
for each resource by checking how each possible
addition its within the institutional vision. The
selection process should be carefully carried out,
ensuring that promotional promises made by the
vendors, immediate appeal of a new product, or
the selector’s preferences do not affect the selection process.
Thus, the selection of an e-resource is a detailed
process, and it is critical to develop a checklist of
selection criteria, which assists the selectors in a
sound selection process.
Figure 1 includes a checklist for the selection
of e-resources and may help as a guideline for
53
Selecting, Acquiring, and Renewing Electronic Resources
selectors before they submit their requests. It
would ensure that the selectors do not overlook
certain areas that need evaluation.
and reviews budget and collection priorities, the
decision regarding approval is made to the collection committee.
Selection Decision
Once the selector identiies a resource for the
collection based on the institution’s collection
development policy, evaluates the resource
against the check list, considers projected use,
ACQUISITIONS OF ELECTRONIC
RESOURCES
Though an acquisitions process for an e-resource
resembles the process for a print resource, such
Figure 1. Check list for selection and recommendation of electronic resources for purchase
The following checklist should assist selectors in the decision-making process. Consider the following
criteria while selecting e-resources for the collection.
Product Information
Title ____________________________________________________
URL ____________________________________________________
Description _______________________________________________
Trial ____________________________________________________
Yes, date __________________
No_______________________
Publisher/Vendor Information
Name of the Publisher ______________________
URL___________________________________
Contact name ____________________________
Telephone/E-mail__________________________
Audience
Primary users of the resource, such as students, faculty, researchers, general public, library staff
______________
Breadth of appeal across all types of library users___________
Relevance to programs such as degree programs, elective courses, faculty support, interdisciplinary
use _____________
continued on next page
54
Selecting, Acquiring, and Renewing Electronic Resources
Figure 1. (cont.)
Content
Type of product such as full text, index/abstract, statistical, graphics, reference source, electronic
journal/package, electronic book, or other____________
Accuracy and currency of the product compared to print counterpart_______
The product is a primary or secondary source, peer-reviewed, scholarly, and so forth. _________
Current comprehensiveness of the product, for example for e-journal package, the number of titles
_______________
Chronological coverage of the product, such as current, retrospective________________
Updates or frequency of the updates, such as daily, weekly, monthly _____________
Duplication, such as equivalents in print or in other electronic products in the collection_______
Quality evaluation of the product. Check for reviews, demonstrations, a trial _______________
Reliability of the vendor. Check for alternate vendors of same content or product ____________
Stable access and coverage of the content for aggregator database_______________________
Cost
Cost based on yearly subscription, one-time purchase ___________.
Initial cost, maintenance cost, cost based on full time equivalent (FTE), concurrent simultaneous
use, consortia______________
Savings on cancellation of duplicate print of e-resource if available in the collection_________
Method of Access and Compatibility Issues
The resource resides on vendor’s server, library’s server___________
Access to backiles/archives if available_________________________
Compatibility with current hardware/software, requirement of special plug-in_______________
Authentication process, such as password, IP address, remote access ____________
Interface Evaluation
Easy for novice users to access interface _____________________
Additional sophisticated features available for expert users_________
Screen layout, use of colors, browse functions___________________
Response time for results____________________________
Allows Boolean, natural language, relevance search, truncation______
Choice availability for display options, sort options________________
Ability to e-mail, download, print______________________________
Interaction with citation management system____________________
continued on next page
55
Selecting, Acquiring, and Renewing Electronic Resources
Figure 1. (cont.)
Availability of online thesaurus_______________________________
Availability of online help, such as tutorials____________________
Space
Space-saving due to disposition of print resource__________________
License
General agreement of the license, such as ability to provide interlibrary loan, copy, print, and download options__________________________
Technical Support
Training for staff, users, availability of online assistance_________
Special access for classroom instruction _______________________
Additional Information/Comments
as pre-order investigation and ordering, speciic
tasks vary between the two formats. Once the
individual selector or selection committee has
chosen a resource for the library’s collection,
the standard acquisition process of locating and
acquiring the resource takes place.
The Acquisitions Process
The acquisition is a four-step process that begins
after the selector discovers a new product. It includes verifying the bibliographic information for
the product, identifying various pricing options,
reviewing the license and business agreements,
and inally, ordering and acquiring the product
for the library collection.
Veriication of Bibliographic
Information
The veriication of bibliographic information
for an electronic product requires inding out
56
various details such as the content provider of
the product, coverage, frequency of updates,
and cost. Sometimes the same product may be
available on multiple platforms or in more than
one package. It is vital to understand various
content providers’ platforms and provide details
to the selectors because they may have different
content coverage; pricing; interface, search or
retrieval capabilities; and user functions. Although
acquisition librarians ind various details from the
publisher’s Website, most of the time they have
to work with a representative of content provider
for clariication on various aspects of the product
and for pricing and business negotiations. There
are other tools that can be used for veriication
of bibliographic information, such as WorldCat
(http://oclc.org/worldcat), Ulrich’s Periodicals
Directory, and Serials Directory.
Selecting, Acquiring, and Renewing Electronic Resources
Identiication of Various Pricing
Options
Content providers offer various pricing models.
They may be based on the size of the library, the
number of users, or the nature of the product.
Unfortunately, there are no consistent standards
for pricing, and acquisitions/ ER librarians need
to negotiate a inal price or pricing model. Some
common pricing models are as follows:
Product Type: There are various types of
products, for example, electronic journal
packages, aggregator databases, and fulltext databases. The pricing model may
depend on the type of product, which may
also be available through various options,
such as yearly subscription or one-time
purchase for archival products.
Institution Size: The size of the institution
is another variable. The content provider may
charge more when selling to large universities with multiple branches, locations, or
sites compared to small sized universities
or community colleges.
Number of Users: Price also varies with
the number of potential users. Some content
providers offer price based on full-time
equivalents of students, while others include
the total number of students, staff, and faculty members as potential users. Price may
also be based on the number of simultaneous
users or unlimited access including remote
access, and so forth.
Consortia: Often content providers offer
special pricing for consortia. In consortia
deals, expensive electronic products can
become affordable for small libraries because several libraries work together and
share costs.
Journal Package Deals: Some providers
offer bundled sets of titles in an electronic
journal package. The library or consortium
must acquire the entire list of journals with-
out any individual selection. In such a deal,
libraries may get relevant content at a lower
price but may have to pay for titles with less
or no relevance for the users; whereas, some
providers of electronic journals packages
offer pay-per-view options. In this option,
libraries are not required to have subscriptions to all journal titles in the package,
allowing users access to articles by paying
the cost of an article from journals that are
not subscribed to by the library. Sometimes,
pricing models are based on a combination
of print and electronic subscriptions. In
such cases, publishers offer free electronic
access or provide deep discounts for print
plus electronic subscriptions.
Content Access: Sometimes pricing is based
on the type of access to content. Some content providers require libraries to pay a large
initial fee and then smaller annual fees for
electronic packages where the annual fee
is generally for continued access, which
may or may not include additional content.
Moreover, pricing depends upon the level of
the content. Databases with full-text articles
have higher prices compared to abstract and
indexing databases.
Thus, each pricing model is unique and
variations seemingly limitless. Acquisitions/ER
librarians explore the above options with content
providers and report their indings to the selectors.
Most electronic journal packages are available
directly from the publishers, while individual
journal titles may be available directly from the
publisher or through a subscription agent or another content provider. Electronic books can now
often be purchased through a major book jobber
as well as from the publisher or as a package deal
through a third party, which may or may not be a
consortium. Some expensive electronic databases
or packages can be obtained directly from the
publishers or by joining a larger consortium. Due
to the high cost of e-resources, many libraries
57
Selecting, Acquiring, and Renewing Electronic Resources
prefer a consortial approach in acquiring those
resources. As a result, consortia play major roles
in acquiring expensive e-resources. Purchasing
through a consortium results in signiicant inancial savings to individual libraries, which allows
for wider access to materials for users.
Reviewing the License and Business
Agreements
Once the source of acquiring the product is
determined, the license agreement becomes the
key part of the acquisition process. The license
agreement includes description of the product,
responsible parties that is, licensor and licensee
who are signing the agreement, authorized users
of the product, use of the product, and rights of
the licensee and the licensor. Inquiring about
the license agreement with a representative of
the content provider before ordering the product
is recommended. Many content providers make
available their licensing agreements and terms
of use on their Websites, while some licenses
can be obtained through their representatives.
Sometimes, publishers have “click-on” or “clickthrough” licenses on their Websites, where a user
is required to click on a box to agree to the terms
and agreements of the products. It is a normal tendency of the user to simply agree without reading
the terms. In such scenarios, the acquisitions/ER
librarians must review the agreement. If certain
terms are not acceptable, then they should be
negotiated with the publishers. It is most critical
to get the contract reviewed and signed by both
parties before the invoice of the product is paid.
Licensing is becoming a day-to-day responsibility
of an acquisitions/ER librarian and is the most
important issue these days since it concerns a
legally binding contract made on behalf of the
institution. The challenges associated with the
licensing agreement include understanding the
content, determining the standard wording required by the institution, and identifying terms,
which requires negotiation. Librarians who deal
58
with licensing agreements should have negotiating skills and be required to work collaboratively
with the institution’s legal counsel. They should
be familiar with the policies of their institution.
Librarians responsible for licenses should
review each term and condition in the agreement
very carefully. While reviewing the agreement,
one should assure that each provision is clear. Librarians must work closely with content providers
while reviewing the agreement and should make
necessary changes to conform to the institution’s
policies. Almost all licenses are negotiable but
require considerable time. Thus, librarians must
be patient and persistent (Wilkinson & Lewis,
2003). If necessary, they should actively negotiate
the terms, keep communication open and clarify
the institution’s service expectations.
The license agreement contains various clauses
that deine the rights of the libraries, users, and
content providers. The following are some of the
important clauses included in the license that can
act as a checklist for the librarian who reviews
the license agreement:
Content of Licensed Materials: The license should clearly include the name of
the product or the list of the titles that can
be accessed.
Site: It is important to include names of the
sites/premises that have authorized access
to the product. Sometimes access to the
product is limited to a particular building
or campus, and it is necessary to name them
in this clause.
Authorized Users: Deinition of authorized
users is an important clause in any license
agreement. This clause deines authorized
users such as students, faculty, and staff of
an academic institution. Many public institution libraries require authorized access for
public walk-in users who occasionally visit
the library. This clause should be reviewed
carefully and negotiated if necessary.
Selecting, Acquiring, and Renewing Electronic Resources
Copyright and Fair Use: Copyright and fair
use laws of the United States allow libraries to make copies of some portions of the
material and send them to other libraries
for educational, research, and teaching purposes. The license agreement should allow
users to view, download, or print a copy of
the material. Some providers support library
services such as interlibrary loan, electronic
course reserve, and distance education. Librarians should carefully review this clause,
identify the institutional needs, and include
them in the agreement.
Conidentiality: Some agreements require
libraries to keep the cost of the resource
conidential. It is not possible for public
institutions to accept such a clause. On the
other end, libraries should protect the conidentiality of the users. Thus, this clause
should be reviewed carefully.
Cost: This clause should clearly include the
cost of the subscription.
Governing Law: Most of the time a publisher stipulates in the terms that the contract
will be governed by the laws of the provider’s
particular state or country. Librarians should
be very careful in reviewing this clause and
should be aware of their institution’s policy.
It is important to negotiate this clause and
change the governing law to the geographical
location of the institution.
Perpetual Access: This clause allows the
library to retain access to the materials for
which payment has been made after cancellation of the product. Libraries should ask
for archival access if it is not included in the
contract.
Liabilities of Libraries: The agreement
includes the responsibility of the library to
monitor the use of the resource for unauthorized access by the user. Librarians should
carefully review this clause and make sure
to agree to a feasible level of monitoring, if
any.
Terms of Payment and Termination: This
clause includes payment of invoices within
certain time frames as well as requirements for the renewal of the contract. It is
important to review this clause and make
necessary changes before signing the agreement. Termination includes reason and time
of termination and notiication from the
provider.
Indemniication: This clause states that
one or both parties will not be inancially
responsible for any monetary loss. This
clause should be carefully reviewed and
needs to have equal indemniication for
both parties. Generally, the contract term
also includes the phrase “hold harmless,”
which means that legal action will not be
taken against the other party.
Usage Statistics: Under this clause, the
content providers agree to provide usage
statistics for e-resources. The data should
be compliant with Counting Online Usage
of NeTwork Electronic Resources (COUNTER), which helps libraries to compare usage
statistics and make informed decisions for
renewal or cancellation of e-resources.
Though librarians are becoming savvy in
negotiating the terms and conditions of licenses
and the content providers are becoming more
familiar with libraries’ needs, it is important to
have consistent and transparent clauses. As of the
time of this writing, there is no standardization
in the agreements. Clarity and standardization in
agreements would be beneicial for librarians as
well as content providers. Some of the resources,
guidelines, and models of the license agreement
are listed as follows:
Yale University: http://www.library.yale.
edu/ecollections/eresmanage.html. This site
provides information for understanding various
issues raised by licensing agreements. Various
models can be found at http://www.library.yale.
edu/~llicense/modlicintro.html.
59
Selecting, Acquiring, and Renewing Electronic Resources
Association of Research Libraries (http://mccoy.lib.siu.edu/arl/licensing/) provides an online
course in licensing and negotiations.
The American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, and other associations have created principles for handling
licensing agreements which can be found at
http://www.arl.org/scomm/licensing/principles.
html. Such principles can help librarians and
providers to understand various problems involved
in license agreements and how to resolve them
successfully.
Columbia University Libraries’ site (http://
www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/inside/ner/license-checklist.html) contains a checklist of
important rights and provisions to look for in a
licensing agreement.
Licensing Models Website at http://www.
licensingmodels.com/ contains a standard license
designed for the acquisition of electronic products. It includes four types of models, namely
those for single academic institutions, academic
consortia, public libraries, and corporate and
special libraries.
University of Texas System at http://www.
utsystem.edu/ogc/intellectualproperty/dbckfrm1.
htm provides guidelines for librarians in the area
of licensing.
The worklow of the licensing review process
varies according to the type and size of a library.
Some libraries have a team approach for license
negotiation, while in some libraries legal counsel
reviews the licenses. In some libraries, once the
acquisitions/ER librarian reviews the license and
negotiates the terms, it is sent to the institution’s
attorney for inal review. Lately large subscription
vendors have also started participating actively in
the licensing process. They have started providing a new service for the library by interpreting
the terms of a contract and negotiating on the
library’s behalf. It is also very important to keep
copies of the signed agreement in the acquisitions
department for future reference.
60
Ordering and Acquiring the Product
After the license is reviewed and signed, ordering
and acquisition of the product begins. Acquisitions
personnel communicate with the content provider
about the resource that is being requested and
provide technical information, such as Internet
protocol (IP) addresses. The acquisitions department gets phone or e-mail notiication from the
provider’s technical support staff once the access
is set up based on the institution’s request. The
content provider also provides a stable URL for
the product through which the resource can be
accessed. Acquisitions or technology personnel
verify access of the product and inform the rest
of the organization of the availability of the new
resource.
The acquisitions department must notify
other library departments such as cataloging,
technology, collection development, and public
services once access to an e-resource is activated.
It is essential to communicate with the cataloging department regarding access to the resource
because they maintain the online public access
catalog (OPAC). They also need all the details such
as license restrictions, if any, content availability,
mode of access, simultaneous use access, and so
forth. The acquisitions department informs the
technology or systems department because they
maintain the technical access and local tracking
of the database. The acquisitions department also
informs the selector who requested the product
and the public services staff who publicize the
new resource to users. It is important to share
details about contractual and legal terms such
as acceptable and prohibited use of the resource
and the number of authorized users. Timely communication between the acquisitions department
and various library departments is vital to ensure
rapid access to the product for the user.
Sometimes content providers offer training in
the use of the resource once it is acquired by the
library. In such a case, the acquisitions staff follows
up with the provider’s representative regarding
Selecting, Acquiring, and Renewing Electronic Resources
training for public services staff. Periodically they
also provide refresher training for the e-resource
purchased by the library. The acquisitions librarian should take advantage of such offers to set up
training for staff members.
After access is conirmed, the provider sends
an invoice to the acquisitions department for payment. Acquisitions personnel review the invoice
to make sure that the charges are as per the agreement and then process the payment.
The responsibility of the acquisitions department is not over as soon as the item is paid for.
Maintaining access to the resource also becomes
a part of this department’s task. Sometimes, access is disrupted due to a delay in the renewal of
the resource. In such a case, acquisitions personnel need to contact the provider immediately to
resolve the issue. Frequently access is affected
due to technical problems such as a change in the
URL. Under such circumstances, acquisitions or
systems personnel should follow up. It is important
for acquisitions personnel to communicate with
the provider whenever there is a change in the IP
address so records can be amended and access
provided to additional buildings or sites. Another
ongoing responsibility of acquisitions personnel is
to receive usage statistics from the provider and
provide data to selectors so that they can review
the usage and make informed decisions about
renewing or cancelling the resource.
Challenges for Acquisitions
Librarian
The work of acquisitions is constantly changing,
and new challenges are added in the process.
After the order for an e- resource is processed, it
does not require traditional tasks such as physical
check-in, shelving, and binding. Once access is
veriied, the title can be cataloged and added to
link resolvers and electronic journal listings so
that patrons have easy access. Thus the process
is quick and simple compared to a print collection. However, it is critical to check access to the
resource on a regular basis and follow up with
the provider in the case of loss of access, which
requires special staff having technical skills and
knowledge.
Another challenge concerns providing institutional details, such as data on full time equivalents,
IP addresses, and proxy servers to the content
provider. When processing an order for a new
electronic subscription, acquisitions personnel
should collaborate with technology staff in these
matters. Similarly, the license agreement requires
reviewing various terms and conditions with
legal/licensing personnel, and thus collaboration
with different departments is necessary.
Another issue, which does not exist in the
print environment, is the need for multiple communication channels with a provider for a single
order. Once the resource is acquired, various
staff members from departments such as acquisitions, cataloging, and technology may need to
contact the provider to obtain information which
cannot be handled or understood by one person
in the acquisitions department. Thus, from the
acquisitions standpoint, e-resources require more
follow-up than print resources.
Budget is yet another challenge, as most libraries do not systematically receive additional
funding to maintain and develop electronic collections. It becomes dificult to add new resources
within limited budgets.
Lastly, managing the necessary record keeping
for e-resources, such as license records, advance
notiication before cancellation or renewal, access follow-up, and lists of various contacts for
the same resource, is a major challenge. Manual
control of e-resources is not practical, so libraries are trying to develop electronic resources
management systems to resolve various problems
associated with tracking of e-resource records in
a systematic way.
Due to changes in user preference and technology, the acquisitions librarian has developed
new skills such as business negotiation ability and
knowledge about licensing terms and technology
to manage the changes. Librarians should always
consider their users and their institution’s poli61
Selecting, Acquiring, and Renewing Electronic Resources
cies irst. They should be unbiased when selecting content providers for a particular resource.
Moreover, effective communication is required
across library departments so that quick access
can be provided to the user. AcqWeb http://www.
acqweb.org/acqnet.html is a very useful Website
for keeping abreast of what is happening in library
acquisitions. It provides an excellent resource for
pre-order searching; information about and from
various publishers, suppliers, and vendors; lists
of relevant associations and organizations; and a
selected list of publications on library science in
general and acquisitions in particular.
RENEWAL/CANCELLATION OF AN
ELECTRONIC RESOURCE
Unlike most serial renewal subscriptions, which
are based on a calendar year, the renewal for
electronic subscriptions depends on the individual
contracts. The majority of them are renewed every
year, but sometimes contracts are signed for two or
three years and are renewed accordingly. Usually,
content providers send a reminder to the library’s
acquisitions department for renewal ahead of time
with pricing and a copy of the contract. The core
e-resources are most of the time automatically
renewed unless there is a signiicant increase in
the price or a change in the licensing terms. But
noncore electronic subscriptions are reviewed
by selectors based on various evaluation criteria
before the renewal is processed by acquisitions.
Once the invoice is paid, generally refunds are
not available. Thus, evaluation of resources before
the renewal process is critical.
During the evaluation process for renewing
e-resources, selectors consider various criteria
such as ranking based on quality and usage, access, cost-effectiveness, breadth, audience, and
uniqueness of the resource:
Ranking: The databases can be ranked by
acquiring usage statistics.
62
Access: Access criteria are based on the
technical reliability of the content provider,
ease of use, remote access by users, and perpetual access. However, when the perpetual
access/archive is not available or if a title is
cancelled, the library loses access to current
as well as retrospective material.
Cost-effectiveness: Cost-effectiveness is
based on the number of searches per year,
cost per search, and so forth. Usage data and
especially cost per use helps in assigning the
title for renewal or cancellation. The pricing
for e-resources is very different compared
to print resources. The price per title and
the cost per use are extremely dificult to
evaluate. Assessment of usage data from
providers is extremely valuable for selectors during the renewal process, especially
for evaluating expensive resources. Some
content providers provide useful statistics
such as number of queries per speciic database, number of sessions, number of fulltext articles or citations retrieved, and the
number of times users were denied access.
Such data can help selectors to increase the
number of simultaneous users during the
renewal process. There is still inconsistency
in usage data received from the providers
despite standards developed by COUNTER,
and libraries should encourage the content
providers to provide such data.
Breadth and Audience: The breadth and
audience criteria include the relevance to
research on campus and the curriculum,
the potential number of users affected, the
primary user group, and the number of
searches per year.
Uniqueness: Uniqueness of the resource
can be evaluated by comparing duplication
in various formats or overlap in full-text
resources. Individual titles in a publisher
package generally cannot be cancelled.
Sometimes, the titles are duplicated in aggregator databases, which do not provide
Selecting, Acquiring, and Renewing Electronic Resources
Once a decision has been made, the acquisitions department is notiied to renew or cancel
the subscription. They process the invoice for
payment or communicate with the provider for
cancellation.
for managing these resources in an eficient way.
The ERM system helps to track the worklow from
selection to acquisitions, license management to
renewal and cancellation of the resource. This
results in more systematic follow-up, and inally
makes the overall management straightforward
from resource selection to user support. Moreover,
many institutions have hired electronic resources
coordinator/librarians to oversee the electronic
resources process and communicate with content
providers about products and options.
FUTURE TRENDS
CONCLUSION
With the increase in growth and demand for eresources, libraries need to purchase and maintain
signiicant e-resources in the collection. Due
to high costs and the multidisciplinary subject
coverage of e-resources, the inal decision has
become a team decision rather than an individual
decision in many libraries. Such a team consists
of members from various departments such as
collection development, acquisitions, cataloging,
technology, and public services. Bringing together
differing expertise can be a very effective method
for selection of e-resources. Such an approach
helps selectors to be open-minded and lexible and
leads to wise collection decisions. The creation
of such teams helps in bringing together diverse
skills needed to acquire a particular resource for
the collection, but sometimes leads to delays in
the decision process. Moreover, due to the rising
cost of e-resources and shrinking budgets, the
multilibrary consortia model will expand in the
future.
Due to the complexity of tracking e-resources
eficiently, libraries are at a crossroads in inding
a complete system for electronic resources management. The Digital Library Federation (DLF)
has deined requirements and suggests solutions
for e-resources management. Various library
system vendors have developed an automated
electronic resources management (ERM) system
In a nutshell, the revolution of e-resources has
drastically changed the entire process of selection and acquisition of materials for collections
and has added various challenges for librarians.
E-resources have virtually transformed librarians into “cybrarians.” In addition to possessing
subject-matter knowledge, librarians are involved
in the organization of resources so that users can
have quick and easy access. Now, they also are
required to possess technology expertise for selecting and evaluating resources. Similarly, acquisitions/ER librarians require legal and technological
knowledge and business negotiations skills. Both
selectors and acquisitions/ER librarians must work
collaboratively with the technology, cataloging
and public services departments.
It is very important for librarians to keep up-todate on various changes and developments taking
place in the areas of collection development and
acquisitions. They should keep themselves current by reading relevant journals, searching the
Internet, and attending meetings and conferences
as well as subscribing to related discussion lists.
Some important journals, conferences, and lists
relevant to collection development and acquisitions are listed under the Appendix.
stable access and hence require renewal of
the subscription.
Budget: Finally, inadequate budget adds
challenges for selectors in making decisions
for renewal of e-resources.
63
Selecting, Acquiring, and Renewing Electronic Resources
REFERENCES
Alford, L. (2000). The impact of digital resources
on organization and management of collection
development and acquisitions. Paper presented
at the IFLA Conference Proceedings, Jerusalem,
Israel. Retrieved November 12, 2007, from http://
www.ila.org/IV/ila66/papers/168-180e.htm
Allison, D., & McNeil, B. (2000). Database selection: One size does not it all. College & Research
Libraries, 61(1), 56.
Bluh, P. M. (2001). Managing electronic serials:
Essays based on the ALCTS electronic serials
institutes, 1997-1999. Chicago: American Library
Association.
Chapman, L. (2004). Managing acquisitions
in library and information services (Rev. ed.).
London: Facet.
Conger, J. E. (2004). Collaborative electronic
resource management: From acquisitions to assessment. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.
Ficher, K., & Barton, H. (2005). The landscape
of E-journal management. Journal of Electronic
Resources in Medical Libraries, 2(3), 57.
Foudy, G., & McManus, A. (2005). Using a decision grid process to build consensus in electronic
resources cancellation decisions. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 31(6), 533-538.
Gerald, N. (2000). Collection development and
organization of electronic resources. Collection
Management, 25(1/2), 97-113.
Gorman, G. E., & Miller, R. H. (Eds.). (1997).
Collection management for the 21st century: A
handbook for librarians. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Grahame, V., McAdam, T., & Association of
Research Libraries. Ofice of Leadership and
Management Services. (2004). Managing electronic resources. Washington, D.C.: Association
64
of Research Libraries, Ofice of Leadership and
Management Services.
Gregory, V. L., & Hanson, A. (2006). Selecting
and managing electronic resources: A how-todo-it manual for librarians (Rev. ed.). New York:
Neal-Schuman Publishers.
Harvell, T. (2005). Electronic resources management systems: The experience of beta testing and
implementation. Serials Librarian, 47(4).
Hawthorne, D. (2003/0). Administrative metadata
to support the acquisition of continuing e-resources. Serials Review, 29(4), 276-281.
Holleman, C. (2000). Electronic resources: Are
basic criteria for the selection of materials changing? Library Trends, 48(4), 694.
Icolc guidelines and preferred practices for selection and purchase of electronic resources (2001).
Online Libraries & Microcomputers, 19(12), 1.
Jaguszewski, J. M., & Probst, L. K. (2000). The
impact of electronic resources on serial cancellations and remote storage decisions in academic
research libraries. Library Trends, 48(4), 799.
Kennedy, M. R. (2004). Dreams of perfect programs: Managing the acquisition of electronic
resources. Library Collections, Acquisitions, &
Technical Services, 28(4), 449-458.
Kovacs, D. (2000). Building electronic library
collections: The essential guide to selection
criteria and core subject collections. New York:
Neal-Schuman Publishers.
Lugg, R., & Fischer, R. (2005). Acquisitions’ next
step. Library Journal, 130(12), 30-32.
Managing electronic resources at Yale University
library (2006). Retrieved November 12, 2007,
from http://www.library.yale.edu/ecollections/
eresmanage.html
McGinnis, S. D. (2000). Electronic collection
management. Binghamton, NY: Haworth Information Press.
Selecting, Acquiring, and Renewing Electronic Resources
McGinnis, S., & Kemp, J. H. (1998/0). The electronic resources group: Using the cross-functional
team approach to the challenge of acquiring electronic resources. Library Acquisitions: Practice
& Theory, 22(3), 295-301.
Metz, P. (2000). Principles of selection for electronic resources. Library Trends, 48(4), 711.
Miller, R. G. (2002). Shaping digital library
content. Journal of Academic Librarianship,
28(3), 97.
Miller, R. H. (2000). Electronic resources and
academic libraries, 1980-2000: A historical perspective. Library Trends, 48(4), 645.
Newman, G. (2000). Collection development and
organization of electronic resources. Collection
Management, 25(1/2), 97-113.
Pattie, L. W., & Cox, B. J. (1996). Electronic
resources: Selection and bibliographic control.
Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press.
Sadeh, T., & Ellingsen, M. (2005). Electronic
resource management systems: The need and
the realization. [Electronic version]. New Library
World, 106(5/6).
Welch, J. M. (2002/0). Hey! what about us?!
Changing roles of subject specialists and reference librarians in the age of electronic resources.
Serials Review, 28(4), 283-286.
Wilkinson, F. C., & Lewis, L. K. (2003). The
complete guide to acquisitions management.
London: Libraries Unlimited.
KEY TERMS
Consortium: A group of libraries or other
entities that work together for a common goal of
interest. Many libraries are becoming a part of
consortium for ordering expensive e-resources
to get better pricing deals and wider access for
users.
Discussion List: An electronic mailing list
for sharing information and problems to or
among those who subscribe to the list. Usually
devoted to a particular topic or subject area (e.g.,
ACQNET). Any message sent to the list will be
sent to everyone in the group either automatically
or through a moderator.
Embargo: The period during which articles in
a periodical are not available in full-text online,
usually for 3, 6 or 12 most recent months.
IP (Internet Protocol) Address: A unique
identiier used by computers to communicate
with each other over the Internet.
Impact Factor: It is a measure of the citations
to science and social science journals which helps
in evaluating the importance of the journal.
Licensing Agreement: A legal agreement
between the library or institution and the content
provider clearly stating the requirements and
speciications of the agreement.
Packages They are grouping or bundling of
publication titles, generally all of the same format
(i.e., either journals or books).
Perpetual Access: It is a permanent right to
the library from the publisher to have access to
paid licensed materials.
Site: Description of locations of the institution
served by the license.
Trial: A request by the library to the content
provider to supply free access to an e-resource
for a limited time. The library uses such a trial
to decide whether to add an e-resource to its
collection.
65
Selecting, Acquiring, and Renewing Electronic Resources
APPENDIX
The List of Journals, Electronic Discussion Lists, Organization,
and Conference/Seminars
Journals
Many library science journals publish information related to collections development and acquisitions:
Acquisitions Librarian. Articles related to acquisitions. ISSN: 0896-3576. Haworth Press. http://www.
haworthpressinc.com
Advances in Librarianship. Articles about issues in librarianship. ISSN: 0065-2850. Academic Press.
http://www.elsevier.com
Advances in Serials Management. Research articles about serials issues. JAI Press. http://www.elsevier.
com
Against the Grain. Articles related to acquisitions and publishing. ISSN: 1043-2094. Katrina Strauch.
http://www.against-the-grain.com/
ALCTA Newsletter Online. The newsletter of the American Library Association’s Association for
Library Collections and Technical services. ISSN. 1523-018X. http://www.ala.org.
American Libraries. It contains articles and news about libraries. ISSN: 0002-9769. American Library
Association. http://www.ala.org/alonline.
ARL Newsletter. Newsletter of the Association of Research Libraries. It contains news about publishing
and member libraries. ISSN: 1050-6098. http://www.arl.org/newsltr/index.html.
Book Collector. Articles about collecting and collectors. ISSN: 0006-7237. Collector, Ltd.
Booklist. Reviews of new materials. ISSN: 0006-7385. American Library Association. http://www.ala.
org/booklist/index.html.
Bookseller. Articles about U.K. bookselling and publishing. ISSN: 0006-7539. http://www.thebookseller.
com.
Bowker Annual: Library and Book Trade Almanac. Information about libraries and publishing. ISSN:
0068-0540. http://www.infotoday.com.
Charleston Advisor. News and critical reviews concerning electronic resources and publishing. ISSN:
1525-4011. Charleston Company. http://www.charlestonco.com.
Choice. Reviews of books for college and research libraries, published by the American Library Association’s Association of College and research Libraries. ISSN: 0009-4978. http://www.ala.org.
Collection Building. Articles about collection management issues. http://emeraldinsight.com.
66
Selecting, Acquiring, and Renewing Electronic Resources
Collection Management. Articles about collection management issues. http://www.haworthpressinc.
com.
College and Research Libraries. Articles about trends and issues in academic and research libraries.
American Library Association’s College and Research Libraries Division. ISSN: 0010-0870. http://ala.
org.
College and Research Libraries News. News about trends and issues in academic and research libraries, published by the American Library Associations College and Research Libraries Division. ISSN:
0099-0086. http://www.ala.org.
Free Online Scholarship Newsletter. News and discussion about the migration of print scholarship to the
Internet and efforts to make information available free of charge. http://earlham.edu/~peters/fos/.
Journal of Academic Libraries. Articles about academic librarianship and scholarly publishing. ISSN:
0099-1333. Elsevier Science Inc. http://www/elsevier.com.
Journal of Electronic Publishing. Articles about electronic publishing. ISSN: 1080-2711. University of
Michigan Press. http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/.
Journal of Librarianship and Information Science. Articles about librarianship. ISSN: 0961-0006.
R.R.Bowker. http://www.bowker.com.
Journal of Scholarly Publishing. Articles about scholarly publishing and publishers. ISSN: 1198-9742.
University of Toronto Press. http://www.utpjournals.com.
Learned Publishing. The journal of the Association of learned and Professional Society Publishers.
News and articles concerning all aspects of academic and professional publishing. ISSN: 0953-1513.
http://www.alpsp.org/journal.htm.
Librarian’s eBook Newsletter. News about electronic books. <http://www.lib.rochester.edu/main/ebooks/.
Library Collections, Acquisitions, and technical Services. Articles and conference reports related to
collection management, acquisitions, and technical services. ISSN: 1464-9055. Elsevier Science, Inc.
http://www.elsevier.com.
Library Journal. News, articles, and reviews. ISSN: 0363-0277. Library Journal. http://libraryjournal.
reviesnews.com/.
Library Resources and Technical Services. Articles about technical services issues and trends, published
by the Association for Library Collections and technical Services. ISSN: 0024-2527. http://www.ala.
org.
Library Trends. Articles about all aspects of libraries and library science. ISSN: 0024-2594. University
of Illinois Press. http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/puboff/catalog/trends/.
NASIG Newsletter. News about NASIG activities and membership. ISSN: 0892-1733. http://www.nasig.
org.
Publishers Weekly. News about publishing and reviews. ISSN: 0000-0019. Publishers Weekly. http://
publishersweekly.reviewsnews.com/.
67
Selecting, Acquiring, and Renewing Electronic Resources
Publishing Research Quarterly. Articles about publishing and scholarly communication. ISSN: 10538801. Transaction Periodicals Consortium. http://www.transactionpub.com/.
Serials: The Journal for the Serials Community. Articles about serials. ISSN: 0953-0460. United Kingdom serials Group. Full text online. http://www.uksg.org.
Serials Librarian. Articles about serials. ISSN: 0361-526x. Haworth Press. Table of contents and abstracts
online. http://www.haworthpressinc.com.
Serials Review. Articles about serials. ISSN: 0098-7913. Elsevier Science, Inc. Full text online. http://
www.elsevier.com.
Electronic Discussion Lists
The purpose of the discussion lists are to facilitate informative discussion about topics and provide
quick distribution of news. The following are some of the discussion lists in the ield of collections
development and acquisitions:
ACQNET-L. For those interested in acquisitions work. listproc@listproc.appstate.edu.
ARL-Ejournal. For discussion of all aspects of the management of electronic journals. ARL-EJOURNAL@ARL.ORG.
Backserv. For exchanging and replacing back issues of serials. http://lists.swetsblackwell.com/mailman/listinfo/backserv.
COLLDV-L. For those librarians who are interested in collection development issues. listproc@usc.
edu.
ERIL. For discussion of practical aspects related to electronic resources. http://listserv.binghamton.
edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?SUBED1=eril-l&A=1.
ExLibris. For discussion of issues related to rare books and special collections. Listproc@library.
berkeley.edu.
GIFTEX-L. For discussion of gifts and exchanges. Listserv@lsv.uky.edu.
LIBLICENSE-L. For issues related to licensing electronic resources. Listproc@lists.yale.edu.
MEDIA-L. For information about media literacy. Listserv@listserv.binghamton.edu.
Newjour. For new journals announcements. Listproc@ccat.sas.upenn.edu.
SERIALST-L. For discussion of issues related to serials. Listserv@list.uvm.edu.
VIDEOLIB. For discussion of the acquisition and use of video materials in libraries. http://library.
berkeley.edu/MRC.
68
Selecting, Acquiring, and Renewing Electronic Resources
Organizations
The following are some of the major organizations and associations in the areas related to collections
development and acquisitions:
American Association of University Presses (AAUP). An association of nonproit scholarly publishers.
http://aaupnet.org.
American Library Association. (ALA). An organization which provides leadership for the development,
promotion, and improvement of library services and librarianship. http://www.ala.org.
Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America. An association of rare and antiquarian booksellers.
http://abaa.org.
Association of American Publishers (AAP). An association of American publishers. http://www.publishers.org.
Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP). An association which represents
not-for-proit publishers. http://www.alpsp.org.
Association of Research Libraries (ARL). An association of major North American research libraries.
http://www.ala.org.
Association of Subscription Agents and Intermediaries. (ASA). The purpose of this association is to
provide high standards of service for libraries and publishers. http://www.subscription-agents.org.
Book Industry Communication (BIC). This organization promotes and develops standards for electronic
commerce and communication in the book and serials industry. http://www.bic.org.uk.
Book Industry Study Group. This organization gathers, analyzes, and disseminates information about
publishing industry. http://www.bisg.org.
Canadian Library Association. (CLA). It provides services to librarians in Canada. http://www.xla.ca.
International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC). A group of library consortia, mainly higher
education institutes, that discusses issues of common interest. http://www.library.yale.edu/consortia.
Conferences and Seminars
The American Library Association (www.ala.org), The Special Libraries Association (http://www.sla.
org/), The Public Library Association (http://www.pla.org/ala/pla/pla.htm), and the Medical Library
Association (http://www.mlanet.org/about/contact_mla.html) are the primary conferences of interest
to librarians in all areas including collections development and acquisitions. At the ALA conferences,
the meetings related to acquisitions are sponsored by the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS) or the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA). Some other
conferences of interest are:
69
Selecting, Acquiring, and Renewing Electronic Resources
Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) National Conference. The conference is held
every year in the spring. http://www.ala.org/acrl/.
Charleston Acquisitions Conference. This conference is related to book and serials acquisitions. The
conference is held annually in the fall. http://www.cofc.edu/cdconference/.
Electronic Resources & Libraries Conference. A new conference established in 2006 for information
professionals to explore ideas, trends, and technologies related to electronic resources and digital services. http://www.electroniclibrarian.org/moodle/.
International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA). The conference is held every year in summer.
http://www.ila.org.
North American Serials Interest Group (NASIG). The conference is held annually in early summer.
http://www.nasig.org.
Timberline Lodge Acquisitions Institute. Discussion of acquisitions and collection development issues
for librarians, vendors, and publishers. The conference is held in early summer. http://libweb.uoregon.
edu/acqdept/institute/home.html.
70
71
Chapter V
Sharing the Albatross of
E-Resources Management
Worklow
Jodi Poe
Jacksonville State University, USA
Mary Bevis
Jacksonville State University, USA
John-Bauer Graham
Jacksonville State University, USA
Bethany Latham
Jacksonville State University, USA
Kimberly W. Stevens
Jacksonville State University, USA
ABSTRACT
Management of electronic resources is a time-consuming and, at times, a dificult process. Although the
management of electronic resources is often seen as a strictly technical services endeavor, it should be
considered a multifaceted process requiring all areas of the library. This chapter will provide a detailed
account of how one library handles the electronic resources management worklow in a collaborative
effort. It will be especially helpful for libraries working with a limited staff and resources and libraries trying to foster a more collaborative relationship between technical services and public services.
The objective and mission of the chapter is to present successful library electronic resources worklow
concepts in a straightforward and realistic approach. It aims to provide useful information on current
worklow applications, procedures, and ideas from practicing library professionals at Jacksonville State
University (JSU) that will contribute to the literature and area of electronic resources management. This
chapter will provide considerations for worklow enhancements and detail the advantages of centralized
worklows and collaboration between units.
Copyright © 2008, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
Sharing the Albatross of E-Resources Management Worklow
INTRODUCTION
“Water, water every where
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water every where,
Nor any drop to drink” (Coleridge, 1798).
Nowhere in the library world do these famous
words from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
ring through clearer than in the management of
electronic resources. As more and more of our
resources move to an electronic environment, the
deeper we get into trying to manage them. They
are indeed all around us, and a lot of the time,
we even begin to drown in them. However, if a
library uses a collaborative effort, these resources
will not take over the staff.
Fundamental changes in worklows for library
technical services procedures were set in motion
with the introduction of integrated library systems in the 1980’s. At that time, a rethinking of
traditional worklows was needed in order to take
advantage of the tracking mechanisms offered by
automation. For instance, moving tasks traditionally assigned to the cataloging and processing
units such as the identiication of bibliographic
records, to the initial site of order in the acquisitions department allowed for better tracking. In
a 1994 survey, Bevis and McAbee found that,
“Sixty-nine percent of the responding libraries
stated that there had been or was a planned reorganization of nonprofessional staff because of …
integration, and 81% reported that there had been
a shift in nonprofessional tasks” (p. 36).
As worklows and process analysis evolved
to accommodate new technologies, the resources
that these technologies were tracking were also
evolving. E-resources, which in the not so distant
past were anomalies are now commonplace purchases, and have easily been incorporated into
established worklow procedures. Moreover, the
increasing number of resources moving to an
electronic format, whether completely or partially
forced librarianship to create an entirely new job:
72
the electronic resources librarian. JSU is aware
of the need to ill this position, which can be seen
in the fact that two of the authors of this chapter
have electronic resources in their titles. The two
electronic resources positions at JSU are classiied in technical services due to other elements
of the job. However, according to Fisher (2003),
a majority of electronic resources librarian job
descriptions include public service characteristics.
Fisher (2003) conducted a study of job postings for
electronic resources librarians which appeared in
American Libraries during a 17 year period. The
main component centered on reference services,
instead of management. Of the 23 most cited
characteristics, management/coordination was
ninth on the list. However, Bednarek-Michalska
(2002) developed a job description for electronic
resources librarians that calls for this position to
be located in the acquisitions department and notes
the responsibilities of acquiring and managing
electronic resources. The varying job descriptions
and requirements attest that managing electronic
resources should be more of a collaborative effort
between technical services and public services
librarians.
The time requirements for managing electronic
resources forces worklow changes. Some of the
tasks involved in the process may very well be
the responsibility of the paraprofessional staff.
Duranceau and Hepfer (2002) discovered this
trend in their survey related to stafing issues and
electronic resource management. JSU’s Houston Cole Library (HCL) distributes some of the
managerial tasks to the paraprofessional staff as
well. This frees up the time for the librarians to
complete other requirements in the process.
LITERATURE REVIEW
While there are a number of articles available
regarding managing electronic resources, the
majority of these articles deal with speciic
maintenance procedures for databases, e-jour-
Sharing the Albatross of E-Resources Management Worklow
nals, e-books, and so forth. Additionally, there
are several articles that provide insight into how
speciic departments (acquisitions, cataloging,
etc.) in libraries manage these resources. Unfortunately, there are few publications detailing the
entire worklow process from start to inish. Joan
Conger (2004) produced an article that illustrates
the importance of collaboration throughout the
entire electronic resource management process
from management to customer service. Beginning with management, she details how a library
should employ a collaborative decision-making
process that includes input from key personnel,
including the administration, in order to have the
decisions more widely accepted and have the staff
buy into the decisions. This type of environment
will lead to more trust between the staff and the
decision-makers. Conger ends with the need to
use a collaborative effort with customer service,
or public services librarians, to ensure the users
have a good experience with the library and its
resources. Richard Jasper (2002) has also produced
an article that touches on the collaborative efforts
by one academic library in managing electronic
publications. This effort involves a number of
librarians from various areas and departments
in the library. The author sums up the basic
necessity for the collaborative effort by stating:
“A collaborative, team-approach to managing
electronic publications helps ensure that the necessary skills are brought to bear on the tasks at
hand” (p. 356). He provides details for what each
person does in the process and concludes with a
poignant statement:
Now that libraries are providing access to
literally thousands of electronic resources, the
likelihood of a single librarian or a single library
department being able to manage the entire
process of managing online resources available seems very small. The key to successfully
managing electronic resources is to identify a
collaborative process in which key players know
their respective roles and responsibilities, have
some idea of how to back each other up, and
know where to turn when the “next question”
that needs to be addressed in solving an access
problem touches on an area outside of his or her
expertise (p. 360).
There are a number of publications that discuss
speciic worklows and processes. Ellen Finnie
Duranceau (1998) details the differences in the
worklows for print and electronic journals at the
MIT libraries. She provides insights into the collaborative approach the library staff undertook
and the position they created to cover all of the
requirements of electronic journals. Although
the article primarily deals with acquisitions-related worklow, the ideas expressed can be easily
translated to other areas of the library. Duranceau
states: “Web-based serials require an entirely new
worklow, one that is no longer a series of linear
and standardized steps, but is rather a complex,
cyclical, labor-intensive, variable, and team-based
process (p. 83).” This is true for the worklow
involved with all electronic resources and is the
principle behind the worklow incorporated at
HCL. Another author, Kristin Gerhand (1998),
continues this thread by providing insights into
Iowa State University’s process of managing electronic resources. Iowa State created an electronic
resources coordinator position that is responsible
for all aspects of electronic resource management.
While the process is managed by one person, this
person collaborates with all other areas of the
library to ensure a quality collection with optimum access and constant communications of all
things related to electronic resources. The author
states, “The unpredictability of ERs [electronic
resources] also prevents us from writing a simple,
one-size-its-all procedure for handling them” (p.
282). HCL believes that is true as well, which is the
reason there is constant communication between
all parties involved. Gerhard (1998) also states:
“The fact that ER [electronic resource] management crosses not only departmental but divisional
lines complicates the situation… ” (p. 282).
Since the management of electronic resources
begins with acquisitions, crosses over to cata-
73
Sharing the Albatross of E-Resources Management Worklow
loging, and trickles down to the public services
librarians, this one statement clearly identiies
why a collaborative effort must be used when
dealing with these resources. Furthermore, Peggy
Johnson (2004) discusses the selection process
and suggests that it should not be “… as linear
as a form or checklist implies. Decisions require
continuing interaction” (p. 211). She suggests that
a collaborative effort should be incorporated during the review process. Conger (2004) also agrees
with this type of collaboration. Johnson expands
on this idea by providing an example of a committee consisting of people from each area of the
library. This committee would allow each person
to present their expertise from the various areas of
the library, which will help the library select the
best resources. Duranceau (1998) discusses this
type of committee at MIT. The Networked Electronic Resources Discussion Group (NERD) was
established to assist with purchasing decisions.
While Duranceau does not indicate any negatives
with this group effort, Johnson does not imply that
this collaboration will work without problems.
Instead, she describes some possible drawbacks:
“bureaucratization” (p. 212) of the selection
process, cumbersome work due to the size of the
committee, complicated issues over consortium
deals, and issues of individuals feeling left out of
the process or that their opinions do not matter. It
is important to note some of these since they may
appear in other areas of collaborative worklows.
Carol Montgomery (2004) demonstrates the necessary worklow changes for each department
in the library when the W. W. Hagerty Library
at Drexel University converted to an electronic
journal collection. Although her article does not
discuss a collaborative approach, it does illustrate
how worklows are changing and reiterates how
Drexel, like most universities, created a position
speciically for electronic resources.
There are some articles that discuss speciic
collaboration efforts but not the entire management process. John Dupuis and Patti Ryan (2002)
provide insight into the collaborative efforts of two
74
public services librarians in managing electronic
resources. These efforts involve putting aside
their own subject specialties and compromising
to develop the best collection for the library. Even
though this article does not discuss the entire
process for managing these resources, it provides
good suggestions on how a small staff can work
together to produce excellent results. The authors
present methods used at York University to overcome the challenges of both limited staff and time
and detail how the collaborative effort yielded
positive results. Jeannette Ho (2005) describes
how one academic library uses an integrated,
Web-based form to encourage a collaborative
environment for electronic resource maintenance.
The integrated library system in place at Texas
A&M University Libraries includes the form as
part of the Web-based catalog, which is accessible
to all users. Users, including the public services
librarians, can submit requests that are routed to
the technical services librarians indicating corrections or enhancements for the library’s catalog and
Website. While this article does not speciically
discuss collaboration starting at the beginning
of the process, it does offer a good suggestion on
beginning the collaborative effort.
There are a number of articles that do not address the management of electronic resources,
but do discuss collaborative efforts. Naomi R.
Sutherland and Valarie P. Adams (2004) produced such an article in which they provide good
examples and reasons for cooperation between
public services and technical services librarians
by detailing their experiences at the University
of Tennessee-Chattanooga. The authors discuss
how the cooperation between the two areas led
to a better understanding of each area: public
services librarians understood the reasons for
following the cataloging rules and the technical
services librarians understood why there was a
need to be lexible with some of the local cataloging practices. The cooperation that they detail will
ensure a quality catalog that will also be easy to
use and understand. In the end, Sutherland and
Sharing the Albatross of E-Resources Management Worklow
Adams (2004) summarize the cooperation concept
with one statement: “the key lies in regular communication and in interaction with colleagues in
a variety of settings” (p. 14).
ORGANIZATION
The library is staffed with fourteen professional
and nineteen paraprofessional employees and has
a collection of over 650,000 titles. The library’s
organizational chart is illustrated in Figure 1.
Library public services are scattered throughout the library, a thirteen-story building divided
into eight subject divisions managed by subject
specialist librarians. Each public service librarian
is responsible for reference, collection maintenance and development, supervision of student
employees, departmental liaison activities, and
instruction for the respective subjects on their
loor. User services (i.e., circulation, ILL, and
reserves) are centralized in the lobby of the building. A centralized reference desk is found on the
second loor.
Library technical services are centralized in
the basement of the library. Technical Services
consist of six librarians and seven paraprofessionals. Technical service librarians are responsible for
acquisitions, collection development, government
documents, cataloging, and processing. In addition to the aforementioned professional duties, all
librarians are required to participate in scholarly
and service activities.
BACKGROUND
JSU is a medium-sized, public comprehensive university offering both undergraduate and graduate
programs. It was founded in 1883 as Jacksonville
State Normal School. Its purpose in 1883 was
to provide a preparatory education for citizens
of a rural Alabama county and the surrounding
areas. The mission and the student population of
the university have changed over time. The current enrollment is approximately 9,000 students.
The university hosts students from all over the
United States and from almost every corner of
the globe. Its institutional borders have expanded.
It is no longer bound to the twelve acres of land
it originally sat on—it has grown beyond actual
physical space.
This is also true for HCL. The library’s collection has grown beyond its physical space, too. It
has expanded from books, journals, newspapers,
and microforms to include electronic resources
such as CD-ROMs, databases, Websites, e-journals, and e-books.
Figure 1. Houston Cole Library organizational chart
University Librarian
Head of Public
Services
User Services
Circulation
Subject Specialist
Reserves
AV
Head of Technical
Services
Systems
Serials/Acquisitions
Government
Documents
Electronic
Resources/DE
Cataloging
75
Sharing the Albatross of E-Resources Management Worklow
PUBLIC SERVICES/TECHNICAL
SERVICES COLLABORATION
This explosion of electronic resources has created
a new workload requirement: management. Management of electronic resources is a time-consuming and, at times, a dificult process. Although
the management of electronic resources is often
seen as a strictly technical services endeavor, it
should been considered a multi-faceted process
requiring all areas of the library. Bergman (2005)
found that the worklow surrounding managing
electronic resources does not it into a neat package belonging entirely to the realm of technical
services librarians or public services librarians.
The worklow currently in place at JSU is just such
a practice. The management of electronic resource
worklow is a collaborative effort between public
service and technical service librarians. At JSU,
the public services librarians collaborate with the
technical services librarians in order to provide a
substantial collection of electronic resources and
to make this collection available to the users as
quickly as possible. It is this collaboration that
makes the worklow inimitable. The collaborative effort begins with the review process, both
trial reviews of databases, e-journals, and so
forth and reviews of freely accessible materials
such as Websites, extends through the acquisitions, administration, cataloging/bibliographic
control, marketing, training, and ends with the
assessment of the resources. No matter what
worklow a library uses for electronic resources,
good communication at each stage in the process
is paramount since there is no physical trail of
where the item is in the worklow until it gets
to the bibliographic control stage (Mitchell &
Surratt, 2005).
Despite the physical division between “technical” and “public” services in the library, managing electronic resources is one of many shared
responsibilities. The mission of the HCL is to
provide information services and bibliographic
resources to support the scholarly and informa-
76
tional needs of the university community. To
meet user expectations better, the public service
librarians’ responsibilities at JSU have evolved to
include four major professional areas. All areas
are both interchangeable with and interconnected
to one another. For example, effective reference
is impossible without a sound collection and
vice versa. The four areas are: (1) reference, (2)
collection management and development of their
respective subject areas, (3) instruction, and (4)
liaison activities. Liaison activities include a
structured liaison partnership between university teaching faculty and library faculty which
includes appointment letters, a list serve, and
formal communications between librarians and
departmental liaisons. An informal relationship
between librarians and teaching faculty is also
encouraged and expected as part of their liaison
activities job responsibilities.
Additionally, these four professional areas
for the public service librarians are dependent
on and mirror the four technical services professional responsibilities to: (1) Provide the correct
bibliographic data and access points; (2) order,
pay, and process the materials requested; (3)
deliver or notify the public services librarians of
new information sources; and (4) process nonlibrary faculty request and inform them of new
information sources. (Figure 2)
IDENTIFICATION OF RESOURCES
The initial process in any library materials acquisition procedure begins with the identiication of
resources. All resources, regardless of format, are
discovered through similar means: professional
review selection tools such as Choice or Library
Journal, print or electronic advertisements, faculty requests, telephone marketers, professional
recommendations, and sales visits. Although the
usual selection criteria that are applied to print
materials such as scope, relevancy, price, and so
forth, should also be applied to the selection of
Sharing the Albatross of E-Resources Management Worklow
Figure 2. Library collaboration
2. Collection
Management/
Acquisitions
1. Reference/
Bibliographic Control
Library Technical and
Public Service
Collaboration
4. Liaison/
University Ordering
electronic books, journals, and databases, there
are additional factors that should be considered
due to the nature of the electronic format. Some,
but not all of these are: the level of ownership (is
the resource a subscription purchase with renewal
obligations or will the library have perpetual access rights); annual maintenance fees, platform
or access fees; licensing agreements; levels of
publisher technical support; levels of in-house
technical support; vendor reliability for content
integrity; and possible subscription cancellation
opportunities for print resources.
REVIEWING ELECTRONIC
RESOURCES
At HCL, the management of electronic resources
begins in the technical services area; speciically,
acquisitions, where the majority of the resources
in the collection begin their journey. A trial review
of an electronic resource generally begins the
worklow process. For more costly products that
may require multiyear iscal commitments, such
3. Instruction/
Delivering Resources
as publisher or aggregator database, or publisher
journal packages, it is highly recommended that
a preview or trial be requested from the vendor.
In some instances, the vendor will initiate the
trial themselves. An in-house review of an electronic resource is a relatively simple process to
accommodate, without the consideration of the
physical items to track and return if the product
is not accepted. Whether the HCL staff requested
a trial or the vendor initiated the trail, the review
process normally takes a month, but sometimes
it can be longer.
Coordination of the responsibilities for
monitoring current database trials is essential for
eficiency and organization. A well-established
worklow pattern for this procedure will ensure
that all trials are given equal attention. If the library has an individual speciically responsible for
maintaining electronic resources in the library’s
catalog, active coordination between this person
and the acquisitions unit is an effective way to
maintain reliable trial information. At HCL, the
distance education/electronic resources manager (DEERM) is responsible for this part of the
worklow.
77
Sharing the Albatross of E-Resources Management Worklow
Once a resource is available for trial, the
DEERM adds the trial information to a secured,
restricted page. This page requires a username
and password for access, so the information is
limited to a speciic group of people. This speciic
group of people includes all of the librarians at
HCL and the departmental faculty liaisons at
JSU. After the information is added to the Web
page, the DEERM retrieves the page to make
sure the layout is correct and also veriies the
URL opens the correct page and the username/
password are accurate and working accordingly.
Once the information has been added to the site
and veriied, the trial information, including
any username and password, is e-mailed to the
librarians and faculty liaisons through listservs
created for these groups. HCL has created an
online evaluation form for these databases. There
is a link to this form on the secured, restricted
Web page and in the e-mail message. The form
includes some open-ended questions about the
content, the interface, and the accessibility of
the resource. The form is available at http://www.
jsu.edu/depart/library/graphic/temp/dbform.htm.
This form is not the only method of evaluating
the resources. The librarians and faculty liaisons
are informed that they can submit evaluations by
using the form, e-mailing comments directly to
the serials/acquisitions librarian, and/or calling
the serials/acquisitions librarian with their comments. However, using the online form to submit
a review is the ideal method, because the online
form or e-mail responses that are routed to the
serials/acquisitions librarian and the DEERM are
the simplest ways to collect database reviews.
During the trial period, all reviews should be
centrally gathered and archived for future reference. The previously mentioned online form and
e-mails allow for a simple means of iling them
electronically in an organized fashion. If the
product is favorably reviewed, but funds aren’t
available for immediate purchase, then later
consideration is facilitated by having reviews
readily available. If trials are extended or altered
78
in any way, all reviewers should be notiied. The
secured Web page is updated with any extensions or alterations of the trials. In addition, the
links and log in information about the trials are
removed at the end of the trial period in order to
avoid dead links and confusion.
The public services librarians and the faculty
liaisons are charged with evaluating all of the
databases that are available through a trial, but
the liaisons normally only review the resources
in their academic areas. An online form is provided for the librarians and nonlibrary faculty to
evaluate the electronic resources. This provides
valuable information when a decision is needed
with regards to the acquisition of a product. This
is especially true in times of limited budgets. In
addition to purchased products, the public services
librarians also review freely available products,
such as Websites, to determine if records should
be added to our Web-based catalog.
Along with trial access to the product, many
database vendors offer onsite demonstrations.
Encouraging interested faculty to attend demonstrations and participate in trial reviews is
indispensable in getting informative feedback.
A good liaison system between subject specialist
librarians and departmental faculty is an excellent way to encourage involvement. Trial periods
and demonstrations should be set for times when
teaching faculty and librarians are available for
participation, avoiding summers and holiday times
when faculty involvement would be minimal. A
typical review period is one month, but depending on vendor policy, may be extended upon
request. The level of trial access can vary from
full database access to sample usage only. It is
always best to have full access so that a review
can be as complete as possible.
Evaluations and recommendations from the
public services librarians regarding electronic
resource subscriptions are routed to the serials/acquisitions librarian, while evaluations and
recommendations regarding freely accessible
resources are routed to the DEERM or the elec-
Sharing the Albatross of E-Resources Management Worklow
tronic resources/documents librarian. The serials/acquisitions librarian begins the acquisitions
process by determining if the product is available
through a consortium deal or if JSU will have
to purchase it separately. Orders are placed and
an initial record is entered into the Web-based
catalog. This record allows the JSU librarians to
track the progress of the resource. The DEERM
handles general electronic resources, while the
electronic resources/documents librarian handles
any government related resources. No matter
what type, a record is added to the Web-based
catalog.
ACQUISITIONS WORKFLOW
The acquisitions of all library materials, regardless
of format should follow similar paths according
to established library policies and procedures,
whether it’s through a collection development
committee, an acquisitions unit, or other centralized entity. If the library is collecting in multiple
formats, the consistency of procedures ensures
that acquisition decisions, and statistical applications for reporting and assessment purposes,
are not biased depending on material format.
This is not to say that electronic resources do not
have added considerations during their journey
through the collection development process, but
rather that they should be viewed equally within
the boundaries of institutional collection development policies to satisfy stated goals.
Generally acquisitions decisions for moderately priced e-materials such as individual books
or single journal subscriptions can be made simply
by set procedures through committees, subject
specialists, or collection development librarians.
Decisions to transfer established print journal
subscriptions to electronic only subscriptions
could be made at annual renewal times, and easily
transferred by the institution’s subscription agent.
The process of updating bibliographic records
indicating these format changes and establish-
ing access with the publisher should follow set
procedures between the acquisitions department
and the staff member responsible for maintaining electronic resources in the catalog. This will
ensure that nothing is overlooked.
Pricing models vary widely among products
and vendors. Vendor pricing policies are based
on an array of factors including individual FTE
(with any combination of faculty, graduate or
undergraduate enrollment), tier group FTE,
highest institutional degree offered, levels of
database access (full database or product/title
speciic), multiyear discounts, print plus online
package pricing for individual journals, and archival rights. Database vendors frequently offer
discounts for group subscriptions. Participation in
a state or regional consortium is an excellent way
to be eligible to receive these discounts. Product
choices, trial periods, license agreements, and
cost divisions are determined at the consortium
level, while review processes and decisions to
purchase are determined at the institutional level.
Discounts are applied according to number of
participants; the more participants, the better the
discount, usually. Licensing and invoice decisions
vary according to vendor policy and can usually
be negotiated centrally at the consortium level.
To avoid duplication of effort, consortium offerings should follow as closely as possible the
same acquisitions route for trials and purchasing
decisions as the individual in-house institutional
electronic resource purchases, and coordinated
by the same staff.
In Alabama, a consortium has been established
for the academic libraries. The consortium is
called the Network of Alabama Academic Libraries (NAAL). “The purpose of the Network
of Alabama Academic Libraries (NAAL) is to
coordinate academic library resource sharing
to enhance education and research. NAAL is
an unincorporated consortium of the Alabama
Commission on Higher Education and Alabama’s
eligible public and private four-year colleges and
universities. In addition, other research libraries
79
Sharing the Albatross of E-Resources Management Worklow
not afiliated with educational institutions may
join as nonvoting cooperative members” (NAAL,
2006, para. 1). JSU is a member of NAAL. In addition to establishing trial reviews of resources,
NAAL also provides workshops for the members
on various library-related issues. Some of the
recent workshops NAAL has conducted have
been related to marketing your library, making
decisions on resource cancellations, emerging
technology showcases, using LibQual, and database training sessions.
The value of an outstanding consortium administrator cannot be over appreciated, and is
essential for consortium acquisitions to succeed.
Fortunately, NAAL has such an administrator.
Coordination of all the disparate facets of electronic resources purchasing, along with various
institutional iscal abilities and personalities is
not easy. A commitment to state and regional
goals for the group is fundamental in achieving
successful consortium purchasing. If there is a
formal consortium committee in place, full participation is recommended to keep abreast of group
activities. Centralization of all communications
through one library designee prevents duplication
of effort within the institution, and aids in better
management.
this usage. Vendors are usually willing to modify
agreements to allow for individual library policies
such as this if access is guaranteed on a secure
site for authorized users.
Some vendors may allow for multiyear contracts with stated price increase limits, eliminating
the need to sign annual contracts. Commitment
to renew for the life of the license is generally
not required, and the stated price increases can
facilitate the budgeting process. If the vendor
does not ask for two signed copies to be returned
(one for the vendor to keep, one to be returned
to library with vendor signature), a photocopy
should be made and kept on ile for the extent of
the contract.
Once a decision is made to acquire a subscription-based resource, the serials/acquisitions
librarian downloads a record for that resource into
the library’s Web-based catalog. The record is attached to a purchase requisition in the integrated
library system, Voyager. The requisition contains
the purchasing information, such as subscription
costs, subscription period, and the vendor/provider
of the resource. When the record is added to the
catalog, the serials/acquisitions librarian forwards
the access information to the DEERM.
License Agreements
ACCESS
One of the most intimidating aspects of electronic
resources acquisitions is dealing with the license
agreements. A license agreement can vary from a
simple one-page paper to an extended multipage
document of legal jargon. If there are any questions regarding the implication of statements
within the agreement, they should be addressed
with the vendor before purchase. Any ambiguities that may conlict with the institution’s state
laws should be resolved, and seeking input from
the institution’s legal representative to assist with
unresolved issues can be helpful. Libraries committed to walk-in and interlibrary loan patrons
must be very careful that agreements allow for
HCL prefers to have IP authentication instead
of username and password. Unfortunately, not
every vendor/provider allows for this means of
authentication. So, the initial step in the access
process is to review the registration information
and determine if the authentication is through IP
or username/password. The next step is to submit
the registration with any required information,
including the IP ranges used at JSU. It is very
important to make sure the IP addresses have
been entered correctly on the vendor/provider side.
Next, the resource’s access point must be added
to the library’s campus proxy information. Proxy
updates also includes the EZproxy server, which
80
Sharing the Albatross of E-Resources Management Worklow
HCL uses for remote authentication for authorized
users. Once these issues have been handled, the
DEERM continues the access process by ensuring
the entry points are accurate and accessible.
Once the access information has been veriied,
the catalog record is updated with the appropriate
link. Furthermore, the Library maintains several
Web pages for electronic resources, such as Web
pages for databases and the e-journal portal
through serials solutions for journals. These access points are also updated with new resources.
Once the library catalog, Web pages, and serials
solutions proile are updated, listservs are used
once again to “announce” the resource to the
JSU community. This message includes a brief
description of the product along with the URL
for access. Also included in this message are the
pages and links to those pages on which that the
resources appears. Although this is a time-consuming method of announcing the new product,
it provides enough detail about the resource and
its location to be useful. Unfortunately, that is not
the end of the cataloging process for an electronic
resource. More work must be completed.
CATALOGING WORKFLOW
HCL began cataloging electronic resources in the
mid-1980’s with the purchase of The Magazine
Collection and The Business Collection. The process of cataloging electronic resources continued
to expand with the subscription of various databases. With each resource that was added, new
local cataloging procedures were created (Bevis
& Graham, 2003). The worklow has evolved into
the streamline process outlined below. Even from
the very beginning of the cataloging process, the
librarians at HCL have tried to “keep it simple
for the users and give them access to everything”
(Munson & Frisque, 2004, p. 11). Skaggs, Poe,
and Stevens (2006) provide detailed information
about the cataloging process for speciic electronic
resources, such as e-books, government documents, journals, e-reserves, and Websites.
Once an electronic resource item has a record in a library’s Web-based catalog, it is made
available to the end user. It is at this step in the
electronic resources worklow that full cataloging and bibliographic control begins. Taylor
deines bibliographic control as “the process of
creating, arranging, and maintaining systems
for bibliographic information retrieval” (Taylor,
2004, p. 501). The two components of bibliographic control are record creation, which can
be original cataloging or copy cataloging, and
record maintenance.
Most libraries create bibliographic records for
electronic resources by both copy and original
cataloging. Like other types of library resources,
it is often easier and faster to modify an existing
electronic resource record from a copy cataloging source than it is to create an original record.
Thus, in most cases, the majority of electronic
resource records are copy cataloging records, and
these records can be obtained from a number of
sources. Most libraries purchase them from vendors or subscription services, and OCLC is the
bibliographic utility most often utilized to search
and export these records. There are also subscription services by vendors which offer batch sets
of records for a speciic class of resources (e.g.,
Marcive for government documents). Most of the
major database and e-book vendors (e.g., EBSCO,
Gale, NetLibrary) also offer free catalog records
with the purchase of their electronic resources.
These records often contain only minimal information, so even when free records are offered,
many libraries still use copy cataloging from a
source such as OCLC. For libraries which cannot afford OCLC or similar bibliographic utilities, Z39.50 sites (i.e., other libraries’ catalogs)
are a good alternative for inding and exporting
records.
If there is not a record to be found in the
sources the library traditionally uses to export
bibliographic records, original cataloging must
be employed. The cataloger must access the electronic resource and construct a record from scratch
81
Sharing the Albatross of E-Resources Management Worklow
or use a locally developed template. Electronic
resource records can be more dificult to create
than records for tangible resources, and much has
been written about the limitations of the MARC
format when it comes to electronic resources.
Additional ields and format designations (e.g.,
“electronic resource”) for MARC records and the
modiication of already existing ields (such as
the 300 descriptive ield), have moved the MARC
format towards more eficient representation of
intangible resources. Another modiication that
many libraries employ as a local practice is to
add speciic uniform access points, or “hooks,”
for pulling electronic resource records when
searching. These hooks can range from a code
in an extra 246 ield to a designation of “e-book”
in a 655 or the name of the vendor in a 710 ield.
These access points allow libraries to quickly
search and retrieve speciic sets of electronic
resources. This retrieval can prove useful when
updating records as it allows for batch updating
which is vastly more eficient than manipulating
records individually.
When adding records to a library’s catalog,
there are two major approaches: single and
multiple records. The multiple record approach
involves inputting a separate bibliographic record
for each format iteration of the same resource.
For instance, a title may be received as a book,
a microform, and have a link to an online PDF
version; with the multiple record approach, this
one title would have three separate catalog records. Most libraries ind that this clutters the
catalog and confuses the end user, so they prefer
the single record approach. This method of cataloging allows for inclusion of all iterations of a
resource on a single record, albeit with multiple
holdings records attached. In this case, the title
mentioned above would have one bibliographic
record in the catalog with two separate holdings
records attached for the tangible formats (i.e., the
print and microform). The electronic resource
appears as a masked hyperlink in an 856 ield
on the bibliographic record and in both holdings
records.
82
Because most libraries utilize the single record
approach, when adding batches of electronic
resource records from vendors, the library must
de-dupe the records to ensure that it is not adding
a new record for a resource already owned and
represented in the catalog. Most library automation software has the capability to de-dupe on a
number of bibliographic record ields, including,
but not limited to, the 020 (ISBN), the 035 (OCLC
accession number), and the 245/246 (title/alternate
title). De-duping is not the only problem to be
addressed when adding batch vendor records to a
library’s catalog—batch imports also often involve
a massive upsurge in authority work. For example,
dumping a batch import of approximately 10,000
NetLibrary e-book titles into the library system
can result in a massive authority maintenance
project for technical services staff. “Unauthorized
headings” can range in the hundreds of thousands
for this single batch import. Reports can be used
to clean up existing authority headings or add
authority headings that are not currently in the
catalog, but the inlux of thousands of new records
yields hundreds of pages of unauthorized name,
subject, and title headings in the library system,
resulting in months of work for technical services
staff in order to clean up these headings.
Authority ile issues are not the only maintenance which must be done on electronic resource
records. From a record maintenance standpoint,
electronic resources are some of the most laborintensive records to maintain in a library’s catalog,
and the most time-consuming aspects of electronic
resources bibliographic control includes URL
changes, title changes, and dropped titles. These
are all ongoing maintenance issues which must
be addressed on a regular basis.
Libraries often receive information about
upcoming changes from content providers. Open
lines of communication between the person receiving this advance notice, usually the person
responsible for licensing or someone involved with
acquisitions, and the cataloging department are
important so that resulting changes to the catalog
Sharing the Albatross of E-Resources Management Worklow
can be incorporated into the worklow (Mitchell
& Surratt, 2005, p. 49).
ADMINISTRATION
Electronic Resource Management
Systems
An electronic resource management system
(ERMS) can streamline the entire process of managing electronic resources. There are a number of
ERMS available, such as Endeavor’s Meridian,
Ex Libris’ Verde, Innovative Interfaces, Inc.’s
Electronic Resource Management, Serials Solutions’ ERMS (E-Resource Management System),
SirsiDynix’s ERM Module, and VTLS, Inc.’s
Verify. There are several articles that provide
detailed information about these systems (Collins,
2005; Duranceau, 2004; Meyer, 2005; Sadeh &
Ellingsen, 2005), so this chapter will not go into
detail about them.
These systems are designed to track an
electronic resource through its’ entire life cycle:
discovery, review, evaluation, purchase, access,
administration, renewal, and so forth. While
these systems would be extremely helpful in the
process, it will still take people to manage the
resources as Medeiros (2005) found: “electronic
resource management systems are just one step
in helping libraries manage e-resources” (p. 94).
For example, a library has to have an individual
that will maintain the ERMS. Again, this would
have to be a collaborative effort in order to get
all of the parts in the system.
Unfortunately, these products come at a cost,
which is out of the HCL budget. Because of the
cost factor, HCL decided to forgo using an ERMS
and instead rely on the expertise of the technical
services and public services librarians for the
administration and management of electronic
resources.
Database Administration
Once a resource is acquired, the library must
decide how much control the staff wants to have
over that resource. There are a couple of options: (1) take the interface as is straight “out of
the box,” (2) make small changes by contacting
the vendor/provider and having them do it, or
(3) receive access to the administrative module,
which most major resources have, and completely
customize the resource.
The simplest management style is to keep
the “out of the box” appearance. While this is
the method that requires no work at all, it is also
the method of least service to the users. Without
customizing the resource to any extent, the user
may not realize that the library has paid for this
resource. With the “everything is free on the
Internet” attitude, it would be to the library’s
beneit to indicate that this resource is free to
them through their library’s purchase; meaning
it is not actually free!
Another easy management style is to submit
your changes to the vendor’s technical support
staff and have them make the necessary changes.
While this provides some level of customization,
it can be time consuming in that the library has to
wait for the request to be process. In some cases,
it can take weeks for the customizations to appear
in the interface.
The most time consuming method is to gain
access to the administrative module because
someone has to learn the module and actually do
the work. This is also the most effective way of
delivering the resources to the users, because it is
customized in order to facilitate their use. Most of
the major database vendors provide this level of
management and provide documentation and/or
training on the administration of the resource.
To facilitate the use of electronic resources, the
HCL decided to use the administration modules
to add speciic customization to the resources
and tailor the interfaces to meet the user’s needs.
This allowed the databases to have some level
83
Sharing the Albatross of E-Resources Management Worklow
of similarity, such as opening to the advanced
search, having the same text for links, having
the same links to the catalog and serials solutions, and having the same branding options. All
of these customizations increase the awareness
of the users that these resources are part of the
HCL collection. Hopefully, it will also increase
the users’ ability to use the resources.
E-Journals Administration
Once a library acquires an electronic journal,
that title must be activated. Activation can be
processed directly at the publisher’s site or through
a subscription agent such as EBSCO. The simplest
way to activate e-journals is through the subscription agent. The agent will submit the subscription
to the publisher with the library’s registration
information. Once the publisher receives this information, the library’s contact person is notiied.
Unfortunately, this is not always the method the
publisher allows or the library has a direct order
through the publisher.
If the publisher requires the library to activate
their individual subscriptions directly, the library
must contact the publisher for activation directions
including the required information for activation.
Most publishers require the subscription number
that appears on the mailing labels. This is easy to
ind unless the publishers mails the journal in a
shrink wrap package. If a journal is delivered in
a shrink wrap package, the person responsible for
opening the mail must be made aware of the need
for the mailing label. This can be time consuming
due to the fact that the library has to wait for the
next issue to arrive in order to activate the title.
If a journal is quarterly, that may take a while.
However, in most cases, the library can contact
the publisher and obtain this information.
Online activation is normally a simple process.
The DEERM opens that publisher’s activation
page and enters the required information including, but not limited to, contact information (mailing address, telephone number, fax number, e-mail
84
address), registration/subscription identiier, and
then, if allowed, IP ranges. If IP authentication
is not allowed, a username and password must
be obtained. If a username and password are
required, the HCL staff has decided to create a
way to distribute this information without violating the license agreements. The DEERM creates
a Web page with the URL, the username, and
the password for those journals. These pages
are placed on a secure and restricted page in the
course reserve system, ERES. Authorized users
can gain access to these resources by authenticating through the reserve system.
Serials Solutions
HCL subscribes to Serials Solutions’ AMS, Access and Management Suite, product. This product
is used to provide access to all journals that the
Library has available to the users in electronic
format. “AMS helps you simplify e-journal access
and management at your library:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Provide easy access to your entire electronic
journal collection
Reduce time spent searching for speciic
journals
Reveal what’s in your aggregated databases
Link your abstract and indexing databases
to your full-text resources
Simplify your e-journal management
Quickly evaluate the contribution of individual databases to your collection” (Serials
Solutions, 2006, para. 3)
AMS does eliminate some of the management
process, but not all. Serials Solutions makes it very
easy to add journals to the collection. When HCL
subscribed to this product, all of the aggregated
databases were added. What followed next was
an onslaught of electronic journals. Individual
publisher packages were added, then individual
journals, and then free accessible journals. Now,
Sharing the Albatross of E-Resources Management Worklow
Serials Solutions even allows their users to submit
titles to be tracked. Any and all electronic journals
can now be tracked through this product. The
Client Center, Serials Solutions administrative
module, is the tool that must be used in order to
add journals to the proile. Administrators can
also obtain overlap analysis reports and usage
statistics from the Client Center. These tools assist
the library in determining if a resource should
be considered for adding/cancelling through
both of these reports. Finally, Serials Solutions
now allows the library administrator to receive
a report of all of the titles tracked in the proile.
Previously, this report was delivered through email by Serials Solutions. So, once again Serials
Solutions is making improvements to the way a
library manages their electronic resources.
Maintenance
Dead links in a library’s catalog are frustrating for
the end user and detrimental to the credibility of
the library. Automated link checking is the most
effective way to ferret out problematic links in the
catalog, and a link checking script can be useful
for detecting broken URLs in records. One that
runs a portion of the library catalog each week
so that over the course of a month the entire
catalog is checked is a manageable way to go.
Some link checkers will provide detailed reports
of the types of problems encountered with the
URLs. Such reports may tell whether the page
has been moved, where it has been moved, or
if it has been removed altogether. One caveat is
that automated link checkers are often not able
to distinguish broken links from links that timeout during the check. Sometimes batch updates
of aggregated database links can be done when
a vendor changes its domain name, saving much
tedious record manipulation.
E-journals are a particular maintenance quandary. Tracking changes to titles can be problematic and may require wearisome manipulation of
vendor-supplied reports to obtain useful results.
For example, rather than provide a report of titles
added and titles removed from the databases,
Serials Solutions only provides a report of all the
titles in the databases. Customers can generate
their own Excel reports of every title in their proile; however, if a title appears in four databases,
the title will appear four times in the report. By
converting these reports to a Microsoft Access
report, an application can be devised which removes duplicate titles. Each month a report can be
run, comparing it to the previous month’s report
to see where titles differ. These reports can then
be run against the library’s catalog to see which
titles are already in the catalog. Further reports
must be run to see which of these titles are new
and which titles have been removed. Serials Solutions does not currently provide a list of title
changes, either, so these kinds of changes must
be tracked manually.
Usage Statistics
Monitoring and collecting usage statistics is an
especially important part of the process in determining renewal decisions for electronic resources.
The level of formality for keeping statistics depends on individual institutional needs, and can
range anywhere from complete monthly detailed
analysis to a simple annual review at renewal
time. No matter what the level of record keeping
is involved, the review of these statistics should
be an integral part of the acquisitions worklow
for determining renewal decisions. Because of
the time-consuming nature of collecting this
data, vendors now offer commercial products
that will collect and organize usage statistics
for institutional subscribers. Pricing levels for
these products are dependent on the number of
databases monitored.
MARKETING
If you buy it will they come? Once the process
for acquiring, cataloging, and providing access
85
Sharing the Albatross of E-Resources Management Worklow
to an electronic resource has been completed, all
of the library staff works together to promote and
market that resource. Without this collaboration,
a resource that may be a huge part of the budget
may not be used. If it is not used, then that money
was not spent wisely.
This collaborative effort can extend outside
of the library as well (or straight to the source so
to speak). Occasionally, once items have been
selected or purchased, database or electronic resource vendors and/or sales representatives offer
training sessions to introduce their product. Along
with these introductory sessions, vendors often
provide training and promotional material. It is
a good idea to ask what promotional or training
materials are available. These vendor led showcases or vendor sponsored “freebies” are a great
way to get others interested in the product and
to introduce the new resources to your library
and university as a whole. If any promotional
materials are sent to the library it is suggested
that the library staff display them at public service
points or student commons. Nobody can sell or
market a product better than a library vendor so
take advantage of all the materials and training
or marketing support they have to offer.
Another marketing method is to distribute an
e-mail message using the preestablished listservs.
This message includes a brief description of the
product along with the URL for access. Also included in this message are the pages and links to
those pages on which that the resources appears.
Another marketing method is to add information
about the new resources to the library’s Web page
on the “What’s New” page at http://www.jsu.edu/
depart/library/graphic/whatsnew.htm. This page
provides the same information that is included in
the e-mail message: brief description, a link to the
resource, and where the resource has been added
to the Web pages. The public services librarians
are charged with maintaining communications
between themselves and their departmental faculty liaisons. Part of this communication should
include announcements about new resources and
86
updates on other resources. Finally, new resources
are discussed with students in library instruction
sessions.
TRAINING
The next step in the electronic resource management worklow belongs to the public services
librarians. This step takes place when the public
services librarians begin instructing the users
about the electronic resource and how to use
it. Again, if the resource is not being used, the
money was wasted. Library patrons are “trained”
on the new electronic resources in a number of
ways. Through in person reference interactions
with librarians, through e-mail, phone, or other
contact with librarians, and through the numerous
formal library instruction sessions conducted by
librarians throughout the academic year.
All subject specialist librarians are expected
to teach library instruction sessions. The library
instruction program is coordinated from the
Head of Public Services Ofice. Currently there
is no credit bearing information literacy course
at JSU. Most, if not all of the library instruction
sessions come in the typical “one shot” variety
where the library is asked to conduct a session
for a class during their regularly scheduled time.
The pros and cons of the “one shot” course are
endlessly debated, however the instruction program and system at the HCL is both vibrant and
successful. The library faculty typically teaches
over 400 sessions, reaching over 5,000 students,
in the fall and spring semesters. Because of the
strong liaison activity, university faculty are very
supportive of the library’s instruction efforts and
do not hesitate to schedule an instruction session
or to bring their classes over to the library.
Additionally, the library’s instruction program
is available to distance students who are less
likely to sit in a face to face instruction session or
come to the library for help, but yet are perhaps
more dependent on electronic resources for their
Sharing the Albatross of E-Resources Management Worklow
research and library needs. To assist our patrons
who are not actually in the library, the library
provides a virtual tour, a “what’s new” section
on it’s home page, an online tutorial, a tutorial
and instruction session online and available in
CD-ROM, and just recently the library has been
busy embedding itself (or a librarian) in the online
course management systems at the university. The
student taking a class online through Blackboard
or WebCT can have access to the library resources
and librarians without leaving the online course.
Librarians can embed themselves in a course and
be available at prescribed times for chat reference,
e-mail reference, or can simply post a power point
or handout with pertinent information regarding
resources that available to help with assignments
for the class. The embedding feature also provides
the librarians with a vehicle to deliver a tutorial or
to gather feedback about library services offered
to the distance education student.
Because the librarians are actively teaching
the library’s resources throughout the year, it is
very important that they keep abreast of all the
new electronic resources as well. Often the latest
and greatest electronic resource is exactly what
the student’s need to complete an assignment,
and although the electronic resources can be
overwhelming, the librarians assure the students
that it is our job to keep up with them so they do
not have to. Because these electronic resources
can be added once a semester, once a month, mid
month, or even day to day, the librarian’s ability
to “keep up” is vital to the user’s success with,
and ultimately acceptance of, any new electronic
resource.
ASSESMENT
And inally the process ends where it began—with
the public services librarians. The inal step of the
electronic resource management worklow takes
place when the public services librarians re-evaluate the resource to determine if the library needs
to continue providing the resource or to cancel
it. During the assessment process, usage statistics from Serials Solutions and/or the individual
vendors/providers should be reviewed. No matter
how “good” the resource is, if the users are not
accessing it, it is not of value to the collection.
Usage statistics are not the only deciding factor.
The overlap analysis report will aid in the determination of an electronic resource. For example,
if the library owns two resources that have the
exact same materials and coverage but one is not
being used, that one resource would be a good
candidate for cancellation.
The subject specialists (public service librarians) are asked to assess their collections on a
regular basis. The library assesses its collection
by doing a detailed qualitative and quantitative
report on call number ranges and subject areas.
The librarians report on the number of items in
the collection and provide a narrative about the
strengths and weaknesses of each area found after
the assessment is completed. The library follows
the guidelines established by the OCLC/WLN
collection assessment service. Part of the assessment process is to evaluate the “deined access”
or electronic resources that are available in each
of the respective subject areas. Deined access
can include Websites, electronic books, electronic
journals, and databases. The electronic resources
are assessed, just like the physical collection,
and decisions are made as to the advantages or
disadvantages of such resources.
In addition to the aforementioned assessment
techniques, word of mouth and user reaction are
great indicators of how well an electronic resource
is working in or for your library. Librarians at
the reference desk or on their loors should pay
attention to which resources are being used more
heavily or more regularly than others.
CONCLUSION
The management of electronic resources is an
enormously involved process best handled by a
87
Sharing the Albatross of E-Resources Management Worklow
coordinated group. Since there is a huge amount
of work involved in the managerial process, it can
overwhelm a single person. This multifaceted
process requires the cooperation of all areas of a
library from public services to technical services.
This cooperation can lead to an even more effective method of managing electronic resources:
collaboration. The collaboration between technical services and public services librarians will
not only ease the workload and streamline the
worklow; it will lead to a quality collection of
electronic resources that the users know about
and use. It will also provide an added beneit of
allowing each service area to see what the other
does and provide a way for each group to see
the whole process, which will lead to workforce
that concentrates on the “team” instead of the
“individual” and provide insight into the “big
picture.”
“And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea”
So, let the albatross fall off the neck of one
person and have it be distributed to a group of
people. The entire process will become easier and
much more eficient.
REFERENCES
Alabama Commission on Higher Education
(2006, December 12). NAAL index. Retrieved
November 12, 2007, from http://www.ache.state.
al.us/NAAL/
Bednarek-Michalska, B. (2002). Creating a job
description for an electronic resources librarian.
Library Management, 23(8/9), 378-383.
Bergman, B. (2005). Looking at electronic resources librarians: Is there gender equity within
this emerging specialty? New Library World,
106(1210/1211), 116-127.
88
Bevis, M. D., & Graham, J. B. (2003). The evolution of an integrated electronic journals collection.
The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 24(2),
115-119.
Bevis, M. D., & McAbee, S. L. (1994). NOTIS
as an impetus for change in technical services
departmental stafing. Technical Services Quarterly, 12(2), 29-43.
Coleridge, S. T. (1798). The rime of the ancient
mariner. Retrieved November 12, 2007, from
LitFINDER database.
Collins, M. (2005). Electronic resource management systems: Understanding the players and how
to make the right choice for your library. Serials
Review, 31(2), 125-40.
Conger, J. E. (2004). Collaborative electronic resource management: From acquisitions to assessment. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited.
Duranceau, E. F. (1998). Beyond print: Revisioning serials acquisitions for the digital age. The
Serials Librarian, 33(1/2), 83-106.
Duranceau, E. F. (2004). Electronic resource
management systems from ILS vendors. Against
the Grain, 16(4), 91-94.
Dureanceau, E. F., & Hepfer, C. (2002). Electronic
journal forum: Stafing for electronic resource
management: The results of a survey (Column).
Serials Review, 28(4), 316-320.
Dupuis, J. & Ryan, P. (2002). Bridging the two
cultures: A collaborative approach to managing
electronic resources. Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, 34. Retrieved November 12,
2007, from http://www.istl.org/02-spring/article1.
html
Fisher, W. (2003). The electronic resources librarian position: A public services phenomenon?
Library Collections, Acquisitions, & Technical
Services, 27(1), 3-17.
Sharing the Albatross of E-Resources Management Worklow
Gerhand, K. (1998). Coordination and collaboration: A model for electronic resources management. The Serials Librarian, 33(3/4), 279-286.
Montgomery, C.H. (2000). “Fast track” transition
to an electronic collection: A case study. New
Library World, 101(1159), 294-302.
Ho, J. (2005). Enhancing access to resources
through the online catalog and the library website:
A collaboration between public and technical
services at Texas A&M University Libraries.
Technical Services Quarterly, 22(4), 19-37.
Munson, K. I., & Frisque, M. (2004). How we
treated our clients’ need for remote access through
a single interface. Computers In Libraries, 24(9),
10-15.
Jasper, R. P. (2002). Collaborative roles in managing electronic publications. Library Collections, Acquisitions, & Technical Services, 26,
355-361.
Johnson, P. (2004). Fundamentals of collection
development & management. Chicago: American
Library Association.
Medeiros, N. (2005). Electronic resources management: An update. OCLC Systems & Services,
21(2), 92-94.
Meyer, S. (2005). Helping you buy: Electronic
resource management systems. Computers In
Libraries, 25(10), 19-24.
Mitchell, A. M., & Surratt, B. E. (2005). Cataloging and organizing digital resources. New York:
Neal Schuman.
Sadeh, T. & Ellingsen, M. (2005). Electronic
resource management systems: The need and the
realization. New Library World, 106(1212/1213),
208-218.
Serials Solutions (2006, December 12). Products – Access and management suite. Retrieved
November 12, 2007, from http://serialssolutions.
com/ams.asp
Skaggs, B. L., Poe, J. W., & Stevens, K. W. (2006).
One-stop shopping: A perspective on the evolution of electronic resources management. OCLC
Systems & Services, 22(3), 192-206.
Sutherland, N. R., & Adams, V. P. (2004). Territorial invasion or symbiotic relationship? Technical
services and reference cooperation. College &
Research Libraries News, 65(1), 12-15.
Taylor, A. G. (2004). Wynar’s introduction to
cataloging and classiication. Englewood, CO:
Libraries Unlimited.
89
90
Chapter VI
Process Mapping for
Electronic Resources:
A Lesson from Business Models
Marianne Aii
California State University, Northridge, USA
ABSTRACT
The number of electronic resources is continually growing and the processes associated with managing
them are ever more complex. Consequently, completely new ways of managing these resources eficiently
and effectively must be invented or borrowed from industries that also must manage complex processes.
This chapter describes how a method generally employed in business and industry can be applied in
managing electronic resource-related processes in libraries. Speciically, a technique called process mapping and its potential application to electronic resource management in libraries is described. Existing
electronic resource management guidelines are conceptually linked to actual management situations. A
case study is presented which is intended to illustrate the process.
INTRODUCTION
Electronic resource management differs from
long-established collection development and
technical services operations in that the latter
have largely dealt with physical items. Over time,
libraries and other information organizations
have had a wealth of experience in how to select,
acquire, and make accessible physical materials.
With the emergence of virtual and electronic
resources, the types of processes that libraries
have traditionally employed do no adequately
serve these new formats. Moreover, there is no
clear consensus on how to manage these virtual
materials eficiently and effectively within the
information organization. Efforts to standardize how to manage electronic resources from a
technical perspective were originally begun at the
Digital Library Federation (DLF) and the National
Information Standards Organization (NISO) and
Copyright © 2008, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
Process Mapping for Electronic Resources
are still ongoing. Because of the delays inherent
in organizational work, these efforts are moving
along slowly and are not yet widely adopted.
Vendors offer a variety of solutions based on
early standardization efforts but the systems are
not yet mature. In the meanwhile, libraries that
must process these resources are confronted with
questions about how to respond both technically
and organizationally to the continuous change
in the acquisition, management and delivery of
electronic resources. Speciically, it is often not
clear what types of skills are needed for different
aspects of electronic resource management and
who in the information organization should be
responsible for the work. In this chapter, process
mapping is presented as a mechanism to systematically manage the people and processes involved in
electronic resource management in libraries.
BACKGROUND
Over the last 10 years the number and variety of
electronic resources have been continually growing and the processes associated with managing
them appear to be ever more complex. In a review
of the serials literature, Corbett (2006) concludes
that the literature relects a rapidly changing environment. Although she found a good variety
of articles relating to collection management of
electronic resources, she found only a few articles in the areas of management and archiving
of electronic serials products. The way libraries
and other information organizations are handling
this type of management differs from place to
place. Breeding (2004) divides electronic resource
management functions into back-end operations
and user delivery. This chapter is concerned with
how the back-end delivery can be accomplished
in a changing library environment.
While some organizations integrate electronic
resource management into technical services
processing, others rely on a variety of options in
different parts of the organization to accomplish
these tasks. In all these models, stafing for managing electronic resources has been challenging
because a diversity of new skills are necessary.
These skills are not always easily deined and
typically are learned by experimentation and
self-training and not by means of formal training.
In a survey of stafing for electronic resources
management, Duranceau (2002) found that the
libraries surveyed felt that they were understaffed
and unprepared for the many facets of electronic
resource management. Since then, Srivastava and
Taglienti (2005) have observed in a larger survey
of mostly smaller and midsized libraries that close
to 50% of respondents identiied as “Other” the job
titles of the employees who managed electronic
resources. A scan of job postings for electronic
resource librarians during the last year, for example, inds a variety of position responsibilities
and skill requirements. Furthermore, stafing
levels have not kept up with the explosion of the
number and diversity of electronic resources.
Speciically, either existing personnel must be
retrained or new personnel with appropriate skills
must be hired to accommodate the management
of electronic resources.
DLF’s Electronic Resource Management Initiative (ERMI) has provided recommendations for
the management of electronic resource collection
development, acquisition, access and delivery
from a technology and systems perspective. The
worklow chart from Electronic Resource Management Worklow Flowchart Appendix B, pages
B4-B7, shows a template for such processes but
is too extensive to reproduce here.
Their overview lowchart, reproduced in
Figure 1, shows the differences between physical and electronic resource management. While
the ERMI addresses issues of license, metadata,
and technical management, organizations must
implement these processes with the appropriate
stafing and budgeting. From a library management perspective, it is apparent that managing
electronic resources cuts across departments
and units within library organizations, requires
91
Process Mapping for Electronic Resources
Figure 1. Worklow lowchart
a variety of new skills as well as training and
professional development, and calls for new ways
of approaching tasks related to electronic resource
management.
PROCESS MAPPING
A business method, called process mapping, is
used in systems development and in managing
large and complex projects. It presents a promising approach to the management of electronic
resources from an organizational and stafing
perspective. Process mapping is often synonymous with business process reengineering (BPR)
and has its roots in the total quality manage-
92
ment (TQM) movement irst championed by W.
Edwards Deming (1986). Following his lead, a
wave of reengineering business and organizational processes began in the 1990’s. The idea,
promoted by Hammer and Champy (1993), was
to create lexible organizations by continually
re-evaluating business processes. In turn, the
newly reengineered processes would improve
performance and productivity as well as deliver
the best quality products and services to the customer. In a more recent article, Champy (2006)
discusses the fact that in the new global economy
it is getting more dificult to execute BPR well. As
organizations become more complex because of
technology, outsourcing, and rapid change, they
must also adapt their reengineering processes
Process Mapping for Electronic Resources
accordingly. De Jong (2006) gives some practical
examples of worklow systems and new ways of
thinking about business process modeling as they
relate to the organization’s goals. Wang (2006)
traces TQM applications in academic libraries
from their beginnings in the 1990’s where they
occurred alongside efforts in the business world
to more recent BPR efforts that address such
issues as customer service and improvement of
operations. While Wang addressed technology
issues only briely, it is evident that libraries
continually need to manage the changes caused
by rapid technological developments using TQM
principles and BPR techniques.
Process mapping itself is a way of breaking
down a process into distinct steps with beginning and end points, somewhat similar to a
lowchart:
Process maps are used to help analyse and
understand a process and to aid its improvement
or, ultimately, its replacement. The process map
can show what controls a process, what it produces, what areas it covers and which elements
make up the process. It shows the sequence of
activities, low of information, decision points
and the range of possible process outcomes…
(JISC infoNet, ¶1 n.d.)
Process maps can help businesses understand
and control how their companies function, what
actions are involved and who is performing
the necessary steps to manufacture a product
or manage a service. Although most libraries
are not businesses in the proit sense, they are
complex organizations that purchase and process
resources and provide services related to these
resources. Thus library tasks and worklows
lend themselves easily to process mapping even
though the published literature does not present
many examples of redesigning organizational
processes using process mapping. For example,
Maharana and Chandra Panda (2001) discuss
BPR in academic libraries and conclude that in
response to radical changes in the information
environment, libraries must use techniques such
as process mapping to keep their organizations
viable. Hayes and Sullivan (2003) discuss a project
that addressed work redesign in libraries using
process mapping. Their emphasis was on involving staff to re-examine organizational worklow
using process mapping. In addition, an outside
consultant provided perspectives and guidance
that most likely would have been more dificult to
generate from within the organization. Zuidema
(1999) describes a process-reengineering project
in library technical services in the late nineties
where the changes brought by rethinking manual
processes and creating automated ones beneited
the library by making everyone more open to
change than they were before. Graves and Arthur
(2006) describe a worklow analysis in their serials unit that uses variations of process mapping
to successfully restructure the unit and positions.
These examples all show different approaches to
process mapping but with similar goals, that is,
rethinking how the organization works.
In general, process maps have a beginning and
an end point or show an input and an output. A
process’ output often becomes the input for another
process, thus showing the handoffs and linkages
from one process to another. The inputs and
outputs can be very speciic or very general. For
example, a library could process-map an activity
such as “cataloging monographs.” The goal would
be to irst create a big-picture map that breaks
the activity down into a number of manageable
steps. These higher-level tasks are then further
broken down into more detail in additional process
maps. The end result should be a map that shows
distinct single steps such as, for example, “save
record and upload to the system.”
While there are many ways to graphically
create a process map, one effective path is to
begin with the inputs on the left side of the page
and end up with the outputs on the right side of
the page. In the middle of the page, between the
inputs and outputs, are the tasks that need to be
93
Process Mapping for Electronic Resources
accomplished. Similar to lowcharting, tasks are
designated by geometric igures of a certain shape
such as rectangles indicating a task or action or
diamonds indicating a decision point. Decision
points then are split into their own sub-tasks.
Across the page one draws so-called swim lanes
that indicate who is involved in a particular task,
so that in one picture it is clear who is responsible
for which task. The task box reaches across as
many swim lanes as necessary depending on who
is involved. The map can also be represented in
text format.
Figure 2 shows a possible process map for
selecting, acquiring, delivering, and managing
electronic resources, which is the highest-level
process for ERM. Each of the subprocesses, for
example, “acquire/deliver electronic resources” is
represented by its own process map. Subsequently,
any processes that need more detailing can be the
subjects of further process maps. Figure 3 shows
the textual version of a process map, entitled Process Deinitions. Here, the processes are clearly
outlined and relect the drawing in igure 2. Both
these types of maps should be used in tandem but
can also be used separately.
Process maps ideally begin by assessing the
current or “as is” low of activities. This process
may be time-consuming and may be met with
skepticism on the part of employees because
there is an implication of something not working
properly. Working through process maps can shed
light on existing processes that work very well
and those that do not as well as allow the process
manager to make adjustments. After the “as is”
map is drawn, a “should be” map is constructed.
This map can be based on the “as is” map and
usually is, but does not have to be if there are
substantially new steps or a complete redesign of
a process due to technological or organizational
changes. For electronic resource management,
many processes are completely new or change
frequently, thus an “as is” map may be sketchy
or nonexistent in some cases.
94
To illustrate the construction of a process
map, we can use the following example, which
can serve as a model for a “should be” trial procedure. A vendor/publisher contacts a collection
development librarian at a university about a new
resource and suggests that the institution order a
trial. To manage the potential acquisition of the
new resource, a process map is drawn depicting
the necessary steps toward acquisition. First the
inputs and outputs of this particular map, the
anchors, must be considered. The input might be
the call from the vendor; the output might be a
campus-wide trial of the resource. The activity in
between, that is, what it takes to get from the input
to the output, is the main content of the process
map. In this example, the collection development
librarian may next call a subject bibliographer to
determine whether this is a good idea. Next, the
bibliographer may call several faculty members,
other librarians, or contact students about their
interest in the resource. She may also consider such
resources as the content descriptions, reviews,
and the user interface to determine whether the
resource is suitable. Without describing all steps
in this particular process map here, we can assume
that there is considerable interest in the resource
and that there is a decision to ask for a trial.
The subsequent steps for the bibliographer
in this example may be to inform the electronic
resources librarian about this trial. She then
would communicate with the vendor on what
technical issues need to be worked out. Again,
all the transactions involved would be broken
into separate steps. Other steps could be to put
a link on the library’s Web page and send out an
announcement. The last step or output would be
the completion of the trial and a survey of the
faculty and students about the new resource. If, for
example, the institution decides that the trial was
successful, and that the resource will be licensed,
then another process map should be created to
document the process where the completion of the
trial would then be the input for the next process
Process Mapping for Electronic Resources
Figure 2. Process low chart
95
Process Mapping for Electronic Resources
Figure 3. Process deinition chart
96
Process Mapping for Electronic Resources
map, possibly the acquisitions process. In our
example, each of the participants in the activities,
such as the collection development librarian, the
electronic resources librarian, an acquisitions assistant, or a technologist, would have a swim lane
indicating in which of the steps she is involved.
Furthermore, the people guiding the input and
the ones receiving the output are also identiied.
In this example, in addition to mapping out who
does what when, we can also look at what type
of work is involved, what skill set is needed for
each employee and then derive a possibly more
detailed worklow from the process map.
The Electronic Resource Management Worklow Flowchart presented by Jewell, Anderson,
Chandler, Farb, Parker, Riggio, et al. (2004)
charts the major processes in electronic resource
management, but it is not a process map. It was
not the intention of the authors of the lowchart to
create one, but organizations can take the example
of this lowchart as a “jumping-off” point and
begin to create their organization-speciic process
maps, breaking down steps even further, adding
swim lanes and deining the type of personnel
who will be working on the individual steps. The
ERMI lowchart also can uncover what functions
libraries are currently not fully performing or
only partially performing. For example, licensing
information is often not tracked systematically.
The lowchart also intentionally leaves out the
details of a category called “routine product
maintenance,” which includes troubleshooting
and resolving problems. The activities involved
here can and should be very easily be detailed in
process maps.
The construction of process maps can be
accomplished by using a variety of software.
Microsoft Visio, for example, provides templates
that can easily be used to create process maps.
Word-processing, presentation, or drawing software are others, but possibly more cumbersome
alternatives. Other commercial software packages
speciically designed for lowcharting or process
mapping are also available. Initially, it may be
easier to use whiteboards or large lip charts to
sketch out the maps since it is preferable to construct them in a group process where changes
are generally made frequently before arriving
at a robust solution. A designated person who
has expertise in using the software and drawing
skills can then transfer the hand-drawn maps to
electronic format.
As with every organizational change, it is
imperative that the process maps be created using
a mechanism in which employees of the library
have a stake and participate actively. This type of
work can be accomplished by setting up a variety
of groups of different stakeholders. For instance,
a wide variety of library employees should be
involved in ERM. This is not to say that the group
must be large, but it should include the major
stakeholders in the ERM. For example, it should
include an electronic resources librarian or someone with a similar job description; at least one but
preferably more members of a technical services
operation, including acquisitions and cataloging;
one member from public services; a person with
automation, database, and technology skills; and
a person with at least a basic understanding of
licensing. The group must be given a charge, a
time line, basic training in mapping processes,
access to software, and a meeting room, preferably
with a projector as well as supplies to accomplish
the tasks. Time must be allocated for the team
members and others to work on the project. A
project manager should be named who can manage the group, the timeline and the process. Other
stakeholders in the library should be available for
consultation and feedback.
The communications process for such an
undertaking should also be carefully considered.
Personnel working with electronic resources are
likely very familiar with many of the steps in the
process, although others in the library may only be
familiar with one aspect of ERM. Therefore, the
mapping project must be well communicated to the
rest of the library. The project manager may be put
in charge of this aspect of the project, but library
97
Process Mapping for Electronic Resources
management and others must also be involved in
reporting the accomplishments and progress of
the project. The project manager also must use a
process numbering system that makes clear which
are the higher level processes and which ones are
subordinated to others. A hierarchical numbering
system is recommended.
Once the mapping process is complete and a
“should be” process map is created, the next step
is the implementation of the process. In general,
if communication throughout the process was
good and reached the appropriate personnel, the
implementation should not come as a surprise to
the staff. Nevertheless, some training and restructuring might be needed to assure that the proper
steps and sequences are being followed. Since a
large part of ERM consists of parallel processes,
care must be taken to assure that those processes
are truly carried out in a parallel fashion and that
there are no delays so that a process that depends
on the completion of another does not hold up the
overall low. Managers and unit heads must ensure
that the new or enhanced processes are being followed. They also should take note of laws and
hold-ups in the process. These problems should
be corrected right away and the process maps
adjusted accordingly. Since ERM is operating in a
rapidly changing environment, the process maps
should be revisited periodically. How often will
depend on the size of the institution and experience level with electronic resources. Changes in
vendor packages, licenses, systems, library practices, storage, and archival needs among others,
may necessitate a review of the process maps and
subsequent changes. Process maps in libraries, but
especially in ERM are dynamic documents that
have to adjust as the environment changes. That
said, care should also be taken that the process
mapping process is followed not for its own sake
but because it is supposed to facilitate ERM in
the organization.
One of the more dificult issues in ERM process mapping is the assignment of time to the
processes that are being mapped. Taking into
98
account individual differences, an average time
for a step in the map should be calculated after
carefully watching and trying out the “should
be” process maps. From experience in managing electronic resources, we know that for some
transactions estimating an average time is almost impossible. This dilemma is mostly due to
interactions with outside constituencies, such as
vendors or consortia, where a time estimate of a
resolution of issues is often highly unlikely. Also,
if a library’s information technology operation
is not within the library’s organization, delays
may occur, especially regarding maintenance
and troubleshooting issues. Perhaps establishing
a median time rather than an average time for
determining the lengths of process steps may be
more useful for a manager than using an average.
This way, if a process consistently takes more
time than planned, it may be necessary to make
adjustments.
CASE STUDY
A large, multilibrary research library undertook
a comprehensive process-mapping project to
improve operations and processes in all areas of
the library. With the help of a business process
consultant, the library’s faculty and staff mapped
a variety of processes including selection, book
acquisition, cataloging, and interlibrary loan. The
consultant, an expert from industry who was not
familiar with library processes, provided training in process mapping to all faculty and staff
involved. A steering team managed the overall
project. Area teams were formed with each
team leader being responsible for guiding the
teams through the process and reporting back to
the steering team. The consultant met with the
teams along the way to help guide the work and
then translate the results of the teams’ work into
a template format that would later aid in a visual
representation of the processes and their relationships to other processes.
Process Mapping for Electronic Resources
As the teams began their work, they irst
mapped existing processes with the goal of depicting accurately the low of an existing operational
process step by step. This mapping activity included a deinition of the inputs and outputs of
the process, the people or groups involved, the
steps and substeps that were taken for each process, and the handoffs to other processes. Once
this “as is” process map was completed, the goal
was to then improve the processes, if necessary,
and to construct a “should be” process map. The
maps were extensively publicized, and others
in the organization provided feedback on the
accuracy and logic of both the “as is” and the
“should be” processes. Based on this feedback,
process maps were reevaluated and changed as
needed. An interesting outcome of this mapping
was that some units depicted some processes in
an idealistic fashion, which were then challenged
by the “customers” or recipients of this process
as not realistic. Although this type of interaction
was sometimes quite unpleasant, it provided an
opportunity to ind out what was really occurring
and where changes were necessary. It is important
to remember that some processes in organizations
become entrenched because there is no impetus
for change either from inside or from outside the
organization. The mapping process provided a
good picture of where there were communications
breakdowns, where individual work practices had
not kept up with overall organizational goals, and
where a complete review and restructuring of a
process was necessary.
Because of the complex nature of electronic
resource management (ERM) and a lack of awareness of the behind-the-scenes issues librarians and
staff were confronting in managing the various
aspects of handling electronic resources, an electronic resources (ER) team was formed to create
process maps for the selection, acquisition, delivery, and management of electronic resources in the
organization. The team consisted of a member of
the library administration in charge of public services and collections, the collection development
coordinator, an electronic resources acquisition
staff member who handled all electronic resource
acquisitions, and the two librarians who were
working closely with electronic resources, one of
whom became the team leader. Neither of these
librarians’ time was fully assigned to electronic
resource management. The consultant attended
most of the meetings of the team, assisted with
drawing the draft process maps and then entered
the information into a template. In addition, an
organizational consultant who was a member of
the steering team and was assisting in shepherding the process mapping effort for the library
administration, also occasionally attended the
meetings of the group. Unlike the other teams,
after a short time of “as is” mapping, the team
realized that the differences between “as is” and
“should be” were small and that it would take less
time to concentrate on the “should be” processes
to arrive at a process map that would successfully
map ERM.
The team set an ambitious meeting schedule
that took away considerable time from other projects and operations, but was necessary to fully
discuss the complexity and Web-like structure of
ERM. The meetings alternated between everyone
on the team meeting and only the people who were
actually working on ERM meeting. The meetings
of the whole team often became quite animated
because the discussions about the complexity
and iterative nature of some of the processes in
ERM were little understood and often seen as
too detailed. The ER team was encouraged by
the others in the group to think about the public
service implications of some of its assumptions
and actions. The ER team was also encouraged to
think about the handoffs to other areas that they
previously had not considered. In its own sessions,
the ER team considered detailed worklow issues
but then presented summarized versions to the
larger group, in order to speed up the process and
save the time of the team members who were not
involved in the minutiae of everyday ERM.
99
Process Mapping for Electronic Resources
Along the way, the team called on subject
experts in public services, serials cataloging,
government documents, and digital libraries to get
feedback and clariication about existing processes
and handoffs, as well as suggestions about their
possible improvement. The subject experts were
presented with draft “should be” process maps for
ERM and were invited to a face-to-face discussion
for feedback. In those sessions, the maps were altered based on the subject experts’ feedback when
necessary. A inal set of process maps was created
and the project leader then presented the result of
the process to the steering team. The team identiied three major processes to map. These were
process 01 entitled “select electronic resources,”
process 02 entitled “acquire/deliver electronic
resources,” and process 03 entitled “manage electronic resources.” Process 01 consisted of four
subprocesses, process 02 of six, and process 03
of four. Some subprocesses needed more detail
and were broken down into further sub-processes.
For example, Figure 4 shows process 02—acquire/
deliver electronic resources and Figure 5 shows
subprocess 02.05—activate access. In process
02 the decision to acquire a resource was made.
The actors are the university administrators (in
this case legal counsel), a collection development
group (CDC) and the acquisitions staff. The actions begin with a preliminary license review and
end with delivering access to the resource in a
linear fashion. In sub-process 02.05, one activity,
namely the activation of access, is broken down
into more detail. Here, only the acquisitions staff
is involved. We can see that this process includes
some yes-no decision points and also refers to the
next subprocess 02.06.
A few loose ends that depended on the completion of other processes were listed in a so-called
“parking lot issues” document to be revisited at
a later date (i.e., “parked” somewhere until later).
Overall, the mapping process achieved its goal of
questioning existing processes, rethinking them,
mapping them and tying them to other processes
in the library. Most importantly, the mapping pro-
100
cess served to clarify ERM processes to library
staff who were not familiar with them. The mapping provided a cross section of the personnel,
departments and activities that were involved
and provided points of intersections with other
processes in the library.
FUTURE TRENDS
ERM implementation became easier after the
creation of ERM systems by companies that
recognized a dire need for them. Most of these
systems were based on the original work created under the auspices of the DLF and are in
use today by many libraries. Even though these
systems integrate and make easier the work of
managing electronic resources, there are still
questions in a library manager’s mind about how
these systems can help libraries accomplish their
goals. For example, where does an ERM system
it into the electronic resources and the acquisitions worklow; who will be using the system and
populating it with data; what skills are necessary
to do these tasks; how long will the tasks take;
and how does this work affect and tie into other,
existing systems? All these questions need to be
answered regardless of the sophistication of the
ERM system.
One aspect of ERM, licensing management,
has generally been dealt with minimally by a
majority of libraries. As publishers struggle to
ind business models that are acceptable to their
shareholders as well as the library community,
we must expect that the legal landscape will be
continually changing for the foreseeable future.
There are efforts in the ERM community to
make sense of this landscape and to codify it
for the beneit of libraries (Farb (2006). Yet, in
terms of process management and stafing there
are many questions about licenses and legal issues that library managers must resolve now.
For example, do libraries need their own legal
experts in managing licenses, or are institutional
Process Mapping for Electronic Resources
Figure 4. Process low chart 02: Acquire/deliver electronic resources
101
Process Mapping for Electronic Resources
Figure 5. Process low chart 02.05: Activate access
102
Process Mapping for Electronic Resources
legal services suficient? How would one or the
other affect the process of ERM? Libraries will
need to ind solutions to these questions sooner
rather than later before they can potentially get
caught up in legal disputes with publishers and
aggregators.
As libraries are experiencing profound changes
in terms of digital content and delivery, managers
must understand what is going on in their organizations and how to best staff them. They are
increasingly turning to proven business practices
that allow them to evaluate and design new methods of delivery of resources and services. Process
mapping has a future in libraries, especially since
it allows library staff to handle complex processes
such as ERM. Publication of other case studies
and discussions of process mapping within the
library community may lead to increased adoption
of these models and methods. Future research will
be increasingly concerned with various implementations of ERM and comparing worklows in
terms of tasks, time, eficiency, automation and
required competencies.
CONCLUSION
In this chapter, a method of setting up an organizational process that allows for making ERM
an integral part of a library organization has
been described. Process mapping at its best can
help this very important, but fragmented and
ever-changing area, it into the already existing
organizational processes of a library. Furthermore,
it can clarify exactly what must be done to get the
complex tasks of ERM segmented and analyzed
as to their necessity, validity, and connection
to other library processes. Process mapping is
lexible enough to it into any size organization
and should not become an end into itself, but a
tool for library staff and library managers alike
providing better resource access and services to
library patrons.
REFERENCES
Breeding, M. (2004). The many facets of managing electronic resources. Computers in libraries.
Retrieved February 2, 2007, from http://www.
infotoday.com/cilmag/jan04/breeding.shtml
Corbett, L. (2006). Serials: Review of the literature 2000-2003. Library Resources & Technical
Services, 50(1), 16-30.
Champy, J. (2006). People and process. Queue,
4(2), 34-38. Retrieved May 1, 2007, from http://doi.
acm.org/10.1145/1122674.1122687
De Jong, P. (2006). Going with the low. Queue,
4(2), 24-32, Retrieved May 1, 2007, from http://doi.
acm.org/10.1145/1122674.1122686
Deming, W. E. (1986). Out of the crisis. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Center for Advanced Engineering Study.
Digital Library Federation (2004). DLF electronic
resources management initiative. Retrieved February 1, 2007, from http://www.diglib.org/standards/dlf-erm02.htm
Duranceau, E. F. (2002). Stafing for electronic
resource management: The results of a survey.
Serials Review, 28(4), 316-320.
Farb, S. (2006). Libraries, licensing and the
challenge of stewardship. First Monday, 11(7).
Retrieved May 1, 2007, from http://www.irstmonday.org/
Graves, T., & Arthur, M. A. (2006). Developing
a crystal clear future for the serials unit in an
electronic environment: Results of a worklow
analysis. Serials Review, 32(4), 238-246.
Hammer, M., & Champy, J. (1993). Reengineering the corporation: A manifesto for business
revolution. New York: HarperBusiness.
Hayes, J., & Sullivan, M. (2003). Mapping the
process: Engaging staff in work redesign. Library
Administration & Management, 17(2), 87-93.
103
Process Mapping for Electronic Resources
Jewell, T., Anderson, I., Chandler, A., Farb, S. E.,
Parker, K., Riggio, A., et al. (2004). Electronic
resource management. Report of the DLF ERM
Initiative. Washington, DC. Digital Library
Federation. Retrieved January 13, 2007, from
http://www.diglib.org/pubs/dlf102/
JISC infoNet. infoKits (n.d.). Process mapping.
Retrieved January 13, 2007, from http://www.
jiscinfonet.ac.uk/InfoKits/process-review/process-review-9.4
Maharana, B., & Chandra Panda, K. (2001). Planning business process reengineering (BPR) in
104
academic libraries. Malaysian Journal of Library
and Information Science, 6(1), 105-111.
Srivastava, S., & Taglienti, P. (2005). E-journal
management: An online survey evaluation. Serials
Review, 31(1), 28-38.
Wang, H. (2006). From “user” to “customer”:
TQM in academic libraries? Library Management, 27(9)
Zuidema, K. (1999). Reengineering technical services processes. Library Resources & Technical
Services, 43(1), 37-52.
105
Chapter VII
Evolving Roles for Electronic
Resources Librarians
Debra Engel
University of Oklahoma, USA
Sarah Robbins
University of Oklahoma, USA
ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the evolution of the electronic resources librarian position within academic
libraries as a result of increasing demands for electronic resources and the need for librarians devoted
to planning, selecting, implementing, and evaluating electronic resources. The authors discuss the
core competencies of electronic resources librarians and analyze the content of job advertisements for
electronic resources librarian positions published in the College & Research Libraries News and The
Chronicle of Higher Education between July 2001 and June 2006. The analysis reveals that electronic
resources librarians are expected to be skillful communicators and collaborators as well as experienced
with technology and versed in the issues surrounding electronic resources. Implications of these indings
on the organizational structure are discussed.
INTRODUCTION
For the past several decades, new information
technologies have dramatically changed the way
academic libraries provide information and services to their patrons. The profession has become
adept at adapting new technologies to best meet
the needs of users. The impact of the digital environment on library collections, providing access
to electronic resources, and the need to manage
hybrid collections of print and electronic resources
are ongoing challenges. The increasing demand
for electronic resources has resulted in the need
for more librarians and library staff devoted to
job functions related to planning, selecting, implementing, and evaluating electronic resources. In
the 1990s, as a response to the increasing and
differing workload introduced by electronic re-
Copyright © 2008, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
Evolving Roles for Electronic Resource Librarians
sources and online services, electronic resources
positions were created that specialized in these
areas (Fisher, 2003).
While the speciic job titles, job responsibilities, and job qualiications vary by institution, a
holistic study of the evolution of the electronic
resources librarian position and the role they currently play within academic libraries can provide
guidance to administrators seeking to create similar positions within their institutions, to library
and information studies educators developing
curriculum, and to graduate students interested
in pursing similar positions upon graduation. In
addition, an examination of core competencies
for electronic resources librarians can be useful
for recruitment, professional development, and
training.
This study analyzes job advertisements and
position announcements for electronic resources
librarians as they appeared in the College &
Research Libraries News and The Chronicle of
Higher Education from July 2001 to June 2006.
It explores already published literature discussing
the job titles, duties and qualiications required
for electronic resources librarians and shows how
core competencies have evolved since the electronic resources librarian position was introduced
in the early 1990s. This study will examine the
following questions:
1.
2.
3.
How are core competencies deined?
What are the core competencies of electronic
resources librarians?
How have electronic resources librarian
positions evolved?
A qualitative analysis of job advertisements
for electronic resources librarians allowed the
researchers to trace job responsibilities and job
qualiications and identify patterns of change
through the ive-year time period studied.
106
BACKGROUND
Core Competencies
Core competencies within librarianship have
been discussed since the early l990s (Corbin,
1993; Dole, Hurych, & Liebst, 2005; Fisher, 2001;
Nofsinger, 1999; Ojala, l993). The trend within
academic libraries to identify and to use core
competencies in performance evaluations gained
momentum in the mid- to late-1990s. (McNeil,
2002). The discussion of core competencies has
been approached in a number of ways for different purposes including identiication of needs
for professional education programs as well as
continuing education programs identiied by
library associations, state libraries, and library
organizations. References to core competencies
have generally included discussions of skills,
knowledge, and abilities.
Murphy (1991) defines competencies as
“knowledges, skills and attitudes required to perform a job effectively” (p. v). Fisher (2001) echoes
this sentiment and asserts that, “work-related
competencies are a combination of knowledge,
skills, and attitudes needed to be successful at a
certain job and into the future” (pp. 180-181). The
Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Systems
and Procedures Exchange Center (SPEC) Kit
#270 on core competencies similarly deines core
competencies as “skills, knowledge, abilities, and
attributes that employees across an organization
are expected to have to contribute successfully
within a particular organizational context” (McNeil, 2002, p. 7). Competencies are a framework
used to identify expected levels of performance
for and desirable traits of employees and can be
generalized to the profession as a whole, created for
speciic specializations within the profession, or
developed by local institutions as a way to measure
their employees. A variety of library associations
Evolving Roles for Electronic Resource Librarians
have created lists of core competencies for their
memberships (e.g., American Library Association,
2005; American Association of Law Libraries,
2001; Reference and User Services Association,
2003; Special Libraries Association, 2003).
Corbin (1993) suggests “a competency is deined as a personal characteristic or trait, or what
one should know or what one should be able to
do in order to achieve a desirable objective or
outcome. Fundamentally, competencies are not
aspects of jobs in electronic information service,
but rather characteristics of those who do the
jobs best” (p. 7). Corbin divides competencies
into the categories of personal characteristics,
basic skills, general knowledge, and specialized
knowledge. Within each of these categories, he
lists the types of competencies required. Personal
characteristics are deined as a service attitude,
or effective interpersonal communication ability.
Basic skills are deined as the use of one’s knowledge and abilities effectively such as information
analysis and evaluation skills or computer skills
(p. 10). General knowledge is deined as the understanding of general facts or principles such
as information transfer or information networks
(pp.7-8). Specialized knowledge is deined as
the knowledge expected for speciic electronic
information services being offered such as the
discipline, relevant literature and what electronic
resources are offered in that discipline (p. 16).
Although Corbin does not report the indings of
a research study, his work is beneicial for documenting the competencies needed by electronic
resources librarians before the profession saw
many job advertisements in this specialization.
His article provides a foundation for further studies on this topic.
Fisher (2001) identiies three types of competencies including professional competencies,
personal competencies, and educational competencies. Professional competencies are those that
are “occupation-related knowledge and skills that
make one technically proicient at the tasks that
comprise one’s job and are needed for success in
a particular work setting” (p. 180). According to
Fisher, these competencies evolve with the job.
Fisher deines personal competencies as “individual traits, attitudes, and behaviors needed for
success in almost any venue” (p. 180). The third
competency area, educational competencies, is
related to “those skills, traits, and attitudes that
result from studying a body of knowledge on a
given topic as one learns how to learn” (p. 180).
Fisher’s types of competencies are closely aligned
with those identiied by Corbin (1993) and are
useful for developing an organizational schema
for the current study.
Job Advertisement Content
Analyses
Analyzing job advertisements to identify trends
related to job skills and responsibilities within
librarianship is a well-established practice (e.g.,
Albitz, 2002; Beile & Adams, 2000; Copeland,
1997; Deeken & Thomas, 2006; Fisher, 2001, 2003;
Foote, 1997; Lynch & Smith, 2001; Nofsinger,
1999; Osorio, 1999; Reser & Schuneman, 1992;
Sproles & Ratledge, 2004; White, 1999, 2000;
Xu, 1996; Zhou, 1996). The literature discussing
position announcements for librarians is extensive
and covers a variety of positions within libraries.
White (2000) suggests that studying position announcements offers “important insights not only
into the characteristics desired in the job but into
the changes and developments taking place in
the ield as well” (p. 265). These studies not only
document changes to the job market in librarianship but also position qualiications required for
speciic types of library positions. A review of
the literature reveals the various methodologies
that have been used by researchers examining job
descriptions and qualiications through content
analysis of job advertisements. In recent years,
the impact of technology and automation on job
requirements and types of responsibilities has been
well documented through this type of research.
107
Evolving Roles for Electronic Resource Librarians
Xu (1996) uses job advertisement analyses to
examine the impact of automation on job qualiications and requirements of catalogers and reference
librarians. He uses advertisements that appeared
in American Libraries between 1971 and 1990,
with two issues per year being randomly drawn.
Xu groups data into ive year spans and compares
and contrasts specialized subject knowledge,
work experience, computer skills, administrative
duties and other skills. The author concludes that
the requirement of computer skills and previous
work experience were similar for both positions
although there were still differences in major responsibilities and knowledge and skills required
for the position (p. 29).
Zhou (1996) performs a study similar to Xu
(1996) and examines the demand for computer-related skills for 2,500 academic librarians from job
announcements in American Libraries between
l974 and l994. Zhou concludes that, “possession
of computer-related skills has changed from an
incidental issue to a major qualiication for all
types of academic library positions” (p.270). Sproles and Ratledge (2004) examined 1,441 entrylevel librarian position announcements published
in American Libraries from l982 through 2002.
They conclude that employers were requiring more
knowledge and experience gained from outside
the classroom and increasing required job-related
experience, such as computer experience.
Foote (1997) surveys systems librarian job
requirements through an analysis of 107 job announcements in College & Research Libraries
News from 1990 through 1994. She concludes
that systems librarian positions require two essential qualiications: knowledge of computers
and the ability to work effectively with others
(p. 524). In addition, Foote notes that 38.4 % of
the systems librarian positions analyzed require
a degree other than the ALA-accredited MLS
degree (p. 524).
White (1999, 2000) researched two articles
concerning position announcements—one on
academic subject specialists and one on head of
108
reference positions. In the 1999 study on academic
subject specialists, he analyzes academic library
position announcements appearing from 1990
through 1998 in American Libraries, College &
Research Libraries News, and The Chronicle of
Higher Education. White inds that, “there was a
somewhat steady growth in the percentage of announcements listing electronic resources as a job
responsibility” (p. 379). In 2000, White studied the
head of reference position descriptions from 1990
through 1999 from American Libraries, College
& Research Libraries News and The Chronicle
of Higher Education. He concludes that the most
often cited position requirements for heads of
reference positions were communication or interpersonal skills and the MLS. degree. He also notes
that almost 60% of the position announcements
for head of reference positions contain language
related to electronic resources.
Beile and Adams (2000) examined 900 unique
job announcements for public services and technical services librarians published in American
Libraries, The Chronicle of Higher Education,
College & Research Libraries News, and Library
Journal during 1996. Similar to Xu (1996) and
Zhou (1996), Beile and Adams conclude that the
position requirement for computer skills was
growing (p. 345). They identify a signiicant
number of position announcements that relate to
electronic services and do not it into the public
services or technical services areas. Beile and
Adams note, “Academic library positions appear to
be becoming more specialized, and many requisite
skills of these positions are changing rapidly and
dramatically” (p.346).
Electronic Resources Librarians
Albitz (2002) studies the electronic resources
librarian in academic libraries by analyzing the
position announcements as they appear in the
College & Research Libraries News from January 1996 through December 2001. She explores
where the electronic resources librarian position
Evolving Roles for Electronic Resource Librarians
falls within the organizational structure, the requirements and responsibilities of the position,
and the experience required. Through examination of 101 electronic resources librarian position
descriptions from 1996-2001, Albitz inds that
electronic resources librarians are expected to
perform a wide variety of tasks (pp. 597-598).
Albitz concludes that “electronic resources librarians tend to be jacks and jills-of-all trades” and
are typically expected to perform public service
duties such as reference and instruction as well
as manage electronic resources, maintain Web
sites, and provide technical support (p. 598). Albitz concurs with White (1999) and conirms that
electronic resources librarians, similar to subject
specialists, tend to be new to the profession with
three years or less of experience.
Croneis and Henderson (2002) published a
study similar to that published by Albitz (2002)
that examines job announcements published
between 1990 and 2000 in College & Research
Libraries News. Their study includes all position
announcements that contain either “electronic”
or “digital” in the position title and compare the
similarities and differences between positions
with electronic in the position title versus those
positions with digital in the position title. Position
announcements were analyzed by position title,
by function area, by institution and by year the
advertisement irst appeared. Croneis and Henderson conclude that both “electronic” and “digital”
types of positions “use technology to enhance
access to information” but that “electronic” positions often include public service responsibilities
while “digital” positions focus more on project
management and administration (p. 235). They
also ind that there was a dramatic increase in
the number of positions from 1990 through 2000
and that the electronic and digital positions were
relected in the areas of public services, technical
services, systems and digital projects. Croneis
and Henderson write:
Initially public service librarians were the only
professionals involved in work with electronic
resources because those resources were few in
number and available only on stand-alone workstations in reference departments. Networking
capabilities, the development of the Web, and the
explosion in the number of resources required the
involvement of librarians with technical expertise. In addition, a wider variety of departments
became involved in such activities as negotiating
licenses, establishing authorization mechanisms,
and providing access via online catalogs and Web
pages. (p. 235)
This illustrates the far-reaching impact of electronic resources into all aspects of librarianship.
Fisher (2003) traces the development of the
electronic resources librarian position from January l985 through December 2001 by examining
job advertisements in American Libraries. Fisher
chose the year 1985 as the start date for his study
in order to encompass position descriptions long
before they were common in the profession. He
discovered that the position title “electronic resources librarian” was irst used in July/August
l992 (p. 4). Through examination of 298 electronic
resources librarian position descriptions over the
17-year time period, Fisher identiies 74 skills or
attributes for these positions and analyzes each
position announcement by title and by content.
In addition, he groups the characteristics into
public service attributes, personal attributes, and
technology attributes. Fisher inds that public
services duties ranked highest in responsibilities
for electronic resources librarians and that the
technological specializations irst appear ifth on
the list of characteristics most cited by position
announcements. He writes, “Knowledge of public
service functions and process, regardless of the
environment, clearly is fundamental” (p.11). In
addition, knowledge of technology available and
communication skills are necessary. Surprisingly
109
Evolving Roles for Electronic Resource Librarians
Fisher notes, “Acquisitions and related duties
(like vendor relations and dealing with licensing
agreements) were found in some of the positions
announcements, but to a much lesser extent than
anticipated” (p. 4). Fisher raises an interesting
question when he writes, “Does the electronic
resources librarian position represent something
new and revolutionary or does it represent the
current iteration along an evolutionary continuum
of public services in libraries?” (p.11).
METHODOLOGY
For the purposes of this study, the authors performed a content analysis of job advertisements for
electronic resources librarian positions published
in the College & Research Libraries News and The
Chronicle of Higher Education between July 2001
and June 2006. These publications were chosen
because of their focus on higher education and
academic libraries which is the focus of the study.
The Chronicle of Higher Education is published
weekly with a wide range of job announcements
for a variety of different academic institutions;
College & Research Libraries News is a monthly
publication which includes job advertisements
of library positions within a host of academic
institutions. Announcements selected were for
full-time positions in academic libraries including
university and college libraries, special libraries
within the academic community such as medical
or law libraries, and community college libraries.
Both the Albitz (2002) and Fisher (2003) studies
ceased gathering data in 2001 which made 2001
a logical starting point for the current study.
Because of the diversity of possible job titles
for this type of position, the authors read all advertisements that included the words “electronic,”
“digital,” “virtual,” and “online” in the position
title. Only the advertisements for jobs dealing
speciically with the management, maintenance,
and/or organization of electronic resources in
some way were collected for further analysis.
110
Advertisements for those positions dealing exclusively with electronic services, virtual reference, digital projects, or systems were excluded
from this, which differs from the studies by
Albitz (2002) and Fisher (2003). Duplicate job
advertisements were also removed so that each
advertisement was studied only once per year. It
is possible that a job advertisement was included
twice if the advertisement appeared over a series
of months that spanned two different years. The
job advertisement would then be included in both
years, though only once per year even if it appeared several times each year. The researchers
chose not to eliminate duplication between years
because it is possible that the position was illed
and vacated within the time period.
The authors did an initial content analysis of
select advertisements from each year. During the
initial analysis, the authors identiied recurring
job responsibilities and qualiications. From these
responsibilities and qualiications, broad category
classiications were developed for the coding of
all advertisements. Twenty-six different job duties were also identiied for study. These were
broadly grouped under the headings of materials,
services, technology, management/administration, interpersonal, and other job responsibilities
such as professional involvement and scholarly
activity (see Appendix A). Thirty-two different qualiications were identiied for analysis;
these include speciic experience requirements,
abilities, skills, knowledge, education, evidence
of research, publication, and/or creative activity,
and professional involvement (see Appendix B).
There was some overlap between the identiied
job responsibilities and job qualiications, and the
researchers based the coding of the item on how
it was presented in the job advertisement.
All data was recorded dichotomously in an
Excel workbook—either the item was present in
the job advertisement or it was not (yes=1, no=0).
Each year of data was recorded in a separate
spreadsheet so that the authors could look at possible changes in qualiications or duties throughout
Evolving Roles for Electronic Resource Librarians
the period of the study. To ensure consistency in
coding between authors, each job advertisement
was coded by each author. If there were discrepancies, the authors discussed their rationale for
their particular coding and an agreement was
reached for the inal coding of the advertisement.
For example, one area of discussion was whether
to code particular items as job responsibilities or
job qualiications because of overlap in the coding
categories. It was decided to use the organization
of the advertisement to guide the researchers’
coding. The researchers utilized Fisher’s (2003)
tabulation method for the current study.
In some cases the full position description
and qualiications were not available because the
complete position announcement was on a Web site
and not included in the printed announcement. In
those instances, as much information as could be
discerned from the printed job advertisement was
coded and included on the Excel spreadsheet, but
a note was made that a Web address was provided
for a complete job description.
FINDINGS
Job Advertisements
The authors analyzed a total of 183 electronic
resources librarian position advertisements that
were published in College & Research Libraries
News and The Chronicle of Higher Education
between July 2001 and June 2006 and that met
the criteria speciied in the methodology. Table
1 illustrates the number of job announcements
analyzed by year; it should be noted that within
both 2001 and 2006 only six months worth of
data were compiled.
Job Responsibilities
Table 2 illustrates the 12 most cited job responsibilities of electronic resources librarians and the
percentage of job advertisements listing each job
responsibility.
The most frequently listed job responsibility included in two-thirds of the job announcements was
“acquire/evaluate/license electronic resources.”
Half of the job advertisements analyzed list “manage/maintain/troubleshoot electronic resources”
as a primary job responsibility, and almost half
included “organize electronic resources, through
cataloging, electronic resource management system or, on Web sites.” Other frequently cited job
responsibilities included performing reference
services, teamwork/collaboration, performing
library instruction, and Web-authoring or Webmanagement. Each of these appeared in at least
one-third of the job advertisements studied.
Required Qualiications
The authors coded the required qualiications cited
by each job announcement. Table 3 summarizes
the 12 most cited required qualiications and
provides the percentage of the total that required
each qualiication.
Electronic resources librarian positions consistently require a Master's degree in library and
information studies (MLIS) with 72% of the ads
studied requiring this degree. Beyond the required
Table 1. Number of advertisements used by year
(July 2001-June 2006)
Year
Number of
Advertisements
2001 (July-December)
26
2002
52
2003
31
2004
32
2005
25
2006 (January - June)
17
Total
183
Data source: College & Research Libraries News
and The Chronicle of Higher Education
111
Evolving Roles for Electronic Resource Librarians
Table 2. Top 12 job responsibilities for electronic resources librarians
% of Total Job
Announcements
Job Responsibilities
Acquire/evaluate/license electronic resources
66%
Manage/maintain/troubleshoot electronic resources
50%
Organize electronic resources, through cataloging,
electronic resource management system or, on Web site
46%
Perform reference service
42%
Teamwork/collaboration
36%
Perform library instruction
33%
Web authoring/Web management
32%
Training
26%
Collection development of print resources
25%
Committee work
23%
Responsibilities for serials, both electronic and print
19%
Supervision
18%
MLIS, the most frequently listed requirement for
the electronic resources librarian position is “demonstrated oral and written communication skills”
which is listed in 44% of the advertisements. This
is closely followed by “experience with, or knowledge of, electronic resources” which is required
in 43% of the positions. Another frequently cited
job requirement is the “ability to collaborate or
work in a team environment” which is included
in 38% of the advertisements. “Experience with,
or knowledge of, computer software” was listed
as a job requirement in 29% of the studied ads. It
is interesting to note that of the top ive requirements for electronic resources librarians two of
the requirements are related to technological skills
and two are related to interpersonal skills.
Preferred Qualiications
The researchers analyzed each position announcement’s preferred job qualiications, though more
than 50% of the position announcements did not
include them. The most often cited preferred
qualiications include: training experience; experi-
112
ence with a particular library system such as an
ILS or bibliographic utility; experience with, or
knowledge of, electronic resources; experience
with, or knowledge of acquisitions and/or business
practices; familiarity with licensing and contract
negotiation; experience with, or knowledge of,
computer software; and experience with computer
programming languages. Some of the preferred
qualiications were speciic to an institution such
as an institution’s speciic ILS. Often the speciic
needs of an organization will override whatever
previous experience may have taught, though a
familiarity with the principles and concepts certainly guides a person new to a position.
DISCUSSION
Perhaps Albitz (2002) said it best when she describes electronic resources librarians as tending
to be “jacks- and jills-of-all-trades” (p. 598). As
evidenced in previous studies (Albitz 2002; Fisher,
2003) as well as the current study, electronic
resources librarians are expected to perform a
Evolving Roles for Electronic Resource Librarians
Table 3. Top 12 required job qualiications for electronic resources librarians
Top 12 Required Job Qualiications
% of Total Job
Announcements
Masters degree in library and information studies
72%
Demonstrated oral and written communication skills
44%
Experience with, or knowledge of, electronic resources
43%
Ability to collaborate or work in a team environment
38%
Experience with, or knowledge of, computer software
29%
Experience with, or knowledge of, computer hardware
25%
Awareness of trends in electronic resources
24%
Academic/professional library experience
21%
Experience with, or knowledge of, Web development/
Web site management
21%
Experience with, or knowledge of, cataloging
20%
Experience with, or knowledge of, metadata standards
19%
Experience with a particular library system, such as an
ILS or bibliographic utility
18%
wide range of job duties and are responsible for
an assortment of tasks. Albitz notes, “Librarians
who chose to enter the ield of electronic resources
management could ind themselves required to
perform almost any function one might typically
ind in an academic library, from Web design to
circulation to bibliographic instruction” (p. 595).
What was no doubt true in 2001 is still true ive
years later. While the current study narrowed the
focus and included only those positions dealing
with electronic resources such as databases, ejournals, and/or e-books speciically, it still appears that electronic resources librarians may be
expected to have experiences in public services
and technical services as well as a clear grasp of
technology.
Fisher (2003) divided the 74 characteristics
he identiied (through an analysis of a combination of position descriptions and qualiications
statements) into three categories (1) traditional
public services functions, (2) technology-related functions, and (3) interpersonal functions
(p.10). Despite the current study’s focus solely
on those electronic resources librarian positions
that had responsibility for acquiring, maintaining, or organizing electronic resources in some
fashion, the study conirms Fisher’s indings of
the electronic resources librarians being heavily
involved in public services. Acquiring, maintaining, and organizing electronic resources by the
very nature of the work its within the realm of
technical services, and while all job advertisements included in the current study involve one
or more of those duties, almost half (42%) of the
advertisements included providing reference
services as a part of the job, and approximately
one-third listed performing library instruction as
a job duty. Fisher found communication skills to
be a highly cited job characteristic for electronic
resources librarians; this study found the same to
be true with demonstrated oral and written communication skills, which appeared as a required
qualiication in 44% of the job advertisements,
and the ability to collaborate or work in a team
environment, which was required in 38% of the
job advertisements.
113
Evolving Roles for Electronic Resource Librarians
This study conirmed the indings of Lynch and
Smith (2001) who wrote, “Most academic library
jobs require a degree from an ALA-accredited
program” (p. 416). Electronic resources librarian
positions consistently require a Master’s degree
in library science with 72% of the ads studied
requiring this degree. This also concurs with
Albitz (2002) and White (2000). It is possible that
many of the remaining 28% of the ads actually
do require the degree; however, due to a large
proportion of the ads providing a Web address
for more information rather than a full position
advertisement, it is uncertain as to whether the
Web site listed an MLIS as a requirement.
One limitation of the current study is the
growing trend of posting full job advertisements
on the Web rather than publishing the full advertisement in national publications. Of the 183
position announcements included in the study, 58
(32%) of the announcements referred readers to a
Web address where a complete position description could be found. Deeken and Thomas (2006)
estimated that 10% of the job ads they reviewed
were excluded from the inal study because the
ads listed URLs rather than complete information
(p. 138). Albitz (2002) also noted that sometimes
only a “skeletal” job announcement was listed
in College & Research Libraries News and that
a Web address was provided where candidates
could locate complete information (p. 594). Since
information on the Web is transitory, this type of
research study is likely to prove more problematic
in the future. Researchers wishing to analyze job
advertisements may need to conduct the study in
real time and gather data from Web sites rather
than rely solely on what has been published in
trade journals.
FUTURE TRENDS
Computers and technology are a way of life in
libraries. In their 2006 study, Deeken and Thomas
found that “collecting data on computer skills
114
was meaningless” because it is now assumed that
applicants will possess computer skills (p. 143).
In her 1997 article, Foote notes, “the systems
librarian must accept change as a characteristic
of the position responsibilities” (p. 524). While
electronic resources librarians are not typically
characterized as systems librarians, change is just
as much a way of life for them as it is for systems
librarians. The landscape for managing electronic
resources is changing, and those responsible for
managing electronic resources will have to adapt
with each new technology and procedure.
The nature of electronic resources management
and changes in technology as a resource delivery
mechanism has strongly inluenced the evolution
of electronic resources librarian positions. One
of the results of a fast-changing landscape within
electronic resources management is seen in the
position responsibilities concerning teamwork and
collaboration within the organizational structure,
as well as in the job requirements that indicate
skills and abilities in interpersonal communication
and working in a team environment. Electronic
resources librarians are required to be collaborative, and job advertisements often indicate that the
applicants must have skills and abilities in teamwork combined with excellent oral and written
communication skills. In a discussion of the role
of electronic resources librarians at Washington
State University, Felt (1999) writes:
As part of their oficial job descriptions, electronic resources librarians teach both librarians
and library patrons how to use new electronic
resources. They are also positioned to have regular, oficial and unoficial, conversations with
others in non-public service departments where
decisions about technology are sometimes made.
Because electronic resources librarians deal
regularly with new technologies, talk technology
with patrons and colleagues, and keep current
with pertinent manuals and articles, they can
understand the unique language that accompanies
this specialized ield. It is important for a reference
Evolving Roles for Electronic Resource Librarians
department to have individuals who can talk and
understand that language. (p. 85)
Translating technical jargon into words of
meaning for public services librarians and other
nontechnically minded librarians can be a vital
role of electronic resources librarians within the
organization and will likely continue to be part
of the communication role for this position in
the future. While librarians in all sectors of the
profession are increasingly expected to have a
functioning level of computer literacy, it is unreasonable to expect each and every librarian to
stay abreast of the latest technology trends and the
myriad issues surrounding electronic resources,
as well as to monitor the trends in their own area
of specialization. This is why it is important that
electronic resources librarians are able to ilter
information related to their area of specialization,
electronic resources, and repackage it in a succinct
and meaningful way to keep their colleagues upto-date in what they must know to best serve their
patrons and perform their own job duties.
Lynch and Smith (2001) discuss the presence
of behavioral skills in the job advertisements
they analyzed and indicate that, while observers
are deeming these skills essential for successful
library work, it has not been determined “who
should teach these skills” (p. 418). They comment
that in library and information studies educational
programs “[p]ractice in doing such activities [team
projects, oral presentations, instruction] might be
included in courses, but instruction in how to do
it is not” (p. 418). It is important as a profession
that new professionals are properly trained with
the skills they will need to succeed; if oral and
written communication skills, collaboration, and
teamwork are being listed as qualiications in job
advertisements, library schools should provide
students with opportunities for developing these
skills in a demonstrable way.
Corbin (1993) identiies six methods of acquiring proiciency in competencies related to
electronic resources and services; these include:
formal education and training programs, onthe-job training, self-education, apprenticeship,
experience, and continuing education (pp. 19-21).
Of these, experience is probably the best training
ground for developing communication and collaboration skills (p. 21). Some of these experiences
may start in a formal education setting, but it is
hoped that as new librarians enter professional
positions, they will have opportunities to inetune and develop their personal communication styles and to learn to create collaborative
environments around them. Those in electronic
resources librarian positions will have no choice
but to continue to develop their skills in this area
if they wish to thrive.
However, will the electronic resources librarian position be needed in the future or will
it go the way of the microform librarian? Will
job responsibilities within electronic resources
librarian positions become standard for other
library positions? Perhaps it is too soon to tell.
The current research indicates that communication among diverse library constituencies is a
key role of the electronic resources librarian. At
some point, it is possible that discussing IP authentication, terms of licensing agreements, and
long-term preservation of digital formats will be a
standard part of every library studies curriculum
just as interpreting a MARC record and conducting a reference interview are. However, until that
time, someone with knowledge of these issues
that can effectively communicate these issues to
colleagues will be needed in most organizations.
Future research studies could examine how job
responsibilities from electronic resources librarians have been incorporated into other library
positions, especially in institutions without an
electronic resources librarian.
CONCLUSION
The increasing number, variety, and complexity
of electronic resources available to academic
115
Evolving Roles for Electronic Resource Librarians
libraries have increased tremendously since the
irst job announcement for an electronic resources
librarian was listed in 1992 (Fisher, 2003, p.4).
Managing electronic resources is an “ever-evolving process” (Skaggs, Poe, & Stevens, 2006, p.
194). Not surprisingly the position of electronic
resources librarian must change as the nature
of the work evolves. When electronic resources
librarian positions were irst listed often the electronic resources management job responsibilities
and job requirements were simply “added to”
an existing position, and Fisher (2003) found
that the foundation of the electronic resources
librarian was based strongly in public services
(p.7). Building upon the work of Albitz (2002)
and Fisher (2003), this study reinforces that the
electronic resources librarian position represents
a position that evolves as the technological and
environmental landscape changes.
While academic librarians have often been
bridge builders within their academic communities, electronic resources librarians are expected
to be bridge builders within their library organizations. They often bring together administrators,
technical services librarians, public services
librarians, and systems librarians to focus on
the current challenges of “any time, any place”
delivery of library resources and services. The
emphasis on communication and collaborative
skills for these positions is an indication of the
strong role electronic resources librarians play
in fostering a team environment within their
organizations. Electronic resources librarians are
expected to be skilled communicators with an
in-depth expertise of technology and the issues
surrounding the acquisition, management, and
organization of electronic resources. Bergman
(2005) notes, “The one thing that is clear is that the
specialty [electronic resources librarian] has arisen
because of the ever increasing need for librarians
to have information technology skills in addition
to—not instead of—people skills” (p. 116). Just
as a reference librarian or bibliographer develops
expertise in a particular discipline or subject
116
area, the electronic resources librarian develops
expertise in managing people, relationships, and
technology in a fast-paced, ever-changing library
and information environment.
REFERENCES
Albitz, R. S. (2002). Electronic resource librarians
in academic libraries: A position announcement
analysis, 1996-2001. Portal: Libraries and the
Academy, 2(4), 589-600.
American Association of Law Libraries (2001).
Competencies of law librarianship. Retrieved
November 17, 2007, from http://www.aallnet.
org/prodev/competencies.asp
American Library Association (2005). Draft core
competencies. Retrieved November 17, 2007,
from http://www.ala.org/ala/accreditationb/
Draft_Core_Competencies_07_05.pdf
Beile, P. M., & Adams, M. M. (2000). Other duties as assigned: Emerging trends in the academic
library job market. College & Research Libraries,
61(4), 336-347.
Bergman, B. J. (2005). Looking at electronic resources librarians: Is there gender equity within
this emerging specialty? New Library World,
106(3/4), 116-127.
Copeland, A. W. (1997). The demand for serials
catalogers: An analysis of job advertisements,
1980-1995. The Serials Librarian, 32(1/2), 2737.
Corbin, J. (1993). Competencies for electronic
information services. Public-Access Computer
Systems Review, 4(6), 5-22. Retrieved November
17, 2007, from http://epress.lib.uh.edu/pr/v4/n6/
corbin.4n6
Croneis, K. S. & Henderson, P. (2002). Electronic
and digital librarian positions: A content analysis
Evolving Roles for Electronic Resource Librarians
of announcements from 1990 through 2000. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 28(4), 232-237.
Deeken, J., & Thomas, D. (2006). Technical
services job ads: Changes since 1995. College &
Research Libraries, 67(2), 136-145.
Dole, W. V., Hurych, J. M., & Liebst, A. (2005).
Assessment: A core competency for library
leaders. Library Administration & Management,
19(3), 125-132.
Felt, E. C. (1999). Holland library’s electronic
resource librarians: A proile of these positions.
The Reference Librarian, 64, 75-113.
Fisher, W. (2001). Core competencies for the
acquisitions librarian: Analysis of position announcements. Library Collections, Acquisitions,
& Technical Services, 25(2), 179- 190.
Fisher, W. (2003). The electronic resources librarian position: A public services phenomenon?
Library Collections, Acquisitions, & Technical
Services, 27, (1), 3-17.
Foote, M. (1997). The systems librarian in U.S.
academic libraries: A survey of announcements
from College & Research Libraries News,
1990-1994. College & Research Libraries, 58,
517-26.
Lynch, B., & Smith, K. R. (2001). The changing
nature of work in academic libraries. College &
Research Libraries, 62(5), 407-420.
McNeil, B. (Comp). (2002). SPEC kit #270: Core
competencies. Washington, D.C.: Association of
Research Libraries.
Murphy, M. (1991). Preface. Future Competencies
of the Information Professional (pp. v-vi). Washington, D.C.: Special Libraries Association.
Nofsinger, M. M. (1999). Training and retraining
reference professionals: Core competencies for the
21st century. The Reference Librarian, 64, 9-19.
Ojala, M. (1993). Core competencies for special
library managers of the future. Special Libraries,
84, 230-234.
Osorio, N. L. (1999). An analysis of science-engineering academic library positions in the last
three decades. Issues in Science and Technology
Librarianship. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from
http://www.istl.org/99-fall/article2.html
Reference and User Services Association (RUSA),
American Library Association (2003). Professional competencies for reference and user services
librarians. Retrieved November 17, 2007 from,
http://www.ala.org/ala/rusa/rusaprotools/referenceguide/professional.htm
Reser. D. W., & Schuneman, A. P. (1992). The
academic library job market: A content analysis
comparing public and technical services. College
& Research Libraries, 53, 49-59.
Skaggs, B., Poe, J. W., & Stevens, K. W. (2006).
One-stop shopping: A perspective on the evolution of electronic resources management. OCLC
Systems and Services: International Digital
Library Perspective, 22(3), 192-206.
Special Libraries Association (2003). Competencies for information professionals of the 21st
century. Retrieved November 17, 2007 from,
http://www.sla.org/content/learn/comp2003/index.cfm
Sproles, C., & Ratledge, D. (2004). An analysis
of entry-level librarian ads published in American Libraries, 1982-2002. Electronic Journal
of Academic and Special Librarianship, 5 (2-3).
Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://southernlibrarianship.icaap.org/content/v05n02/sprolesc01.htm
White, G. (1999). Academic subject specialist
positions in the United States: A content analysis of announcements from 1990 through 1998.
The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 25(5),
372-382.
117
Evolving Roles for Electronic Resource Librarians
White, G. (2000). Head of reference positions in
academic libraries: A survey of job announcements from 1990 through 1999. Reference & User
Services Quarterly, 39(3), 265-272.
Xu, H. (1996). The impact of automation on job
requirements and qualiications for catalogers and
118
reference librarians in academic libraries. Library
Resources and Technical Services, 40(1), 9-31.
Zhou, Y. (1996). Analysis of trends in demand for
computer-related skills for academic librarians
from 1974 to 1994. College & Research Libraries, 57, 259-272.
Evolving Roles for Electronic Resource Librarians
APPENDIX A
Job Responsibilities for Electronic Resources Librarians
Materials
•
Acquire/evaluate/license electronic resources
•
Organize electronic resources, through cataloging, electronic resource management system or on
Web sites
•
Manage/maintain/troubleshoot electronic resources
•
Collection development of print resources
•
Responsibility for serials, both electronic and print
•
Catalog, print resources or special formats
•
Monitor trends in electronic resources
Services
•
Perform library instruction
•
Provide reference service
•
Provide virtual reference speciically
•
Act as a liaison or perform outreach to an external department
•
Web authoring/Web management
Technology
•
Maintain computer hardware and software
•
Coordinate/supervise computing in library
•
Monitor trends in technology
•
Act as a liaison with the campus information technology department
Management/Administration
•
Supervision
•
Training
•
Committee work
•
Project management
•
Teamwork/collaboration
•
Policies and procedures/documentation
Interpersonal
•
Facilitate communication between departments
•
Demonstrate a commitment to customer service
Other Job Responsibilities
•
Involvement in professional associations and activities
•
Scholarly activity
119
Evolving Roles for Electronic Resource Librarians
APPENDIX B
Qualiications for Electronic Resources Librarians Positions
Experience, Abilities, Skills, Knowledge
•
Experience with, or knowledge of, electronic resources
•
Academic/ professional library experience
•
Experience with, or knowledge of, acquisitions and/or business practices
•
Experience with, or knowledge of, cataloging
•
Experience with, or knowledge of, collection development
•
Experience with, or knowledge of, library instruction or teaching
•
Experience with, or knowledge of, reference and public services
•
Experience with, or knowledge of, serials
•
Supervisory or management experience
•
Experience with a particular library system such as an ILS or bibliographic utility
•
Training experience
•
Experience with, or knowledge of, Web development/Web site management
•
Familiarity with licensing and contract negotiation
•
Ability to collaborate/work in a team environment
•
Demonstrated oral and written communication skills
•
Customer or public service orientation
•
Experience with, or knowledge of, computer hardware
•
Experience with, or knowledge of, computer software
•
Experience with, or knowledge of, instructional technologies
•
Leadership ability
•
Experience with policy and procedure documentation
•
Demonstrated project management, organizational, and/or problem-solving skills
•
Experience with computer programming languages
•
Experience with, or knowledge of, metadata standards
•
Awareness of trends in electronic resources
•
Ability to work independently/self-motivated
Education
•
MLIS
•
Advanced degree, additional masters or PhD
•
Associates degree
•
BA in a speciic discipline
Other
•
Evidence of research, publication, and/or creative activity
•
Evidence of professional involvement
120
Section III
Copyright and Licensing
122
Chapter VIII
The Evolution
of License Content
Trisha L. Davis
The Ohio State University, USA
Celeste Feather
The Ohio State University, USA
ABSTRACT
The terms of licenses for electronic resources have changed in the past decade as librarians and publishers strived to reach common ground. A review and analysis of thirty-ive licenses in effect prior to
2000 and their 2006 counterparts reveals how licenses evolved to meet the licensing principles set forth
in recent years by the American Association of Law Libraries, the International Federation of Library
Associations, and the NorthEast Research Libraries. Thirteen aspects of licenses were analyzed in the
study. Eight aspects have evolved in the spirit of the principles, and four have not. The remaining aspect has not evolved as part of a license, but has emerged as a preferred business practice outside the
license agreement that is in keeping with the practice the licensing principles encourage. The results
of the analysis indicate that efforts in the library community to encourage the development of licenses
that meet the needs of most libraries are having a positive impact.
INTRODUCTION
The need for licenses for electronic resources
that are acceptable to publishers, vendors, and
librarians is substantial. As the number of licensed
electronic products increased in the 1990’s, librarians began to gain expertise in understanding
license terms, legal requirements, and appropri-
ate procedures for entering into a legal contract
between a publisher and the library or its parent
organization. Library associations began to create
lists of licensing principles in order to educate their
members and take a formal position on many of
the common issues encountered in the licensing
negotiations. The three most recent sets of licensing principles from the library community have
Copyright © 2008, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
The Evolution of License Content
a great deal in common. Have the principles and
the support they have garnered within the library
community had an impact on the way licenses have
changed over time? This study reviews 35 licenses
in existence prior to 2000 and their counterparts
in 2006 in an effort to answer the question.
BACKGROUND
The negotiation of licenses for the acquisition of or
access to electronic content has been challenging
the academic library community for over a decade.
Various professional associations and individual
universities have developed documents to state
the needs and requirements for licenses that are
acceptable by individual research institutions and
library consortia. These documents have been
revised over time to relect the changing understanding and requirements of the community.
In the United States, work in the library community regarding licensing principles for electronic resources irst came to fruition in June, 1995
by the Electronic Publishing Licensing Agreements Subcommittee of the Publisher/VendorLibrary Relations Committee of the Association
for Library Collections and Technical Services,
a division of the American Library Association.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed its “Licensing Principles for Electronic
Materials” in December of 1995, followed quickly
by the University of California’s “Principles for
Acquiring and Licensing Information in Digital
Formats” in May of 1996, the University of New
Mexico’s “Guidelines for Licensing E-Products”
in November of 1996, and California State University’s “Principles for Acquisition of Electronic
Information Resources” in December of 1996. In
1997 the Association of Research Libraries led
a joint effort with the American Association of
Law Libraries, the American Library Association,
the Association of Academic Health Sciences
Libraries, the Medical Library Association, and
the Special Libraries Association to develop a
set of national principles (Schottlaender, 1998).
These principles were known as the “Principles
for Licensing Electronic Resources” (Association
of Research Libraries [ARL], 1997).
Similar work was in process in Europe and
elsewhere during the same time period. In 1997,
the Dutch Association of University Libraries and
the German Association of Research and University Libraries in North and Middle Germany
drafted a set of licensing principles that provided
a basis for the International Coalition of Library
Consortia to develop a “Statement of Current Perspective and Preferred Practices for the Selection
and Purchase of Electronic Information” in the
spring of 1998 (International Coalition of Library
Consortia [ICOLC], 1998). More than 80 consortia
worldwide had adopted the ICOLC document by
May, 2000. The European Association of Research
Libraries, known as LIBER, drafted its own set
of principles in July, 1998 (Klughist, 2000). This
document is known as the LIBER “Licensing
Principles” (Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes
de Recherche [LIBER], 1998).
More recently, the International Federation of
Library Associations prepared a set of “Licensing Principles” in 2001 (International Federation of Library Associations [IFLA], 2001). The
American Association of Law Libraries (AALL)
developed a set of “Principles for Licensing Electronic Resources” in 2004 that was built upon
the earlier collaborative work that the AALL
had performed in 1997 with other U.S. library
associations (American Association of Law Libraries [AALL], 2004). The NorthEast Research
Libraries (NERL) consortium in the northeastern
United States maintains a current set of “licensing guidelines” that the group uses to provide
guidelines for vendors and NERL members as
they negotiate licenses for electronic content
(NorthEast Research Libraries [NERL], 2006).
The California Digital Library of the University
of California system has created a “Checklist of
Points to be Addressed in a CDL License Agreement” that calls attention to areas of licensing that
123
The Evolution of License Content
are of special concern and provides guidance and
background information for these areas (California Digital Library [CDL], 2006). The University
of California Libraries has a set of “Principles
for Acquiring and Licensing Information in
Digital Formats” that mainly addresses broader
issues in scholarly communication (University of
California Libraries, 2006). Together, these two
California documents address many of the same
issues previously mentioned in other documents
that were developed since 2000.
METHODOLOGY
The authors of this study focused on the three
documents from IFLA, AALL, and NERL that
have been developed since 2000 and directly
address the content that the library community
desires in licenses for electronic resources. They
selected primary areas of overlap in the principles
documents on which licenses could be evaluated
objectively, and gathered a selection of 35 licenses
for review for which there were pre-2000 versions
and counterparts in use in 2006. The licenses
were gathered from the iles of the libraries at The
Ohio State University, the University of Akron,
the University of Minnesota, the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University
of Washington. The analysis in the study examined how the licenses in the review set evolved
over time, and how the changes did or did not
correspond to the current principles established
by the library community for licenses governing
the acquisition of electronic content.
The authors acknowledge that the review set
of licenses may be skewed because it was drawn
only from academic libraries and contains more
licenses from nonproit than from for-proit providers. The bias toward nonproits occurred because
many nonproit societies were among the irst to
offer online access to their resources and because
those societies still exist in the form that they
existed in the previous decade. In the for-proit
124
sector, mergers and acquisitions among publishers
frequently have left no current counterpart for a
pre-2000 license for a given product. The review
set of licenses contained examples from eight forproit licensors and 25 nonproit licensors. This
analysis, albeit with a limited sample, revealed no
signiicant differences in the ways that licenses
have changed over time based on the proit status
of the licensor. The results of the analysis may
be speciic to licenses for products of interest to
the scholarly community.
The licensors represented in the review set are
listed below. The dates of the pre-2000 licenses
examined from each licensor appear after the
licensor’s name:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
ABC-CLIO (1998)
American Association for the Advancement
of Science (1999)
American Chemical Society (1997)
American Institute of Physics (1997)
American Mathematical Society (1997)
American Physical Society (1999)
American Society of Civil Engineers
(1999)
Association for Asian Studies (1998)
Association for Computing Machinery
(1999)
Bloomberg (1994)
Cambridge Scientiic Abstracts (1997)
Cambridge University Press (1998)
Columbia University Press (1999)
Company of Biologists (1998)
Commonwealth Scientiic and Industrial
Research Organisation (CSIRO) (1998)
EDP Sciences (1999)
Elsevier (1999)
Evolutionary Ecology Ltd. (1999)
Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (1999)
HAPI (1998)
Heron Publishing (1998)
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (1999)
The Evolution of License Content
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Institute of Physics (1997)
Iter, Inc. (1998)
JSTOR (1997)
National Academy of Sciences (1998)
NISC (1998)
NRC Research Press (1998)
Optical Society of America (1998)
Oxford University Press (1998)
Project Muse (1997)
ProQuest (1995)
Royal Society (1998)
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (1996)
University of Chicago Press (1999)
The 13 aspects selected for objective analysis
from the three principles documents follow:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Authorized site deinition
Authorized user deinition
Breach cure period
Conidentiality of business terms
Dispute resolution and governing law
Electronic reserves and coursepacks
Indemniication
Interlibrary lending and scholarly sharing
Licensee’s responsibility for actions of
authorized users
Modiication of license terms
Perpetual use/archival rights
Remote access
Usage statistics
ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
The analysis of the licenses in the review set follows the quoted language related to each aspect
from the principles documents.
Authorized Site
Authorized site deinitions, if present in a license,
are generally based on one of two qualities. The
irst is the geographic contiguity of the site; the
second is the nature of the administration of
the institution. Licenses require either that the
authorized site exist in one physical location,
or that a group of geographically disconnected
sites be united under a central administration.
The three principles documents are concurrent
in their inclusion of all sites administered as part
of a single organization, regardless of location.
They describe an authorized site as follows: "A
license agreement should recognize the afiliation
of users with a given library or institution, regardless of users’ physical location and should allow
for routine remote access to licensed electronic
information resources" (AALL).
"A license should provide access for geographically remote sites if they are part of the licensee’s
organization" (NERL).
"The license should provide access for geographically remote sites if they are part of the
licensee’s organization" (IFLA).
An example of language in a current license
that follows the principles regarding an authorized site is:
If the subscriber has one or more remote sites or
campuses which do not have their own central
administrative staff, but instead are administered
by the subscriber’s site or campus, persons afiliated with those remote sites or campuses will
also be considered authorized users.
An example of current language that does
not follow the principles of the authorized site
deinition is:
For the purposes of this license, an “authorized
site” is a localized site (one geographical location) that is under a single administration. For an
organization with locations in more than one city,
each city is considered to be a different site. For
an organization that has multiple locations in the
same city that are administered independently,
each location is considered to be a different site.
No access from remote campuses or remote sites,
125
The Evolution of License Content
Table 1.
2006 Licenses
Site Limited to Single Geographic
Location
Site Based on Administration Pattern
Silent
35 (100%)
18 (51.4%)
8 (22.9%)
9 (25.7%)
Pre-2000 to 2006 Changes
Did Not Change
13 (37.1%)
Silent
8 (22.9%)
Administration Pattern
6 (17.1%)
Changed
8 (22.9%)
Silent to Single Geographic Location
4 (11.4%)
Single Geographic Location to Administration Pattern
2 (5.7%)
Administration Pattern to Single Geographic Location
1 (2.9%)
Single Geographic Location to Silent
1 (2.9%)
and no consortia or other forms of subscription
sharing are allowed under this license.
Table 1 provides the data regarding the deinition of authorized site that was gathered from the
license review set. The majority of licenses prior
to 2000 and in 2006 deine an authorized site by
geographic contiguity. Half of the changes in the
licenses over time were to move to a site deinition
that focused on geographic contiguity.
In an academic environment it can be dificult
to deine site purely by location, yet this concept
of geographical contiguity persists. Several 2006
licenses provided university names and locations
as examples of sites that were not contiguous. In
some states with large university systems spanning the state under a common name this is a
reasonable differentiation, for example California,
Pennsylvania, and New York. In other systems,
this approach requires even the smallest branch
or research institute of a large university to be
deined as a separate location requiring a unique
site license. Not only is it costly to negotiate
two licenses for the same institution, but also
frequently the accompanying base fees for a
126
27 (77.1%)
Single Geographic Location
single site are beyond the resources available to
the smaller entity.
Little progress has been made toward meeting
the deinitions outlined by the license principles
documents. Only half of the 2006 licenses agree
with the principles’ deinitions and the greatest
change occurred in the shift toward geographic
limitation. Differential pricing based on geographic location seems to be continuing as an
evolving trend.
Authorized Users
Given the academic nature of the license review
set, faculty, staff, and students are included in all
of the deinitions present in these licenses. The
question for analysis centered on whether persons
who are not oficially afiliated with the licensee
are permitted to use the resource when they are
physically present within a library facility. These
users are commonly known as “walk-in” users
and normally include the general public accessing
a resource via a public workstation in a library
building. The three principles documents are concurrent in their inclusion of all users, regardless
The Evolution of License Content
of afiliation or location. The NERL and IFLA
principles speciically include walk-in users at
public workstations in library facilities. They
deine authorized users as follows: "A license
agreement should recognize the afiliation of
users with a given library or institution, regardless of users’ physical location and should allow
for routine remote access to licensed electronic
information resources" (AALL).
"A license agreement should deine authorized
users to include students, faculty, researchers,
and staff of the NERL member institutions, as
well as walk-in users of the institutions’ library
facilities. It should permit remote access by authorized users, except walk-in users, and include
students enrolled in oficial distance education
programs" (NERL).
"The license should provide access for all
of the users afiliated with a licensee, whether
institution or consortium, regardless of whether
they are on the licensee’s premises or away from
them" (IFLA).
"The license should provide access to individual, unafiliated users when on the licensee’s
premises" (IFLA).
An example of language in a current license
that follows the principles regarding authorized
users is:
Authorized users must be employees, faculty, staff,
or students oficially afiliated with the subscriber,
or authorized on-site patrons of the subscriber’s
library facilities.
An example of language in a current license
that does not follow the principles of the authorized
site deinition is:
“Authorized users” refers to the staff, faculty, and
students of the customer, the membership of the
customer, or the employees of the customer.
Table 2 shows the data found in the license
set related to the inclusion of walk-in users in the
deinition of authorized users. There is substantial
agreement among the current licenses that walk-in
users should be included, and all of the changes
to authorized user deinitions in the review set
from pre-2000 to the present have been to include
walk-in users.
The fact that 91.4% of 2006 licenses, as compared to 57.1% of 1990’s licenses, include walk-in
users is encouraging for public institutions which
by law must allow access to such products. For
many academic libraries, this is a make-or-break
issue that must be addressed before public funds
Table 2.
2006 Licenses
Authorized Users Include Walk-ins
Authorized Users Do Not Include
Walk-ins
Silent
35 (100%)
32 (91.4%)
1 (2.9%)
2 (5.7%)
Pre-2000 to 2006 Changes
Did Not Change
23 (65.7%)
Included Walk-ins
20 (57.1%)
Silent
2 (5.7%)
Did Not Include Walk-ins
1 (2.9%)
Changed
Silent to Include Walk-ins
12 (34.3%)
12 (34.3%)
127
The Evolution of License Content
may be spent. It is reassuring to see that licensors
are acknowledging this more frequently.
Breach Cure Period
Many licenses describe and deine the steps that
will be taken when a suspected breach or violation of the license terms occurs. Some licensors
choose to terminate access immediately upon
suspicion of a breach, while others establish a
certain time period within which the licensee
must investigate the problem and take corrective
action. Some licenses remain silent on the issue.
The AALL and NERL principles are concurrent
in their requirement of notiication of a suspected
breach; all three principles documents agree that
a breach cure period should be provided for the
licensee to investigate and resolve any true breach.
They deine such activities as follows: "A license
agreement should require the licensor to give
the licensee notice of any suspected or alleged
license violations that come to the attention of
the licensor and allow a reasonable time for the
licensee to investigate and take corrective action,
if appropriate" (AALL).
"A license agreement should require the licensor to give NERL member institutions notice of
any suspected or alleged license violations that
come to the attention of the licensor and allow
a reasonable time for the institution to investigate and take corrective action, if appropriate"
(NERL).
"The license should provide for remedy periods
and other modes of resolution before either cancellation or litigation is contemplated" (IFLA).
An example of language in a current license
that follows the principles regarding breach cure
periods is:
If either party breaches any term of this agreement, the other may send written notice of the
breach including a description of all unacceptable
actions. If the breach is not corrected within 30
days, the nonbreaching party may terminate the
agreement upon written notice.
An example of language in a current license
that does not follow the principles regarding
breach cure periods is:
Table 3.
2006 Licenses
Include Breach Cure Period
Explicitly Deny Breach Cure
Period
Silent
35 (100%)
13 (37.1%)
6 (17.1%)
16 (45.7%)
Pre-2000 to 2006 Changes
Did Not Change
Silent
15 (42.9%)
Included Breach Cure Period
8 (22.9%)
Denied Breach Cure Period
5 (14.3%)
Changed
128
28 (80%)
7 (20%)
Denied Breach Cure Period to Include Breach Cure Period
5 (14.3%)
Denied Breach Cure Period to Silent
1 (2.9%)
Silent to Include Breach Period
1 (2.9%)
The Evolution of License Content
This agreement will terminate immediately if any
term or condition of this agreement is violated
for any reason.
Table 3 reveals that there are many differing
opinions and practices about breach cure periods.
There is no clear trend toward either including a
breach period or remaining silent on the matter.
While there was a surprising lack of change
over the decade, the few revisions that did occur
recognized the need for a breach cure period. The
practice of explicitly denying a cure period appears to be diminishing. This change may indicate
that licensors are becoming more receptive to the
concept and may be more willing to negotiate
these terms with a library.
Conidentiality of Business Terms
The practice of keeping business terms conidential as part of a license agreement is not common,
but occasionally occurs. Many publicly supported
institutions cannot legally agree to not disclose
these terms and still abide by the laws of their state.
The three principles documents are concurrent in
their prohibition of such conidentiality clauses.
They describe the issue as follows: "A conidentiality or nondisclosure agreement should not be
a prerequisite to a license agreement" (AALL).
"A license agreement should not require
nondisclosure of licensing terms or prices"
(NERL).
"Requirements for nondisclosure of license
terms are generally inappropriate" (IFLA).
Current licenses that follow the principles
regarding confidentiality of business terms
simply are silent on the matter. An example of
language in a current license that does not follow
the principles is:
Conidential information shall include, but not be
limited to, the terms and existence of this agreement, including pricing, site locations, population
counts, and proprietary information relating to
products or services of the parties disclosed for
the purposes of providing price quotes.
Table 4 shows the stability in licenses regarding
conidentiality over the past decade. Conidentiality clauses were not common prior to 2000, and
remain that way. This principle appears to be one
of the few receiving widespread support from all
parties in the licensing community.
Dispute Resolution and Governing
Law
Governing law in licenses is used to help deine
procedures and legal arguments in the event of
Table 4.
2006 Licenses
Require Conidentiality
Silent
35 (100%)
1 (2.9%)
34 (97.1%)
Pre-2000 to 2006 Changes
Did Not Change
Silent
Changed
33 (94.3%)
33 (94.3%)
2 (5.7%)
Silent to Required Conidentiality
1 (2.9%)
Required Conidentiality to Silent
1 (2.9%)
129
The Evolution of License Content
a dispute between the parties. Licenses either
mention a speciic jurisdiction, which is usually
the state of the licensor if the licensor’s place of
business is within the United States, or remain
silent on the matter. Licenses originating outside
the United States generally state the law of their
country. This section is critical for state-supported
institutions that must abide by state law and cannot
agree to a governing law outside that state.
The three principles documents each discuss
this issue from a different perspective. The AALL
principles suggest the option of using alternative
dispute resolution, such as binding arbitration, in
place of legal proceedings. While this may be a
preferable alternative, such options are frequently
not permitted by state law or institutional policy.
NERL principles are silent on the matter. AALL
principles recommend a choice of law and venue,
and provisions for resolving disputes outside the
courtroom. The IFLA principles recommend that
the applicable law be acceptable to both licensor
and licensee, but favor the licensee. They describe
the issue as follows: "A license agreement should
allow for the use of alternative dispute resolution
to resolve any conlicts that may arise in relationship to the agreement" (AALL).
"A license agreement should state the choice of
law and choice of venue by which the parties will
be governed in the event of a dispute" (AALL).
"The choice of applicable law should be acceptable for both parties. Preferably it should be the
national or state law of the licensee" (IFLA).
Language in current licenses regarding dispute resolution is not common, but one example
was found:
All claims, disputes and causes of action arising
from or related to this agreement shall be subject
to binding arbitration to occur in [City, State].
Arbitration shall be by single arbitrator either
agreed upon by each of the parties, or by each
party appointing a representative who shall meet
with the other party’s representative and those
two parties shall appoint the arbitrator.
Governing law statements in current licenses
are generally stated in the following manner:
This agreement will be governed by and construed
in accordance with the laws of the state of [State
Name], applicable to contracts entered into and
fully performed in the State of [State Name].
Table 5 provides the data from the license
review set related to the mention of governing
law. The 2006 sample is almost evenly split
(48.6%-51.4%) on this issue. Changes made since
the 1990’s signiicantly favor the elimination of
Table 5.
2006 Licenses
Specify Governing Law
Silent
35 (100%)
18 (51.4%)
17 (48.6%)
Pre-2000 to 2006 Changes
Did Not Change
17 (22.9%)
Silent
11 (31.4%)
Changed
130
28 (80%)
Speciied Governing Law
7 (20%)
Speciied Governing Law to Silent
6 (17.1%)
Silent to Speciied Governing Law
1 (2.9%)
The Evolution of License Content
a speciic governing law. When terms are unacceptable, this is usually one of the easier sections
to alter or remove in a license negotiation.
Electronic Reserves and
Coursepacks
Mention of coursepacks, printed copies of material
for sale and distribution to authorized users in a
course, involves either permitting or prohibiting
the practice through license language. Many
licenses are silent on the matter. In a similar
manner, digital content may be stored on an access-controlled server for access only by students
registered for the speciic course. Because this
practice frequently replaces the control of materials in a physical reserves collection, the practice
often is referred to as electronic reserves.
Although students are considered authorized
users and thus automatically have access to licensed materials through the library catalog or
indexing tools, instructors often want all materials available at a single site. The three principles
documents are concurrent in their consideration of
coursepacks and electronic reserves as a standard
practice and inclusion as a desired license term.
They describe these terms as follows: "A license
agreement should clearly state the permitted uses
of the electronic resource. The licensee should
make clear to the licensor those uses critical to
its particular users including, but not limited
to, printing, downloading, copying, electronic
reserves, and the development of course packs"
(AALL).
"A license agreement should recognize and not
restrict or abrogate the fair use rights of a NERL
member institution’s user community permitted under copyright law. The license agreement
should deine the purposes for use of the resource
as education and research, and should allow for
the printing, downloading, and copying that are
inherent in scholarly work. The license should
also speciically provide for instructional use in
the form of electronic reserves and coursepacks"
(NERL).
"Licenses should support local teaching and
learning efforts, from elementary through university level, by permitting links to, or copies of,
speciic course-related information to appear in
online course-support activities such as electronic
reserve" (IFLA).
Table 6.
2006 Licenses
Allow Coursepacks
Prohibit Coursepacks
Silent
35 (100%)
6 (17.1%)
7 (20%)
22 (62.9%)
Pre-2000 to 2006 Changes
Did Not Change
26 (74.3%)
Silent
18 (51.4%)
Prohibited Coursepacks
7 (20%)
Allowed Coursepacks
1 (2.9%)
Changed
9 (25.7%)
Silent to Allowed
4 (11.4%)
Allowed to Silent
4 (11.4%)
Prohibited to Allowed
1 (2.9%)
131
The Evolution of License Content
An example of language in a current license
that follows the principles regarding electronic
reserves and coursepacks is:
The licensee may include copies (print or electronic) of items from the online database in: (a)
coursepacks in print or digital form for distribution to the authorized users for use in classroom
instruction; (b) in reserves or offprints collections set up by the licensee’s libraries for access
by authorized users in connection with speciic
courses offered by the institutions. Copies of
items in digital form which are included in online
coursepacks, reserves, or offprints collections
must be deleted by the licensee’s libraries at
the end of the terms in which the related course
concludes.
An example of current license language that
is counter to the principles is:
Institutional subscribers or licensees many not
make multiple copies of materials from [the
product] for the purpose of classroom use or
place materials from [the product] on electronic
reserve without prior written permission.
Table 6 shows the data gathered from the license review set related to coursepacks. Silence
on the matter prevails in 2006.
Data gathered from the review set provides
similar insights into license trends related speciically to electronic reserves. As shown in Table 7,
silence prevails to an even greater degree in the
2006 licenses regarding electronic reserves.
The trend shown by this data is a movement
away from prohibiting the use of licensed material in coursepacks. However, as the movement
towards digital content progresses, more content
is available via deep linking, and course management systems encompass traditional electronic
reserves, the printed coursepack probably does not
have a sustainable future. The need for permission
to make digital copies of licensed material and
temporarily deposit them on a local server for
electronic reserves also will diminish.
Indemniication
The legal issue of indemniication appears in
licenses in several ways. The verb “indemnify”
means (1) to secure against hurt, loss, or damage,
or (2) to compensate or reimburse for incurred hurt,
loss, or damage (Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary
Table 7.
2006 Licenses
Allow Electronic Reserves
Prohibit Electronic Reserves
Silent
35 (100%)
5 (14.3%)
3 (8.6%)
27 (77.1%)
Pre-2000 to 2006 Changes
Did Not Change
Silent
27 (77.1%)
Prohibited Electronic Reserves
1 (2.9%)
Allowed Electronic Reserves
1 (2.9%)
Changed
132
29 (82.9%)
6 (17.1%)
Silent to Allowed
4 (11.4%)
Silent to Prohibited
2 (5.7%)
The Evolution of License Content
of Law, 1996). Sometimes the licenses require
both parties to indemnify the other. Sometimes
one party is required to indemnify the other, and
sometimes the licenses are silent on the matter.
The two principles documents from United States
library associations are concurrent in their requirement that the licensor indemnify the licensee. They
suggest the following approach to indemniication:
"A license agreement should require the licensor to
defend, indemnify, and hold the licensee harmless
from any action based on a claim that use of the
resource in accordance with the license infringes
any patent, copyright, trademark, or trade secret
of any third party" (AALL).
"A license agreement should require the licensor to defend, indemnify, and hold NERL and
NERL member institutions harmless from any
action based on a claim that use of the resource in
accordance with the license infringes any patent,
copyright, trademark, or trade secret of any third
party" (NERL).
An example of current license language that
follows the principles of indemniication is:
The licensor shall indemnify, defend, and hold
harmless the subscriber and its authorized users from and against any loss, damage, costs,
liability and expenses arising from or out of
any third-party action or claim that use of the
licensed products in accordance with the terms
and conditions herein infringes the intellectual
property rights of such third party.
An example of current license language sets
forth the opposite scenario from the principles’
direction is:
The institution assumes the sole responsibility
for all use of the service through its IP addresses
and hereby indemniies and agrees to hold the
licensor indemniied from any liability or claim
of any person arising from such use.
Table 8 provides the data for the analysis of
indemniication in the license review set. This area
is often a point of negotiation in licensing due to
state laws. The principles have not had the desired
impact on licenses regarding indemniication.
Table 8.
2006 Licenses
Licensee Indemniies
Licensor
Licensor Indemniies Licensee
Mutual Indemniication
Silent
35 (100%)
10 (28.6%)
1 (2.9%)
2 (5.7%)
22 (62.9%)
Pre-2000 to 2006 Changes
Did Not Change
27 (77.1%)
Silent
20 (57.14%)
Licensee Indemniied Licensor
6 (17.1%)
Licensor Indemniied Licensee
1 (2.9%)
Changed
8 (22.9%)
Silent to Licensee Indemniied Licensor
3 (8.6%)
Mutual Indemniication to Silent
2 (5.7%)
Mutual Indemniication to Licensee Indemniied Licensor
1 (2.9%)
Silent to Mutual Indemniication
1 (2.9%)
Licensor Indemniied Licensee to Mutual Indemniication
1 (2.9%)
133
The Evolution of License Content
The preference prior to 2000 and now is to
remain silent about indemniication, but mutual
indemniication sometimes is an acceptable alternative. The analysis demonstrated that indemniication by licensor of licensee only and mutual
indemniication are rare. In fact, 28.6% of 2006
licenses require indemniication of licensor by
licensee. This is an area of obvious disagreement
between libraries and publishers and perhaps
should be left silent.
Interlibrary Lending and Scholarly
Sharing
Rights for interlibrary lending (ILL) to individuals
outside the licensee’s authorized user community
vary considerably. The most common deinitions
fall into three general concepts: ILL may be
prohibited explicitly, allowed if the material is
irst reduced to print, or allowed via electronic
transmission of the digital ile. This review found
that when electronic transmission of the digital
is permitted, then transmission of the print is
generally also permitted. The three principles
documents are concurrent in their requirement of
interlibrary loan rights as established by the interlibrary loan provisions of Section 108 of the U.S.
Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. 108). They deine these
rights as follows: "A license agreement should
recognize and not restrict, abrogate or circumvent
the rights of the licensee or its user community
permitted under copyright law, including but not
limited to the fair use provisions of Section 107
of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. 107) and the
interlibrary loan provisions of Section 108 of the
U.S. Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. 108)" (AALL).
"A license agreement should permit library-tolibrary lending of full-text, within limited conditions analogous to those provided by the CONTU
guidelines for print materials" (NERL).
"Licenses (contracts) for information should
not exclude or negatively impact for users of the
information any statutory rights that may be
granted by applicable copyright law" (IFLA).
134
"Provisions for interlibrary loan or equivalent
services should be included" (IFLA).
An example of current license language that
follows the interlibrary lending principles is:
Institutional subscribers and licensees may
use hard or electronic copies derived directly
or indirectly from the electronic edition of the
journals for the purpose of interlibrary loan with
the same limitations that apply to paper copies
for that purpose made from the print edition of
the journals. Speciically, copies must be made in
accordance with Section 108 of the Copyright Act
of the U.S. and with guidelines developed by the
National Commission on New Technological Uses
of Copyrighted Works (CONTU Guidelines).
An example of current license language that
does not follow the interlibrary lending principles
is:
The systematic making of print or electronic
copies for transmission to nonsubscribers or nonsubscribing institutions (such as in “interlibrary
loan”) is prohibited.
Table 9 provides information regarding the
interlibrary loan rights that are present in the
license review set. There has been a great deal
of change over the decade, but this area remains
a persistent issue in negotiations.
In the licenses in effect prior to 2000, 19
(54.3%) either prohibited ILL or were silent. In
the 2006 set, only 12 (34.3%) prohibited ILL or
were silent. Eight of the licenses (22.9%) were
for products that can be described as databases,
which may or may not have full text worth sharing, so this change is a valid improvement. The
trend to explicitly allow ILL is encouraging. For
many academic libraries, ILL rights for electronic
journals remain an important issue. For some,
this can be a make-or-break issue, regardless of
format. It is reassuring to see that licensors are
acknowledging this more frequently.
The Evolution of License Content
Table 9.
2006 Licenses
ILL Via Print Only
ILL Via Print and Electronic
ILL Prohibited
Silent
35 (100%)
16 (45.7%)
7 (20%)
9 (25.7%)
3 (8.6%)
Pre-2000 to 2006 Changes
Did Not Change
23 (65.7%)
ILL Via Print Only
10 (28.6%)
ILL Prohibited
9 (25.7%)
ILL Via Print and Electronic
2 (5.7%)
Silent
2 (5.7%)
Changed
12 (34.3%)
Silent to ILL Via Print Only
3 (8.6%)
ILL Prohibited to ILL Via Print Only
3 (8.6%)
Silent to ILL Via Print and Electronic
2 (5.7%)
ILL Via Print Only to ILL Via Print and Electronic
2 (5.7%)
ILL Prohibited to Silent
1 (2.9%)
ILL Prohibited to ILL Via Print and Electronic
1 (2.9%)
Scholarly sharing, the right of an authorized
user to occasionally provide a copy of a limited
amount of material to an unauthorized user for
educational or research purposes, appears in
licenses in the form of permitting the right or
denying the right. Many licenses remain silent
on the matter. None of the three principles documents address the issue, but the presence of this
additional type of sharing right in the license
review set warrants discussion.
An example of current license language that
explicitly permits scholarly sharing is:
An authorized user may transmit a hard copy or
electronic copy of any article to any individual
who is not an authorized user provided such
transmission is (1) not for compensation, (2) for
purposes of scholarly exchange of ideas, and (3)
not part of any systematic provision of content to
such user or any third party.
An example of current license language that
is counter to the principles and denies the right
of scholarly sharing is:
Users are not permitted to transmit any part of
the materials by any means to any unauthorized
user.
Table 10 indicates the status of scholarly
sharing in the license review set. The analysis
does not reveal any signiicant trends toward a
common goal.
Over the decade, changes in licenses related to
scholarly communication were quite varied. The
identiied changes were almost evenly divided
among change to permit, change to deny, and
change to remain silent on the matter. Signiicantly
more licenses (48.6%) speciically prohibit the
practice as speciically permit it (28.6%). Silence is
a signiicant portion of sample (22.9%). Licensors
seem to be moving toward interlibrary lending,
but at the same time seem to be reluctant to allow
scholarly sharing. The intermediation effort by
135
The Evolution of License Content
Table 10.
2006 Licenses
Prohibit Scholarly Sharing
Permit Scholarly Sharing
Silent
35 (100%)
17 (48.6%)
10 (28.6%)
8 (22.9%)
Pre-2000 to 2006 Changes
24 (68.6%)
Did Not Change
Prohibited Scholarly Sharing
13 (37.1%)
Permitted Scholarly Sharing
6 (17.1%)
Silent
5 (14.3%)
11 (31.4%)
Changed
Prohibited Scholarly Sharing to Silent
3 (8.6%)
Silent to Prohibited Scholarly Sharing
3 (8.6%)
Prohibited Scholarly Sharing to Permitted Scholarly Sharing
3 (8.6%)
Silent to Permitted Scholarly Sharing
1 (2.9%)
Permitted Scholarly Sharing to Prohibited Scholarly Sharing
1 (2.9%)
the library staff for interlibrary lending is a more
trusted method of sharing than from one authorized user directly to a scholarly colleague.
Licensee’s Responsibility for
Actions of Authorized Users
Licenses vary in the degree that they require
licensees to assume responsibility for the actions of individual users. Some licenses require
licensees to take total responsibility for all user
actions, while others require the licensee to assist
the licensor in the event of suspected misuse of
the product and investigate and take corrective
action. Many licenses are silent on the matter,
which is the preferred approach for libraries.
The three principles documents are concurrent
in their recommendation that the licensee should
not be held responsible for the actions of end users. However, they also emphasize the library’s
responsibility to make reasonable efforts to notify
end users of any use restrictions. They present
these terms as follows: "A license agreement
should not hold the licensee liable for unauthorized
uses of the licensed resource by its users, as long
136
as the licensee has implemented reasonable and
appropriate methods to notify its user community
of use restrictions" (AALL).
"A license agreement should not hold NERL
or a NERL member institution liable for actions
of users, except to require the institution to make
reasonable efforts to notify its user community
of use restrictions" (NERL).
"Libraries should work with users to educate
them about proper use of electronic resources and
take reasonable measures to prevent unlawful
use, as well as with providers to halt infringing
activities if such become known. Nonetheless, the
library should not incur legal liability for actions
of individual users" (IFLA).
An example of current license language that
follows the principles regarding the responsibility of the licensee for the actions of authorized
users is:
The subscriber shall use reasonable efforts to
ensure that all authorized users are notiied of and
comply with the usage restrictions set forth in this
agreement. The subscriber shall not be liable for
breach of any of the terms of this agreement by
The Evolution of License Content
any authorized users provided that the subscriber
did not intentionally assist in or encourage such
breach or permit such breach to continue after
having actual notice thereof and provided that
the subscriber reasonably cooperates with the
licensor to prevent misuse.
An example of current license language that
does not follow the principles of licensee responsibility for the actions of authorized users is:
The subscriber assumes sole responsibility for
all use of [the product] by the subscriber and by
each authorized user.
Table 11 shows the data from the license review
set related to licensee responsibility for the actions
of end users. In every case, even though a license
may explicitly state that the licensee is not held
responsible for end user behavior, a requirement
exists that the licensee help investigate suspected
breaches by an end user.
The evolutionary trend regarding responsibility for user actions has been to stop requiring
the licensee to assume all responsibility for all
users. No license changed to require such total
responsibility for user actions and behavior. This
evolution is in keeping with the directions set
forth by the principles.
Modiication of License Terms
Licenses set forth mechanisms that enable licensors to modify the terms of the agreement in a
number of ways. Sometimes both parties must
agree in writing to any change in terms. Sometimes
the licensor will give the licensee advance notiication of a change in terms, and if the licensee does
not agree to those terms then further negotiation
must occur. In yet other licenses, if the licensor
does not receive a response from the licensee regarding the changed terms, then continued use of
the product is deemed to be an acceptance of the
changed terms. Some licensors now are simply
posting changed terms to their Web sites without
notiication to licensees.
The IFLA principles do not address the issue
of license modiication. The other two sets of principles concur that license terms should not change
without advance notiication and that there should
be an opportunity for the licensee to terminate
the agreement if the changes are not acceptable.
Table 11.
2006 Licenses
Licensee Not Responsible for User
Actions
Licensee Responsible for User Actions
Silent
35 (100%)
10 (28.6%)
6 (17.1%)
19 (54.3%)
Pre-2000 to 2006 Changes
Did Not Change
30 (85.7%)
Silent
19 (54.3%)
Licensee Not Responsible for User Actions
6 (17.1%)
Licensee Responsible for User Actions
5 (14.3%)
Changed
5 (14.3%)
Silent to Licensee Not Responsible for User Actions
3 (8.6%)
Licensee Responsible for User Actions to Silent
1 (2.9%)
Licensee Responsible for User Actions to Licensee Not Responsible for User Actions
1 (2.9%)
137
The Evolution of License Content
The relevant principles are as follows: "The terms
of the license should be considered ixed at the
time the license is signed by both parties. If the
terms are subject to change (for example, scope
of coverage or method of access), the agreement
should require the licensor or licensee to notify
the other party in writing in a timely and reasonable fashion of any such changes before they are
implemented, and permit either party to terminate
the agreement if the changes are not acceptable"
(AALL).
"If the terms of a license are subject to change,
an agreement should require the licensor to notify
NERL member institutions at least 90 days in
advance of implementation and permit institutions to terminate the agreement with a prorated
refund. Likewise, an agreement should specify
that NERL institutions will be given 30 days
notice and the option of terminating the agreement with a prorated refund if the product is to be
subject to substantive change (other than normal
updating)" (NERL).
An example of current license language that
follows the principles regarding the way in which
license terms may be modiied is:
The terms and conditions of this agreement may
be changed from time to time and the subscriber
will be notiied of all revisions that impact authorized user rights to access including concurrent
user restrictions, copyright and protection conditions, subscription cycles and payment terms. If
subscriber does not agree to the revised license
terms, it may terminate its subscription within
thirty days after receiving such revised license
terms. A failure to terminate the subscription
shall constitute acceptance of the revised license
terms. A subscriber shall be entitled to a prorated
refund for the remainder of the subscription cycle
for a subscription cancelled in accordance with
the terms and conditions of [this section].
This type of language is unusual among the
licenses in the review set. Prorated refunds are
138
generally only offered in conjunction with a reduction of product content. A common approach
to the matter is to only permit modiications to a
license if both parties agree in writing, but there
usually is no mention of a prorated refund if a
license is terminated.
An example of language that clearly is not in
alignment with the principles is as follows:
Licensor reserves rights to amend, remove, or add
to the terms of service at any time. Such modiications shall be effective immediately. Accordingly,
please continue to review the terms of service
whenever accessing or using this site. Your access
or use of the site after the posting of modiications to the terms of service will constitute your
acceptance of the terms of service, as modiied.
If at any time you do not wish to accept the terms
of service, you may not access or use the site. Any
terms and conditions proposed by you which are
in addition to or which conlict with these terms
of service are expressly rejected by the licensor
and shall be of no force or effect.
The data in Table 12 provides evidence from
the license review set that there is no best practice or standard emerging on the issue of terms
modiication. Silence is still largest category for
license terms modiication, but over the course
of the decade there was change in all directions.
The pattern of avoiding further negotiation on a
license by posting changed terms on a Web site
and expecting licensees to abide by them (with
or without prior notiication) has been adopted
slightly more than change to require new negotiations if there are modiications to a license.
License terms need to change as new situations
arise, and licenses should allow for this lexibility
to beneit both parties. No clear pattern exists for
the evolution of licenses in this category.
Perpetual Use/Archival Rights
Some licenses include continuing rights to access
content that was licensed during a certain time
The Evolution of License Content
period but for which there exists no current license.
The type of rights and the steps that need to be
taken in order to take advantage of such rights
vary. The licenses grant some archival rights
explicitly, explicitly state that no archival rights
exist, or remain silent on the matter. The three
principles documents concur that perpetual access
and archival rights should be addressed speciically in a license. They elaborate on the issue as
follows: "When permanent use of a resource has
been licensed, licensor should provide a usable
archival copy of the licensed content, including any
necessary interface. The license should specify the
conditions under which the licensee may access
or refer users to the archival copy" (AALL).
"When subscription-based or renewable use of
a resource has been licensed, a license agreement
should specify what, if any, access to the licensed
material would continue to be available after the
subscription period lapses" (AALL).
"A license agreement should state clearly what
access rights are being acquired by NERL or
NERL member institutions’ permanent use of the
content or access rights only for a deined period
of time. If the license provides for permanent use,
speciic detail should be provided regarding extent
of backile, method of access to backiles, and
assurance that access to backiles will continue
even if the institution or the consortium cancels
its agreement for ongoing access" (NERL).
"A license should include provision for affordable, perpetual access to the licensed information by some appropriate and workable means"
(IFLA).
"A license should address provisions for longterm access and archiving of the electronic information resource(s) under consideration and should
identify responsibilities for these" (IFLA).
An example of archival and perpetual rights
language found in a current license in the review
set that follows the principles is:
Table 12.
2006 Licenses
Requires
Renegotiation to
Change Terms
Failure to Respond to Notiication of
Changed Terms Equals Acceptance
Changed Terms Posted to Web
Site Without Notiication
Silent
35 (100%)
9 (25.7%)
8 (22.9%)
3 (8.6%)
15 (42.9%)
Pre-2000 to 2006 Changes
Did Not Change
22 (62.9%)
Silent
12 (34.3%)
Required Renegotiation to Change Terms
6 (17.1%)
Changed Terms Posted to Web Site Without Notiication
4 (11.4%)
Changed
13 (37.1%)
Silent, to Failure to Respond to Notiication Equals Acceptance
4 (11.4%)
Required Renegotiation to Silent
2 (5.7%)
Silent, to Required Renegotiation
2 (5.7%)
Silent, to Changed Terms Posted Without Notiication
2 (5.7%)
Required Negotiation, to Changed Terms Posted Without Notiication
1 (2.9%)
Failure to Respond to Notiication Equals Acceptance, to Required Negotiation
1 (2.9%)
Failure to Respond to Notiication Equals Acceptance, to Silent
1 (2.9%)
139
The Evolution of License Content
If a subscription lapses, licensor will provide
customers with access to material for the years
in which they held an online subscription. The
material will be accessed either from the licensor’s
server or from a third party server or by downloading electronic iles to the institution’s server.
An example of current license language for a
package of electronic journals that explicitly denies any archival rights or perpetual access is:
Upon termination of this agreement all online access to the product by the licensee and authorized
users shall be terminated.
rights granted varies widely across the licenses
reviewed. Some licenses commit to providing a
copy of the content on CD for those years that the
library held a subscription granting permanent
online access. Other licenses allow archival rights
only if the library is willing to purchase such a CD
at an extra cost. The cost presumably would be at
a discounted rate, but nothing is conirmed at the
time of signing the agreement. The technological
and inancial challenges inherent in providing
perpetual access and archival rights are likely
causes of the reluctance on the part of licensors
to include language of this nature in licenses.
Remote Access
Table 13 shows data gathered from the license
review set that indicates that the majority of
licenses today remain silent regarding archival
or perpetual use rights. Of the seven licenses
that changed over the decade, only one removed
archival rights altogether. The other six moved
either from explicit denial or from no mention
of archival rights to including them. While
this change is positive, the largest percentage
of licenses continues to ignore the issue with a
deafening silence. Finally, the type of archival
Remote access is access by authentication for
authorized users when they are not physically
located on the licensee’s premises. Licenses
explicitly permit such access, remain silent, or
explicitly prohibit it. The three principles documents are clear in their direction to permit remote
authenticated access to electronic content. Their
statements are as follows: "A license agreement
should recognize the afiliation of users with a
given library or institution, regardless of users’
Table 13.
2006 Licenses
Grant Perpetual Use/Archival Rights
Deny Perpetual Use/Archival Rights
Silent
35 (100%)
8 (22.9%)
2 (5.7%)
25 (71.4%)
Pre-2000 to 2006 Changes
Did Not Change
28 (80%)
Silent
25 (71.4%)
Grant Perpetual Use/Archival Rights
2 (5.7%)
Deny Perpetual Use/Archival Rights
1 (2.9%)
Changed
7 (20%)
Silent to Grant Perpetual Use/Archival Rights
4 (11.4%)
Deny Perpetual Use/Archival Rights to Grant Perpetual Use/Archival Rights
2 (5.7%)
Grant Perpetual Use/Archival Rights to Silent
1 (2.9%)
140
The Evolution of License Content
physical location and should allow for routine
remote access to licensed electronic information
resources" (AALL).
"A license agreement should deine authorized
users to include students, faculty, researchers,
and staff of the NERL member institutions, as
well as walk-in users of the institutions’ library
facilities. It should permit remote access by authorized users, except walk-in users, and include
students enrolled in oficial distance education
programs" (NERL).
"The license should provide access for all
of the users afiliated with a licensee, whether
institution or consortium, regardless of whether
they are on the licensee’s premises or away from
them" (IFLA).
An example of the type of language in a current license that follows the principles is:
Authorized users may access the service from
terminals or work stations from which they undertake work for the institution and from remote
sites or campuses.
The data gathered from the license review set
about remote access is presented in Table 14. The
issue largely has become noncontroversial. The
practice of denying remote access has vanished
from this pool of licenses. The practice was not
common even before pre-2000. All three-model
licenses explicitly permit remote access. Trust in
maturing authentication technology has helped
to make the question of remote access less challenging at the point of negotiation.
Usage Statistics
As libraries increased their expenditures for
licensed resources, the need to monitor usage
became essential. In 2003 Project COUNTER
(Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic
Resources) was established by a group of publishers and libraries to build a code of practice for
reporting usage statistics for electronic journals.
The number of publishers providing COUNTERcompliant statistics has been growing steadily,
even though requirements to do so are not routinely
part of licenses. The three principles documents
are concurrent in their recommendations for inclusion of usage statistics provisions in licenses.
They address the issue as follows: "A license
agreement should describe the usage statistics
collected or generated by the licensor or any third
parties, and the means available for the licensee
to access those statistics" (AALL).
"A license agreement should require the licensor to provide basic use data on a timely and
regular basis. In addition, the agreement should
Table 14.
2006 Licenses
Explicitly Allow Remote Access
Silent
35 (100%)
23 (65.7%)
12 (34.3%)
Pre-2000 to 2006 Changes
Did Not Change
26 (74.3%)
Explicitly Allowed Remote Access
14 (40%)
Silent
12 (34.3%)
Changed
9 (25.7%)
Silent to Explicitly Allowed Remote Access
7 (20%)
Explicitly Prohibited Remote Access to Explicitly Allowed Remote Access
2 (5.7%)
141
The Evolution of License Content
provide NERL member institutions the right and
opportunity to gather use and management data
independently at local sites" (NERL).
"The networked information provider should
offer usage (as opposed to user) data so that the
library licensee may assess the effectiveness of
the use of the resource" (IFLA).
An example of current license language that
addresses usage statistics is:
Licensor shall provide the subscriber with
COUNTER-compliant usage data on the articles
downloaded, by journal title, on a monthly basis
for private internal use by the licensor and the
subscriber only.
Table 15 reveals the data from the license
review set, and provide evidence that very few
licenses include a commitment from licensors to
provide usage data to licensees. Usage statistics
often are provided by licensors in 2006. The trend
has perhaps become so common that libraries are
no longer feeling the need to press publishers to
include the provision of usage data in a license.
FUTURE TRENDS
Of the 13 areas of licenses examined in this
study, eight of them showed movement toward
the spirit of the licensing principles or are irmly
in keeping with the principles already. In these
eight areas, the impact is that fewer and fewer
negotiations of these terms will be necessary
as licenses will usually include language that
is acceptable to libraries. Publishers have heard
the library community’s message in these areas.
These are all welcome trends.
One area, usage statistics, does not show
movement toward the licensing principles that
encourage discussion of the matter in licenses.
However, the practice of providing usage statistics in a standardized way is becoming much
more common, particularly with the advent of
COUNTER standards. In this regard, the licensing
principles helped encourage the entire community to address the issue, but neither the licensor
nor the licensee community seems to regard the
presence of a usage statistics section in a license
as essential as time marches on.
The remaining four areas, which are authorized site, electronic reserves and coursepacks,
indemniication, and modiication of license
terms, showed movement away from the spirit of
the principles or unchanging disagreement with
principles. The challenges presented by these areas
differ. Some may disappear as technologies evolve,
while others may continue to require negotiation
for a long time to come.
Table 15.
2006 Licenses
Explicitly Commit to Providing Usage
Statistics
Silent
35 (100%)
5 (14.3%)
30 (85.7%)
Pre-2000 to 2006 Changes
Did Not Change
29 (82.9%)
Silent
29 (82.9%)
Changed
6 (17.1%)
Silent, to Committed to Providing Usage Statistics
5 (14.3%)
Committed to Providing Usage Statistics, to Silent
1 (2.9%)
142
The Evolution of License Content
The deinition of authorized site is particularly challenging to some because of the wide
variation of organizational structures among
library parent organizations. A large “branch”
campus of one university with an enrollment of
10,000 students and graduate degree programs
is not the same as a small “branch” campus of
another university with 400 students that basically offers undergraduate classes for two years
and then sends the students to the main campus
to inish a degree. The unfortunate result from a
license that bases an authorized site on geographic
contiguity is that smaller branch campuses are
denied access to resources as they cannot afford
to license many products just for their small community. Publishers are moving away from the
deinition of an authorized site based on central
administration that the principles encourage.
Many academic libraries oppose authorized site
deinitions based on geographic contiguity for the
reasons given above, and a continuing struggle
in this area is likely.
The purpose and function of electronic
reserves and coursepacks are merging; just as
electronic reserves and online course management
systems are merging. A list of items developed
for use in a course preferably is housed within a
course management system so that it can be fully
integrated with assignments, online discussion,
quizzes, and so forth. Integrated library systems
have developed electronic reserve modules, but
unless those can be integrated into the worklow
or the online course management system in some
way, they will not be as useful and as used in the
future. The future of the printed coursepack is
growing dimmer, as students are increasingly resistant to paying large sums of money for printed
textbooks and coursepack material. The concept
of electronic reserve provisions in licenses relies
on the notion that a copy of a digital ile will be
placed on a server within the institution for a
temporary period of time. Linking technology
now has made it possible to simply provide a
list of links to electronic documents stored on
a vendor’s server within a course management
system, and for this, no explicit permission in a
license is needed. No signiicant movement toward
the inclusion of language that explicitly permits
electronic reserves and coursepacks is apparent,
as the principles encourage. Perhaps, though,
the need for such language is decreasing due to
evolving technologies.
Indemniication by the licensor of the licensee
as encouraged by the principles is almost nonexistent. The trend seems to be silence on this matter,
which could be regarded as in keeping with the
principles’ spirit of not requiring the licensee
to indemnify the licensor. This area of obvious
disagreement may continue to be resolved at the
point of negotiation by eliminating indemniication provisions from licenses entirely. From a legal
perspective including language that requires the
licensee to indemnify the licensor is beneicial to
the licensor, but since such language often is unacceptable due to the legal requirements within the
state of the licensee, licensors generally are willing to eliminate the clause. The presence of such
clauses in licenses may remain, with the burden
falling on the licensee to request removal.
Modiication of license terms is a complex
process. License negotiation requires a great
deal of effort for all parties. Understandably,
once a license is negotiated neither party wants
to reopen negotiations unless a critical change is
needed. However, requiring the licensee to abide
by any changes to the license over time without
formal acceptance is not acceptable according to
the principles. Some publishers are moving away
from requiring signed licenses to a statement of
terms and conditions on a Web site that is changed
as needed and requires no signature. Since there
is no discernible trend among the license review
set in this study, the future of this issue remains
unknown. What is clear is that there is considerable disagreement and uncertainty. A study of
trends and issues regarding the use of signed
licenses versus an online statement of terms and
143
The Evolution of License Content
conditions, and the reasons for choosing one over
the other, would be interesting.
CONCLUSION
Efforts in the library community to encourage
the development of licenses that meet the needs
of most libraries have had a positive impact over
the past decade. License language indeed has
evolved in ways that are in keeping with principles
established by librarians. Areas of concern and
luctuation still exist, but in general the licenses
of 2006 have language that is more acceptable to
libraries than licenses in effect prior to 2000.
REFERENCES
American Association of Law Libraries (2004).
Principles for licensing electronic resources.
Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://www.
aallnet.org/committee/reports/LicensingPrinciplesElecResources.pdf
Association of Research Libraries (1997). Principles for licensing electronic resources, inal
draft, July 15, 1997, by the American Association
of Law Libraries, the American Library Association, the Association of Academic Health Sciences
Libraries, the Association of Research Libraries,
the Medical Library Association, and the Special
Libraries Association. Retrieved November 17,
2007, from http://www.arl.org/scomm/licensing/principles.html
California Digital Library (n.d.). Checklist of
points to be addressed in a CDL License Agreement. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://
www.cdlib.org/vendors/checklist.html
144
International Coalition of Library Consortia
(1998). Statement of current perspective and preferred practices for the selection and purchase of
electronic information. Retrieved November 17,
2007, from http://www.library.yale.edu/consortia/statement.html
International Federation of Library Association
Committee on Copyright and Other Legal Matters
(2001). Licensing principles. Retrieved November
17, 2007, from http://www.ila.org/V/ebpb/copy.
htm
Klughist, A. C. (2000). LIBER licensing principles
for electronic information. Journal of Academic
Librarianship, 26(3), 199-201.
Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche (1998). Licensing principles. Retrieved
November 17, 2007, from http://www.kb.dk/liber/
currentinitiatives/licensing.htm
NorthEast Research Libraries (n.d.). Licensing
guidelines. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from
http://www.library.yale.edu/NERLpublic/licensingprinciples.html
Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law (1996).
Springield, MA: Merriam-Webster.
Schottlaender, B. (1998). The development of
national principles to guide librarians in licensing electronic resources. Library Acquisitions:
Practice and Theory, 22(1), 49-54.
University of California Libraries (n.d.). Principles
for acquiring and licensing information in digital
formats. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from
http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/cdc/
principlesforacquiring.html
145
Chapter IX
Copyright Implications for
Electronic Resources
Aline Soules
California State University, East Bay, USA
Donna L. Ferullo
Purdue University, USA
ABSTRACT
The chapter begins with an examination of the sections of copyright law that impact electronic resource
management, and reviews the various laws that have been enacted in recent years to attempt to delineate
appropriate uses of information in the electronic environment. In section two, the impact of copyright
is discussed in relation to particular types of electronic resources. The unique characteristics and challenges inherent in both access and format are discussed. Section three reports on responses to a series
of interview questions the authors posed to librarians working in a wide variety and type of libraries.
The goal was to elicit information about how librarians are managing to implement copyright law in
the daily reality of their increasingly electronic environments.
INTRODUCTION AND
BACKGROUND: COPYRIGHT
AND THE LAW
An understanding of the nuances of copyright
law and its relationship with other areas of library
law is critical for anyone whose responsibilities
include electronic resource management, which
today encompasses almost everyone. There are
basic elements of copyright that apply to all
information resources, regardless of format, but
the emergence of electronic resources and their
characteristics have brought particular concerns
into bold view. New laws have subsequently been
enacted to try to deal with these concerns and the
cycle continues as new concerns arise and new
bills are introduced to deal with them.
For a long time, people knew that copyright
existed. If they were employed in the library, they
took certain steps to inform the public of various
Copyright © 2008, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
limitations, for example, by posting oficial notices
on copying machines (U.S. Copyright Ofice,
Circular 21, 1998) or by using the guidelines set
forth in such documents as the revised Guidelines
for Classroom Copying of Books and Periodicals
(2001), agreed to by the Association of American
Publishers and the Author’s League of America.
However, copyright was, in large measure, disconnected from the daily work or something that
was dealt with if a problem occasionally arose.
Now that various types of electronic resources
are becoming a primary method of delivering
information, copyright is becoming an integral
part of daily work and the “gray” areas that were
laid aside for so long are now being considered.
In some ways, these laws have been with us and
are just now coming under intense scrutiny.
In other ways, there are new considerations to
incorporate.
A Review of the Basics
Copyright law is about balance. It weighs the
public’s right to use copyrighted works with the
rights of the copyright holder (not necessarily the
author). United States copyright law is based on
English copyright law, as irst enacted by the British Parliament in the Statute of Anne in 1710. The
Statute provided copyright protection for authors
for 14 years and was renewable for another 14
years if the author was still alive. This new law
was in response to a monopoly by publishers, in
particular the Crown of England, which was very
restrictive in what could be published. Authors
wanted more control over their works and the
Statute theoretically provided that. However, in
reality, the authors needed the publishers to print
their works, so there remained an unequal balance
of power. Nonetheless, the principle of balance
was established and remains a fundamental goal
to this day.
Our forefathers recognized the importance of
copyright to the future success of our new country,
believing that the dissemination of knowledge was
146
the key to an informed democracy. When they
drafted the constitution, they created copyright
law and gave authority over that law to Congress
through the Constitution:
Congress shall have the power … to promote the
Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors
exclusive Right to their respective Writings and
Discoveries. (United States, 1787)
The founding fathers wanted to encourage
citizens to create new works and the incentive
was to give them control over their work for
a limited period of time, but not so long as to
create a sinecure. This was the beginning of the
struggle to balance the rights of users and authors
(or owners) of copyrighted works, a struggle that
is increasingly raging today.
Within the federal government, the three major
players who have a role in different aspects of
copyright are Congress, the federal courts, and
the United States Copyright Ofice.
Congress is responsible for drafting legislation
for new laws and amending existing laws. The
irst copyright law was enacted by Congress in
1790. Since then, the most comprehensive updates
to the law were enacted in 1909 and 1976, the
latter being our current fundamental law. There
have been many amendments to the law over the
years, but there is only one copyright law—Title
17 of the United States code. The amendments
are merely changes to different sections within
that law.
To handle the functions associated with copyright law, the United States Copyright Ofice
was founded and eventually became a separate
department within the Library of Congress. Its
role is to administer and sustain the national
copyright system.
As copyright is a federal law, disputes are
settled in federal courts, which interpret the law.
Trials are held in federal district courts. If the
parties are dissatisied with the outcome of the
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
trial, they can ile an appeal in the Circuit court
for their district (there are 12). Appeals from those
courts are iled in the Supreme Court, which may
or may not choose to hear those cases.
In copyright, as in other areas of law, there is
statutory law and case law. Congress passes the
laws (statutory). Case law is the result of judicial
opinions in the courts. Even though they may
research what has been decided in each others’
courts, different Circuit courts can interpret the
law differently and their rulings are only binding
in their respective regions. While all courts must
begin in the same place—interpreting the current
law—some courts are known to be more sympathetic to one group over another. For example, the
Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes
New York, is perceived to favor publishers while
the Ninth Circuit, which includes California, is
perceived to favor the author or creator of a work.
As a result, litigants will go “forum shopping” to
ile suit in the Circuit that may give them the best
chance to win their case. It might appear at irst
glance that understanding the distinction among
courts and the different arenas of law is only for
lawyers, but it is equally important to anyone who
is trying to understand why some legal decisions
hold or maybe only appear to hold more weight
than others.
The Law and Electronic Resources
Under our current law (1976) and its amendments, there is automatic copyright protection
for works that are original and are “ixed in a
tangible medium of expression” (17 U.S.C. §101).
To be ixed, the work must be in a form that is
not merely transitory. If it can be perceived by a
person, machine, or device, then it is ixed. In the
1976 law, works eligible for copyright protection
had to fall into these eight categories:
1.
2.
Literary works
Musical works, including any accompanying
works
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Dramatic works, including any accompanying music
Pantomimes and choreographic works
Pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works
Motion pictures and other audiovisual
works
Sound recordings
Architectural works (17 U.S.C. §102a).
Over the years, many speciic types of works
have been added to the categories, for example,
computer programs (which are considered literary works) and Web sites. It should be noted,
however, that computer programs are sometimes
also protected by patents, another area of intellectual property law. As new electronic resources
are developed, if there is doubt about whether
copyright or patent applies, rights of ownership
may be sought via both avenues.
A work has to be original, but the originality
only has to be minimal in order to receive protection. In the early 1990’s, the court ruled in Feist
Publications Inc. vs. Rural Telephone Service Co
(1991) that an alphabetical listing in a white pages
telephone book did not have suficient originality
while in the Bellsouth Advertising & Publishing
Corp. vs. Donnelley Information Publishing, Inc
(1993) case, the court decided that a yellow pages
arrangement of listings by subject might have
suficient originality to be protected. This is an
example of an early form of electronic database,
as the data was stored electronically for purposes
of easy updating prior to printing. It is also an
example of a variation in ruling from one case
to another.
Automatic protection means that the copyright
holder does not have to register the work with the
United States Copyright Ofice nor place a copyright symbol (©) on the work. Many copyright
formalities were rescinded to bring United States
copyright law into harmony with international
copyright treaties; however, to move forward with
any litigation through the United States courts,
the work must irst be registered.
147
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
Not all works qualify for copyright protection.
Ideas are exempted; only the expression of ideas
is protected. Other unprotected areas include
facts, titles, names, short phrases, and slogans,
although some of these are protected through
other intellectual property laws such as patents
or trademarks. Also unprotected are works by
employees of the United States federal government whose work is a direct result of their jobs;
works whose copyrights have expired; and works
not ixed in a tangible medium of expression, for
example, an extemporaneous speech that remains
unrecorded. These works are now in the public
domain, free to be used.
Rights of Copyright Holders
Copyright holders (not necessarily the authors or
creators) have the exclusive right to:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
148
Reproduce the copyrighted work in copies
or phonorecords
Prepare derivative works based upon the
copyrighted work
Distribute copies or phonorecords of the
copyrighted work to the public by sale or
other transfer of ownership, or by rental,
lease, or lending
In the case of literary, musical, dramatic,
and choreographic works, pantomimes, and
motion pictures and other audiovisual works,
to perform the copyrighted work publicly
In the case of literary, musical, dramatic,
and choreographic works, pantomimes,
and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works,
including the individual images of a motion
picture or other audiovisual work, to display
the copyrighted work publicly
In the case of sound recordings, to perform
the copyrighted work publicly by means
of a digital audio transmission (17 U.S.C.
§106).
With electronic resources, those rights extend
to reproduction in electronic form.
The Right of First Sale
In the print world, copyright holders knew that
when their works were published to the world,
users would be able to resell the physical copies
they held, whether at garage sales, used bookstores, or online via ebay or some other venue
(17 U.S.C. §109). In addition, it also permitted
libraries to loan these materials and to engage in
interlibrary loan transactions. When information
is provided digitally, this right is far less clear.
In principle, many believe that this right should
continue; however, without having purchased the
information in a tangible form, it is dificult to
argue that this right continues to be transferred
to the user. In fact, often, the information is not
even purchased, but licensed or “rented” and
there have been discussions about this right for
a number of years.
Exemptions
Copyright holders’ rights have limitations, commonly called exemptions. One is the time limit
during which those rights apply. The latest extension, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension
Act, was enacted in 1998 and extended the rights
to the life of the author plus 70 years. In cases of
corporate creations, works for hire, and anonymous or pseudonymous works, the limit is 95 years
from the date of irst publication or 120 from the
date of creation, whichever is the irst to expire.
Due to the many changes in this area, determining
the exact expiration can be dificult, but works
published in the United States prior to 1923 can
safely be considered in the public domain. The
1998 act was challenged in the supreme court
case, Eldred vs. Ashcroft (Berkman Center, 2003).
The Supreme Court ruled that as long as the time
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
was not unlimited, Congress could establish the
duration of the copyright term. As more proitable
works near the timeline, it is likely that further
extensions will be sought.
Given the length of copyright protection, it
becomes even more critical for the public to understand and use the exemptions as appropriate,
such as fair use, library copying, and educational
use in classroom and distance learning. These
exemptions are not mutually exclusive and must
be applied to a situation wholly to ensure that all
rights under the copyright law are exercised.
Fair Use
Fair use is probably one of the most highly used
exemptions in education and possibly the most
confusing. Congress purposely built in lexibility
through the four-factor test that applies whether
the information is presented as a traditional or
an electronic resource. The irst is the purpose
and character of the use to be made of the work.
If the use is for educational purposes rather than
commercial purposes, then it weighs in favor of
fair use. The second factor, nature of the work,
protects factual works less than creative works.
The amount of the work being used is the third
factor, with less being preferred over more. In spite
of guidelines that suggest speciic amounts, for
example, the Conference on Fair Use (CONFU)
and multimedia, they are not the law and can be
misleading (University of Texas System, 1997,
2004).
The fourth and most contentious factor assesses market effect. If there is an impact on the
market for the work, then it generally weighs
against fair use. In terms of electronic resources,
a key consideration is Web exposure. If the use is
on a restricted access Web site, then there is less
impact on the market than if the work is made
available via the World Wide Web, creating the
potential for a great deal of harm to the market.
After the four factors have been applied to
the use of the work, a determination is made as
to the likelihood that the use is fair. Often, the
determination is unclear. At that point, users
must decide how much risk to assume, whether
individually, as a group, or as an institution. This
often presents another challenge, as institutions
are often more concerned about potential liability
than individuals. It is also an area that has received
heightened awareness and caused increased tension in recent years.
An important example of this occurred at
Cornell University. In a press release issued by
Cornell University’s Press Relations Ofice, the
following statement was made:
As part of ongoing discussions over the manner
in which Cornell University provides copyrighted
course content to students in digital formats, the
Association of American Publishers (AAP) and
Cornell recently announced a new set of copyright guidelines to govern the use of electronic
course materials on the library’s electronic course
reserves system, on faculty and departmental Web
pages, and through the various ‘course management’ Web sites used at Cornell. The guidelines
afirm that the use of such content is governed
by the same legal principles that apply to printed
materials (2006).
These new guidelines make it clear that parallels are being conirmed between traditional
and electronic formats. Also recommended are
methods to restrict access and the need to de-link
or take down information at the end of courses in
order to prevent wholesale distribution without
appropriate permission.
The Libraries Exemption
Section 108 of the copyright law is known as the
“libraries exemption,” which permits copying for
preservation, interlibrary loan, and private study
by users (17 U.S.C. §108). Each category has its
own requirements, but the overall section is not
digital-friendly. As of this writing, a Section 108
study group has been convened by the Library of
Congress to examine the changes to libraries and
149
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
archives as a result of the digital explosion. Their
charge is to determine what part of Section 108
might need to be amended in order to provide
the public, including copyright owners and users, the rights to which they are entitled under
the Constitution. The group is to submit their
recommendations to the Librarian of Congress in
2007 and is currently in the process of conducting
roundtable discussions around the country to hear
opinions from the ield. The group maintains a
Web site that provides details about the group,
its roundtables, and the public comments it has
gathered to date (Library of Congress, 2006).
Educational Exemptions
There are two exemptions for education both
included under Section 110 of the copyright law
(17 U.S.C. §110). Section 110(1) delineates the use
of copyrighted works for the classroom or faceto-face teaching. Basically, teachers and students
can display or perform any work legally made in
any format in the classroom provided the work has
some relation to the course content. On the other
hand, mounting that work or the performance of
that on a course Web site is a different matter, as
the Cornell guidelines make clear.
Section 110(2) speciies the use of works for
distance learning. This section is known as the
TEACH Act, that is, the Technology, Education,
and Copyright Harmonization Act (21st Century
Department of Justice Appropriations Authorization Act, 2002). This was an instance where
the law was lagging behind the technology and
severely limiting what and how educators could
use digital resources. It is an improvement over
its predecessor, but it falls far short of embracing
the diverse educational opportunities offered in
the digital world. It expands the exemption that
allows dramatic literary or musical works to be
used in distance education by adding the ability
to use dramatic works and audiovisuals, but only
in “limited and reasonable portions.” In addition,
before that exemption can be claimed, many
150
requirements must be met. Institutions must be
accredited and nonproit; must have a copyright
policy in place; and must distribute copyright
information to their faculty, students, and staff.
There are also technological restrictions and restrictions as to the type of material that qualiies
under this exemption. Throughout this amendment, there is the persistent restriction that the
use of digital works in a distance environment
is to be comparable to what takes place in a live
classroom. It is evident that vendors were quite
concerned that their revenue stream would be
negatively impacted if broad use of digital works
was allowed.
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
The year 1998 saw more than one amendment
to the copyright law. In addition to the Sonny
Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, Congress
passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA) (United States Copyright Ofice, 1998).
The DMCA is quite complex and controversial. It
offers immunity from liability for online service
providers under certain circumstances, which
immunity is helpful to educational institutions
that generally qualify as online service providers. There is also an anticircumvention provision
of technological protection systems that is quite
confusing and a bone of contention among many
players. When drafting this legislation, the intent
was to stop widespread piracy of digital works.
While this was well meant, the reality is of grave
concern to libraries and educational institutions
who foresee far greater restricted access to copyrighted works, as well as an erosion of fair use
rights. After all, if the material is digitally locked
up and circumventing the copy protection technology is a violation of the DMCA, how can a fair
use analysis even be applied in such situations?
Further, what happens to the right of irst sale?
There have been several cases, both criminal and
civil, brought under the DMCA, but the concern
remains that it is far more harmful than beneicial
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
to the general public and users of copyright protected works. In essence, it forces individuals and
institutions into negotiating contracts for the use
of materials and determining the rights of each
party to the contract. The DMCA is constantly
being reviewed and legislation introduced to
clarify and reine the statute. One aspect of the
DMCA is that every three years, the United States
Copyright Ofice is required to hold hearings on
the possible need for exemptions. On November
22, 2006, the librarian of Congress issued a statement regarding six exemptions that would apply
for the next three years. The exemption of most
interest to this discussion is as follows:
Audiovisual works included in the educational
library of a college or university’s ilm or media
studies department, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of making compilations of portions of those works for educational
use in the classroom by media studies or ilm
professors. (United States Copyright Ofice,
Statement, 2006)
While this can be viewed as a small step towards redressing the copyright balance, it should
be remembered that it is very limited (to media
studies or ilm professors) and only in effect for
the next three years, at which time a determination will be made as to whether to continue this
exemption or expunge it. However, it is the irst
time that any exemption of this type has been
introduced.
Orphan Works
Another pending legislative issue, as of this writing, is the orphan works issue. Orphan works are
works which are still protected by copyright but
where it is dificult, if not impossible, to identify or
locate the copyright owner to seek permission to
use the work. As the duration of copyright becomes
increasingly longer, more works are falling into
this no man’s land. The United States Copyright
Ofice held roundtable discussions to determine
the issues and concerns of all parties. In January
2006, they submitted to Congress their report
which was based on the discussion. A house bill
on orphan works was introduced in May 2006
and subsequently incorporated into H.R.6052 entitled the “Copyright Modernization Act of 2006”
(Public Knowledge, 2006). Unfortunately, this
bill died due to the fact that additional unrelated
restrictions were added regarding music licensing. The intent of the orphan works section of this
legislation was to reduce the liability of users of
orphan works should the copyright owner come
forward. Should similar legislation be introduced
and passed at some future time, it would allow for
unknown numbers of orphan works to be used in
numerous ways which would beneit the public.
Further, as information proliferates on the Web,
inadvertent digitization of an orphan work would
result in less harsh consequences than might currently be the case.
The International Scene
The United States is part of the international
community in harmonizing copyright laws
around the world, something that is increasingly
critical with the growth of the World Wide Web
and electronic resources generally. It is in our
best interest on many fronts to work with other
countries in having uniform copyright laws, especially given the digital nature of many works
and the international exchange and collaboration
on multi-authored works. The challenge is that it
is dificult to keep up with the national scene, let
alone the international one. It would be impossible to cover the international scene fully in this
chapter; however, a couple of highlights should
be considered.
In 1989, the United States became a signatory
to the Berne Convention, an international copyright treaty. In order to be a party to the treaty, the
United States had to remove some of the formalities associated with U.S. copyright law, such as
151
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
the registration and copyright notice requirement
(see previous section). Unfortunately, that placed
many items formerly in the public domain back
under copyright, but this is all part of an effort to
promote globalization of copyright laws.
Another major player on the international
copyright scene is the World Intellectual Property
Organization (WIPO), an agency of the United
Nations. They are responsible for promoting and
protecting intellectual property throughout the
world. This organization, however, focuses more
on protecting owners’ rights than promoting users’
rights to intellectual property (World Intellectual
Property Organization, 2006). One example of
this is WIPO’s support of database protection
legislation coming out of the European Commission (2006). This type of protection is more
in favor of owners than the protection currently
afforded by United States legislation. This legislation has been under consideration and discussion
for almost ten years, but no inal determination
has yet been made.
Legislation that is closer to home, but still
international, is the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) (1992). This agreement
among Canada, the United States, and Mexico
deals with trade regulations, but copyright is
impacted because these three countries have
different copyright laws and as electronic information travels back and forth as a “commodity,”
different regulations apply in each of the three
countries.
The intricacies of both international and United
States copyright laws can potentially impact the
use of electronic resources, but copyright is not
the only regulator. Many electronic resources
are governed by contract, not copyright law.
Contracts set the terms of use for the product.
When managing electronic resources, contracts
must be reviewed to ensure that the use of these
resources complies with contract terms. An
analysis of copyright law and its exemptions is
the next step in the process. For details about
152
contracting for electronic resources, please see
the chapter on licensing.
COPyRIGHT, THE NATURE OF
ELECTRONIC INFORMATION, AND
ITS DELIVERY
The law is slowly evolving to accommodate
electronic resources and to try to address the
principle of balance that has been the foundation
of United States copyright law from its beginning.
It is useful to look at the particular characteristics
and nature of electronic resources to understand
the challenges this represents.
When the book was invented, the world of
information underwent a revolution. Prior to
that, the oral tradition was the vehicle by which
information was conveyed from one person to
another. Print was a major change. Today, we
are experiencing another revolution, in this case
involving far more than a single transfer from oral
to print. The nature of information itself is not
that different from the past, although there is a
great deal more of it—facts, opinions, iction, the
human mind made manifest through prose and
poetry, sharing discoveries. The change is really
in the packages in which that information comes.
To understand the relationship of copyright laws
and electronic resource management, it is useful
to look briely at some of the ways information
is delivered.
To do this, we have organized this section
to discuss access, that is, platforms and other
ways to reach information—the Internet and
World Wide Web, course management systems,
electronic reserves, institutional repositories, and
interlibrary loan—and formats, also including
new and emerging formats—electronic databases,
electronic journals and articles, electronic books,
digitized print material, and media and streaming
media. We end the section with a brief discussion
of the blurring of information among creators and
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
users, the possibilities of future formats, and the
importance of thoughtful copyright decisions as
these developments evolve.
Access: The Internet and World Wide
Web
The Internet granddaddy that enables electronic
information to be delivered has been around for
longer than many people realize. The foundations
of the Internet were developed in the 1960’s and
the Internet itself was irst introduced to the public
in 1972 (Berners-Lee, 1996). After being used by
the Department of Defense for a number of years,
it expanded from being a network used by the
government and scholars to an open environment,
available to anyone who could afford a domain
name and server space, and had the ability to create or pay for code to make information available
(Leiner et al., 2005).
The current World Wide Web content, which
travels over the Internet, includes material that
appears only in electronic form, material that
appears both in electronic and print form, material that is copyright-controlled, material in the
public domain, material that copyright owners
permit users to use freely or with credit or with
other restrictions—in other words, every type of
copyright condition imaginable. What is clear,
however, is that the moment the content is issued, there is a copyright condition attached.
If it is not in the public domain by virtue of its
being issued by the federal government or being
taken from content that is older than the current
length of copyright, then the copyright belongs
to someone (individual, author, group, association, etc.), whether that copyright holder provides
a statement permitting use in full or in part or
whether no statement appears.
It is possible for the copyright holder to place
the information on the Web “as is” or, if the holder
wishes to restrict its use, to introduce some sort
of technological device that prevents copying or
downloading (protected by the DMCA). When
issuing information without such a technological
restriction, the copyright holder should be aware
that it is easy for users to copy, print, or cut and
paste the information regardless of what printed
restrictions may be listed on the site. Even with a
technological restriction in place, if a user chooses
to circumvent it, in violation of the DMCA, the
holder has no recourse unless the offender is
caught—a serendipitous event at best.
Access: Learning (or Course)
Management Systems
An institution’s learning management system is
another access route to the library’s electronic
information; however, in this case, the environment is controlled because authentication is required both on campus and for remote use, and
is restricted to class enrollees. In spite of this
control, it is possible for the professor to allow
“guest” access to a course site. That guest access
can be set up to exclude information sources,
as is generally requested by the institution, but
it is controlled by the professor, who should be
educated in the reasons for that requirement.
In addition, there are sometimes issues with
the URLs that link the user from the learning
management system to the full text in electronic
databases, particularly in the case of remote
use, and the professor must ensure that the links
“work” from noncampus sites on a “persistent”
basis. The technical challenges involved in that
process make it tempting to download full text
documents from the electronic database to remount in PDF format, which is making a digital
copy. While there are advantages, such as making user access more reliable (particularly when
users have a variety of computer capabilities to
receive information) or setting up the PDF ile
to prevent copying, downloading, and so forth.
(although that is optional on the part of the person
mounting the ile), it is not appropriate. It is easily
assumed that because copyright is already paid,
there is “no harm done,” but making such a copy
153
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
requires permission and, when required, the payment of copyright fees. This issue is speciically
addressed in the Cornell guidelines, which will
provide library staff with additional support as
they work to educate their users. If links prove
too dificult to establish, it is possible to provide
faculty with templates that provide descriptions
for users on how to access information items for
themselves.
In the case of courses that are fully part of
distance learning, the TEACH Act eases some
restrictions. The information does not change, but
the conditions do. Details of the act are covered
in the previous section.
As a result of these various issues, while the
contract may be clear, some user knowledge of
copyright guidelines is needed to promote an
understanding of what is and is not appropriate,
whether information is accessed directly from the
electronic database or through a learning/course
management system.
Another access mechanism for electronic database information is for a commercial provider
to enable searching through sites such as Google,
Yahoo, and so forth. In this case, the user may
get a list of search results that includes links to
indexed or even abstracted information, but to
retrieve the full text, the user will be asked to
pay-per-access. This method of access is fully
controlled and the information is paid for in the
same way as a widget. In this scenario, the model
is structured on an industrial rather than an intellectual property basis.
In addition, there is Google Scholar, which
enables users to set preferences for the institution
to which they are afiliated and to search databases through Google in the same way as they
would search the open Web on regular Google.
The advantage is that copyright protections are
fully in place; the disadvantage is that users, particularly novice users, are frequently unaware of
what they are actually searching and when back
on the open Web or Google, they are confronted
154
with requests for payment that they do not fully
understand. This too requires education.
Access: Electronic Reserve Systems
A consideration when it comes to digitized articles
and books is electronic reserve systems, generally administered by libraries. Under copyright,
fair use is one option when it comes to e-reserve
content. Which of the following determinations
will be made? Will library staff apply fair use one
time then seek permission for subsequent uses,
will they require permission for every use, or
will they apply fair use each time that the library
owns or has rights to a copy of work in print or
electronic form? In the case of electronic content,
are there contractual obligations that will dictate
uses for electronic reserves?
As electronic reserves are a dominant resource
in higher education at this point in time, these
questions are critical and the decisions libraries
make are gathering attention. Publishers express
escalating concern about the use and/or digitization of materials without appropriate permissions
or payment and there is controversy over whether
the library continues to have special rights, as they
do with print reserves, or whether these pieces of
information are similar to course packs or course
readers, subject to full requirements for copyright
permissions with or without fair use. While the
Cornell guidelines address the issue of what is provided in a learning/course management system,
they are equally applicable to electronic reserves.
In fact, the Cornell guidelines may prove to be a
watershed in the evolution of electronic resource
management from a copyright perspective.
It should be noted, however, that errors in
copyright do work in two ways. In licensing
databases, libraries pay copyright fees for the appropriate use of those materials, whether for class
or research purposes. Faculty, however, may not
be fully aware that the item they want is available in these resources and may seek permission
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
unnecessarily. If they ask that an item be put on
electronic reserves, however, library staff will
generally check to see if that item is available in a
licensed database as a irst step in their procedures
and will pursue permissions only if it is not.
If it is determined that an item is in a licensed
database, either the library staff or the faculty
member can provide a link (hopefully persistent)
through an electronic reserves system or a learning/course management system with conidence
that copyright requirements are met. In the case
of faculty, it is possible to provide a link through
a personal Web site, but then it is necessary to
ensure that authentication is required at some
point before the user can access the item.
These methods generally take care of articles;
however, book chapters and whole books are
another matter. Whole books are generally still
placed on traditional reserves (unless they come
in electronic form), but book chapters are another
matter. To make a book chapter available electronically, either purchase of an electronic form
or the digitization of a chapter from a print book
is needed. From the publisher perspective, either
condition requires seeking copyright permission
and this is not always granted. From the library
perspective, fair use analysis is an option that
should be applied. This is currently a source of
tension.
In fact, it is impossible to know what is permissible until that permission is sought. In the Taylor
& Francis license, for example, the following
statements are included:
•
•
“For the avoidance of doubt, the Licensee
may not incorporate all or any part of the
Licensed Materials in Course Packs and
Electronic Reserve collections without the
prior written permission of the Publisher or
the Publisher’s Representative, which may
set out further terms and conditions for such
usage.”
“A link to the Licensed Material may be
incorporated in Electronic Reserve collec-
tions” (Taylor & Francis Group Journals,
2006).
On the other hand, an e-mail on the SerialSt
listserv provided the following information regarding the practices of Haworth Press: “Right
now, Haworth Press allows the preparing of
coursepaks [sic] from journal articles at no charge,
if the library subscribes to our journals. It is our
way of expressing appreciation to the library”
(Cohen, 2006).
While it should be said that the irst scenario is
the more likely condition, it is clear that publisher
practices vary.
The challenges in the permission-seeking process include the murkiness of fair use analysis, as
described above, the cost of permissions, and the
pressure of time, as faculty often make decisions
about materials close to the time they wish to use
them, and that time is not suficient to secure that
permission. Thus, both the cost of permissions
and also the time to secure them are not necessarily built into the infrastructure. Publishers are
responding more quickly to permissions requests;
however, there are occasions when the publisher’s
time frame is impractically long and other occasions when the requestor comes to realize that no
answer is an answer. The budget issue, however,
is the requestor’s to manage.
Access: Institutional Repositories
This relatively new effort, primarily in academic
or research libraries, is an attempt to make information available without the expenses incurred
through established publishing routes for electronic information. Copyright discussions take
place over the rights of creators, users, and the
institution that supports the repository. Authors
who allow their creations to be made available in an
institutional repository are generally not expecting that information to garner them income in a
commercial sense. They are primarily interested
in sharing their work; however, they do want to
155
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
retain their full rights to that information, to be
cited appropriately, to gain recognition, and to be
rewarded inancially through the indirect route
of tenure and promotion. As long as they remain
connected to the institution where the repository resides, matters generally lie fallow. If they
choose to change their afiliation to a different
institution and wish to switch that information
from one repository to another, it is best for some
contractual agreement to be in place prior to the
original mounting of the information.
Another concern is institutional repositories
that present students’ work, for example, theses
or dissertations. Students have long been subject to graduation requirements that involve the
submission of their material to a commercial
source for these types of materials; however, with
the institutional repository, there may either be
requirements for submission to both or the submission requirement may be switched from the
commercial source to the institutional repository.
When this practice of mounting student dissertations on the Web began, there was some question
about whether the material had already been
“published,” and some newly-minted engineering
PhDs who pursued academic careers found that
they were unable to rework their research into
publishable articles for tenure. This issue seems
to have abated as the practice becomes more commonly considered and more familiar.
The establishing of institutional repositories
brings into play not only user rights, but also
creator rights. Faculty, students, or anyone who
submits material for inclusion in an institutional
repository may have the same rights as any other
creator, per copyright law, but the open nature of
institutional repositories is such that there is a need
to clarify the boundaries of these rights in advance.
One attempt to deal with these still-gray areas
is the Creative Commons license (2006). This
and similar types of licenses are focused on the
importance of sharing and crediting information
and not concerned with monetary recompense.
As is stated on the Creative Commons Web site,
156
“Creative Commons provides free tools that let
authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily
mark their creative work with the freedoms they
want it to carry. You can use CC to change your
copyright terms from ‘All Rights Reserved’ to
‘Some Rights Reserved.’ ” They continue by saying, “We’re a nonproit organization. Everything
we do—including the software we create—is free”
(Creative Commons, 2007). The development of
the Creative Commons has become a grass roots
groundswell, but still depends on user good will.
It does provide templates, however, which express
the general principles of appropriate sharing and
provide a framework within which to work.
There are also established networks, such as the
social science research network, that act very much
like institutional repositories, housing working
papers that may or may not appear eventually in
more traditional journals. While the same copyright conditions apply, those who submit papers
are seeking dissemination, feedback, and credit,
not direct monetary recompense, and they have
no expectations that their work will be subject to
the same copyright restrictions as is the case with
commercial enterprises. They do, however, rely
on user goodwill in the same way as those who
invoke Creative Commons license options.
Access: Interlibrary Loan
This area has now evolved into an almost solely
electronically based service. Exceptions include
whole books and those articles that are restricted
from electronic transfer by publishers. The availability of systems such as Ariel has made it possible
for libraries to “loan” articles and book chapters
through electronic means. Electronic versions
are made available for limited periods of time
(generally 30 days) and users must authenticate
to gain access to the electronic item that has
been “loaned.” Once that access is gained, they
may print or download the items from a Web
site behind the authentication. This reduces the
time it takes for articles and book chapters to be
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
made available, but the system hinges on user
ethics. If a document is downloaded, the user can
share it with others. If users have the full Adobe
Acrobat program, not just the free reader, they
could even choose to alter the document before
distributing it to colleagues, and so forth. It is
useful here to remember that it is Section 108 of
the U.S. copyright law that permits copying for
interlibrary loan, and that this section is now being reviewed (see Section 1). What changes will
result are still unknown.
Format: Electronic Databases
The most common electronic databases are integrated electronic information sources that are
highly controlled by their commercial providers.
Access requires subscription because commercial
information providers have a great deal invested in
this information. They contract with publishers to
include information sources (articles, news, book
chapters, conference proceedings, journals, etc.)
in their databases. They create indexes, which
are not merely a list (like the telephone book),
but involve complex algorithms and programming and, in some cases, human intervention to
ensure that the information is retrievable through
multiple search strategies. Abstracts may be taken
directly from the original content or written by
staff members who work for or are contracted
by the company. Some databases include only
indexes; some include indexes and abstracts, yet
others also include full text. That full text may
be available in html or PDF format or both. Information is updated on a continual basis, in this
case by the addition of new pieces of information
or by the withdrawal of information for various
reasons, for example, a change in a contract with
a publisher or a copyright case, such as New York
Times Co., Inc., et al. v. Tasini et al. (FindLaw for
Legal Professionals, 2001). In this case, freelance
authors iled a lawsuit alleging that their copyrights
were infringed when some of their articles were
placed in electronic databases by their publishers
and without their permission. Their contract with
the publishers was silent on the issue of electronic
rights and only speciically cited print. The authors won their case, but in many ways, it was a
Pyrrhic victory. Their articles were pulled from
the databases and future contracts with authors
were amended to include electronic rights for
publishers.
In addition to text databases, there are numeric
databases with data sets. There are differences
in indexing, but the search and retrieval process
for the user is similar. Some numeric or numeric
and text databases are time-delayed, for example,
information from the stock market, but some offer real-time, streaming data. Protection on these
databases is particularly critical, and costs for
real-time data are higher than for time-delayed
information. Corporations, particularly inancial
ones, will pay signiicant money for real-time
data; educational institutions generally operate
with time-delayed information. Both, however,
are copyright-protected.
Users generally sign contracts for electronic
database information and when contracts are
signed, the conditions of the contract prevail over
copyright law if the contract signs away such
rights. The language in the contract should include
a provision that preserves the rights permitted by
copyright law. Users essentially divide into two
groups—corporate and educational. Corporate
contracts are expensive and restricted to corporate
employees or third party contractors, who may
be asked to sign nondisclosure or other agreements prior to being given access. In the case of
educational users, the cost is generally cheaper.
The information may also be slightly different
in terms of what’s included. For an educational
institution, the general rule of thumb is that the
information is available to their primary clientele
(students, faculty, and staff) and, in the case of
the libraries afiliated with public institutions,
“walk-ins,” that is, those who physically walk
into the library building. For administrative units
in the institution, however, there may be more
157
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
restrictive conditions and those units may pay
a different fee from the fee paid by the library,
depending on the database and its intended use.
What is important from a copyright perspective
is the deinition of “educational use.” It does not
mean any use that takes place in an educational
institution, but is restricted to uses that are educational in nature.
For public libraries, the issue is more complicated because their user base is not as easily
deined. They have struggled to meet the vendor
need for a deinition by trying to limit remote
access to the residents of their jurisdiction’s
geographical boundaries, but there have been
dificulties in implementing that deinition.
In terms of remote use, generally only the
primary clientele is granted access and authentication is required. The libraries are responsible
for putting these conditions in place; however,
if a primary user chooses to share access with
family or friends, for example, there is little the
database provider or the libraries can do in the
way of prevention, other than providing education
about the appropriate use of commercial electronic
database information and taking action if such
violations come to light.
Over time, however, as vendors ind more
and more ways of tracking activity, a number of
loopholes will undoubtedly be illed. It is also one
of the reasons that tension has increased over the
last few years—vendors now have more ways of
monitoring copyright restrictions than was the
case in the print world.
Format: Electronic Journals and
Articles
The focus in these cases is full-text access. While a
journal run is often available through an electronic
database that provides indexing and abstracting,
it cannot be browsed in quite the same way as a
print run. There are electronic databases, such as
JSTOR, which began as a way to digitize, archive,
and make available the full text of the journals,
158
but which also offer ever-growing sophistication in their search capability. Contracts again
prevail and the conditions of use are the same as
for electronic databases; however, these sources
have a slightly different orientation, as the irst
focus was on journal content and search capability was added later, whereas electronic databases
began with indexing and abstracting and added
full text access later. Some journal archives still
require an indexing electronic database so that
users can conduct a subject search for a particular
article (either in electronic or print format), unless the user knows the exact article wanted or
simply wants to browse a particular title. There
are many efforts to digitize journals and there are
embargos, both in electronic databases and also
in electronic journal sources, in order to protect
copyright and ensure that institutions continue
to purchase current issues, whether in print or
electronic format. This is driven by the desire
to protect copyright in order to preserve income
streams, essentially a protection for the fourth
fair use factor of “effect on the market.”
There are also electronic-only journals. They
can be contracted like electronic journals available
through a database or they can be available over
the World Wide Web. If on the Web, the same
challenges apply when it comes to protecting
copyright as apply to other information provided
over the Internet, unless some technological
restriction is in place. In most cases, however,
the goal is dissemination rather than income, in
which case, asking users to credit the journal is
more important than whether they use or re-use
the information.
Format: Electronic Books
Electronic books are a more recent development
in electronic information resources. There are
commercial providers that contract with publishers to provide certain books in their electronic
book databases. These are much like electronic
databases for journal articles because these ven-
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
dors provide packages of books, for example,
ebrary, netLibrary. Fortunately, it is possible to
download individual records for these items,
enabling faculty and students to retrieve them in
searches. Electronic books that are most used in
academic libraries are those chosen by faculty
as class textbooks or as supplementary reading
(generally a particular chapter). Electronic books
are also very popular in public libraries.
The advantages of electronic books include
such features as increased search capability within
the book and the ability to highlight, dog-ear, and
so forth without “damaging” the book for the next
person. One disadvantage is that reading an entire
book online is not an easy prospect, although some
books are good candidates for this format when
users need only subsets of pages—a chapter or
an extract of some sort. Another challenge comes
either with the number of simultaneous copies
available (usually at test or exam time), an issue that
is license-based; however, in spite of the “parallel”
to the print book that may be checked out, users
tend not to understand why they cannot access
the electronic book. This may be due to technical
problems, which is the most common reason in
academic libraries, or because the electronic book
disappears after a certain number of viewings, a
condition that occurs primarily in public libraries. Another disadvantage is copyright-based.
Generally printing is restricted to one page or
just a few pages at a time. It is presumed that the
inconvenience will deter extensive copying of
large amounts of the book. The vendor’s statistics
may reveal whether that is true or not. Most users
complain about the disadvantages or work around
them. If they understand why they are not gaining
access, they wait and try to access the book later.
As for printing, this is the feature users ind most
irritating. They can resort to online reading, which
is feasible, but not popular. They generally try to
print in small batches. If they are in the library
when they are trying to work with electronic
books, they will come to a service desk, offering
an opportunity to provide a brief explanation of
how these resources work.
Some electronic books are now purchased individually from commercial sources with the entire
attendant licensing conditions attached, making
them more complex to purchase than is the case
with books in print. Some electronic books are
made available over the Internet by individuals or
groups. These books are either digitized versions
of public domain titles or of original works created
by the person mounting them. These materials
may provide useful access, particularly to remote
users, but all of these titles are subject to the same
copyright “dos and don’ts” as any print book or
as any agreed-upon contract requires, whether
negotiated or click-through.
Another feature that affects copyright is beaming. It is possible to beam an item from PDA to
PDA or to computer. Presumably publishers will
ind a way to control or track that through technological means.
The future is likely to provide continuously
improving technology, whether through electronic book readers or through the increasingly
multipurpose PDA (who does not have a public
domain title like The Last of the Mohicans on a
PDA?), but, in the meantime, electronic books
offer a key feature that users want—anywhere
availability anytime.
Format: Digitized Print Material
The amount of electronic information is increasing daily, both in terms of new material and also
because of the intervention of individuals and
groups to digitize print formats.
JSTOR is an example of the mass digitization
of journal issues and a further example of an
operation that works comfortably within the law
and with the consent of publishers. To achieve
this, they make agreements with publishers to
restrict digitization of current issues for a certain
length of time, three to ive years being most common, and to “move the wall” each year as issues
159
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
become older than the embargo period and they
are then permitted to update the title with another
year’s worth of issues. Certain titles, however, are
entirely excluded if JSTOR is unable to reach an
agreement with a publisher. As a result, JSTOR
is able to digitize retrospective material within
the conines set by publishers and can be secure
in the knowledge that they have met copyright
requirements as set by publishers.
The scenario for the digitization of books,
however, is a very different story and, unlike the
quiet efforts of JSTOR, a very public one. Google’s
grand vision is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”
(Quint, 2004). To that end, they have developed
the Google Scholar project and have contracted
with major research libraries (originally Harvard,
Oxford, Stanford, the University of Michigan and
New York Public Library) to digitize their collections. This digitization includes works in the
public domain and works that are still protected
by copyright. Since Google’s irst announcement,
work has progressed, but not without objections
from copyright holders.
Lawsuits have been iled by publishers against
Google and the Scholar project, but as of this
writing the cases have yet to be heard in court. If
the cases do reach the courts, one theory is that
Google will claim fair use as its defense. Google
will more than likely argue that, under fair use,
their use of the copyrighted works is a transformative one. In essence, in order to make a new
or transformative work, they must use the entire
original work. On the other side, publishers will
more than likely claim that all Google is doing
is making a copy and that the only change is in
the format, thus not rising to the level of a new
creative or transformative work. In the publishers’
view, it is quite simply a derivative work without
any transformative value. Not surprisingly, courts
in the various circuits have different views on
what constitutes transformative use (see Section
1 for an explanation of this disparity). It remains
to be seen as to whether the courts’ analyses and
160
decisions will favor Google and its Scholar project
or the publishers. Many in the library community
and beyond are closely monitoring the legal developments for this initiative, understanding that
much is at stake not only for Google, but also for
all other mass digitization projects.
Format: Media and Streaming Media
Media has generally been subject to more restrictive copyright use guidelines than has text.
Streaming media is no different, whether in audio,
video, or some learning object format. The advent
of the MP3 player and the iPod resulted in a greater
effort to provide downloadable information with
clear statements as to whether the information is
free or fee. Various music sources now provide
easy download capability and have set prices for
such downloads at an individually affordable
level. This encourages copyright-appropriate use,
although there is great vigilance on the part of
groups such as the Recording Industry Association
of America. There have been regular references to
RIAA activity in such publications as Edupage,
Educause’s electronic newsletter that provides
short news briefs on information technology
issues and IT news related to higher education.
Podcasting and vodcasting are developing trends
that will no doubt push the copyright boundaries
once again.
There is also more integration of media with
text, for example, encyclopedias with audio pronunciation, video clips illustrating motion, and
so forth. Off-air taping, a copyright challenge
in the preelectronic information world, is not
copyright-legal to stream without permission.
Prevention is however still not technically possible, but requires education.
Video information sources can be categorized.
Commercial movies are restricted from a copyright perspective; however, educational media
are purposely less controlled. Annenberg, for example, offers teachers professional development,
resources, and activities on a free basis and it is
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
possible to make arrangements to stream media
selections through a learning/course management
system as well as directly. A third category is
the individual use category, whether an item is
rented or purchased. It is illegal to make a duplicate copy; an additional copy should be rented
or purchased. A word should also be said about
international availability. There have been cases
where an individual has purchased a movie in
one country and found that it cannot be viewed
in another. These types of restrictions are built
into the products. Objections have been made in
certain cases, but, as yet, these limitations continue
to be part of the technology.
This is an area which includes multiple library types. Academic and public libraries have
offered audio and visual media for some time in
the formats of the day—LPs, CDs, videos, DVDs.
For some time, they just purchased a standard
copy or copies and loaned them to users. In some
cases, this may still continue; however, for many
libraries, the contract world has entered into the
picture. Libraries may pay extra for what are called
“educational” media in order to be able to show
them in classrooms or at free public library events
in their meeting rooms. For commercial media in
the form of the latest movie, public libraries can
now license through Swank, the nontheatrical
distributor of motion pictures (Swank, 2006).
Some libraries contract through a service such as
Netlix to get titles on a one-time basis periodically. In some cases, however, the fact that Netlix
does not provide invoicing acceptable to various
regulatory bodies prohibits such contracts. In
those cases, libraries are reduced to negotiating
with individual distributors or sending individual
users to services such as Netlix and Blockbuster
to pursue individual rentals. This limits the renter
to “home use,” however, as that is the copyright
restriction in these cases. For some libraries, providing commercial ilms is particularly dificult
in light of copyright and other considerations;
however, the cost of the copyright permissions
is generally the biggest hurdle.
Blurring Information and Future
Formats
Wikis, blogs, MySpace, Facebook, instant messaging, and what is generally known as social
software are recent developments that blur the
information lines between creator and user.
Wikipedia is an excellent example of how creators and users essentially forego copyright in the
interests of putting information “out there.” An
article in the New Yorker on the 25th anniversary
of Wikipedia’s existence elaborated on the challenges of the reliability, maintenance, upkeep, and
management of this information source (Schiff,
2006). While the moment the information is supplied, it is under copyright, the creators are not
known and Wikipedia disclaims ownership. In
fact, they invoke a principle known as copyleft,
“the practice which removes restrictions on the
distribution of copies and modiied versions of a
work for others and requires the same freedoms
be preserved in modiied versions”(GNU, 2006).
Wikipedia states: “The Wikimedia Foundation
does not own copyright on Wikipedia article
texts and illustrations. It is therefore useless to
e-mail our contact addresses asking for permission to reproduce content.” (Wikipedia, 2006).
Copyright cannot apply, as the creators should
be aware that their words are unassignable. This
brings the discussion of the nature of information
full circle—back to the Internet and the endless
stream of information that it can now provide.
The constantly shifting information on the
Web is very easily manipulated. Copyright is
essentially disclaimed by Wikipedia because its
information can literally change daily. Other Web
sites, however, may not issue such disclaimers and
if nothing is said by the content owners to relax
the conditions under which they are willing to let
their information be used, copyright law applies
in full. The ease with which users can download
and save, even change, Web information does not
change the application of copyright law. If a user
saves a page, which later disappears from the Web,
161
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
that saved page is still protected by copyright law,
even if it no longer appears anywhere else.
A reference should be made to the new forms
of scholarly communication that are emerging in
response to the challenges presented by the traditional publisher model of providing information.
It is impossible in this chapter to address the many
experiments in scholarly communication, whether
they involve licensing (e.g., Creative Commons)
or prepublication (e.g., social science research
network) or other methods by which authors are
attempting to develop new models for publishing
information that is less about making money and
more about sharing content, but it is important
to note that the same copyright principles apply.
Often, conditions for the use of the information
are included on the Web site or in an electronic
appendix to the information. The information
provider relies on the ethical perspective of the
user to follow those conditions. If no conditions
are provided, standard copyright law applies and
permission should be sought for any use beyond
that of fair use or other copyright exemptions.
What the future will bring is unknown, but
it is likely that new forms of providing information will shift the nature of information, new
technologies will enable more effective tracking
of what is actually being used and printed, new
inventions will continue to challenge copyright
laws, and all of the above will require signiicant
thought by creators and users of information as
well as by those who create the laws by which
copyright is governed.
IMPLEMENTING COPYRIGHT
How are library staff managing this complex
combination of copyright law and evolving
electronic resources? We began by examining a
variety of copyright policies available on the Web
(see appendix I) to get a sense of the approaches
taken by various library types and sizes. Next, we
queried various libraries, both with and without
162
Web-mounted policies (see appendix II). These
libraries included a wide range of types and sizes,
including academic, public, and school libraries
(we omitted corporate libraries that function under
a very different rubric); large, medium, and small
libraries; and public and private libraries. Anonymity was promised to the respondents in order
to elicit the most open comments. As expected,
answers varied signiicantly from place to place
and came from a variety of parts of the institution,
not necessarily always the library.
This section addresses how respondents
interpreted the term “electronic resources,” fundamental library philosophy and focus, policies,
education (libraries’ main method of addressing
copyright issues with users), and budget.
Interpreting the Term “Electronic
Resources”
When asking the questions outlined in appendix
II, we intended the term “electronic resources” to
encompass the broad range of platforms and electronic information discussed in this chapter. Our
respondents, however, did not necessarily share
that interpretation. Some respondents interpreted
the term to mean simply commercial electronic
databases or resources provided by vendors, and
one suggested that, “all those copyright issues are
handled by them,” (i.e., the vendor). Presumably,
negotiation about who can use these resources
takes place, but the respondents rely on the
vendor to handle copyright clearances, relieving
them of that responsibility, and they see no other
copyright concern.
Another respondent interpreted “electronic
resources” to mean only electronic reserves,
indicating, perhaps, that this is a primary work
responsibility or that this is an area of particular
importance in that library at this time.
Clearly, academic libraries are most concerned about copyright as it relates to electronic
resources and the bulk of the policies in appendix I are from those types of library, even if the
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
interpretation of “electronic resources” is just
commercial electronic databases or electronic
reserves. Certainly, these are major concerns at
the moment. A growing area of concern, however, is distance learning, which was referenced
by some academic respondents. One expressed
an effort to interest the institution in drafting a
copyright policy, but was unable to succeed until
the TEACH Act, when instructional technology
began to develop more and more online courses
and the issue of copyright became a concern to
those beyond the library.
None of the respondents made speciic reference to any special copyright-related issues in
regard to the Internet or the World Wide Web,
which we had expected from public libraries in
particular. In fact, while some public libraries have
policies, many do not have a speciic person responsible for copyright and some of their responses
relected that they are still thinking and working
in the pre-electronic world. For example, when
asked about educating users, one response was to
say that the oficial copyright notice is posted at
all photocopy machines. It is not clear how long
it will take before that perspective expands to
include electronic resources. Public libraries are
far less involved with electronic databases, but
the expansion of the electronic book may come
into play. Media are still in tangible formats,
such as CDs and DVDs, but if streaming comes
to the public library, that too, will trigger a different response.
When it comes to school libraries, little concern was expressed. Some school boards have
policies (see appendix I), but what happens in
the classroom or in the library is limited because
of budget. In California, for example, there was
an effort in 2006 to pass legislation to provide
money for all K-12 schools to purchase online
database subscriptions (AB 2540), but it did not
come to fruition. In 2007, the database proposal
will be reintroduced (California School Library
Association, 2006). This and other efforts will
create greater awareness and drive concerns
about copyright.
Policies
Policies are generally the irst step in implementation. Sometimes these policies are developed
by the libraries; sometimes, they are developed
by the larger organizations of which the libraries
are a part. In some cases, libraries are the prime
resource for copyright in their organizations;
sometimes, they are not. Sometimes, libraries
are included in the development of institutional
policies; sometimes, they are not. The level of involvement of the libraries is on a sliding scale. The
reasons for this extreme variation are not entirely
clear, but possibilities include the level of expertise
of individuals in the library and/or information
technology areas, the presence or absence of legal counsel somewhere in the organization, the
level and location of knowledge about intellectual
property and copyright in particular, and, to some
degree, the type of library/institution involved. It
became clear in reviewing responses that institutions and libraries of higher education are much
more likely to have policies and be focused on
managing copyright and electronic resources than
institutions or libraries of other types.
As will be seen from a look at the list of web
policies in appendix I, there is everything from
the elaborate to the general. On one end are highly
detailed policies that delve into user expectations,
ownership rights, technology transfer, and include
statements that try to spell out the speciics of the
application of laws to a particular environment.
In some institutions, there are multiple policies.
There might be a policy from a central ofice plus
policies from various sub-units on the campus or
in the system. On the other end of the policy spectrum, as the questions subsequently elicited, there
are places with no policy at all. One respondent
even thanked the authors for bringing the lack
of a policy to his attention. Frequently, policies
range somewhere in between, offering more gen-
163
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
eral statements to clarify the institution’s intent,
but relying on ever-changing laws to direct from
day to day what is intended. The approach to the
creation of these policies is driven by individual
and institutional philosophy, dictating whether
the approach will be detailed or general, but a
typical approach is to write something general or
relatively general and include the speciics in the
procedures so that revisions are easier to implement. The purpose of the policies is to provide
a philosophy and a broad set of parameters, but
also to meet legal requirements and ensure that
the institution and/or the library have a foundation
on which to build an infrastructure, create speciic
guidelines, implement some strategies, and help
if and when contentious issues arise.
One interesting element that emerged from
the responses was an indication of the degree to
which politics can play a role in policy-making.
There is no doubt that the growth of electronic
resources has made copyright policy-making and
implementation more complex. As a result, there
are more stakeholders and copyright has assumed
more prominence. One respondent indicated that it
took eighteen months to create a copyright policy
and reach approval, which supports the idea of a
general policy that requires infrequent revision.
Another respondent indicated that after eighteen
months, the committee and stakeholders could not
reach agreement and that they still did not have a
policy. In these days of elaborate consortia, which
have often evolved to take advantage of such
things as the licensing of electronic resources,
copyright policies can require the approval of
boards or state governments. With such varied
stakeholders and interests, there is frequently
disagreement as to the extent of the parameters
of such elements as fair use. Even lawyers do not
necessarily agree among themselves. Further,
if these matters end up in an ofice such as that
of a state attorney general, there can be tension
between the fear of a lawsuit and the right to
exercise fair use. Further, some lawyers are not
intellectual property specialists and may not fully
164
understand or necessarily care about this arm of
the law, particularly if their workload is heavy in
other areas. Tensions between the library and the
legal ofices can result. In other cases, the presence of legal counsel works in the opposite way,
affording an opportunity for collaboration. The
library then works together with legal counsel on
the policy, but works independently in implementing that policy and attending to the daily details.
Legal counsel is there to assist with issues and
problems. All of these scenarios were represented
in the responses we received.
Regardless, once a policy is written, regardless
of which part of the organization is responsible
for its creation, the library is usually the implementer because library staff are the front line
for the user.
Education
To achieve their goals with copyright, library
staff must be vigilant, exercising fair use rights,
complying when the use exceeds fair use limits,
communicating with constituents to ensure that
they stay as up-to-date as possible, and being
active in the political arena. While there may be
disagreements as to where the line falls between
fair use and the need for permission, respondents
express the desire to behave ethically and to encourage their users to do likewise.
However, the issue of education is one area
where there is a gap. When asked if he thought
there was a gap between policy and behavior, one
respondent replied “always.” The problem is that
copyright compliance is still not enforceable by
the library. The library cannot be “big brother,”
watching every screen and every download for
copyright violations, particularly when users are
not in the library, but accessing information remotely. If they cannot be tracked electronically, it
will not happen. This, in turn, raises the question
of ethics and privacy, and what should be watched
and what should not.
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
The library relies on education, which has
usually been its preferred method of dealing
with issues. Education efforts include any or all
of the following: a copyright ofice or specialist
who answers copyright questions through various
means (telephone, e-mail, in person), copyright
Web pages, publicity materials, copyright workshops, and even DMCA copyright classes for users
caught using excess bandwidth or in response to
DMCA claims. It is not clear how many are reached
through these methods and it is not clear whether
the lessons stick or whether, in moments of time
crunch or laziness, users violate copyright even
when they know better.
The signiicant differences between print and
electronic resources in the realm of copyright center around these key elements—the technological
ability to track the use of electronic resources by
the publisher or the broker (library, in this case);
the technological inability to allow fair use, yet
restrict the ability to copy or print beyond what
fair use would permit (assuming a clear deinition
is possible); the lack of ability to control distribution; and the continuing legal struggle over what
should be permitted. This is the environment in
which library respondents attempt to educate
their users.
In the print world, the fact that some users
were, as one respondent described, “complacent
or illiterate” regarding the understanding and observation of copyright law was suspected, but not
easily proved. What happened at a copy machine
was unobserved and up to individual conscience.
Now, however, publishers and distributors can
track the number of prints or downloads that are
made and know which pages were reproduced.
This enables them to present arguments about the
effect on their market, the fourth fair use factor.
“Professors get ‘F’ in copyright protection knowledge,” an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer,
emphasizes the need to deal with the “complacent
or illiterate” user (O’Neill, 2006). The end result
is that the pressures on licit copying are now
greater than ever; assuming that what is licit can
be deined in a more absolute way.
In the electronic realm, fair use has been under
threat. It is certainly possible for someone to copy,
either by hand or by retyping, a small portion
of an electronic text; or to print or download a
page and later incorporate a portion of that into
another document for criticism, a research paper,
or other appropriate use. Publishers, however,
argue that allowing electronic reproduction,
particularly by download, gives users too much
latitude because, while it is now possible to limit
printing to a single or a few pages or to control
downloading technologically at the original site,
it is not possible, once the capability has been
given, to prevent users from printing more than
is reasonable or distributing multiple copies at
a single keystroke. This issue has still not been
addressed, but if and when technological means
are in place to track an item beyond the irst
download, users may see a change in what they
are able to do. Alternately, they may experience
consequences, such as receiving a bill from the
provider, for taking more than a publisher thinks
is reasonable. If a user cannot be identiied (e.g.,
anonymous access through a public terminal),
the library may get the bill. On the other hand, in
the matter of fair use vs. seeking and paying for
permissions, one respondent encourages faculty
to practice fair use “because if educators don’t,
or if we seek permission for things we don’t need
to based on fair use … we will lose it.”
Respondents frequently handle copyright
questions when individuals call with speciic issues. In their environments, they become known
as copyright experts or persons with an interest in
copyright, whether they think they are experts or
not. Handling copyright is not necessarily in their
job descriptions, but they do what they can.
Some provide print or online materials about
copyright; however, as one respondent pointed
out, there is the question of inding a person to
write it, when the person handling copyright may
not consider him or herself to be an expert, and
165
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
a further question of inding a unit to absorb the
costs for staff time, coding information on to the
Web, or printing a brochure. Other educational
methods include workshops, and/or required
classes for students who are caught violating the
DMCA. Many respondents are seeking ideas for
promoting copyright to users, particularly faculty.
One respondent said “We warn. We do not educate.
Education would be better.” This implies that in
that library, staff takes responsibility for some sort
of policing. The amount of education possible is
clearly dependent on staff levels, staff expertise,
and resources of time and money.
Budget
Touched upon in the last section, this proved to
be a particularly interesting issue. One respondent, in a richer library environment, commented
“While it [copyright] is certainly expensive, we
consider it the cost of doing business and budget
for it accordingly.”
Other respondents, however, said that the
budget was not impacted “to any signiicant degree.” Interestingly, these responses came from
institutions where there was an expressed concern
about who would pay for educational materials on
copyright. There also seemed to be a separation
in thinking between the cost of such things as
electronic databases and the budget for copyright.
Perhaps it is the lack of understanding about how
much of a database cost is for copyright permissions and how much is related to other elements.
The respondents seemed to think of budget impact
in terms of speciic line items, rather than inherently built into other services.
In fact, in many institutions, the inancial
infrastructure has largely been left out of the
copyright equation, unless it is a formal part of
licensing a database or a previously established
budget line for interlibrary loan. Electronic reserves introduce a whole new level of inancial
obligation, which some institutions are prepared
to absorb and some are not. These inancial
166
obligations may well increase with streaming
media and with new formats that have yet to be
invented. The new publishing models, however,
may mitigate some of that.
Respondents clearly ight for the retention
of fair use, as in the example of the person who
encourages faculty to exercise those rights or the
respondent who does battle with the Attorney
General’s Ofice in his state, but it would be naïve
to end this chapter without acknowledging that
there are users who violate copyright laws, abuse
fair use limits, and generally ignore copyright
law, whether through ignorance, situational ethics (“just this once”), or willfully. To reference
the Seattle Post-Intelligencer article once again,
publishers claim they “must protect $3.35 billion
in annual U.S. college textbook sales” (O’Neill,
2006). Publishers are taking a tip from the music
and ilm industries and growing more aggressive
about the impact of materials use on their markets. Continuous education is one approach to
address this; further technological developments
are another. Both impact budget. If fair use rights
are further reduced or eliminated, institutions or
individuals will have to pay signiicant fees for
resources, incurring costs that current budgets
cannot handle.
While budget affordability is not a reason for
sanctioning these behaviors, it does raise the question of how the system is going to adapt either to
the increased need for inancial resources or to
another way of doing business.
FUTURE TRENDS AND
CONCLUSION
There will continue to be changes to the laws.
Currently, the Section 108 study group is examining portions of the 1976 law to update it for the
electronic age. This process includes a series of
roundtable discussions for public comment. The
DMCA exemption process has already sanctioned
exemptions and will continue to hold open hear-
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
ings every three years. Other laws will also change.
The harmonization of law internationally will
likely become more important.
Meanwhile, there are grass roots movements
to ensure the availability of documents. Digital
rights management now includes alternatives to
the standard publishing process. There are open
access publications and public access is also being addressed in the contractual process through
the efforts of groups such as SPARC (Scholarly
Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition),
ARL (Association of Research Libraries), and
ACRL (Association of College and Research
Libraries). On the SPARC Web site (2006), three
major initiatives are described. The organization
“creates and develops competitive alternatives
to current high-priced commercial journals and
digital aggregations,” “promotes fundamental
changes in the system and the culture of scholarly
communication,” and “develops campaigns aimed
at enhancing awareness of scholarly communication issues and supports expanded institutional
and community participation in and control over
the scholarly communication process.” Their goal
is to “reclaim” scholarly communication and
output. These efforts bring copyright law back
into balance.
Institutional repositories are another effort
to change how business is done. While they are
highly work-intensive, they are another alternative
to enable authors to share their scholarly work and
ideas. In those situations, copyright law provides
a reasonable balance that supports the creative
process while allowing users to make reasonable
and cited use.
The complexity of copyright and its implementation continues to grow, as does the intensity of
attention the subject receives. Core to concept of
copyright are these important ideas: the original
intent of copyright as expressed in the Constitution, something that is unique to this country and
which has fostered invention, knowledge, and
dynamism; the all-important need to continue the
balance between the rights of the author or owner
with the rights of the user; and the translation
of these concepts to electronic resources. Then,
and only then, will copyright be able to work as
it is supposed to work, whether in a traditional
or an electronic environment. There is constant
concern that the struggle to maintain balance
will continue to be dificult. To achieve the full
transformation of copyright to the electronic
environment, therefore, requires continued effort
by library staff and others in the legislative and
educational arenas.
REFERENCES
21st Century Department of Justice Appropriations Authorization Act. (2002). Retrieved
November 17, 2007, from http://www.copyright.
gov/legislation/pl107-273.html
Bellsouth Advertising & Publishing Corp. vs.
Donnelley Information Publishing, Inc. 999 F.2d
1436 (11th Cir.). (1993). Retrieved November 17,
2007, from http://www.coolcopyright.com/cases/
chp4/bellsouthdonnelley.htm
Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard
Law School. (2003, January 15). Openlaw site:
Eldred v. Ashcroft. Retrieved November 17, 2007,
from http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/eldredvreno/
Berners-Lee, T. (1996). The world wide web:
Past, present and future. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://www.w3.org/People/
Berners-Lee/1996/ppf.html
California School Library Association. (2006).
Legislation and advocacy. Retrieved November
17, 2007, from http://www.schoolibrary.org/leg/
Cohen, B. (2006). E-reserve use of e-journal
content. Email on SERIALST listserv. Retrieved
November 17, 2007.
Cornell University. (2006, September 19). Cornell
University and publishers announce new copyright guidelines governing use of digital course
167
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
materials. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from
http://www.news.cornell.edu/pressofice/Sept06/
AAPCopyright.shtml
Creative Commons. (2007). Main page. Retrieved
November 17, 2007, from http://creativecommons.
org/license
Creative Commons. (2006). License your work.
Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://
creativecommons.org/license/
European Commission. (2006). About this
site. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://
ec.europa.eu/about_en.htm
Feist Publications, Inc. vs. Rural Telephone
Service Co., 499 U.S. 340. (1991). Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://www.coolcopyright.
com/cases/chp2/feistrural.htm
FindLaw for Legal Professionals. (2001, June 25).
New York Times Co., Inc. et al. v. Tasini et al.
Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://caselaw.
lp.indlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol
=000&invol=00-201
GNU. (2006, August 3). What is copyleft? Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://www.
gnu.org/copyleft/copyleft.html
Guidelines for classroom copying of books and
periodicals. (2001, August 9). Retrieved November
17, 2007, from http://www.utsystem.edu/OGC/INTELLECTUALPROPERTY/clasguid.htm
Leiner, B. M. et al. (2005, October 31). A brief history of the internet. Reston, VA: Internet Society.
Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://www.
isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml
Library of Congress. (2006). The section 108
study group. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from
http://www.loc.gov/section108/
North American Free Trade Agreement. (1992).
Ofice of NAFTA and inter-American affairs:
Intellectual property rights. Retrieved November
17, 2007, from http://www.sice.oas.org/TRADE/
NAFTA/naftatce.asp
168
O’Neill, J. M. (2006, November 20). Professors
get “F” in copyright protection knowledge. Seattle
Post-Intelligencer. Retrieved November 17, 2007,
from http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=n
avclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=RNWE,RNWE:200450,RNWE:en&q=professors+get+f
Public Knowledge. (2006, September 11). H.R.
6052: Copyright modernization act of 2006.
Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://www.
publicknowledge.org/node/621
Quint, B. (2004, December 20). Google and
research libraries launch massive digitization
project. Information Today. Retrieved November
17, 2007, from http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb041220-2.shtml
Schiff, S. (2006, July 31). Know it all. The New
Yorker, 82, 36-43.
Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources
Coalition. (2006). About SPARC. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://www.arl.org/sparc/
about/index.html
Swank Motion Pictures, Inc. (2006). Home page.
Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://www.
swank.com
Taylor & Francis Group Journals. (2006, January). Terms and conditions of access. Retrieved
November 17, 2007, from http://www.tandf.
co.uk/journals/pdf/terms.pdf
United States. (1787, September 17). Constitution
Article 1, Section 8. Retrieved November 17, 2007,
from http://www.law.emory.edu/cms/site/index.
php?id=3080
U.S. Copyright Act. 17 U.S.C. §101 et seq.
United States Copyright Ofice. (1998). Circular
21: Reproduction of copyrighted works by educators and librarians. Washington, D.C: Library of
Congress, Copyright Ofice.
United States Copyright Ofice. (1998, December).
The digital millennium copyright act of 1998:
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
A U.S. copyright ofice summary. Retrieved
November 17, 2007, from http://www.copyright.
gov/legislation/dmca.pdf
United States Copyright Ofice. (2006, November 22). Statement of the librarian of congress
relating to section 1201 rulemaking. Retrieved
November 17, 2007, from http://www.copyright.
gov/1201/docs/2006_statement.html
University of Texas System. (1997). CONFU: The
conference on fair use. Retrieved November 17,
2007, from http://www.utsystem.edu/ogc/INTELLECTUALPROPERTY/confu.htm
University of Texas System. (2004, November
22). Offsite: Fair use. Retrieved November 17,
2007, from http://www.utsystem.edu/ogc/INTELLECTUALPROPERTY/offsite.htm#fair
Wikipedia. (2006, December 31). Retrieved
November 17, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights
World Intellectual Property Organization. (2006).
Home page. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from
http://www.wipo.int/portal/index.html.en
169
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
APPENDIX I
Policy Sites
Retrieved July, 2006
•
American Association of Law Librarians, Model Law Firm Copyright Policy. http://www.aallnet.
org/about/model_law.asp
•
Association of Research Libraries, Ownership of Faculty Works and University Copyright Policy.
http://www.arl.org/pp/ppcopyright/author-rights-resources.shtml
•
Bates College, Requirements of Faculty for Reserves.http://abacus.bates.edu/Library/aboutladd/
departments/circulation/reserve.shtml
•
Carnegie Mellon University.http://www.cmu.edu/policies/documents/Copyright.html
•
Columbia University. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/provost/docs/copyright.html
•
Columbia University, Computing, Network, and InformationPolicies. http://www.columbia.edu/
cu/policy/copyright-info.html
•
Dartmouth University.http://www.dartmouth.edu/copyright/
•
Drexel University.http://www.drexel.edu/provost/policies/copyright.asp
•
George Mason University. http://www.gmu.edu/facstaff/policy/ae.html
•
Grand Valley State University.http://www.gvsu.edu/library/services/index.cfm?id=9FDBEF4E9317-B72F-9106BCDE2DF76CE3
•
Greenville County Schools Online. http://www.greenville.k12.sc.us/district/web/policy/webcopy.
asp
•
K12, Inc. http://www.k12.com/copyright.html
•
Kansas Board of Regents, DMCA policy. http://www.kansasregents.org/copyrightDMCA.html
•
Northwestern University. http://www.research.northwestern.edu/research/ori/copyright/copyrightpolicy.html
•
Portland Community College. http://www.pcc.edu/about/policy/copyright/
•
Public Schools of North Carolina. http://www.ncpublicschools.org/legalnotices/
170
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
•
Rochester Institute of Technology, Digital Media Library. https://ritdml.rit.edu/dspace/simplesearch?query=copyright&submit.x=0&submit.y=0&submit=Go
•
Stanford University. http://www.stanford.edu/dept/DoR/rph/5-2.html
•
Syracuse University. http://library.syr.edu/copyright/
•
•
University of California, Irvine, Network and Academic Computing Services. http://www.nacs.
uci.edu/policy/copyright.html
University of California, Los Angeles. http://www2.library.ucla.edu/copyright/index.cfm
•
University of California Los Angeles, Civil Rights Project. http://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.
edu/copyright.php
•
University of California Ofice of the President. http://www.ucop.edu/ott/faculty/crprimr.html
•
University of Florida, Software Copyright Policy, Guidelines, and Training Materials. http://www.
it.ul.edu/resources/copyright/TRAINING.HTM
•
University of Georgia. http://www.libs.uga.edu/staff/copyright_policy.pdf
•
Univ. of Missouri.http://www.umsystem.edu/ums/departments/gc/rules/business/100/030.shtml
•
University of North Carolina. http://www.unc.edu/campus/policies/copyright.html
•
University of North Carolina, Patent and Copyright Policy.http://intranet.northcarolina.edu/docs/
legal/policymanual/500.2.pdf
•
University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, Computing Policy. http://www.unc.edu/policy/copyinfringe.html
•
University of Texas System. http://www.utsystem.edu/OGC/intellectualProperty/cprtpol.htm
•
University of Virginia, Acquisitions Department. http://www.lib.virginia.edu/acquisitions/
copyright/
•
University of Wisconsin System, Copyrightable Instr uctions Materials, Ownership, Use and Control
(G27). http://www.uwsa.edu/fadmin/gapp/gapp27.htm
•
University of Wisconsin-Extension. http://www.uwex.edu/ces/copyright/
•
Washington State University. http://www.wsu.edu/Copyright.html
171
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
•
•
Wellesley University. http://www.wellesley.edu/Library/copyright_ToC.html
Yale Ofice of Cooperative Research. http://www.yale.edu/ocr/pfg/policies/index.html
APPENDIX II
Interview Questions
1.
Do you have a copyright policy? What areas of copyright does your policy address? Are there
speciic references to electronic resources? If so, what?
2.
What department/area is in charge of your copyright policy? Why was that area chosen/selected?
3.
If there are legal questions on the application of the policy, who responds to that?
4.
If so, will you share it?
5.
Why did you draft a policy? What was the intent? Were electronic resources a factor in your decision?
6.
How easy/dificult is the policy to implement? What are the issues in implementing it?
7.
Does copyright impact your management of electronic resources and, if so, how?
8.
How often do you update your policy and what is the focus of the updates? Are electronic resources
a factor?
9.
What is your procedure for updating your policy? Does the procedure hinder the completion of
the update?
10. How successful/unsuccessful is your library in implementing the policy? How do you measure
success? We are particularly interested in the implementation and success of your policy as regards
electronic resources.
11.
How do you promote your policy?
12. How do you educate your community on copyright issues?
13. If you think there is a “gap” between your policy and the behavior of your users, are you trying
to address this? If not, why not? (cost, time, view it as impossible, other) If so, how?
172
Copyright Implications for Electronic Resources
14. How do you envision the future of copyright? Do you see it tightening to the point where copyright
permission/payment will be required for everything? Or do you see it undergoing a change in the
other direction because users, such as young people, will simply by-pass it and just do what they
want? What impact do you envision the increase in electronic resources having on the future of
copyright?
15. What advice would you give to a library which is just starting to draft a copyright policy?
16. What are the absolute “must haves” in a copyright policy?
17.
What advice would you give in regards to implementation? Education? The ongoing process of
coping with copyright?
18. What impact has copyright had on your budget? How has it affected your ability to purchase or
contract for information sources and to provide users with access to materials?
19.
How knowledgeable do you think you are as regards national copyright policy? How well do you
keep up? How much do you think changes in laws affect your copyright policies and daily implementation of those policies?
20. How knowledgeable do you think you are as regards international copyright policy? How well do
you keep up? How much do you think changes in those laws affect your copyright policies and
daily implementation of those policies?
21.
Is there any other information you would like to share with us?
173
174
Chapter X
Tactics and Terms in the
Negotiation of Electronic
Resource Licenses
Kincaid C. Brown
University of Michigan, USA
ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the reader to the realm of electronic resource license agreements. It provides
the reader with an overview of basic contract law as it relates to electronic resource licensing. The
chapter then discusses the electronic resource license negotiation process as well as license agreement
term clauses. The aim of this chapter is to provide librarians with an understanding of basic licensing
concepts and language in order to aid librarians in the review and negotiation of their own license
agreements. The author hopes to impart lessons and tips he has learned in reviewing and negotiating
license agreements with a number of publishers to further the awareness and understanding of licensing
in the library community.
INTRODUCTION
Almost every electronic resource to which a
library will subscribe requires either a signed
license or an acceptance of a vendor’s terms and
conditions via a click-through license. Every
signed license or clicked-through acceptance of
a vendor’s terms is a legal contract that provides
rights and protections (mostly) to a vendor, but also
to a library. Some vendors allow for interlibrary
loan and off-campus access while other vendors
want to limit usage to individual computers and
have limits on printing or downloading. It is
important for librarians to understand what a
license is, what its terms mean, and to be able to
get a vendor to agree to terms more aligned with
a library’s interests through negotiation. This is
especially important, as many librarians are uncomfortable with the licensing process, not just
because of the opaque legal language but also due
to the prospect of trying to get, often monolithic,
corporations to agree to our terms.
Copyright © 2008, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
Tactics and Terms in the Negotiation of Electronic Resource License
BACKGROUND
The increase in the use of license agreements is
fueled by content owners’ beliefs that the fair use,
interlibrary loan, and other library principles and
practices that have served well in the print era are
sure to cause rampant copyright infringement in
the digital era. License agreements are, in fact,
the publishers’ tool of choice for protecting their
intellectual property (Okerson, 1997) by speciically counteracting the “irst sale doctrine” (Rice,
2002). The “irst sale doctrine” transfers ownership of a title with the initial sale of a copy and
is what has historically allowed libraries to lend
and interlibrary loan materials or permitted a
bookstore to resell used books. Because licensing
grants a mere permission instead of ownership
to a user or library, there has been no “irst sale”
and the publisher can tightly control the uses of its
digital copies via the license agreement terms.
From the library point-of-view, it is important that licenses be negotiated to allow libraries
to continue their mission of promoting access
to information. This is especially important as
electronic resources have continued to be more
expensive than their print counterparts despite
the consensus among librarians that electronic
format materials should be less expensive than the
print because of the elimination of printing, binding, and shipping costs (Alford 2002; Okerson,
1997). Due to the cost of digital resources, which
is further exacerbated by the present economic
climate, libraries are inding that they have to
choose between digital resources and materials in
other formats. In order to best serve patrons and
steward a library’s budgetary resources, libraries will have to carefully monitor their license
agreements and try to negotiate terms that are
favorable to libraries. Most licenses are written
by publishers to protect their interest and as such
can rarely be signed without at least some minor
amendments (Okerson, 1996).
THE LAW GOVERNING LICENSE
AGREEMENTS
A license agreement is a contract between a user/
subscriber (licensee) and a content owner/vendor
(licensor). In the library realm, a subscription
for an electronic resource will generally entail
the signing of a written license agreement or the
acceptance of a slate of terms and/or conditions.
The contract determines the rights and obligations of the parties, including the services that
the licensor will provide and the conditions the
licensee must adhere to in order to use the electronic content. In the library setting where most
electronic resources are subscriptions, the license
provides the library and its patrons permission to
use the vendor’s electronic resource and/or content
pursuant to the agreed upon terms for the time
period speciied.
According to Murray (2001) a valid contract
is formed when its formation is comprised of the
following components:
•
•
•
•
A promise, offer and acceptance that are
“suficiently deinite” (see below)
Consideration (value such as payment or
performance of a service),
The parties have the legal capacity to make
a contract (for example, no party is a minor
or mentally ill)
There is no legal barrier to the formation of
the contract (for example, a contract entered
into through fraud or duress)
A promise is one party’s intention to act or
not act in a particular manner, (American Law
Institute, 1981-2006) for example by providing
certain goods or services to another party. Breaking a contractual promise is where a party opens
itself up to liability for damages or penalties for
the harm caused to the other party. An offer is
one party’s willingness to make an agreement
regarding such a promise and an acceptance is
another party’s willingness to so agree.
175
Tactics and Terms in the Negotiation of Electronic Resource License
The promise, offer, and acceptance also need to
be deinite enough to be enforceable. This means
that if the contract ends up in litigation the court
must be able to precisely decide what the party
at fault must do to make the other party whole.
This may be to perform the service or provide the
goods contracted for or pay monetary damages
as a remedy (Farnsworth, 1999).
The offer, acceptance, and consideration are
the three main elements of an enforceable or
valid contract (Bieleield & Cheeseman, 1999;
Harris, 2002). These elements are controlled by
state law (Richards, 2001), but because all of the
states have passed some form of the uniform
commercial code there are relevant similarities
in the contract law across the country (Bieleield
& Cheeseman, 1999).
Many electronic resource license agreements
take the form of end user license agreements
(hereinafter EULAs) which are sometimes called
browse-wrap, shrink-wrap, or click-through licenses. EULAs are a list of terms or conditions
that generally take two forms (Kutten, 2003-2006).
The irst version is where the licensee must agree
to the terms prior to using the resource by clicking
a button often labeled “accept” or “agree” at the
end of the list of terms. The second form is where
the licensee is told that by using the resource he
or she accepts the terms and conditions that are
then referred to on a separate Web page (Kutten,
2003-2006).
EULAs are not covered by the uniform commercial code but are speciically endorsed by
the Uniform Computer Information Transaction
Act (hereinafter, UCITA) (UCITA, 2002-2006)
which is an outgrowth of the failed attempt to
cover EULAs within the uniform commercial
code (Kutten, 2003-2006). UCITA has only been
passed in Maryland and Virginia (American
Library Association [State], 2006; Harris, 2002;
Kutten, 2003-2006) and has been strongly criticized by the library community because it shifts
the middle ground of license negotiations toward
the vendor to the detriment of the licensing library
176
community. The library community aversion to
UCITA is because UCITA:
•
•
•
•
Accepts EULAs (UCITA §209, 2002-2006)
which generally undercut a library’s ability
to negotiate a license
Allows publishers to change contractual
terms unilaterally
Eliminates the historical contract law standard where limitations in contracts need to
be stated in the contract itself and favors
the publisher when construing the scope of
use of licensed materials (UCITA §307(a),
2002-2006)
Speciically undermines the copyright fair
use protections, including the “irst sale
doctrine” (UCITA states that transfer of title
as a digital copy does not transfer ownership
(UCITA §501-502, 2002-2006) of the title),
on which libraries rely
(Alford, 2002; American Library Association
[Impact], 2006). Because only Maryland and
Virginia have passed UCITA and because of the
conlict between historical contract negotiation
requirements the state courts deciding EULA
contract cases have come down on either side of
the issue with some afirming the use of these
click-through or browse-wrap licenses and others
refusing to accept such licenses as valid (Kutten,
2003-2006).
THE LICENSE NEGOTIATION
PROCESS
A license negotiation begins when the library
starts to consider a subscription to or purchase
of an electronic resource. This is important to
remember that the utility of an electronic resource
is dependent in part on the license because the
license agreement sets the cost, access method,
uses, and users of an electronic resource. When the
library begins to look at an electronic resource it
Tactics and Terms in the Negotiation of Electronic Resource License
is important to ask for a copy of the license agreement because the negotiation of the license may
take some time to complete. As noted previously,
these licenses will take the form of either a formal
written contract or an EULA. Both types of license
agreements are negotiable although vendors often
loathe negotiating changes to EULAs. Indeed
some commentators note that most publishers
are of the opinion that license agreements are not
negotiable except for price because the publisher
generally is the party who drafted the license and
is accordingly favored (Alford, 2002).
However, at the University of Michigan Law
Library we have had success negotiating changes
to EULAs by altering the EULA so that signature
is necessary or via an e-mail agreement. When
we have amended a EULA via e-mail we indicate
that our amended terms and the vendor’s return
message accepting the amendments become
part of the EULA. When amending a EULA,
regardless of the other terms that are changed, it
is important to amend the notice and/or amendment clauses so that changes to the EULA on the
vendor’s Web site do not bind the library to those
provisions without the requisite notice or agreement. Bieleield and Cheeseman (1999) state that
EULAs may be negotiated on a clause-by-clause
basis. Note that the Blackwell-Synergy (2006)
EULA states that if an institution has signed a
written license agreement, that contract will take
precedence over the EULA.
Before negotiating a license with a vendor it
is best for the library to have already made some
decisions regarding negotiation policies and speciic license terms the library may ind acceptable,
unacceptable, or mandatory. It is also important to
have an understanding of license agreement language, especially if there is not a licensed attorney
on staff to review licenses (Bieleield & Cheeseman, 1999). Library group licensing Web sites as
well as workshops, library or legal literature, and
other resources will aid in the understanding of
license terms and will provide examples of licensing language. The library itself should also have
an archive of license agreements already in force
that can be referred to for licensing language and
examples of what the library was able to negotiate
as amendments. It is often a good idea to have
a side-ile or database of license clauses that the
library prefers that can be consistently used in
negotiations with vendors.
When negotiating the license for an electronic
resource, it is important to remember there should
be some middle ground between the library and
the licensor, as both parties ultimately want to
reach an agreement. The library wants to gain
an appropriate amount of access to the electronic
resource for a reasonable price while meeting the
needs of its patrons. The licensor wants the library
to subscribe to its content while protecting its
property rights (Bieleield & Cheeseman, 1999).
Harris (2002) notes that a license negotiation
should not be considered a zero sum affair with
a winner and loser. Okerson (1996) states that it
is rare that a publisher and library are unable to
agree on an acceptable middle ground. Of the
libraries answering the question in Tashbook’s
(2004) survey, 85% indicated that publishers met
library demands at least half of the time.
Harris (2002) notes that to start a license
negotiation the library must know what it needs,
wants, and can afford. If a library cannot negotiate
a license to meet its basic needs or a price that it
can afford then the time comes when the library
must walk away from that electronic resource and
spend its time exploring alternative avenues to gain
access to that or similar digital information. Because licenses for electronic resources begin with
the vendor’s standard license the negotiation can
be entirely about which amendments the vendor
is willing to make. But, it is also important for
the library to be lexible—although the vendor
may be unwilling to change a license clause to
the library’s preferred language a middle ground
may be acceptable. Harris (2002) states that it is
important to give up items in a negotiation as
long as you get something in return. In the case
of a license agreement, these items may be extra
177
Tactics and Terms in the Negotiation of Electronic Resource License
protections the library may be willing to forego or
speciic language that may be generalized or cut
back. Harris (2002) also asserts the importance
of not making assumptions; a licensor may be
willing to meet all of your licensing needs, but
you will never know until you ask.
In a negotiation, we have often found it useful to be able to refer a licensing issue further up
the library hierarchy. This is because the library
administration may be able to negotiate some
favorable terms by agreeing to some less than
favorable terms from their position as the inal
arbiter of library policies or inances. We have
also made use of the university’s general counsel’s
ofice to refer dificult license negotiations and to
get guidance on particular licensing terms.
Statistics are a bargaining chip that can be
used to bolster the library’s position in regard to
price. This is especially true when the cost for a
particular electronic resource is noticeably more
expensive than what the library understands the
going rate for that sort of resource is. Libraries
can often gauge the amount of use that a particular
resource will generate based on past experience. If
a resource under license negotiation is priced too
steeply, especially in the case of a price increase
for an electronic resource renewal, then the ability to refer to statistics to state a case for a lesser
price is important. For a irst time license for an
electronic resource, if a vendor does not provide
statistics and you believe the cost is higher than
ordinary for like resources, it is important to ask
what the price is based on, if not actual usage.
Access to a similar resource or the ability
to subscribe to the same material from another
vendor can also help in negotiating a better price.
If it is possible to subscribe or purchase the same
or substantially similar digital content at a lower
price then use that as a negotiating tool. A threat
to rely on a competing product may be enough
for the vendor to lower the price in order to get
a library’s business. Of course, many electronic
resources may be offered by vendors with a monopoly on the content so such a threat will not be
178
available as a negotiation tool. But, even though
the content may be unique, the resource will be
similar in type (e.g., a single electronic journal,
a full-text document archive, or a journal index)
to other resources where a library does have preexisting subscriptions. Based on past experience,
the library should have a good idea of a reasonable
price range where the price for a resource should
fall. In cases where a unique resource is more
costly, the library should approach the vendor
with a counter-offer of a reasonable price range
along the lines of other resources of the same type
and size. However, if the library and the vendor
cannot reach a middle ground the library will
need to do without that resource if the money is
not available and/or the library does not want to
set a high priced precedent that the budget will
have to meet in future iscal years. Additionally,
libraries caving into exorbitant pricing schemes
reinforce the vendor’s immobility in regard to
the cost.
In one negotiation we had, a vendor did not
provide usage statistics and we thought that the
price that was being asked was exorbitant. We
looked at some of our existing subscriptions on
those subjects and made some calculations for
cost per use based on the statistics provided by
those vendors. We then assumed similar use and
calculated cost per use for the electronic resources
under negotiation. Our existing subscriptions
averaged out to between $5 and $40 per session.
The same amount of usage for the resources under
negotiation was going to be between $100 and $800
per session. And, this was for resources that that
we felt were each much less complete than the
resources to which we already subscribed—while
much of the commentary material that comprised
the resource being negotiated was unique, commentary as well as primary legal materials themselves (i.e., laws, regulations, caselaw) were also
included in our pre-existing subscriptions. This
cost discrepancy combined with the resource’s
lesser scope and inclusiveness relative to our
existing subscriptions steadied our resolve not
Tactics and Terms in the Negotiation of Electronic Resource License
to pay the asking price. In this case we ended up
not subscribing to the resources because of the
exorbitant pricing, but bolstered with our statistical analysis we were able to defend our decision
to the faculty who supported us in our refusal to
subscribe to those resources.
LICENSE TERMS
It is important for the license agreement to relect
the terms that have been negotiated between the
library and the publisher. Otherwise, the time
and effort spent during negotiation will have
been wasted. A license is all about the terms
and as such the terms need to accurately portray
the agreement that is being struck. For example,
once we had negotiated to subscribe to electronic
resources via IP (Internet protocol) access only
to be given a license to sign that described the
access method as a password system administered
by the library. The vendor in this case said that
it did not matter—it was merely a license for a
different client group that they had all libraries
sign because there was no other. We revised the
access method terms in order to ensure that the
license we were signing relected the subscription
that we were getting (and wanted) to protect the
library from future hardship, in this case having
to manage a password system to provide access
to the resource.
Some of the most common license terms that
require negotiation are discussed below.
Access Versus Ownership
An issue that will make a large difference in the
make-up of the rest of the license is whether you
are purchasing or leasing the electronic content. A
purchase of the content will provide ownership of
content to the library generally with a large down
payment and modest annual maintenance fee. A
lease of the content will take the form of access
to content via an annual subscription.
This access versus ownership dilemma is
new for libraries with the advent of electronic
resources. Libraries are paying large sums of
money for information that they will lose access
to at the end of a subscription, if a vendor disappears, or if the product is sold or discontinued.
This practice is a direct contrast to the past when
a purchased book would be on the shelf and the
library would possess the information itself.
Pace (2003) comments that in the past libraries
would have been unlikely to spend vast amounts
of money on materials where access would be
lost at the end of a subscription period. Because
of the amount of money at issue and its impact
on the future strength of a library’s collection,
the access versus ownership issue is an important area within license negotiations. For many
resources, such as inding aids, indexes and citators, access alone makes sense; it is for full-text
materials where ownership or perpetual access is
more important. Okerson (1996) maintains that
an acceptable license should provide for either
perpetual access to the digital materials that were
published during the license term or provide an
option for archival access.
The purchase of content can take many forms
including the deliverance of digital backiles of an
entire database’s content to the library once the
license is signed (usually combined with access
to the same content via the vendor’s interface),
perpetual access to content via a vendor’s Web
interface, or access to the materials published
during the time of the agreement either via perpetual access or backile but no access to materials
published after the expiration of the license. For
materials where the license only provides access
to materials, the access will cease at the expiration
of the license agreement.
Access versus ownership is something that
will often be open for negotiation. The major issue will be cost, as ownership of the content will
cost a premium. Note also that ownership in this
context generally will refer only to the housing
or perpetual access to the content for research
179
Tactics and Terms in the Negotiation of Electronic Resource License
purposes. This ownership will not provide ownership to the intellectual property contained in
the databases and will still be governed by other
terms negotiated in the license (e.g., copyright
or fair use provisions). Some vendors will only
be willing to license for access on a subscription
basis but ownership, even if it just to a partial
backile of a single journal title, may be negotiable
from others.
Vendors will often license ownership of content for large digitization projects of historical
materials and sometimes may not be willing to
go the subscription route. For large digitization
projects where licensing options may be limited
to purchasing the entire backile and paying an
annual maintenance, it is often a good idea to
include an “opt out” clause in the license. This
clause would typically be enforceable after a
negotiated term of years, after whish the library
could “opt out” of paying the maintenance fee if
the charge became too onerous and load the digital
iles on its own servers. Of course, in this case
the library would also need to provide a search
mechanism or other access method to get to the
electronic content since access would no longer
be available via the vendor’s interface.
Amendment of License Terms or
Services
It is always best to include language in the license
that requires both parties to agree in writing to
any amendments to the terms of the license or
the services covered by the license. In a fall back
position for end user license agreements (EULA),
the license should at least indicate that the licensor give written notice to the licensee when the
terms are amended. Alford (2002) asserts that
prior written notice and the option to terminate
the license if the amendment constitutes a material change in terms is the least to which a library
should agree. It is never in the best interests of
the licensee library to accede to terms that allow the vendor to alter the terms of the license
180
at any time without notice. Okerson, Stenlake,
and Harper (Amendment, 2006) maintain that
any amendment or modiication to the license
should be inalized in the same manner as was
the original license agreement.
One negotiation we had concerned a license
that not only included a provision that allowed the
vendor to alter the terms of the license without
notice but also allowed the vendor to change the
product without notice. This provision would
have left us in a dificult legal position should
the vendor amend the license or product in a way
that is detrimental to a library’s use of the product. When we were in the process of negotiating
this license, the vendor was surprised when we
balked at signing it, saying in essence that they
would never eliminate the database we were
interested in and not return our money. Whether
that is true or not is of course irrelevant from a
licensing rights perspective as it could be possible
under the terms of the license for the vendor to
take such actions. In the principle of managing
the library’s resources in the best possible way it
is imperative that a licensee library not negotiate away future rights or abilities by allowing a
licensor unfettered ability to amend the terms
of the license. A case-in-point of a license that
contains such problematic language is the CQ
Press EULA (2006).
Authorized Users
The authorized users section limits who is able
to access the electronic resource in question.
Because of the ease of access to digital information, license agreements for digital content must
contain a deinition for “users” (Alford, 2002) in
a way that was not necessary for print materials
where copyright law deined that term (Richards,
2001). If your library provides services to walkin patrons outside of your primary patron group
(e.g., public patrons in an academic library or
nonresidents in a public library) this section will
need to include language that allows “walk-ins”
Tactics and Terms in the Negotiation of Electronic Resource License
to access the electronic resource. In academic
settings, licensors may want to limit access to a
resource to the school’s faculty, students, and staff,
so it is important to make sure that the license
includes provisions that will allow the library’s
diverse patron base access to the resource. If the
college or university has a distance education
program then those faculty students should it
within the authorized user deinition, but it may
be best to include that in the deinition or verify
that point with the vendor. The same would be
true of a corporate library where the resource
could be used in teleconferencing or other distance communications. Some vendors will want
to limit access to a resource to a school within a
larger university (e.g., law, medicine, business).
In this case, agreeing to such a limitation would
be a point where a library can try to negotiate a
lower price, in essence agreeing to less access for
less money, especially when limiting a resource
to a single school is not uncommon on a given
campus. It is also sometimes possible to pay more
in order to provide access to an additional patron
group (e.g., alumni). In Tashbook’s (2004) survey
15 percent of libraries indicated that the deinition
of authorized users was the easiest issue to get
publishers to accommodate.
The authorized user section is also often where
language-allowing access to patrons from outside
of the library buildings should be included. If this
language is not included in the “authorized users”
section the license may include an “authorized
site” section. Off-site access is generally provided
via a proxy server which requires users to authenticate when out of the library or off-campus before
using a resource. We have had success getting
wary vendors to agree to allowing access via a
proxy server, in an academic setting, by including
license terms that acknowledge that the library
is responsible for setting up the authentication
system and making sure that only its primary
patrons (e.g., faculty, students, and staff) will be
able to access the electronic resource from off
campus. Note that in Tashbook’s (2004) survey,
15% of libraries indicated that use of a proxy
server was the easiest issue to get publishers to
agree to. Because many vendors prefer to license
content in an on-campus environment only, it is
imperative to make sure that the license includes
language allowing off-site usage if the library
wants to provide such access to patrons (Harris,
2002).
The University of Chicago Press Journals
Division (2006) license for astronomy journals
includes an authorized user provision that is
very well suited to an academic library’s needs.
It allows access for faculty, students, staff, and
on-site patrons as well as allows the institution
the ability to use a proxy server via the university
network provided that the institution take measure
to prevent unauthorized users from accessing
the content.
Authorized Uses
The authorized uses section is sometimes named
“rights granted” or “permissions” and is one of the
most important sections of a license agreement.
For academic institutions it would be generally
reasonable to agree not to use the resource for
commercial purposes, but in a corporation or
business setting a commercial purpose, as deined
in the license, may be the reason for subscribing
to the resource (Alford, 2002). Authorized use
language may contain key digital information
practices like viewing, downloading, printing,
and displaying. These are really basic rights of
using electronic information and a library should
really consider how a product is going to be used
before agreeing to the limitation of such electronic
rights. Uses contained in authorized use sections
that more commonly are negotiated between the
library and the vendor are end-use in nature.
These uses include interlibrary loan, electronic
reserves, coursepacks, distance education, backup
copies, inclusion in an intranet, and linking. The
authorized use provisions of license agreements
are where the content owner aims to protect its
181
Tactics and Terms in the Negotiation of Electronic Resource License
rights pursuant to copyright law by limiting the
rights that it is licensing.
Vendor-created use license provisions will
generally limit how a licensee may use the electronic content that is the subject of the license even
though these uses may otherwise be protected under United States copyright law via the “fair use”
provisions (17 U.S.C. §107-122, 2001-2005). The
fair use provisions are rights granted to an owner
of a copy of a copyright protected work by United
States copyright law (Richards, 2001). Under the
fair use doctrine, a use may be determined to not
violate copyright law after looking at:
•
•
•
•
“The purpose and character of the use”
“The nature of the copyrighted work”
“The amount and substantiality of the portion used”
“The effect of the use upon the potential
market for or value of the copyrighted work”
(17 U.S.C. §107, 2001-2005)
Authorized uses are very important provisions to look at and understand because it is in
the vendor licensor’s interest to limit the library
licensee’s authorized uses as much as possible.
Harris (2002) notes that libraries should be aware
that many licenses allow or prohibit uses with
general or expansive phrasing. It is important to
pay attention to such language as it will have an
effect on the bundle of rights that a license allows.
The fair use doctrine provides users with a wide
array of permissions but these permissions can be
waived or negotiated away (Okerson, Stenlake, &
Harper [Authorized Use], 2006; Okerson, 1997).
When a license reduces the rights that a library
holds in relation to a copyrighted work, the library
and its users are restrained by the terms of the
license and are no longer protected by United
States copyright law (Richards, 2001). Needless
to say, a library should think very hard before
negotiating away its fair use rights. Also, note
that a library licensee cannot generally negotiate
away the rights of its patrons but a licensor may
182
try to hold a library responsible for its patron’s
actions through cancellation of service or litigation (Okerson, Stenlake, & Harper (Authorized
Use), 2006).
As noted, when a library signs a license that
includes more restrictive authorized uses than
provided for pursuant to fair use, it is those terms
that will govern. In the early days of electronic
content and license agreements, many libraries
signed licenses without contemplating the fair
use issues and these contracts have minimized
or eliminated fair use rights (Pace, 2003). For
this reason the licensee should be sure to include
language acknowledging its fair use rights and/or
speciically delineating particular rights that it
wants to reserve because of their importance to a
library’s patrons (e.g., course packs and electronic
reserves for an academic library or electronic
document delivery and use in teleconferencing for
a corporate library). Alford (2002) asserts that it is
important for a patron to have the same permitted
uses for print and digital materials and that the
license should accordingly contain an explicit
statement that fair use applies to the electronic
resource content. When a license speciically
mentions fair use rights or does not include restrictions on authorized uses, fair use will govern
(Okerson, Stenlake & Harper [Authorized Use],
2006; Richards, 2001). For this reason, it is a good
idea to negotiate license terms that include fair
use rights (Okerson, 1996; Richards, 2001).
The ability of a library licensee to negotiate
fair use rights will vary depending on the vendor,
but it is common for a vendor to balk at the inclusion of a long list of rights that the library would
like to reserve. When we have tried to include
the authorized use terms from LIBLICENSE
(Okerson, Stenlake, & Harper [Authorized Use],
2006, section 2) one vendor licensor refused to
agree to modify any of its terms to meet ours
and we spent a great deal of time and energy at
an impasse. We have had greater success where
we have asked vendors to eliminate speciic
authorized use provisions (on the licensee side)
Tactics and Terms in the Negotiation of Electronic Resource License
and restrictions (on the licensor side) and rely
on a general fair use statement declaring that
nothing in the agreement is intended to limit the
library licensor’s fair use rights. Because this is
a simple statement it may not merit a drawn-out
negotiation between the library and the licensor
and will still fully protect a library’s abilities to
provide interlibrary loan and other services. Note
that Haworth Press (2006) speciically allows for
coursepacks as pursuant to fair use.
Okerson, Stenlake, and Harper (Authorized
Use, 2006) note that the interlibrary loan system
that has worked well for academic and public
library print material lending worries publishers
when it comes to electronic publications. Accordingly, the right to interlibrary loan is a relatively
dificult term to negotiate with a vendor in a license
agreement for an electronic resource even though
interlibrary loan is expressly permitted by the
federal copyright law (17 U.S.C. §108, 2001-2005)
and libraries voluntarily adhere to the CONTU
(1979) guidelines that place limitations on library
interlibrary loans practices in an effort to protect
publishers’ copyrights.
Alford (2002) states that although a vendor
may not agree to the interlibrary loan of digital
materials via e-mail, they should at least accede
to a license where a library can interlibrary loan
a printed copy of an electronic resource. Note
that this is not permitted under the JSTOR (2006)
or Cambridge Journals Online (2006) licenses.
However, some vendors do expressly allow for
interlibrary loan rights for digital materials equal
to the rights available for print materials in their
licenses. For example, the University of Chicago
Journals Division (2006) license for astronomy
journals speciically allows for interlibrary loan
pursuant to United States copyright law and the
CONTU guidelines.
Cancellation
This provision speciies if and when a party to
the license may end an agreement and what the
repercussions for that action would be. Often
cancellation of a license by the licensee before
its term has run will result in a forfeiture of the
already paid annual subscription cost or a payment
penalty in the case of a multiyear agreement. If
a library’s budget luctuates year to year—for
instance a court or public library whose budget
is controlled by the state—it is a good idea to
include language in this section that would allow the library to cancel a multi-year agreement,
without penalty, if the library’s inancial situation
changes such that continued subscription and
payment for an electronic resource becomes an
impossibility.
Choice of Law and Venue
The choice of law section is where the license
designates which state’s law will govern a contract dispute as contracts are governed by state
and not federal law (First Options of Chicago,
Inc. v. Kaplan, 1995). In which court the contract
litigation takes place is controlled by the venue or
choice of forum section. Venue as speciied by the
license terms need only be a jurisdiction where
a lawsuit can proceed often due to a connection
with one of the parties. Jurisdiction in this sense
(as a locale) should not be confused with the legal
concept of jurisdiction which is the court’s power
to hear a case and is often speciically authorized
by statute. See Wright (1994) for more detail on
the jurisdiction/venue dichotomy.
Public institutions, whether school, government or public library, may be forbidden by statute
from signing a license in which the institution
surrenders to the law of another state and may
hold special defenses or rights under the law of its
home state (Okerson, Stenlake, & Harper [Governing Law], 2006). It is especially important to
amend a governing law section that speciies the
law of Maryland or Virginia for the contract as
these are the two states that have passed UCITA,
licensing law which is unfavorable to libraries.
Accordingly, if other states pass UCITA it would
183
Tactics and Terms in the Negotiation of Electronic Resource License
be best for a library to avoid signing license agreements that specify those additional states’ laws as
governing law as well. If a library’s home state
has passed UCITA, then the library should specify
in the license that it opts out of UCITA (allowed
by UCITA (§104, 2002-2006). As for the venue
section, a library should not agree to a distant
venue in the license. In the event of litigation,
short of a granted change of venue motion, the
trial will take place in that distant court, adding
to the cost of the litigation.
In our experience, the choices of law and venue
sections are the easiest sections to negotiate with
a vendor. Because we are not able to sign a license
that designates anything other than Michigan
law and venue, vendors have been willing to accommodate us in order to get our business. We
have had a couple of license negotiations with
foreign-based companies in England and Hong
Kong in which the vendors were not willing to
designate Michigan law in the contract terms. In
these cases we eliminated the sections entirely
and both parties were able to move on.
Conidentiality of License Terms
Some vendors include a provision in their licenses
that would prohibit the discussion of the terms of
the license by the licensee. Vendors will generally include this in a license when they want to
keep the licensee from sharing terms with other
parties and libraries. This is most often an issue
when a vendor is in the practice of varying its
pricing, access, or authorized uses for a product
on a license-by-license basis. These terms are
problematic in that they allow vendors to control
the information available to libraries as they try to
negotiate their own licenses and generally ensure
that the library has a weaker bargaining position
because of this lack of information.
It is always good practice to eliminate this
clause if a vendor is willing to do so or to negotiate a clause that only prohibits the sharing
of speciically identiied information (Okerson,
184
Stenlake, & Harper [Conidentiality], 2006). At
the very least, public institutions will often need
to modify such a conidentiality section to comply
with state “Freedom of Information Acts” (a.k.a.
FOIA, generally modeled on the federal Freedom
of Information Act, 2001-2005) as contracts signed
by a public institution are records that can be
requested pursuant to many state FOIA statutes
such as Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act
(2004-2006).
Cost
The price of a resource can be a major issue in a
license negotiation and sometimes will be the main
issue. Many resources will have a standard list
price on a take it or leave it basis. This is especially
the case when a license is for a single electronic
journal where the price is set for print only, electronic only, or print plus electronic subscriptions,
but is also true for larger packages. Indeed, half
of the libraries surveyed by Tashbook (2004) that
answered the question indicated that price was
the issue on which publishers were least likely to
make accommodations to a library. It is for the
larger databases and digital archives where the
price may be negotiable although it may always
be the case that a library will have to go without
a resource because funds are not available for
the one-time purchase or the encumbrance of an
expensive annual subscription. Regardless of the
payment model, it is important that the contract
prohibits the vendor from unilaterally changing
the pricing (Okerson, Stenlake, & Harper [Fees],
2006).
One model for negotiating down the price
of a resource is to agree to restrict access to the
resource. It is possible to reach a consensus point
with a vendor by limiting access to an electronic
resource to a particular campus (for a state-wide
institution), afiliates of a single or few schools on
a campus, eliminating alumni or walk-in patron
access, or restricting access to on-campus use
only. In a public library options include restricting
Tactics and Terms in the Negotiation of Electronic Resource License
access to in-building use only, limiting access to
one or more dedicated terminals, or requiring a
patron to login (thereby limiting access to residents
for many public libraries). Obviously, the palatability of these options will depend on the nature
of the resource, the perceived usage of a resource
by the groups to be excluded under a license, the
degree of hardship the exclusion would cause
those groups (e.g., is it unreasonable to make
students on a campus go to the business school to
use a resource on the stock market if is will halve
the price?), and the mission of the library. A less
onerous way to restrict access to a resource would
be to negotiate down the number of simultaneous
users that may access a resource. Often simultaneous user limits will be tiered and each tier will
have a standard price afixed to them. When a
resource is available with various simultaneous
user price tiers, statistics are an important tool in
understanding how much access a library needs
to negotiate and pay for. The statistics for total
number of uses are important, but when negotiating a level of simultaneous usage the statistics for
peak simultaneous logons and turnaways will let
a library know whether the current level of usage
is too little or too much.
Another way to easily reduce the annual cost
of an electronic resource subscription is to license
a multiyear subscription to the resource. A multiyear license can cut 5 to 20% from the annual
price for a resource. Additionally, if a resource is
available from multiple vendors you will often be
able to get vendors to match or beat the subscription cost offered by another vendor. If multiple
libraries on a university campus are interested in
the same electronic resource then it may also be
possible to share the cost so that no one library
has to pay for access to a resource where usage
would be largely spread across a campus. A further
way to cut costs is for a library to cancel print
subscriptions to material that it is also subscribing to electronically. If this is a real possibility
or deinite plan it is imperative to negotiate the
ability to cancel print into the license agreements
as some licenses have language prohibiting print
cancellations.
Some resources will have alternative pricing
models that may be less expensive. These models
can be lat-fee, package, or pay-per-view. A lat-fee
model is similar to a monthly or annual subscription cost. Usage, but more usually downloading,
can be capped at a certain amount in any given
month or annually. A package plan, which is often a pricing model for electronic journals, will
provide access to an array of journals for a single
cost rather than licensing each journal separately.
Richards (2001) notes that package plans often do
not meet librarian expectations because usually a
small percentage of the journal titles in a package
get the large majority of usage, in essence meaning
that libraries are paying for electronic access to
additional journals that may not be necessary for
their patrons’ research needs. Package plans will
often allow for the cancellations of print subscriptions, but allowed cancellations may be capped
at a certain percentage per year. A pay-per-view
plan would limit the cost to the library to the
actual searches and downloads performed. This
plan is most appropriate for an electronic resource
that will not receive much use and is costly on a
subscription basis. For a resource that is highly
used, a pay-per-view model will generally be more
expensive than a subscription.
A library’s membership in a consortium is
another way for a library to get more electronic
resources for less money. As Kohl and Sanville
(2006) note, this should not be confused with
getting electronic resources more cheaply via a
consortia membership (i.e., a library can increase
its access to electronic resource titles, usually ejournals or e-books, for a percentage more money
than it currently pays for the titles it holds in print).
While the relatively cheap additional expenditure
for access to a large number of new titles can
be a tantalizing incentive, consortial deals can
have other costs including high administrative
costs (Stange, 2006), a movement away from a
patron-focused collection to a more general col-
185
Tactics and Terms in the Negotiation of Electronic Resource License
lection due to the aggregate nature of multilibrary
packages (Scigliano, 2002), and a lesser ability to
re-negotiate deals at renewal. Other positives to
consortial packages include the ability to cancel
print subscriptions to rely on the electronic version (this needs to be negotiated at the outset as
many consortial packages have print cancellation
limitations) and the ability of the member libraries to withdraw print collections in reliance on
the electronic for access and a particular member
library for archival purposes.
Other factors that can be used to positively
negotiate the price of a resource are having previously purchased the same material in another
format or a library having purchased another
electronic resource in the same series from the
vendor. Additionally, some vendors may be willing to extend pricing deals similar to consortium
pricing to university libraries that have historically purchased a large number of that vendor’s
electronic resources either themselves or in conjunction with other libraries on campus.
We have had the most dificulty in negotiating
the cost of resources where the vendor bases the
price of the resource on FTE enrollment (full time
equivalent, i.e., the number of full-time students
enrolled where two half-time students would be
combined as 1 FTE). The dificulty we have had
in negotiating down such prices is due to the fact
that FTE price quotes are more set in stone from
the vendor’s point-of-view than other electronic
resource pricing. FTE cost is based on the theory
that a school with a 1000 FTE will use a resource
twice as much as a school with a 500 FTE. While
this may be the case for some resources, we feel
that for many resources, especially those on a
particular subject (e.g., tax law), this is not an
accurate theory as larger institutions may have
more resources available thereby reducing the
usage of any speciic resource. It is for these
types of resources that we have tried to negotiate
FTE quoted prices. We have had some, but not
universal, success in getting out of the FTE price
track by agreeing to restrict access to dedicated
186
terminals or by purchasing passwords instead
of IP access (we prefer not to use passwords because of their administrative hassle). There have
also been resources that we have chosen not to
subscribe because of a nonnegotiable FTE-based
price when we have felt that the usage based on
FTE theory was not an accurate predictor of the
usage from our institution.
Deinitions
Some license agreements will have a separate
deinitions section while others will include
deinitions of terms in the individual sections of
the license where they arise. Generally, a good
contract or license agreement is clear to the parties
who sign it and that means that the terms at issue
in the license should be clearly and speciically
deined, especially if the usage varies from common dictionary meaning (Harris, 2002; Kutten,
2003-2006). Harris (2002) notes the importance
of deciding whether a license term is being used
in its common manner. The deinitions of the
terms of the license are where a great deal of
the negotiation may take place. A deinition of
“authorized users” may not include alumni and
if the library wants alumni to have access to a
resource, the library will need to negotiate that
change to the deinition. The same is true of a
deinition of “library network” that omits access
from off-campus in an academic setting or to a
public library’s patrons from home. Note that
Taylor and Francis (2003) include a set of deinitions including “authorized users,” “course packs,”
“library premises,” and “subscription period” at
the beginning of their EULA.
Reimbursement
The license agreement contract will generally
cover continual access to digital content for a
subscription period. There are times where access
to an electronic resource is not available due to
Internet or network problems at the library but
Tactics and Terms in the Negotiation of Electronic Resource License
also due to network problems on the vendor side.
In the latter case it is important that a library be
able to receive a pro rata refund for the resource
downtime if the electronic content is unavailable
for a suficient period of time. Downtime of an
hour or even a couple of days may not be worth
the effort of getting a refund, but if a resource is
unavailable for weeks, then continual access as
licensed was unavailable and the library should
be allowed a refund for that time under the terms
of the license agreement. Sometimes the agreement will provide for the refund by extending
the license term by the same amount of time as
the downtime.
This section deals with the content covered by
the license. It is important that the license clearly
and accurately details the content to which the
library is subscribing. The subject matter is often
included in another section of the license such
as the preamble or deinitions section instead of
standing on its own. It is important to note that the
preamble and deinitions sections are not legally
binding parts of a contract but are used by courts
to discern the intent of parties
appropriate remedy for the aggrieved party. The
termination section is where a library should
indicate that a termination based on a default by
the publisher mandates a pro rata refund of the
prepaid subscription cost (Harris, 2002). In our
experience, vendors are generally willing to agree
to a pro rata refund.
The termination section is also the appropriate
place to include language allowing a library to not
renew a multiyear subscription that is paid on an
annual basis because of funding shortfalls. This
may most often be a problem in governmental
libraries but can touch other types of libraries
as well. This language would allow a library to
terminate its subscription in the event of a budget
shortfall or cut without penalty.
Harris (2002) cautions that libraries should
make sure that a license agreement not allow vendors to terminate an agreement due to the actions
of library patrons. The library should have a role
in educating its patrons about the use of electronic
resources and will generally be responsible for
mediating access to an electronic resource (via
passwords, the set-up of library terminals, or a
proxy server) but should be wary of agreeing to
allow a vendor the right of termination due to
patron misuse.
Termination
Warranty & Indemnity
The termination of a license will most often be
due to the expiration of the term set by the license
agreement. The termination section of the license
delineates when one of the parties to the license
can terminate the agreement for another reason.
It is important that a library make sure that the
termination clause allows the library to terminate
the agreement for a material breach, such as the
disappearance of important content, and not allow only the licensor to terminate the agreement.
Murray (2001) notes that a material breach is a
failure to perform the contract so substantial that a
party does not receive the beneits of the contract;
thereby making termination of the contract an
The warranty and indemnity clauses will often be
combined in a license agreement. A warranty is
a promise or guarantee regarding the electronic
resource at issue. In the warranty portion the
licensor will generally promise that the vendor is
the content owner and has the right to license the
electronic content. Warranty sections will often
also state that the license is for the electronic resource “as is” and that the vendor cannot be held
liable for any errors in the product or damages
caused by reliance on such erroneous information
although the warranty should at least indicate that
the product is free from defects. Warranty and
indemnity terms will often be boilerplate clauses
Subject Matter
187
Tactics and Terms in the Negotiation of Electronic Resource License
that may be dificult to get vendors to amend.
Harris (2002) suggests that it is not necessary
to negotiate these sections in minute detail, as a
general warranty and indemnity section will be
appropriate for most licenses for library electronic
resources.
Alford (2002) asserts that an important warranty for a library to negotiate is a warranty against
copyright infringement where the publisher would
maintain that the digital materials included in the
electronic resource in question do not infringe the
intellectual property rights of another party. This
is especially important because a library may be
liable for copyright infringement under law even
if the fault in not obtaining permissions lies with
the publisher (Alford, 2002). The LexisNexis
(1996) terms include such a guarantee.
The indemnity section provides for compensation should there be a contractual breach
resulting in damages to a party. From a library
perspective, an indemnity clause should provide
at a minimum that any problem with the electronic
resource making it unusable must be ixed in a
prompt manner or the library would be able to
cancel the agreement and ask for a refund. Alford
(2002) states that the library should not agree to
indemnify the publisher for anything and especially not for misuses of electronic content by
library patrons as the library has no real control
over how patrons will use the materials. Alford
(2002) continues that is would be acceptable for
a library to agree to make efforts of a reasonable
nature to remedy a situation of misuse once the
library has knowledge of such a situation. Okerson, Stenlake, and Harper [Warranties] (2006)
state that indemnity clauses should impose equal
burdens on each party.
Other Common License Terms
Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR):
This clause allows for resolution of a dispute
between the parties outside of a court of law.
ADR processes often include mediation,
188
negotiation, and arbitration as a inal step.
Arbitration may be binding or non-binding
where nonbinding arbitration allows for the
parties to go to court after the arbitration
stage. Arbitration may be expensive as arbitrators in the United States are generally
chosen through the American Arbitration
Association (Harris, 2002). When reviewing
an ADR clause a library will generally want
to ensure that both parties equally pay the
costs.
Assignment: This clause may prohibit the
assignment of the license to another party.
Corporate libraries especially will want to
be sure that the assignment clause details
how an assignment may be made in the case
of a corporate purchase or takeover.
Complete or Entire Agreement: This
clause stipulates that the negotiated agreement is enforceable on its own and any other
written communication between the parties
is irrelevant. Accordingly, a library will want
to make sure that the provisions it wants are
indicated in the negotiated license and not
agreed on verbally or via e-mail.
Force Majeure: Literally a superior force
and generally refers to an act of God, act
of war, or another condition outside of the
control of either party. This clause will apply provided that the act was not foreseeable
enough that due care on the part of a party
would have avoided the failure to meet the
terms of the contract (Harris, 2002). The
force majeure section should apply equally
to both parties and common technical issues (e.g., server failure) are generally not
covered.
Severability: This clause ensures that if any
provision of a contract is deemed illegal or
unenforceable the remainder of the contract
still stands.
Support: This clause indicates what kind
of technical support the library may rely on
under the contract. The library may want to
Tactics and Terms in the Negotiation of Electronic Resource License
try to negotiate for free-of-charge support
if the vendor does not typically provide that
and the library believes that such support
may be necessary.
Waiver: This clause prevents the failure to
enforce a particular provision in the contract
from constituting a waiver of that or any
other part of the license. It is good practice
to include language that states that amending the contract in writing is the only way
that provisions may be waived.
WHAT NEXT?
What will the future bring? It is probably safe to
say “more license agreements.” A license agreement will likely arrive hand-in-hand with each
new electronic resource as it becomes available
and as the number of electronic resources increases
so will the licenses to sign.
The real question will probably be whether
publishers and libraries will be able to ind a more
universal middle consensus on some important
issues like fair use, cost, ownership, and amendment of licensing terms. Libraries will certainly
need to continue to argue their case regarding the
use of materials and patron rights, but it will be
dificult to make sweeping changes considering
both the current political and publishing climate
as well as the large number of publishers creating
these electronic resources. It seems unlikely that
Congress will reverse course against the interests
of contributors and shorten the term of copyright
or add material to the public domain so libraries
will still need use licenses to gain permission to
content. At present, publishers have no reason to
start license negotiations anywhere other than a
strictly curtailed list of authorized uses in order to
both protect their rights in the content as well as to
allow for the possibility of increased payment in
compensation for looser use restrictions. This does
not seem likely to change but movement toward
the middle may be possible if libraries are able
to intelligently negotiate licenses and are willing
to step away from a resource with unfavorable
licensing language. The more libraries that are
willing to take this step the more likely it is that
publishers will amend their practices.
A licensing area that libraries will want to
watch will be increased use of Creative Commons
licenses (2007b) and their effect on electronic
resources. Creative Commons’ goal is to provide
a middle “reasonable” level of copyright protection between no protection and the national and
international legal regimes (Creative Commons,
2007a). Note that there is some dissent about
the advantageousness of the Creative Commons
scheme as a way to get around the use problems
of traditional copyright (see e.g., Dusollier, 2006;
Elkin-Koren, 2005; Katz, 2006). Creative Commons licenses are attached to a work by the creator and in addition to requiring attribution may
also restrict commercial use, restrict derivative
works, or require derivative works to carry the
same license as the original work (Creative Commons, 2007b). What does this mean for a library
licensing resources from a vendor? Currently, it
does not mean much. Resources that are currently
being licensed from vendors may include works
that the creator has attached a creative commons license to - probably these would be only
the “Attribution” or “Attribution No Derivates”
licenses (Creative Commons, 2007b) because of
the commercial nature of the larger electronic
database—but it would presently be a daunting
task to try to ferret out any Creative Commons
licensed materials on a work-by-work basis in a
large database (Dusollier, 2006). At present, there
are two areas where libraries may want to focus
their licensing energies regarding creative commons. First, libraries may want to add a clause to
license agreements that speciically protects the
libraries ability to use works attached to Creative
Commons licenses as allowed by those licenses.
Second, libraries may want to negotiate with the
vendor terms that mandate that the vendor indicate whether a Creative Commons license (and
189
Tactics and Terms in the Negotiation of Electronic Resource License
which one) is applicable to a particular work in
the work’s metadata. This second area is going
may be the more dificult term to negotiate, as it
would require work on the vendor’s part to add
metadata indicating Creative Commons licensing
to the existing database as well as to materials
added in the future.
CONCLUSION
As electronic resources become a larger proportion of library collection budget expenditures, the
importance of being able to negotiate favorable
terms for a library become more imperative. License agreements are contracts and as such use
rights given to libraries pursuant to United States
copyright law can be negotiated away. In order to
protect a library’s interest as well as the interests
of a library’s patrons, librarians must become more
knowledgeable concerning electronic resource
license agreements and the licensing language
and terms included in them.
REFERENCES
17 U.S.C. §107-122 (2001 & Supp. 2005).
Alford, D. E. (2002). Negotiating and analyzing electronic license agreements. Law Library
Journal, 94(4), 621-644.
American Law Institute (1981-2006). Restatement
of the law second, Contracts 2d: As adopted and
promulgated by the American Law Institute at
Washington, D.C. St. Paul, MN: American Law
Institute Publishers.
American Library Association (2006). UCITA:
Impact on libraries. Retrieved November 18, 2007,
from http://www.ala.org/ala/washoff/WOissues/
copyrightb/ucita/impact.htm
American Library Association (2006). UCITA:
UCITA & related legislation in your state. Re-
190
trieved November 18, 2007, from http://www.
ala.org/ala/washoff/WOissues/copyrightb/ucita/
states.htm
Bieleield, A., & Cheeseman, L. (1999). Interpreting and negotiating licensing agreements: A
guidebook for the library, research, and teaching
professions. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc.
Blackwell-Synergy (2006). Terms and conditions.
Retrieved November 18, 2007, from http://www.
blackwell-synergy.com/help?context=terms_
and_conditions
Cambridge Journals Online (2006). Online terms
of use. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://
journals.cambridge.org/action/terms
CONTU (National Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyright Works) (1979). Final
report of the national commission on new technological uses of copyright works. Washington,
D.C.: Library of Congress.
CQ Press. (2006). Terms of service for the online
services at cqpress.com. Retrieved November 18,
2007, from http://www.cqpress.com/TermsOfUse/general.htm
Creative Commons (2007a). About us. Retrieved
November 18, 2007, from http://creativecommons.
org/about/history
Creative Commons (2007b). Creative commons
licenses. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from
http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/meetthe-licenses
Dusollier, S. (2006). The master’s tools v. the
master’s house: Creative commons v. copyright.
Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts, 29(3),
271-293.
Elkin-Koren, N. (2005). What contracts cannot
do: The limits of private ordering in facilitating a
creative commons. Fordham Law Review, 74(2),
375-422.
Tactics and Terms in the Negotiation of Electronic Resource License
Farnsworth, E. A. (1999). United States contract
law (Rev. ed.). Huntington, NY: Juris Publishing.
First Options of Chicago, Inc. v. Kaplan, 514 U.S.
938 (1995).
Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552 (2001
& Supp. 2005).
Freedom of Information Act (Michigan), Mich.
Comp. Laws Ann. § 15.231 et seq. (West 2004
& Supp. 2006).
Harris, L. E. (2002). Licensing digital content: A
practical guide for librarians. Chicago: American
Library Association.
Haworth Press (2006). The Haworth Press multisite online terms. Retrieved November 18, 2007,
from http://www.haworthpress.com/pdfs/MultiSiteLicense.pdf
JSTOR (2006). Terms and conditions of use.
Retrieved November 18, 2007, from http://www.
jstor.org/about/terms.html
Katz, Z. (2006). Pitfalls of open licensing: An
analysis of creative commons licensing. IDEA,
46(3), 391-413.
Kohl, D. F., & Sanville, T. (2006). More bang
for the buck: Increasing the effectiveness of library expenditures through cooperation. Library
Trends, 54(3), 394-410.
Kutten, L. J. (2003-2006). Computer software:
Protection/liability/law/forms (2003 Recompiled
ed.). St. Paul, MN: Thomson/West.
LexisNexis (1996). Terms & conditions of use
for the LexisNexis services. Retrieved November
18, 2007, from http://www.lexisnexis.com/terms/
general/
Murray, J. E., Jr. (2001). Murray on contracts (4th
ed.) New York: LexisNexis.
Okerson, A. (1996). What academic libraries
need in electronic content licenses. Retrieved
November 18, 2007, from http://www.library.yale.
edu/~okerson/stm.html
Okerson, A. (1997). Copyright or contract? Library Journal, 122(14), 136-139.
Okerson, A. S., Stenlake, R., & Harper, G.
(2006). LIBLICENSE: Amendment. Retrieved
November 18, 2007, from http://www.library.yale.
edu/~llicense/amendgen.shtml
Okerson, A. S., Stenlake, R. & Harper, G. (2006).
LIBLICENSE: Authorized use of license materials. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from http://
www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/usecls.shtml
Okerson, A. S., Stenlake, R., & Harper, G. (2006).
LIBLICENSE: Conidentiality. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from http://www.library.yale.
edu/~llicense/confgen.shtml
Okerson, A. S., Stenlake, R., & Harper, G. (2006).
LIBLICENSE: Fees. Retrieved November 18,
2007, from http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/
paygen.shtml
Okerson, A. S., Stenlake, R., & Harper, G. (2006).
LIBLICENSE: Governing law; Dispute resolution.
Retrieved November 18, 2007, from http://www.
library.yale.edu/~llicense/remgen.shtml
Okerson, A. S., Stenlake, R., & Harper, G. (2006).
LIBLICENSE: Warranties; Indemnities; Limitations on warranties. Retrieved November 17, 2007,
from http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/warrgen.shtml
Pace, A. K. (2003). The ultimate digital library:
Where the new information players meet. Chicago:
American Library Association.
Rice, D. A. (2002). Legal-technological regulation
of information access. In T. A. Lipinski (Ed.),
Libraries, museums, and archives: Legal issues
and ethical challenges in the new information era
(pp. 275-294). Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.
191
Tactics and Terms in the Negotiation of Electronic Resource License
Richards, R. (2001). Licensing agreements: Contracts, the eclipse of copyright, and the promise
of cooperation. Acquisitions Librarian, 13(26),
89-107.
Scigliano, M. (2002). Consortium purchases: Case
study for a cost-beneit analysis. The Journal of
Academic Librarianship, 28(6), 393-399.
Stange, K. (2006). Caught between print and
electronic. IFLA Journal, 32(3), 237-239.
Tashbook, L. (2004). Survey on licensing. Buffalo,
NY: Williams S. Hein & Co., Inc.
Taylor & Francis (2003). Terms and conditions
of access. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from
192
http://public.metapress.com/download/proiles/
taylorandfrancis/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf
Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act
(2002-2006). Uniform laws annotated (Vol. 7, Part
II). Minneapolis, MN: Thomson/West.
University of Chicago Press Journals Division
(2006). Electronic access to astronomy journals.
Retrieved November 18, 2007, from http://www.
journals.uchicago.edu/sitedocs.pdf
Wright, C. A. (1994). The law of federal courts
(5th ed.). St. Paul, MN: West.
Section IV
Working with
Electronic Resources
194
Chapter XI
Working with Database and
E-Journal Vendors to Ensure
Quality for End Users
Heather Christenson
California Digital Library, USA
Sherry Willhite
California Digital Library, USA
ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how the California Digital Library (CDL) supports the thousands of electronic
journals, databases, collections and reference works that are licensed by CDL on behalf of the ten
campuses of the University of California (UC). Three key components are vital to the success of this
activity: the involvement of librarians at all the campuses to monitor and evaluate UC’s electronic resources; CDL’s internal processes for working with vendors; and CDL’s requirements documents which
emphasize both technical standards and best practices. By sharing these processes and documents, the
authors hope to provide a foundation for developing practices to work successfully with vendors and
ensure quality for library patrons.
INTRODUCTION
The California Digital Library (CDL) licenses
thousands of electronic journals, databases, collections and reference works on behalf of the ten
campuses of the University of California (UC),
which are located across the state of California
from San Diego in the south to Davis in the north.
The CDL is an all-digital library and is located
at the UC Ofice of the President, rather than on
a campus. The CDL’s responsibilities include
monitoring UC’s systemwide electronic resources
for access, performance, features, functionality,
completeness of content and usage. Within this
large consortium, the relationships are complex,
and the range of digital content provided to end
Copyright © 2008, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
Working with Database and E-Journal Vendors to Ensure Quality for End Users
users takes many forms and covers many subjects.
Since the CDL is not directly connected to the
users of the electronic resources we license, we
have created a process to gather and share information about electronic resource use, monitor
and evaluate the resources, prioritize issues and
problems, and work with vendors to improve the
resources.
This chapter describes three key components
of the CDL’s electronic resources program: the
involvement of librarians at all the campuses to
monitor and evaluate UC’s electronic resources;
CDL’s internal processes for working with vendors; and CDL’s requirements documents which
emphasize both technical standards and best
practices. The authors hope these processes and
documents will provide a foundation for librarians who wish to develop practices for working
successfully with vendors and ensuring quality
for end users, regardless of the size of their organization and numbers of staff.
BACKGROUND
Today’s libraries license and provide access to an
ever-increasing array of digital content from a wide
variety of vendors. The vendors, and associated
publishers and platforms, can range from small
scholarly organizations to large corporations, and
have varying levels of technical expertise and
engagement with librarians.
UC makes a sizable investment in licensing
electronic resources from these vendors, and we
must ensure that our investment results in useful content and services for our end users. The
electronic resources licensed by the CDL on
behalf of the campuses fall into two categories:
resources licensed for all ten UC campuses, which
we call “tier 1” resources, and resources that are
championed by one UC campus and may include
other campuses in the license, called “tier 2”
resources. The ten campuses license electronic
resources for the use of their individual campus
locally, but these are currently out of the scope of
our programs. However, some of the principles we
describe could indeed be adapted to an individual
campus or library.
Everything we do is for the purposes of ensuring a quality research experience for the students,
faculty and staff of our university. The quality
of their experience is critical for their pursuits
of teaching, research and knowledge. Because
the CDL centrally licenses electronic resources
for all ten campuses, we are well positioned to
advocate for quality. But this effort also involves
our campus librarians, since it is they who work
with the end users and are the subject experts.
The two primary groups whose work we will
discuss are the CDL Resource Liaisons (CDL,
2005b), a campus-based, consortium-wide group,
and a team of six staff at CDL called the Resource
Wranglers. The beginnings of our current processes date back to 1999, when CDL formed the
Resource Liaisons group to monitor UC-wide
licensed electronic resources.
The CDL’s electronic resources program,
which includes the Resource Liaisons and the
Resource Wranglers, demonstrates that a successful program does not have to be centralized
to provide maximum beneit and that it can be
achieved without requiring an enormous amount
of time from any one staff member. Investing the
time to identify the services critical to users, the
technologies necessary to support these services,
and the requirements that brings these together
is necessary for a successful program. In addition, these activities provide vendors with a clear
picture of the user community and can aid them
in their process of product development.
THE CDL RESOURCE LIAISON
PROGRAM
Central to CDL’s “watchdog” efforts is a group
called the CDL Resource Liaisons. Resource liai-
195
Working with Database and E-Journal Vendors to Ensure Quality for End Users
sons are campus librarians who volunteer to take
responsibility for monitoring a licensed resource
or set of resources in their areas of expertise on
behalf of all ten campuses and the CDL. This
group is centrally administered from CDL by a
resource liaison coordinator, but it “lives” on the
campuses, where more than 100 UC librarians
have been appointed to carry out the charge:
It is important to monitor bibliographic and
full-text content licensed by the University of
California and hosted at external sites. In some
cases, the features and functionality of a resource could be improved and, as a single large
customer, we would like to inluence product
development. In others, the performance of a
producer (server availability, completeness and
currency of content, etc.) must be monitored. In
both cases, there may be issues that should be
brought to bear upon renewal.
Subject experts who regularly use these
resources are in the best position to monitor
functional progress, completeness of content, and
performance and may be the most interested in
the use data. They also are the most appropriate
people to gather input from colleagues and users,
and recommend enhancements to the resources.
(CDL, 2005b)
Monitoring the Resource
Each resource liaison serves as the central communications point in a process that involves colleagues at their own library, colleagues at other
libraries on their campus, colleagues at other
campuses, database and e-journal vendors, and
the CDL. From this central position, the resource
liaisons monitor and share information about their
assigned resource in a number of ways. Most
immediately, they actively use their assigned
resource, help patrons use it, and solicit feedback
from their colleagues to learn how others are using the resource.
196
As the central point of contact for their assigned
resource, the resource liaison is often involved
when access or content problems are discovered.
Colleagues across UC may refer problems to them,
or contact them for information regarding the resource. Resource liaisons explain problems to the
vendor; suggest the ideal outcome for resolution
of a problem and follow up until the problem is
satisfactorily resolved. This information is shared
with the CDL via a listserv.
Each year in January and in July as contracts
come up for renewal, there is often a lurry of
access problems, and it is especially effective
to have the resource liaisons’ help. Also, when
there are changes to a resource such as removal
or addition of features or content, the resource
liaisons notify the UC campus community via
systemwide listservs, CDL’s e-mail newsletter,
and campus Web site sites, blogs or newsletters.
Much-awaited database platform upgrades, books
added to book collections, and backiles added
to journal collections are examples of the type of
improvements which need to be announced and
placed into context. The resource liaisons are in
the best position to do this. The CDL provides
centralized problem reporting mechanisms, including a telephone helpline, a Web-based helpline
database application, and several listservs which
can be used to report problems.
When resource liaisons take on their assignment, the CDL provides them with initial vendor
contacts and background information. Most of
the resource liaisons get to know their vendor
representatives, and subscribe to vendor newsletters, listservs, or RSS feeds. Resource liaisons
are encouraged to participate in vendor advisory
groups, if possible. At conferences, the resource
liaisons attend user group meetings meet with
vendors in person to smooth the way for working
relationships. The CDL staff works alongside the
resource liaisons when there are especially dificult or ongoing problems to work through with
vendors. In addition, the CDL serves as a conduit
for addressing issues that affect multiple resources
licensed from an individual vendor.
Working with Database and E-Journal Vendors to Ensure Quality for End Users
Reports
In addition to the ongoing monitoring of resources,
the Resource Liaison group’s major evaluation
activity is an annual report, known as the “vendor
report card,” which is sent to the CDL resource
liaison coordinator. The report provides a means
to evaluate key aspects of each resource: content,
user interface, technical functionality and robustness, technical support and support in general. The
report includes a request for updated instructional
materials, either vendor or librarian-created to be
included in the Instructional Materials section of
the CDL Web site. Finally, the report includes a few
open-ended questions which allow the resource
liaison to do a full overall evaluation of the vendor’s
strengths and weaknesses and identify issues not
covered in the rest of the report. A sample of the
report form is included as Appendix I.
This reporting activity has evolved over the
years, and has been iteratively informed by feedback from the Resource Liaisons group. When the
group meets each year, both the outcome of the
reports and the reporting process is discussed,
and in the past the group has voted on whether
to make adjustments to the process. Originally,
the evaluation of vendors was separate from the
evaluation of resources, and the resource liaisons
reported quarterly. As vendor offerings seemed
to gradually stabilize, the scope of the reports
merged and was narrowed down to one report per
year. The CDL’s assessment team (CDL, 2005a)
assisted in distilling our needs into a set of six
questions. Having one report seems to balance
the workload of the campus librarians with what
CDL really needs to know about the systemwide
resources. However, if the situation changes,
a process is in place to consider new or varied
ways of reporting.
Surveys
In addition to the annual report, the CDL will
occasionally survey the resource liaisons about
functional aspects of the resources, or current
trends in vendor offerings. For example, the
resource liaisons who are assigned to databases
were asked to report on whether their particular
database incorporated openURL support, durable
links, and other services. Resource liaisons who
are assigned to e-journal collections were asked
to ind out which version of a journal article the
vendor considered to be the “copy of record.”
Other survey topics have included vendor support
for metasearch standards, whether RSS feeds
are offered, and whether “paid for by library”
branding is available. The CDL has also asked the
resource liaisons to weigh in on the success of our
own services such as our helpline and reporting
mechanisms. In the future, the CDL will likely
survey the group on issues surrounding vendor
strategies for digital preservation.
Statistics
Another key element in the evaluation of licensed
resources is usage statistics. This area had fallen
under the scope of the Resource Liaison program,
but activities have evolved over time as the CDL
has continued to seek greater eficiency and
consistency across vendors. A number of years
ago, the resource liaisons collected systemwide
statistics from the vendors. Although now there
are vestiges of this activity with a few vendors,
the data is now centrally collected by CDL, with
assistance from individual resource liaisons when
needed.
The resource liaisons still provide important
expertise in the interpretation of usage statistics.
At annual report time, and informally at renewal
time, the resource liaisons are asked to review the
statistics and make sure the numbers match the
perception of usage on that particular liaison’s
campus. Given their expert understanding of
their assigned resource, the resource liaisons can
identify factors that may contribute to the amount
the resource is used. For example, low usage may
relect barriers to access such as port limits, a need
197
Working with Database and E-Journal Vendors to Ensure Quality for End Users
for publicity, or an inherently small user community. Although port limits are becoming a thing of
the past, resource liaisons are still charged with
notifying CDL when users complain of frequent
turnaways. High usage may be attributed to the
cancellation of a competing database or a recent
transition to a more usable interface.
In addition, the resource liaisons are a strong
voice in encouraging database and e-journal
vendors to support standards for reporting usage
statistics. In the past, the group has successfully
lobbied vendors to conform to the ICOLC statistics guidelines (ICOLC, 2006) With the coming
of the COUNTER initiative (COUNTER, n.d.),
the group now advocates for the latest version of
the COUNTER guidelines (COUNTER, 2005).
The draft standard, “NISO Standardized Usage
Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI)” (NISO,
2006) is the next logical step in this progression,
for it will enable harvesting and local manipulation
of COUNTER statistics. In the future the CDL and
the resource liaisons will most likely encourage
vendors to become SUSHI-compliant.
Being Proactive
In light of a strong user service perspective, the
CDL encourages resource liaisons to be proactive
in identifying improvements that they and their
colleagues would like the vendor to make to their
products. In the recent past, these improvements
have often been enhancements to the user interface. CDL’s user interface principles document
(CDL, 2003) is a high-level encapsulation of the
knowledge gained from years of articulation of
many user interface issues to vendors. The user
interface principles address consistency and clarity, context and navigation, search, ease of learning, lexibility and personalization. The resource
liaisons use this document as a starting point for
conversations with colleagues and vendors. Key
issues can be easily pointed out in relation to the
principles, with ready examples of the reasoning behind each item. As user interface design
198
continues to evolve, so will the user interface
principles document. In the near future, principles
for integrated discovery interfaces and mobile
search interfaces will most likely be added.
The CDL works with the resource liaisons to
gather and prioritize requests for enhancements
and changes before sending them to a vendor. The
resource liaisons are then invited to participate
in vendor meetings where the issues are discussed. This is especially effective in situations
where we have multiple products from a vendor
and more than one resource liaison. In a recent
vendor meeting that included such diverse topics
as consistent presentation of linking services,
problems with pop-ups, browser compatibility issues and schedules for adding content, the vendor
was riveted by the irst person accounts given by
the resource liaisons of end users grappling with
these aspects of the vendor’s product. The CDL
will work with the vendor to implement resulting
enhancements and provide feedback to resource
liaisons on the status of requests for changes and
enhancements. This process is discussed in detail
later in this chapter.
Instructional Materials
The CDL provides a central location for instructional materials covering systemwide-licensed
resources as a service to librarians on all of the
UC campuses (CDL, 2006c). Although the vendorsupplied embedded help is usually the irst resort
of the end user, librarians on all of our campuses
need to reference the tutorials, help and other
instructional materials for a given resource, especially when they are teaching classes of students
or instructing faculty. Resource liaisons provide
links to vendor-supplied materials in their annual
report. In addition, whenever there is a signiicant
change to a resource, the CDL asks the resource
liaison to supply updated instructional materials
once new features have been incorporated. Often the most helpful and engaging instructional
materials are those created by UC librarians. UC-
Working with Database and E-Journal Vendors to Ensure Quality for End Users
created materials can be especially useful since
they place the resource in the context of speciic
use in the campus environment. Materials from
one campus can be modiied for use on another
campus. Most instructional materials tend to be
documents, but they may also be interactive tutorials, “tours,” Web-conference recordings, videos,
podcasts, or guidance in other formats.
Because the resource liaisons contribute the
instructional materials, it is not an onerous task
for a central entity such as CDL to maintain a
simple Web page listing the materials. There
may be more dynamic methods for sharing this
sort of information (e.g., wikis, blogs) across an
institution or consortium, but the CDL has found
this low-barrier solution to be effective.
Vendors appreciate the fact that these instructional materials are surfaced to a wide audience
of librarians, so this arrangement beneits everyone. By periodically turning their attention
to instructional materials, resource liaisons may
also surface unmet training originating from the
campuses, which can then be passed along to the
vendors for attention.
The Value of the Resource Liaison
Program
Power of the Group
Resource liaisons make sure that ensure that
UC’s faculty and students realize the value of
licensed resources. The oversight that the resource
liaisons provide regarding the performance of
each licensed resource is particularly important
at renewal time, when it provides great leverage
to understand the strengths and shortcomings
of a given resource. Examples of issues that
resource liaisons might bring to CDL’s attention
are user interface problems, missing content, or
lack of conformance to technical requirements.
The technical requirements are essential to this
process, and will be discussed in more detail later
in the chapter.
In addition, the Resource Liaison program
saves time both for CDL and individual campuses in responding to all kinds of problems and
changes to resources. When resource liaisons
report upcoming user interface changes, administrative changes, and content changes, the CDL
can be proactive in taking the appropriate action
to ensure the best possible outcome for end users. The Resource Liaison program provides UC
with a powerful group voice in discussions with
vendors. This effort gives us a great platform for
making sure the needs of UC’s staff and scholars
are taken into account by our licensed resource
vendors and incorporated into vendor offerings.
The CDL serves generally as a central point
where UC creates eficiencies in our systemwide
licensed resources activities. The Resource Liaison program speciically adds to these eficiencies
in a number of ways. The group gives CDL access to subject expertise and depth of knowledge
about particular resources that the CDL does not
have in-house. The campuses have, for example,
music librarians who understand the limitations of
“Beethoven” as a search term within music collections, life sciences librarians who understand the
intricacies of each layer of biological taxonomies
in depth, government documents librarians who
have a sense of how licensed content dovetails with
documents available on the Web, and chemistry
librarians who understand the challenges of the
search and presentation of chemical formulas
and models. This type of speciic expertise is
essential for evaluating completeness of content
and appropriate search mechanisms, as well as
for understanding user needs. In addition, the
participation of many resource liaisons who talk
to the vendors creates a vital channel for informal
“heads up” reports. The CDL could not possibly
know about the sheer scope of content changes,
platform changes, details of user interface updates,
and other changes that the resource liaisons report
directly from our libraries. Because the resource
liaisons are on the front lines and see user behavior, including how databases and e-journals are
199
Working with Database and E-Journal Vendors to Ensure Quality for End Users
really used, they can best identify problems and
give the CDL a clear picture of what goes on at
our constituent campuses.
Common Technology Standards
The resource liaisons advocate for UC-preferred
technology standards and services that beneit the
entire university. The CDL provides technical
expertise, and having consistent advocates on
all the campuses keeps UC’s name and CDLrecommended technical requirements in front of
database and e-journal vendors. This tactic has
resulted in great success with vendors implementing our recommended technical solutions. For
example, link resolver services are very important
to end-users. UC relies on our openURL-based
link resolver service to get users to the appropriate
copy of electronic text, to link to campus OPAC
records, and to link to our interlibrary loan and
document delivery service. The resource liaisons
and the CDL have worked together to raise the
awareness level of the vendors in this area and
work to convince vendors of the need to support
this critical function. The CDL technical staff
worked closely with our database and full content vendors to help them implement openURL
services and to improve both the quality and the
amount of the metadata sent in the openURL.
Connection and Enrichment
The Resource Liaison program also enriches UC
systemwide relationships, and provides professional development opportunities to librarians.
The program forges connections between UC
libraries and librarians at the systemwide level,
since resource liaisons are charged with communicating with their colleagues among the
various bibliographer groups and campuses. A
good example of this is when a transition of a
database from one vendor to another is made; an
evaluative process is lead by the resource liaison
and involves colleagues across the university. The
200
program also connects CDL to the campuses, and
gives the CDL an opportunity to inform campus
librarians via the Resource Liaison program about
CDL activities and practices.
In addition, the Resource Liaison program is a
good channel for propagating skills such as user
interface evaluation, understanding of linking
technology, licensing and more. This experience is a form of professional development for
the resource liaisons, which also beneits their
campus libraries. Most importantly, the work that
the Resource Liaisons group does with CDL aims
towards happy end users—UC’s scholars.
Value to Our Vendors
Not only do the resource liaisons gather opinions
and information from their colleagues across the
university to present to vendors, they also can serve
as a point for vendors to disseminate information,
conduct user testing and gather feedback that
supports the vendors’ goals for product enhancement and development. The CDL and the resource
liaisons provide vendors with examples of how
their products are being used, and the relative
popularity and/or success of a given functionality. Currently, vendor usability testing is taking
place on several of UC campuses, facilitated by
the resource liaisons. Some resource liaisons have
served on advisory groups to recommend content
additions to vendor products; the resource liaisons
based their feedback on content recommendations
from their colleagues across UC.
In addition, the CDL advocates for standards,
as laid out in technical requirements and as
monitored by the resource liaisons. Because of
this advocacy, vendors have brought in high-level
technical staff to meet with CDL about such
subjects as authentication protocols, creation of
current awareness and citation export services,
interface design and metadata for linking. The
CDL aims for two-way communication which
can beneit both sides.
Working with Database and E-Journal Vendors to Ensure Quality for End Users
Value to the Participants
Although librarians who participate as resource
liaisons have varying levels of engagement, by
participating they all are taking a visible role
among their colleagues. Serving in the volunteer role of resource liaison is a plus for campus
librarians at performance review time. If they
have been actively engaged in this role, the CDL
will support them with letters of recommendation for their service to the university. By actively
participating in the program, campus librarians
gain a systemwide view and develop contacts with
the CDL, with vendors, and across UC. Resource
liaisons are empowered to work with the CDL
and vendors on improving our resources. Some
have been motivated to volunteer for resource
liaison duties in order to address problems from
a UC-wide position. The CDL hosts an annual
meeting of the resource liaisons (CDL, 2006a),
during which the group is updated on CDL and
UC-wide activities that have an impact on their
work in the resource liaison role. Each year the
meeting includes panel discussions, where members of the group discuss aspects of their experience. Past panels have focused on working with
vendors and managing transitions of databases
from one vendor to another. The panels have
surfaced lively anecdotes of how each person’s
personal style (gentle and congenial, direct and
energetic) can be adapted to the role using the
framework the CDL provides.
THE CDL RESOURCE WRANGLERS
Although a network of librarians across the
campuses communicate between vendors and the
CDL, the CDL must still monitor vendor issues
internally. The Resource Wranglers is an internal
CDL group that monitors issues regarding the CDL
licensed databases and e-journals. The wranglers
have a depth of technical expertise that many of
the resource liaisons do not have, and a deeper
understanding of the issues concerning all of all
of the CDL licensed resources, and can serve as a
guide for the resource liaisons. The group works
with the resource liaisons to proactively communicate UC’s needs to vendors, track vendor
issues, and follow up on these issues until they
are resolved.
This group was inspired by the CDL’s transition
from loading A&I databases in-house to accessing
the databases via vendor interfaces. The range of
primary job responsibilities of the staff involved in
the transition-working group ensured that issues
were evaluated and addressed from a number of
perspectives, and meeting as a group facilitated
the process. The need for an ongoing oversight
group for licensed content became obvious during
the transition process, and the Resource Wranglers
group was created.
The Resource Wranglers members have a range
of job responsibilities within CDL, and include the
resource liaison coordinator, the helpline and user
feedback coordinator, the information services
manager responsible for instruction, education
and communication, a member from the Business
and Licensing group, the technical lead for our
link resolver service, and the Resource Wranglers
group convener who is responsible for monitoring
database and e-journal speciic issues, services
issues and tracking these to resolution.
The Resource Wranglers group takes the input
from the resource liaisons and carries it further
by aggregating and prioritizing the needs and
issues. Vendor issues lists are prepared, based
on what is reported by the resource liaisons. The
resource wranglers then set up vendor meetings,
create vendor status reports based on these issues,
and distributes the reports to the campuses. The
issues lists and status reports are used to track
the progress UC makes and to hold vendors accountable for resolving these issues.
The Resource Wranglers also create and maintain key documentation and information such as
the resource selection criteria (CDL, 2006e), and
other database evaluation and transition documen-
201
Working with Database and E-Journal Vendors to Ensure Quality for End Users
tation used by the resource liaisons and campus
bibliographer groups when changing vendors,
information about CDL-licensed resources on the
CDL Web site (CDL, 2006b), and the Technical
Requirements for Vendors documents made available on the CDL’s Vendors and Content Providers
Web page (CDL, 2006h).
The group focuses on the following areas for
licensed resources:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
User interfaces for licensed databases and
e-journals
Access (includes proxy/VPN support,
searches conducted outside of the vendor
interface, for example, via EndNote’s Z39.50
function, etc.)
Database and e-journal speciic issues as
reported by the resource liaisons, other UC
campus groups, and end-users
Linking issues such as getting vendors to
support the openURL standard and other
items of this nature as suggested by the
CDL’s UC-eLinks team
Multi-item services, for example, the CDL’s
use of the PubMed order function to allow
users to send a list of citations to the CDL
UC-eList service that provides inline links
to electronic full text, and access to CDL’s
Request service to ask for a group of items
via campus document delivery service or
interlibrary loan
Usage statistics
The wranglers develop an annual work plan
based on the responses to the resource liaisons’
annual reports, any additional issues raised via
the CDL Helpline or feedback links and any areas
where the vendors does not meet UC’s expectations as detailed in our technical requirements for
202
vendors document, and any business issues that
need to be addressed, for example port limits.
The work plan is divided into sections based on
the type and extent of issues reported.
In the highest priority category are vendors
needing full review by the Resource Liaisons
and Wranglers groups. To be included in this
category, a vendor’s products must have triggered
overwhelming user dissatisfaction. A full review
begins with the creation or updating of the list
of vendor issues causing problems for UC users. The list is then sent to resource liaisons for
additions, deletions and prioritization. The next
step is a conference call with resource liaisons,
the resource liaison coordinator, and wranglers
convener to review “inal list.” A letter is sent to
the vendor asking that the vendor review and reply
to the prioritized issues list. This letter includes
a link to the technical requirements. If there are
complex issues to be addressed, the letter asks
for a face-to-face meeting or a conference call
to discuss the issues. The vendor responses are
reviewed; any areas requiring follow-up are identiied and the group drafts UC’s response.
In the second priority category are the vendors that need to respond to each section of the
appropriate technical requirements document. In
this case, there are too many problems reported
to focus on a single issue, but not enough issues
to warrant a full review.
In the third category are single-issue problems.
In this group the resource liaison sends speciic
letters requesting vendor response and timeline
for any planned changes. The two major issues
that fall into this category are support for UC’s
openURL requirements and support for UC’s
statistics requirements.
Any other issues with individual resources,
for example, a speciic database within a vendor
Working with Database and E-Journal Vendors to Ensure Quality for End Users
site or business issues, are handled case-by-case
by the resource liaison.
1.
CDL’S TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS
FOR VENDORS
2.
How and Why the Requirements
Were Developed
3.
In 2001, the CDL began a transition from loading
several core A&I vendor databases on-site and
providing Z39.50 access to other A&I databases
via our OPAC interface, to providing access to
these databases via the vendor’s native interfaces.
A vital part of the transition was ensuring that the
services and functions that were available in our
internal system were also available in the vendor’s
native interface. Some of the key services were
provided by software that was internal to the OPAC
and developed by UC, and the vendor solutions
for these services were in some cases new to the
general marketplace, for example, linking from
a citation directly to the content of the item. The
CDL needed a consistent way to communicate
UC’s needs and expectations to the potential vendors. To ill this need we created a set of technical
requirements describing the key components that
users needed, and listing our expectations of how
these requirements would be met. At the core of
these requirements was a commitment to using
recognized national and international standards
as the preferred solution.
Principles Used for Drafting the
Requirements
In general, quality and consistency of electronic
resources across the university is the primary
goal expressed in the technical requirements.
The following principles were agreed upon and
endorsed by the campus libraries, and were used
in developing the technical requirements documents:
4.
Proprietary vendor solutions should be
discouraged in favor of methods based on
standards or solutions that can work with
multiple vendors
Existing linking to catalog holdings, to full
content from all publishers licensed by the
CDL and to the interlibrary loan and document delivery service should be preserved
and extended
The level and consistency of services should
be improved for all databases licensed by
the CDL (and by individual campuses)
UC should be proactive in developing
expertise and mechanisms for inluencing
the quality of vendor user interfaces and
services
The Technical Requirements Overview section, included next, sets expectations in context
for the vendor.
When selecting vendors for abstracting and indexing databases, CDL aims not only to maintain
existing standards for access and service, but
also to improve, whenever possible, on existing arrangements. Moreover, by choosing our
technologies and vendor relationships carefully
now, we hope to lay the groundwork for future
improvements. To that end, the following document sums up the major technical issues of our
decision-making process, and offers vendors
insight into our preferred solutions, why they’re
important to UC, and what their implications are
for prospective vendors.
Preferred vendors will provide the CDL opportunities for input on development priorities.
CDL sets a high standard for vendors that ultimately beneits all academic customers and leads
to more competitive products for the publisher
or vendor. CDL is willing to work closely in the
development and implementation of new features
and functionality for existing products as well as
codevelopment on new, cutting edge products that
it CDL’s own strategic plans. These opportunities
203
Working with Database and E-Journal Vendors to Ensure Quality for End Users
could take place via a users group, focus groups,
working with the vendor’s director of development,
or discussions with the development planning
team. (CDL, 2006f; CDL, 2006g)
A preference for standards-based solutions
over proprietary solutions is a major point of
emphasis in the technical requirements documents. Although compliance with standards and
interpretation of them will never approach 100%
agreement, at the very least the standards provide
a common language that enables service integration at a baseline level.
Two versions of the requirements document
are referenced, one for database vendors and one
for e-journal vendors. Although there is quite a
bit of overlap between the two, there are enough
differences to make the two versions necessary.
How the Requirements Are Applied
The technical requirements provide the vendor
with a comprehensive view of UC’s expectations.
When CDL is considering licensing databases,
e-journals or other electronic content on behalf
of UC, vendor representatives are asked to have
their technical staff review the technical requirements document and respond item-by-item. This
provides a clear view of the vendor’s baseline
functionality, and of how well the vendor system
meets our user’s needs. The vendor’s response also
highlights any gaps in a common understanding
of the issues and is used as the basis for further
discussions and negotiations. When the CDL
updates the technical requirements documents,
the CDL or the resource liaison sends an updated
version to the vendor and asks for another sectionby-section response. The CDL asks the resource
liaisons to be familiar with the technical requirements, and to encourage vendors to comply. For
example, the resource liaisons encouraged their
vendors to attend NISO’s May 2003 meeting,
204
NISO Metasearch Strategy Workshop: May 7-8,
2003 in Denver Colorado and the NISO workshop
on OpenURL and Metasearch: New Standards,
Current Innovations, and Future Directions in
Washington, D.C. on September 19-21, 2005. As
the UC libraries move forward with metasearch
implementation, the resource liaisons will work
with their vendors to reinforce the need for
standards-based search API’s in support of UC’s
metasearch implementation. In the current version of our Technical Requirements for Database
Vendors, we list the following methods (in order of
preference) of accessing a vendor site from CDL’s
metasearch application: Z39.50; SRU (preferred)
or SRW; NISO metasearch XML gateway (MXG)
protocol (NISO, n.d. a) based on the NISO-registered SRU protocol (NISO, n.d. b); and lastly via
a proprietary XML gateway.
Which Requirements are Most
Essential Now, and Why?
The key requirements—access control, clean,
comprehensive metadata for linking to content,
and quality data—focus on getting end users to
what they want when they want it.
Access
Users need access from where they are—from
home, a conference, or a sabbatical location. Access should be designed to allow UC’s user community to get to the resource from anywhere with
a minimum of effort on the part of UC or that of
the user, and with minimal disclosure of identity
information. The legacy method of authentication uses IP addresses. Because the IP method is
labor intensive, error-prone, and often frustrating
for end users, the CDL is actively seeking new
solutions; particularly those that stress federated
identity management and privacy protection. UC is
seeking to implement access control mechanisms
that simplify the authentication protocols.
Working with Database and E-Journal Vendors to Ensure Quality for End Users
Linking
Clean metadata in openURLs is needed, in order
to provide end users with viable links to electronic
content that they can access immediately online,
or links that contain enough information to get to
the item on their home campus or via interlibrary
loan. The CDL has a speciication for the items
that must appear in an openURL. UC requires
more metadata than many of the vendor’s other
customers, since in our environment the metadata
is used to send requests for interlibrary loan direct
to lender. This situation appears to be changing,
as other institutions are now also asking for a
more robust set of metadata. The CDL’s Metadata
Requirements for OpenURLs (CDL, 2006d) may
be useful as a model for other institutions.
Data quality
Scholarship requires high quality data. Sloppy
scanning, black and white scans of color graphics,
and intrusive watermarking can result in unusable
data. Indexing schemes designed for print indexes
do not make the cut in the online world.
End users’ needs evolve over time, and so
should the vendor services. In 2002 when the CDL
transitioned from loading key A&I databases inhouse to using these databases via vendor Web
sites, one of the core services our users had on
our system and wanted on the vendor system was
a “passive” current awareness service, based on
an existing search strategy, that automatically
provided a list of relevant items via e-mail each
time the data was updated. This allowed end users
to do a search once and get new relevant citations
via e-mail every time items were added. Thus,
one of our top requests in 2002 for features to be
added to vendor systems was for current awareness service. Now our users want their updates
to be provided via RSS feeds, and we are asking
vendors to provide this service.
The value of the technical requirements is
their focus on what is needed now and what is
expected for the future. We are doing things now
as a matter of course that were not even on the
table ten years ago. Many of the items in the irst
version of our requirements addressed emerging
technologies and required a signiicant amount of
descriptive text highlighting the advantages to
the end-user and to the vendor. Lengthy explanations of the beneits of some services, such as
openURL, were necessary in the original version
of the requirements when most vendors had not
yet set-up this type of service, but are now no
longer necessary. The requirements for statistics
support have changed over time from ICOLC to
COUNTER to COUNTER2 and SUSHI. Recent
revisions were made to add or update sections on
user privacy, perpetual access and preservation
responsibility.
In the future, a number of emerging areas will
need to be addressed in the technical requirements.
Use of mobile applications must be addressed by
the academic community. Texting and podcasting are the norm for our incoming students (the
next decade’s faculty) and we need to keep pace
with their needs. We have ample evidence of how
quickly changes happen in the online environment,
such as the transition from line-mode interfaces to
Web interfaces, moving the copy of record from
print to electronic, and changing the way metadata
is delimited to focus on online retrieval rather than
the more limited number of access points used to
create print indexes. Vendors need to think about
keeping their metadata “nimble” and be able to
move forward as technology moves forward. Our
requirements will also need to address image
services providing access to images and their
associated metadata. Integration of UC services
with open access journals, and freely available
discovery platforms such as Google Scholar and
Windows Live Academic will also eventually
need to be taken into account.
205
Working with Database and E-Journal Vendors to Ensure Quality for End Users
BEST PRACTICES AND
RECOMMENDATIONS
Given the CDL’s experience working with these
processes and requirements, we can offer the following words of wisdom to librarians working in
consortia, on campuses, or in individual libraries
of any size.
It is all about your end users. The end user’s
needs are the focus of all interactions with the
vendor. Make sure that your vendor supports your
users’ needs and, most importantly, supports them
in a way that they can take full advantage of the
vendor’s product. The best return on the investment in online resources is high use.
Vendors spend time, effort and expense on focus groups to determine features and functions for
their products. Your end users provide that type of
data every time they ask you a question about how
to ind an article or how to use a vendor product,
or send a complaint via e-mail, or talk with their
colleagues. With the advent of Google Scholar and
other services piggybacking on commonly used
free services, the A&I vendors will need to offer
better features to keep their user base. Even then,
this may not be enough to retain some end users
that are more focused on “one-stop” searching,
than on the search tool. The library community
is looking to metasearch systems that will offer
one stop searching for licensed materials as well
as freely available scholarly materials. To be
successful across vendors, the query process for
these systems needs to leverage the strength of
standards based search mechanisms; API’s such
as Z39.50, SRU/SRW, or the NISO metasearch
XML gateway (MXG) protocol that is based on
SRU instead of relying vendor speciic API’s or
“screen scraping” techniques.
Items that are not easily accessible are not
attractive to end users and do not meet their
needs—even if the resource is, in fact, the best
resource for their topic. Simultaneous user limits
are becoming an anachronism. End users that are
206
told to go away because of system limits, will go
away, and will not come back.
End users will often be content with an answer,
even if it is not the best answer. Vendors must
provide easy access and keep the learning curve
low. Look at the success of PubMed. One of the
greatest services that NLM/NCBI has provided
is to remove the need for intensive user training
on how to search for appropriate MeSH terms,
and to provide behind-the-scenes subject term
mapping. The system is easier to use and the
users get better results. This is the type of effort
we must encourage the A&I vendors to make in
order to retain users.
Vendor interactions are based on the ive
“B’s:”
•
•
•
•
•
Be proactive
Be speciic
Be realistic
Be persistent
Be part of the solution
Be proactive. If something is not working for
your end users, it probably is not working for other
end users at other institutions. Talk to your vendor
about the issue as soon as it becomes apparent
that there is a problem. If end users cannot igure
out how to download their list of articles, let the
vendor know. The sooner you raise the issue, the
sooner it can be resolved. The interaction should
not be adversarial. You and the vendor have the
same goal in mind: getting the maximum number
of users to the resource and actively using it.
Go to the source of the problem. This requires
knowledge of the data producer/database vendor
relationship. If the issue is with the data, go to
the data producer irst. The interface vendor cannot easily index the volume number if it is sent
a part of a larger ield, for example, as part of
the source ield, and it does not have consistent
labeling. This is a data producer issue. Keep in
mind that the majority of the items online began
Working with Database and E-Journal Vendors to Ensure Quality for End Users
in the print world and the data divisions useful
for a print index do not always translate well
to an online index. It may be that the backiles
cannot be altered but that a change can be made
going forward. When the problem is partly from
the producer and partly the vendor, establish a
three-way dialogue.
Be speciic. The CDL has had the most success when we include screen shots that show
the problem, or examples of how other vendors
handle the same function in a way that works for
end users. We try to frame each of our problem
reports in the same way:
1.
2.
3.
This is what happens now (Provide screen
shots, include a narrative description.)
This is the impact on the users (Provide
narrative description.)
This is what we would like to happen instead
Provide narrative description; if useful include
a mock-up showing desired action; if the problem
situation is handled well by other vendors provide
examples from other vendor systems. Suggest
solutions for both the short term and the long
term. Short-term solutions mitigate the impact of
the problem, but the problem still occurs. These
often rely on interface messages and are relatively
simple to implement. Long-term solutions ix the
problem so that it no longer occurs, but generally
take more time since the vendor has to make
infrastructure or indexing changes. These take
time and may need to be integrated with other
changes in the works or wait for the development
team to have an opening.
Example from one of our vendor communiqués
used as the starting point for discussion:
The thesaurus could be a very useful tool;
instead it is confusing. In the example below
the user is given the message that the search for
architecture competitions retrieved no results,
and then irst suggested heading is architecture/
competitions which contains the same words in
the same order but has a slash instead of a space.
Users ind this response quite confusing:
Your search for architecture competitions returned
no results. Perhaps one of these other terms will
help you:
•
•
•
Architecture/Competitions, awards, etc.
Houses/Competitions, awards, etc.
City planning/Competitions, awards, etc.
In this case it seems that the punctuation is
being indexed. Users do not really see the difference and it looks like the system is having
problems. The punctuation should not be indexed.
An interim option would be to change the message from “Your search for <term(s)> returned
no results. Perhaps one of these other terms will
help you:” to “Your search for < term(s)> did not
exactly match a subject heading. Perhaps one of
these other terms will help you.”
Be realistic. Manage your expectations as well
as the user’s expectations. Some times there is a
simple change the vendor can make to mitigate the
problem, such as adding an example to a search
screen. This type of change is usually simple to
make and you can see results relatively quickly.
In other cases, the resolution requires a change
in the way the data is indexed or loaded, these
changes take time to implement. If this is the case,
work with the producer and the vendor to resolve
the problem. When the vendor/producer agrees to
make the change, ask for a time frame. It is easier
to manage expectations if you have a date; even a
ballpark igure of late next year is helpful.
Be persistent. Do not take no for an answer
on the irst pass. If the vendor does not agree to
make the change your users need, ask again. Use
more/different examples of the negative impact.
Let the vendor know if they are the “trailing
edge” and that all of your other vendors are using
the solution you have proposed. There have been
times that it has taken the vendor several years
207
Working with Database and E-Journal Vendors to Ensure Quality for End Users
to make the changes we have requested. The key
here is to be persistent, not pesky.
Be part of the solution. It is not helpful to say,
“This feature is abysmal,” and stop. If you stop
there, it is a complaint and not a constructive
comment. Offer one or more alternatives that the
vendor could apply to ix the “abysmal” feature.
Once the vendor makes the change, be willing to
participate in testing the change.
The two things the CDL hears most frequently
from our vendors when working on interface issues are the following. Before the vendor makes
the change: “Nobody else has asked for this.”
After the change is made and released: “We
are getting a lot of good feedback; this is a very
popular feature.”
FUTURE TRENDS
From the point of view of the CDL’s electronic
resources program we see a number of trends that
we’ll need to adapt to address. The CDL will need
to reine our practices to better enable working
with data providers and service providers in situations where we do not have a license or contract (for
example, open access journals, Google Scholar).
We’ll also need to adapt to the increasingly blurry
boundaries of scholarly information and ind the
economies of scale for the support and evaluation
of new types of resources and delivery mechanisms (e.g., comprehensive access and service
for mobile devices, “real time” data sources). In
addition, libraries and vendors will likely evolve
services towards tighter integration with the end
user environment. We will need to encompass
next generation linking, personalization and
transactional situations into our requirements
and evaluative processes. As our virtual library
collections become predominate and our in-person
interactions with end users become an anomaly,
we’ll need to adjust accordingly.
In terms of our process, a promising area of
exploration may be the translation of our best
208
practices model into new forms via Web-based
collaborative technology. Our years of experience
have lead us to a certain scale of activities, but
collaboration at more or less granular levels, both
institution-wise, and practice-wise, is now easily
possible and may be more fruitful for a wider
community. There is potential in homegrown
tools that could emulate rating, evaluation and
informational aspects of services as the Charleston
Advisor (The Charleston Advisor, 2007); projects
such as SHERPA RoMEO (SHERPA, 2006), or the
University of California report on Bibliographic
Services (Riemer, Declerck, Kautzman, Martin,&
Ryan 2005); and in collaborative efforts such as
the American Society for Engineering Education’s
best practices work (American Society for Engineering Education, 2006).
In addition, library ERM systems show promise in tying evaluative information more closely
to electronic resources, and thus making this
information more readily available to librarians
managing electronic resources across an entire
user group (in UC’s case, the entire consortium).
ERM systems may provide rich, detailed comparisons between resources and vendors, and
also may enable a more precise communication
of these details to our vendors. Furthermore,
the worklow adjustments that are made when a
library adopts an ERM system may enable the
librarians to more eficiently incorporate evaluative activities into their worklow. If we establish
common checkpoints within an ERM system
for the many different activities in an electronic
resources worklow, it may result in a shared
understanding of where the handoffs are, across
both the internal user group and the points where
external vendors are involved.
CONCLUSION
The need for access to quality (good, complete,
and authoritative) information in a way that makes
sense in the end user’s worklow will always exist.
Working with Database and E-Journal Vendors to Ensure Quality for End Users
How we understand that needs change over time,
so our practices will always be evolving. Communications methods have changed and will keep
changing, but the need for good communications,
evaluation of end user needs, and clear requirements will always be relevant.
The process and documents described in this
chapter are intended to be living processes and
living documents. As the environment within
which we work evolves, we will continue to reassess, change and improve. Our current materials
and processes are not inal—they relect where
we are now.
Certainly not many institutions are structured
to include a central entity such as the CDL, or
are large enough for the same eficiencies to
be realized. However, the key ideas presented
here can be applied to any library consortium or
individual library. Deining what your end users
need, creating a system for evaluating how well
a vendor meets those needs, systematically performing a check on the quality of individual electronic resources before they are up for a renewal
payment, tracking problems in a central place,
encouraging librarians to be the “eyes and ears”
of the organization, advocating for standards,
and maintaining communication with vendors
are all worth doing.
We encourage you to adapt and build upon
our practices as appropriate to your needs. In
the rapidly changing world of licensed, and now
openly available content, librarians will need to
continue to play the role as advocates for quality.
Our voices are more likely to be heard if we view
working with vendors and content providers as a
positive, and if we advocate for common, reasonable standards.
REFERENCES
California Digital Library (2005a). Assessment.
Retrieved November 18, 2007, from the Califor-
nia Digital Library Web site: http://www.cdlib.
org/inside/assess/
California Digital Library (2005b). CDL resource
liaison charge. Retrieved November 18, 2007,
from the California Digital Library Web site:
http://www.cdlib.org/inside/groups/Resource
liaison/charge.html
California Digital Library (2006a). CDL resource
liaison meetings. Retrieved November 18, 2007,
from the California Digital Library Web site:
http://www.cdlib.org/inside/groups/rl/meetings.
html
California Digital Library (2006b). Information
About CDL-Licensed Resources. Retrieved
November 18, 2007, from the California Digital
Library Web site: http://www.cdlib.org/inside/resources/licensed/index.html
California Digital Library (2006c). Instructional
materials. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from the
California Digital Library Web site: http://www.
cdlib.org/inside/instruct/
California Digital Library (2006d). Metadata requirements for OpenURLs. Retrieved November
18, 2007, from the California Digital Library Web
site: http://www.cdlib.org/vendors/Metadata_requirements.pdf
California Digital Library (2006e). Resource
selection criteria. Retrieved November 18, 2007,
from the California Digital Library Web site:
http://www.cdlib.org/inside/resources/licensed/
resource_selection_criteria.rtf
California Digital Library (2006f). California
digital library technical requirements for database
vendors. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from the
California Digital Library Web site: http://www.
cdlib.org/vendors/CDL_ejournal_Vendor_Req.
rtf
California Digital Library (2006g). California
digital library technical requirements for e-journal
vendors. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from the
209
Working with Database and E-Journal Vendors to Ensure Quality for End Users
California Digital Library Web site: http://www.
cdlib.org/vendors/CDL_DB_Vendor_Req.rtf
California Digital Library. (2003). User Interface
Principles. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from the
California Digital Library Web site: http://www.
cdlib.org/vendors/Interface_Principles.rtf
California Digital Library (2006h). Vendors and
content providers. Retrieved November 18, 2007,
from the California Digital Library Web site:
http://www.cdlib.org/vendors/
The Charleston Advisor (2007). TCA review
scorecard. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from
the Charleston Advisor Web site: http://www.
charlestonco.com/scorecard.cfm
COUNTER (n.d.). About. Retrieved November
18, 2007 from the Project COUNTER Web site:
http://www.projectcounter.org/about.html
COUNTER (2005, April). Release 2 of the COUNTER code of practice for journals and databases.
Retrieved November 18, 2007, from the Project
COUNTER Web site: http://www.projectcounter.
org/code_practice.html
Engineering Libraries Division, American Society
for Engineering Education (2005, May). Punch
list of best practices for electronic resources. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from the Engineering
Libraries Division of American Society for Engineering Education Web site: http://eld.lib.ucdavis.
edu/punchlist/PunchlistRevision2005.pdf
210
ICOLC (2006, October). Revised guidelines for
statistical measures of usage of web-based information resources. Retrieved November 18, 2007,
from the ICOLC Web site: http://www.library.
yale.edu/consortia/webstats06.htm
NISO (2006). NISO standardized usage statistics
harvesting initiative. Retrieved November 18,
2007, from the NISO Web site: http://www.niso.
org/committees/SUSHI/SUSHI_comm.html
NISO (n.d. a). NISO RP-2006-02, NISO Metasearch XML Gateway implementers guide. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from http://www.niso.
org/standards/resources/RP-2006-02.pdf
NISO (n.d. b). NISO Z39.92-200X. Information
retrieval service description speciication DRAFT
STANDARD FOR TRIAL USE. Period: November 1, 2005 – October 31, 2006
Riemer, J., Declerck, L., Kautzman, A., Martin,
P., & Ryan, T. (2005). Bibliographic services
task force inal report. Retrieved November 18,
2007, from the University of California Libraries
Web site: http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.
edu/sopag/BSTF/Final.pdf
SHERPA (2006). SHERPA RoMEO publisher
copyright policies and self-archiving. Retrieved
November 18, 2007, from the SHERPA Web site:
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php
Working with Database and E-Journal Vendors to Ensure Quality for End Users
APPENDIX I
Vendor Evaluation Report
Use this form to give an overall ranking for your vendor. There is no length limit for comments. Please
be speciic in your comments and use examples whenever possible.
1.
The content of this information resource meets UC standards and users needs. This should include
complete content, good quality, links from citations to full-text, and so forth. For more information see: http://www.cdlib.org/vendors/CDL_DB_Vendor_Req.rtf; http://www.cdlib.org/vendors/
CDL_ejournal_Vendor_Req.rtf
Check one:
Always Agree
Agree
Disagree
Always
Disagree
Comments:
2.
The user interface of this information resource meets CDL standards of quality, as outlined in the
CDL User Interface Principles, for example, consistent terminology, easy to navigate, clear search
screens, and so forth. For more information see: http://www.cdlib.org/vendors/Interface_Principles.
rtf
Check one:
Always Agree
Agree
Disagree
Always
Disagree
Comments:
3.
This information resource meets the standards outlined in the technical requirements established
by CDL, including remote authentication, usage statistics, and so forth. For more information see:
http://www.cdlib.org/vendors/CDL_DB_Vendor_Req.rtf; http://www.cdlib.org/vendors/CDL_ejournal_Vendor_Req.rtf
211
Working with Database and E-Journal Vendors to Ensure Quality for End Users
Check one:
Always Agree
Agree
Disagree
Always
Disagree
Comments:
4.
Technical and customer support for this resource meets UC standards. The vendor is responsive
and prompt in responding to problem reports, provides training materials, usage data, and is fair
and reasonable to work with.
Check one:
Always Agree
Agree
Disagree
Always
Disagree
Comments:
Please provide links to the most up-to-date version of vendor-provided and/or to campus-created
training materials:
5.
6.
212
What should this vendor do better? What about this resource should be improved? Are there any
issues, big or small, that you would like to see addressed?
What does this vendor do well? Are there things that this vendor does or aspects of this resource
that can be used as a model for other vendors?
213
Chapter XII
One-Stop Shopping
for Journal Holdings
Janet A. Crum
Oregon Health & Science University, USA
ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author advocates providing a uniied, seamless interface—one-stop shopping—for
the full range of journal literature available and of interest to library patrons. After outlining the reasons
why libraries should provide this access, the chapter reviews the tools available for making journal
collections accessible, then analyzes the categories of journal literature to which a library could provide access—print and individual electronic titles, aggregated collections and big deals, free titles, free
articles, and articles available for purchase. The chapter discusses the challenges associated with each
category, as well as tools available to overcome these challenges. It closes with a brief look at future
trends that will affect the ability of libraries to provide coherent, seamless access to journal literature.
INTRODUCTION
A patron stops at the reference desk and asks the
librarian, “Do you have this journal?” This scene is
played out in libraries across the world every day,
yet the answer is no longer a straightforward yes
or no. Where does one look to answer the question? The catalog? A Web-based list of journals?
Both? Somewhere else? There is a disconnect
between what the patron wants to know—“How
do I get this article?”—and what library catalogs
and other bibliographic control tools are designed
to answer —“Does the library own this item?”
This disconnect did not exist when journals were
available only in print. Either the desired item was
in the library’s collection, or it was not. But now
the range of possibilities is much greater:
•
•
The library may own the item in print and/or
microform
The library may have purchased electronic
access to the item, in addition to or instead
of the print
Copyright © 2008, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
One-Stop Shopping for Journal Holdings
•
•
•
•
The library may have purchased access to
an aggregated database that includes the full
text of the journal the patron wants
The journal (or only the speciic article)
may be freely available online, either on the
publisher’s site or as part of an open access
resource (e.g., an institutional repository or
PubMed Central)
The article may be available for a fee from
the publisher/vendor site or a document
delivery service
The article may only be available via interlibrary loan.
Answering the patron’s seemingly simple
question may require searching several sources—online catalog, Web list, aggregated database,
publisher Web site, internet search engine, and so
forth—and considerable knowledge of electronic
journals. So much for the simple, known-item
search.
This chapter will explore these issues in depth,
focusing on the patron’s experience in searching
for journal literature. The speciic objectives of
this chapter are as follows:
•
•
•
•
Convince the reader that one-stop shopping
for journal literature is a worthy goal, with
an emphasis on how it meets user needs
Demonstrate the extent to which this goal
can be achieved with current tools and
standards
Explain the challenges and limitations that
prevent a library from achieving true onestop shopping
Explore what would be needed to bring us
closer to this ideal
BACKGROUND: HISTORY AND
LITERATURE REVIEW
While this chapter will primarily focus on
electronic journals, it is useful to briely review
214
challenges associated with serials, regardless of
format. Serials caused problems in library catalogs
before the advent of electronic journals, and these
problems continue today, whether or not the serial
in question is received in print or electronically.
In order to have a serial in a library catalog, one
must catalog it, which can be a daunting prospect.
Osmus (1996), Cole and Williams (1992) and
Williams (1997) provide an overview of serials
cataloging issues through the advent of electronic
journals in the early 1990’s. Once in the catalog,
serial records can be dificult for users to ind and
interpret. Snavely and Clark (1996) provide a clear,
readable, and all too accurate view of the pain
a library user must endure when using journals
in academic libraries. They address a variety of
problems with searching for journals in online
catalogs, as well as the dificulties users experience
when attempting to interpret holdings and locate
actual articles. Fescemyer (2005) analyzes both the
dificulty inding journals with one-word titles and
the complexity of many catalog records for serials,
concluding with a plea for single records, shorter
displays, consolidated holdings, and consistency
across catalogs. According to Shadle (2006),
the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic
Records (FRBR) standard may provide a way to
make it easier for users to ind and interpret serial
records in library catalogs. Finally, Black (2006)
provides an excellent overview of bibliographic
control of serials, both print and electronic. As
these resources demonstrate, serials are by
nature complicated—complicated to catalog,
complicated to manage, and complicated to use.
The advent of electronic journals has increased
the complexity signiicantly, as explained in the
introduction to this chapter.
The management of electronic journals has followed a fairly consistent pattern in most libraries,
a pattern that is well documented in the literature.
The remainder of this section will provide a brief
overview of the history of electronic journal
management in libraries, based on a review of
the literature and the author’s experience. A more
One-Stop Shopping for Journal Holdings
detailed literature review covering the early years
of electronic journal management, up to the late
1990’s, is provided by Copeland (2002), while
Jones (2003) provides an exceptionally readable
history of e-journal cataloging practices. Several
case studies are also available which illustrate the
stages of electronic journal management as played
out in speciic libraries, for example Tobia (2001)
and Ferguson, Collins, and Grogg (2006).
When e-journals irst became common, libraries typically provided access to them in two
ways: via static Web pages and the library catalog.
Libraries created one or more Web pages which
included links, holdings information, and notes
on access. Electronic journals were incorporated
into the library catalog, either by adding information about the online version to the bibliographic
record for the print version or by creating a new
bibliographic record for the online version. As the
number of electronic journals grew, however, these
two access methods became more time-consuming. They became positively unsustainable upon
the advent of two new models for purchasing full
text: the Big Deal and aggregated databases. The
Big Deal is deined by Frazier (2001) as, “an online
aggregation of journals that publishers offer as a
one-price, one size its all package.” An aggregated database is deined by Martin and Hoffman
as, “A collection of electronic resources (usually
full text) from separately issued publications, assembled as a convenience to libraries and other
subscribing institutions. JSTOR and LexisNexis
are examples of such databases” (2002, p. 64).
Around the same time, more publishers began offering selected content free of charge as the open
access movement grew. Suddenly libraries had
access to many thousands of electronic journals,
and, in the case of aggregated databases, with
holdings that changed frequently and unpredictably. Static Web pages gave way to Web-enabled
databases, which could handle larger numbers of
titles more gracefully, and traditional cataloging
went by the wayside. Since libraries could no
longer provide full cataloging for their electronic
journals, they began limiting the scope of their
cataloging in various ways, such as: (1) cataloging only electronic journals for which the library
had archival or perpetual access rights (Sennema,
2004); (2) providing only a link to full text with
no information on holdings (Ferguson et al.,
2006); (3) cataloging only purchased electronic
journals, excluding all free titles; (4) excluding
titles outside the library’s collecting scope; and
(5) excluding all titles in aggregated databases.
Instead of including these vast numbers of titles
in their catalogs, libraries relied increasingly on
their Web lists to provide access, or, as Anderson
writes, “It was the thousands of constantly luctuating journal titles available through aggregator
databases that caused catalogers to cry ‘Uncle!’
and yield to the keepers of the lists” (1999, p. 313).
Some libraries used electronic journal gateways
from their subscription agents to provide access to
their electronic journals (Ferguson et al., 2006). In
either case, library users now had to look in two
places to determine whether or not the library had
access to a desired journal: the catalog (for print
and some electronic journals) and a Web list (for
the full range of electronic offerings).
Libraries were overwhelmed with the effort of
managing all these holdings and clearly needed
help. In response, a new type of vendor entered the
library market—the publication access management service, or PAMS. PAMS are “companies
who take on the messy responsibility of iguring
out what titles are contained in which aggregator
packages, and produce reports for libraries on
which titles (and which dates ranges) they therefore
have access to” (Jones, 2003, p. 23). Libraries told
the PAMS which packages and individual titles
they purchased, and the PAMS provided a Webbased database, often offering more advanced
features than libraries could implement on their
own, for example browsing by subject. But users still had to check in two places to see if the
library had access to a desired journal, and the
catalog remained incomplete. Chen, et al. summed
up the problem well, writing, “Libraries almost
215
One-Stop Shopping for Journal Holdings
universally present some portion of their electronic
holdings on Web lists instead of, or in addition to,
their catalogs. This trend sets a dubious precedent
of dividing the library’s holdings between two different sources and possibly complicating matters
for its users. To make matters more chaotic, there
existed no common agreement among libraries
concerning which categories of resources should
be listed in the catalog, which in the Web list,
and which in both. Conversely, all libraries did
list at least some of their electronic resources in
their catalogs. No libraries, however, cataloged
all of the electronic resources that they hold, with
even the most thorough institutions resorting to
a collection-level record for databases such as
LexisNexis [™]” (Chen, Colgan, Greene, Lowe,
& Winke, 2004, p. 175).
Since that article was published, new tools have
become available that make it easier for librarians
to unify their journal holdings in one source. The
irst electronic resources management module
from an integrated library system vendor debuted
in 2004, when Innovative Interfaces released their
Electronic Resources Management™ (ERM)
product. Since then, other integrated library system vendors have followed suit, providing tools
that allow libraries to integrate their electronic
resources—including electronic journals—into
their integrated library systems and, by extension,
into their catalogs. For a behind-the-scenes look
at the development of Innovative’s ERM product,
see Grover and Fons (2004). Tull, Crum, Davis,
and Strader (2005) provide a detailed overview
of the product itself and how it its into a library’s
worklow for managing electronic resources.
Computers in Libraries offers a buyers guide to
these systems that provides an overview of the
major products in this category (Meyer, 2005).
Meanwhile, PAMS vendors began offering MARC
records for electronic journal holdings, allowing
libraries to load electronic journal information
into their catalogs without cataloging each title
individually, and some libraries developed inhouse systems to generate MARC records from
216
their Web lists or from publisher data (Johnson &
Manoff, 2003; Mitchell & Surratt, 2005).
What, then, is the status of electronic journal
management now, in early 2007? Electronic
resource management systems, whether part of
an integrated library system or standalone, are
being implemented widely, though the cost of
these systems is still prohibitive for some libraries. Large aggregated databases and packages of
titles from publishers are still being purchased.
But new, potentially disruptive changes are occurring that will require yet another shift in the
way libraries manage electronic journals. Journal
publishing practices are changing as open access
becomes more widespread, articles are posted
in institutional repositories and other freely accessible systems, and the article rather than the
journal becomes the least publishable unit. At the
same time, user expectations are heavily conditioned by nonlibrary Web sites such as Amazon™
and Google™. User demand for simpler, more
seamless systems is causing libraries to rethink
how they deliver resources and services. The
remainder of this chapter will explore the extent
to which libraries can provide simple, seamless
access—one-stop shopping—for their journal
collections, analyzing the tools available and the
challenges that remain to be addressed.
ONE-STOP SHOPPING: WHY
What is One-Stop Shopping?
The concept of one-stop shopping as used in this
chapter refers to a single place for users to look
to determine whether or not they have access to
a desired article. It does not necessarily mean
that all accessible journal holdings are in a single
database. Rather, it means that a patron can start
looking in a single place and be led seamlessly
to all available holdings. After several years of
putting electronic holdings in separate Web lists,
more and more librarians are recognizing the need
One-Stop Shopping for Journal Holdings
for uniied access to all serial holdings, regardless
of format (paper, electronic) or source (aggregated
database, individual subscription, etc.). As Jones
writes, “Libraries need a gateway. Or, perhaps
more accurately, library users need that gateway,
that one entry point into the increasing wealth
of information in e-serials (and all things “e”)
which their library can provide for them. They
should not have to fritter away their time trying
to igure out which catalog/Website/listing to
consult” (2003, p. 24). McCracken emphasizes the
importance of including electronic journals from
aggregated databases in the library catalog, even
though the content is leased rather than owned
and changes rapidly. He argues, “What about the
customers who lose out if they do not know that
a journal is available in a speciic database? How
many patrons go away empty-handed, when the
library is actually already paying for access to
the journal? Money—and the patron’s time—is
regularly wasted in interlibrary loan requests for
journals the library does not know it can access
electronically” (2004, p. 32).
Why Should Libraries Provide
One-Stop Shopping for Journal
Information?
Offering one-stop shopping for journal holdings is
key to making a library’s journal collection usercentered and user-friendly. Dempsey’s writings
on the role of the library in a network age provide
some relevant arguments to support the onestop shopping concept. According to Dempsey,
libraries can make life easier for their users by
aggregating supply and demand. One aggregates
supply through consolidation, combining lots
of materials into one central source. That large
central source (Google™, NetFlix™, or a database
of journals) then attracts more users than would
be attracted by several smaller sources, thereby
aggregating demand and making it more likely
that each item in the collection will be found by
an interested user—or in Ranganathan’s words,
“Every book its reader” (Dempsey, 2006; Five
laws of library science, 2006). Dempsey then
points out that failure to aggregate supply and
demand through integrating systems and resources results in higher transaction costs for the
user—not necessarily inancial costs, but costs
in time and effort required to use a complex,
poorly-integrated system (2006). If libraries
integrate their resources, including information
on journal holdings, they help to satisfy another
one of Ranganathan’s ive laws of library science,
“Save the time of the user” (Five laws of library
science, 2006; Dempsey, 2006). Dempsey further
notes that large Web entities such as Google and
Amazon further aggregate demand by going out
to where their users are, that is, where demand
already exists (2006). This argument suggests that
the one-stop shopping concept can include making
journal holdings accessible to users at the point of
need, for example from citation databases. That
concept is especially relevant to the role of link
resolvers, discussed later in this chapter. Finally,
Dempsey reminds librarians that libraries are no
longer the only—or even primary—source of
information for users, writing, “In our current
network environment, libraries compete for scarce
attention. This suggests that if the ‘library long
tail’ is to be effectively prospected then the ‘cost’
of discovering and using library collections and
services needs to be as low as possible” (2006).
This notion of competing for scarce attention is
supported by current principles of Web usability
and the behavior of library users. Steve Krug sums
up Web usability principles nicely in the title of
his seminal work on usability, Don’t Make Me
Think (2006). Krug emphasizes that users will not
devote large amounts of time and effort to learning
how systems work. In his words, “If something
requires a large investment of time—or looks like
it will—it’s less likely to be used” (2006, p. 6). He
argues that users “don’t igure out how things work.
We muddle through,” because, “It’s not important
to us” to igure out how the system works (2006,
pp. 26-27). Instead, users are conditioned by popu-
217
One-Stop Shopping for Journal Holdings
lar commercial Web sites, especially Google™,
which can be used—often effectively—without
any instruction at all. Novotny found, “Library
catalog users are heavily inluenced by trends in
Web searching… Both experienced and novice
users adopted search strategies more appropriate
to Google than to a library catalog” (2004, p. 533).
Novotny also found that extensive experience using the Web convinced users that they knew how
to search: “A new disincentive to learning is the
fact that many searchers believe they are already
proicient information seekers. As experienced
Web searchers, many new students enter college
conident in their own ability to locate information” (2004, p. 530). Similarly, users’ experience
online fosters a desire for self-suficiency. According to the 2003 OCLC Environmental Scan,
“People of all age groups are spending more time
online doing things for themselves” (De Rosa,
Dempsey, & Wilson, 2004, p. 5). If users want
to be self-suficient and perceive themselves as
proicient searchers, they are unlikely to read
instructions or attend bibliographic instruction
sessions. Krug’s work on Web usability supports
this assertion. He explains, “When we’re creating
sites, we act as though people are going to pore
over each page, reading our inely crafted text,
iguring out how we’ve organized things, and
weighing their options before deciding which
link to click. What they actually do most of the
time (if we’re lucky) is glance at each new page,
scan some of the text, and click on the irst link
that catches their interest or vaguely resembles
the thing they’re looking for. There are usually
large parts of the page that they do not even look
at” (2006, p. 21).
Yet we know that, at least where journals are
concerned, library users do not know enough to
use our journal collections to the fullest extent.
According to Giles, “Studies have shown that
users are really confused, and library catalogs
and policies are the culprit. Users do not know
the difference between e-journals and aggregator
databases (why should they?), and as such will
218
not understand why some titles available at the
library have direct links from the catalog while
others don’t even appear in the catalog” (2003, p.
41). Usability testing at the Oregon Health & Science University Library suggests that users—even
experienced, motivated researchers—will give up
quickly if they have dificulty inding a journal
(Zeigen, personal communication, October 2006).
Librarians may be disheartened by the lack of
effort exerted by library users, but “Librarians
cannot change user behavior and so need to meet
the user” (De Rosa et al., 2004, p. 77).
To sum up the situation with respect to usability
and user behavior: Users will not work too hard to
learn how to use library systems effectively. They
expect them to be self-explanatory and seamless.
So, if libraries build complicated systems for their
journal collections, with holdings located in multiple places without distinctions that are obvious
to the user, users will either not use the collection
at all or, more likely, will use only one part of it,
potentially missing many useful items. It seems
clear, then, that librarians need to provide users
with a single source for journals to which they
have access, that is, one-stop shopping. But what
should that single source be—the catalog, a Web
list, or something else? Or can libraries integrate
several tools into a seamless system for guiding
users to relevant journal literature? The next section examines two common tools—Web lists and
the library catalog—to help libraries determine
how to provide access to their journal collections.
It also discusses the role of the link resolver in
providing seamless access to journal holdings
from citation databases and other resources not
managed by the library.
ONE-STOP SHOPPING: WEB LISTS,
THE CATALOG, AND BEyOND
Today libraries have several tools that can facilitate one-stop shopping for journal literature – the
catalog, integrated electronic resources man-
One-Stop Shopping for Journal Holdings
agement modules, link resolvers, and federated
search tools. With these tools, libraries can—and
should—provide access to print and electronic
holdings, including holdings from aggregated
databases and selected free titles, from a single
source. The irst question to answer, then, is what
should this source be—the catalog or a Web list
of journal holdings?
As Web lists have gained popularity, the catalog is no longer as prominent as it once was. As
Primich and Richardson note, “The ILS is now ‘a’
resource instead of ‘the’ resource” (2006, p. 125).
The catalog-versus-Web-list debate centers on
several issues: usability, staff time, local control,
standards and interoperability, and lexibility.
Many libraries have found that users prefer
browsing a list of journals to searching the catalog, for example Chrzastojwski (1999); Ferguson,
Collins, and Grogg (2006); Zeter, Thunell, and
Maguire (2003). Users often prefer the cleaner
results provided by a Web list to the complex, often
cluttered results one gets from a journal search in
most library catalogs. Catalog searches generally
produce more results than a similar search in a Web
list, and many of those results may be irrelevant,
especially if the library catalog does not offer a
separate search for journals only. Plus, without a
separate search for journals, it becomes extremely
dificult to ind records for journals with short
titles consisting of common words (e.g., Science
or Time). Even with a journals-only search, previous and succeeding titles, alternative or uniform
titles that differ only slightly from the main title,
and separate records for the same title in different formats (e.g., print, electronic, microform) all
produce cluttered lists of results through which a
user must wade to ind the desired record. Once
the user does ind the right record, s/he may ind
that record dificult to interpret. Serial records
tend to be long and complex, and the information explaining the details of electronic access is
typically buried in notes ields that users rarely
see. In fact, Giles found that even an experienced
library school student had dificulty interpreting
complicated serial records (2003). These problems
with catalog access to serials are not new. Long
before electronic journals came along, many
libraries maintained printed lists of their serial
holdings to make access simpler for users. But
the problems have been exacerbated as electronic
access has increased the number of journals to
which libraries have access, as well as the demand
for journal literature, thereby increasing use of the
catalog for journals and exposing these problems
to wider audiences.
Despite these problems, the catalog offers
some signiicant advantages over Web lists when
searching for journals. First, most catalogs offer
powerful, sophisticated search interfaces that
Web lists cannot match. With the catalog, one
can search for journals by subject or corporate
author or limit a search in various ways. Plus,
catalogs offer much richer data as a target for
these searches. For example, “The alphabetical
list greatly limits the accessibility that MARC
records provide. The ‘least effort’ way is satisfactory for quick reference, but it allows for no
additional access point other than title entry and
provides no cross-linking features. It also limits
in-house reporting capabilities that can be coded
into MARC records” (Bevis & Graham, 2003,
p. 116). Michigan State University’s browse list
includes “no standard cross references,” and “the
title search capability is limited because the user
must enter the exact title” (Zeter et al., 2003,
p. 203). According to McCracken, the title list
“misses critical access points, from title variations to series names; from publishers to subject
headings; from foreign titles to ISSN; and so on.
The process for using and searching by all of these
access points has already been incorporated into
the OPAC, and current A-to-Z title lists do not,
unfortunately, take advantage of these access
points” (McCracken, 2003, p. 104). Cole offers a
detailed explanation of the advantages of catalogs
over Web lists for journal searching (2003).
Staff time and effort are also a major concern
when considering whether to use a catalog or a
219
One-Stop Shopping for Journal Holdings
Web list for access to a library’s journal collection.
As libraries buy more and more big aggregated
databases and vendor packages, it is no longer possible to provide individual, full MARC cataloging
for every electronic journal the library purchases,
let alone relevant free titles. For the titles that do
receive individual, full cataloging, expertise in
serials cataloging is required. Serials cataloging
is a complicated specialty, and many libraries may
not have adequate staff skilled in this area. Then
there is the need to develop and harmonize local
practices for cataloging serials; cataloging and
electronic resources staff need to work together
to develop procedures for managing electronic
titles in the catalog. Conlicts may arise over the
scope of the catalog, with some staff wanting to
include a broad range of materials, including many
free titles, while others wish to limit the number
of titles included. Similarly, cataloging rules and
practices may conlict with the way that electronic
journal providers present their wares, for example
regarding whether supplements should be cataloged separately or tacked onto the record for the
parent publication. Signiicant staff time may be
required to work through these differences and
ind workable compromises.
These problems illustrate another weakness
of catalogs as tools for managing electronic
journals—lack of lexibility. Libraries that use
Web lists are not bound by either national or local
cataloging policies and practices or by a vendor’s
product development plans. The design of the
Web list can be changed as needs change. The
library does not have to lobby a vendor to make
needed changes—but of course the library must
have adequate technical staff to make changes
in-house. Procedures can be changed as needs
change (Briscoe, Selden, & Nyberg, 2003). With a
Web list, journals can be entered the way providers
offer them, independent of how they are offered
in print; if a provider offers a supplement under
a separate URL, it can receive a separate entry in
a Web list, regardless of whether the cataloging
rules indicate that it should have one. Web lists,
220
if well designed, also allow libraries to enter or
remove large numbers of titles easily. If they
purchase data from a PAMS provider, libraries
can easily update holdings information in their
Web lists. But as Chrzastowski argues, the catalog is not nimble enough to cope with resources
that change so frequently, and “Updating records
often becomes secondary to new cataloging pressures” (Chrzastojwski, 1999, p. 318). Similarly,
Ferguson, Collins & Grogg argue, “The MARC
record lacks the lexibility to adjust to a format
as luid and constantly changing as the e-journal”
(2006, p. 32).
On the other hand, MARC records conform to
an international standard that is widely supported
in the library world. Having records that conform
to such this standard supports interoperability and
allows libraries to integrate disparate systems
more easily. MARC records can be exported,
imported into other systems, or converted into
XML or Dublin Core with free tools. If the library’s
integrated library system supports the MARC
format for holdings data, serial holdings can be
exported and used to populate other systems, for
example local holdings records for union listing
on OCLC. Conforming to standards, then, limits
lexibility while enhancing interoperability.
Despite its many weaknesses, the catalog is
the best long-term option for providing access
to journal collections. Using the catalog allows
libraries to integrate their journal collection with
other resources, which can be an advantage to
users if the interface is designed to minimize
clutter and complexity. When the library uses
a separate retrieval system for journals, users
have to remember to look in a different place
for journals—and they have to know that what
they seek is actually a journal. Similarly, the
library has to decide what gets included in the
journals database—journals, of course, but what
about annuals or monographic series that are
sometimes cited as journals? Using the catalog
as the primary retrieval system for all materials
allows the library to avoid making these kinds of
One-Stop Shopping for Journal Holdings
distinctions. It also represents a more sustainable
choice and a better use of library resources over
the long term than does maintaining individual,
in-house systems. Staff time and energy are better
invested in partnering with vendors to improve the
way catalogs manage journals, as the beneits of
these partnerships are available to all of a given
vendor’s customers. In fact, the library catalog
seems to have reached a turning point in the last
few years. Librarians and vendors are beginning
to rethink catalog interfaces in exciting ways. New
interfaces are being designed or implemented; see
Antelman, Lynema, and Pace for one example
(2006). If libraries use their catalogs to manage
their entire journal collections, these exciting
enhancements should improve access to journal
literature considerably. Finally, electronic journals
are no longer new, unusual formats that require
special treatment. As Anderson notes, libraries
used to provide,
Separate lists of new videorecordings or compact
discs or computer software as these media were
being introduced into library collections. When
these were the new ‘cutting edge’ resources and
their numbers were relatively few, public services librarians were eager to promote their use
and legitimately concerned that they would be
lost in the jungle of the online catalog… As the
complexity of maintaining the lists increased,
and the glamour of the ‘new’ media wore off,
library staff began to ind ways to leverage the
online catalog search options. Eventually, the
lists were abandoned, and the catalog become the
sole method of access for these and other library
material. (1999, p. 312)
The time has come for libraries to leverage the
catalog to manage electronic journals, and many
efforts to do so are already well underway.
Making Catalogs Work for Journal
Collections
Libraries have several options for making their
catalogs more lexible and user-friendly for journal collections: they can load batches of records,
either brief records generated in-house or records
obtained from vendors; use electronic resources
management systems that integrate with their
catalogs; conduct usability studies related to retrieving journal information from their catalogs
and use this information to partner with vendors
to improve catalog interfaces to journal literature;
and use catalog data to create Web lists and other
interfaces desired by users.
When individual, full cataloging is not practical, libraries can load batches of records, either
brief records generated in-house or records
obtained from a vendor. Brief records can be
generated from data provided by publishers,
aggregators, or PAMS using various software
programs (Mitchell & Surratt, 2005). Judicious
use of brief records represents a compromise approach, balancing the labor required to create and
maintain full catalog records with the need to provide one-stop shopping in the catalog for as many
journals as possible. Using brief records allows a
library to enter title and holdings information, a
level of access similar to that provided by a Web
list. Unfortunately, brief records share many of the
drawbacks of Web lists, lacking alternate titles,
subject headings, and classiication information.
Because they also lack standard control numbers,
for example OCLC numbers, brief records may be
problematic in union catalogs which rely on these
numbers for matching and overlay. They may also
cause problems in other projects that rely on control numbers, for example batch updating union
list information. An alternative to brief records
is the vendor record. Vendor records can often be
221
One-Stop Shopping for Journal Holdings
obtained from PAMS, integrated library system
vendors, or producers of aggregated databases.
They usually contain more complete data than
brief records, as they are often generated from
CONSER records. Many libraries use a “hybrid
approach,” using records from one or more vendors
and/or brief records for some packages and full
cataloging for others (Collins, 2005). Decisions
are typically based on the nature of the collection
(e.g., how rapidly the contents change), selection
priority, usage, and so forth.
Another tool to help libraries manage large
numbers of electronic titles in the catalog is
the electronic resources management system
(ERMS). ERM systems are primarily designed
to help library staff manage information about
electronic resources, but many of them, especially
those produced by integrated library system vendors, integrate with library catalogs and provide
options for batch loading holdings. For example,
using the Electronic Resources Management ™
product from Innovative Interfaces has allowed
the Oregon Health & Science University Library
to batch load holdings for thousands of journals
into its catalog. The library can load delimited text
iles from publishers, aggregators, and/or PAMS.
The load process matches holdings information
to existing bibliographic records, or creates new,
brief bibliographic records if desired, and it also
creates MARC holdings records. Updating holdings is also a batch process. This level of integration allows the library to offer seamless access
Figure 1. Patron view of journal holdings, Oregon Health & Science University Library
222
One-Stop Shopping for Journal Holdings
via its catalog to many journals without requiring
excessive staff time. See Figure 1 for a patron
view of holdings from Oregon Health & Science
University’s integrated ERM module.
The primary drawback of ERM systems is
cost. Even though managing electronic resources
is now a core function in libraries, adding this
functionality to an integrated library system costs
extra. As Breeding notes, “The typical library
automation environment today, especially for a
medium-sized to large academic library, would
require an ILS to manage traditional content and
a suite of additional products to lend support for
electronic content” (2006, p. 28). For more infor-
mation, including a feature-by-feature comparison
of nine of these tools, see Meyer (2005).
Batch loading, with or without an ERM system,
can help a library to get large numbers of titles into
the catalog. But loading holdings into the catalog
does not address usability problems associated
with library catalogs. Searching for journals in
library catalogs remains a frustrating experience
for users. What can libraries do to improve this
situation? First, libraries can and should do regular
usability tests on their catalogs, including journal
searches. In some cases, problems can be corrected
or ameliorated by changing wording, indexing,
or other aspects of the system that are under the
Figure 2. Web list from Oregon Health & Science University Library
223
One-Stop Shopping for Journal Holdings
library’s control. For example, when the Oregon
Health & Science University Library retired its
Web list of journals in favor of the catalog, users
complained that title searches produced long lists
of results with lots of irrelevant entries. Library
staff were able to improve the lists of results by
changing indexing parameters and adjusting
cataloging practices to reduce redundant or unnecessary title added entries in the title index.
Other problems will prove to be more intractable.
For those, libraries should share the results of usability testing with their catalog vendors, lobby
for improvements, beta test new interfaces, and
otherwise partner with their vendors to ensure
the best access for their users. Many vendors are
redesigning their catalog interfaces in response
to a spate of criticism—for example Schneider
(2006a; 2006b; 2006c) and Tennant (2005)—providing an opportunity for libraries to lobby for
changes on behalf of their users.
No matter how much libraries improve their
catalogs, some users will likely want to browse
rather than search for journal holdings. So, the
optimal solution for many libraries is not the catalog or a Web list but the catalog and a Web list.
The key point is to maintain the data in a single
place and serve it out in multiple ways. MARC
records can be generated from a local database
of holdings, and Web lists can be generated from
catalog records (Briscoe et al., 2003). The latter
option is dependent, of course, on the catalog
vendor allowing catalog data to be accessed
outside of the standard catalog interface. For an
example of a Web list that is generated from and
links to catalog data, see Figure 2.
Link Resolvers: One-Stop Shopping
Outside of the Catalog?
Having journal holdings integrated in one
source—the catalog—is extremely helpful for
users searching for journals. But many users begin their searches in article databases, using the
224
catalog or a Web list afterwards to ind out which
of their desired articles the library can provide.
To provide those users with seamless access to
these articles—one-stop shopping from article
databases—the library needs another tool, the
link resolver. The link resolver matches metadata
from a citation against a database of the library’s
holdings, often called a knowledge base, and offers
the user a menu of links to full text and/or other
services (e.g., a document delivery request form).
The link resolver, then, can link the user directly
to the desired article or journal from a citation,
without requiring the user to visit the library
catalog. If all of the library’s journal holdings,
including those from aggregated databases as well
as some free titles, are loaded into the resolver, it
can provide another form of one-stop shopping.
The situation is complicated, however, by the fact
that users are starting their searches in resources
the library did not purchase and over which the
library has very little, if any, ability to customize—for example Google Scholar™, Windows
Live Academic™, and CiteULike™. Further,
users may not realize where the library stops
and the rest of the online world begins (Manoff,
2000). How can libraries guide a user seamlessly
between these non-library sites and the library’s
resources, without the user having to know how
to get to the library’s information space? Recent
developments with link resolvers may provide an
answer. Latent openURLs (Apps & MacIntyre,
2006; Chudnov, Cameron, Frumkin, Singer, &
Yee, 2005) are openURLs embedded in Web
pages, invisible to human readers but accessible
to software applications. A recent example is
the COinS speciication (Hellman, 2005), which
embeds bibliographic metadata in a Web page so
that software programs such as browser extensions, for example OpenURL Referrer (2006),
can generate openURLs. The user conigures
the browser extension to point to the desired link
resolver and is then directed to library resources
to fulill an information need.
One-Stop Shopping for Journal Holdings
ONE-STOP SHOPPING: WHAT AND
HOW
One-stop shopping represents a return to the model
libraries have used for decades—library holdings represented in one place (for the most part).
But as one looks at the current state of journal
literature, one must ask, “What is a library holding?” To which materials should libraries attempt
to direct users, and which materials are outside
the library’s responsibility? To some degree, the
answers to these questions will be different for
each library, just as collecting scope is different
for each library. Then, once one has decided what
should be included in the collection, one must igure out how to provide access to those materials,
taking into account issues related to bibliographic
control, workload, and more. This section will
examine the universe of journal literature in detail,
discussing both the philosophical and practical
issues related to including various categories of
journal literature in library collections.
Individual Print and Electronic
Journals
Figure 3 attempts to capture the universe of
journal literature to which a library may wish to
direct users. As one moves from left to right, one
moves from materials to which libraries have traditionally provided access, and for which current
tools work well, to materials that are new to the
library’s purview and more dificult to manage.
Print journals, then, are at the far left, along with
their direct electronic counterparts, individual
electronic journals with archival rights. The term
“individual e-journals” refers to electronic journals that are selected and purchased in ways similar
to print journals, that is individually or in small
packages, and which are essentially electronic
copies of their print counterparts. If the library
has perpetual access and/or archival rights, the
library retains access to subscribed materials
even after the subscription has ended; in essence,
the library “owns” these titles. By contrast, if the
library does not hold archival rights, as in the
next oval in Figure 3, access to all volumes is
lost when the subscription is canceled. Current
integrated library systems can handle individual
print and electronic titles fairly well, and the effort
required to provide access to these materials is
usually manageable.
“Big Deals,” Aggregated Databases,
and Free Titles
Beginning with the next level, big deals and aggregated databases, managing journal holdings
becomes more challenging. Both “big deals” and
aggregated databases often include large numbers
of titles, including some that the library would not
have selected individually. Likewise, as the open
access movement has grown, many publishers
offer at least some journal content free of charge.
Figure 3. The universe of journal literature (graphic by Laura Zeigen; used with permission)
225
One-Stop Shopping for Journal Holdings
Sometimes entire journals are free (e.g., titles in
Biomed Central). In other cases, publishers restrict
access to the most current content but offer older
content free, or they offer certain journals free
for a limited time. According to Hood and Howard, “The best way to add value to open access
journals is by cataloging and maintaining open
access bibliographic records in our catalogs…
Adding these records increases the currency
and relevance of the catalog, encourages access
to e-resources through the OPAC rather than
separately maintained utilities, and legitimizes
‘freely available’ resources” (2006, p. 250). With
batch loading via an ERM system, vendor records,
or other means, aggregated databases and other
large packages can be managed in the catalog, but
libraries must overcome signiicant challenges
and make compromises to manage these titles
successfully.
There are several barriers to managing aggregated databases and groups of free titles in
the catalog. First, it can be challenging to get
current, reliable, usable data about availability
and holdings and to keep this data current and
accurate. As McCracken explains,
Most aggregators have devoted the majority
of their efforts to improving access, database
management, marketing, usability, and other
important issues. Relatively little attention has
been paid to the quality of the title lists most aggregators generate, and this is a shame. Title lists
are rife with invalid ISSNs. Notes of title changes,
when they appear, rarely include a changed ISSN.
Title changes are often absorbed into holdings
notes for the new title, leaving little or no indication of holdings under the previous title. Though
librarians catalog serials using a standard of
successive entry—with a separate entry for each
signiicant version of the title—aggregators often
tend to list their journals using a modiied form
of latest entry, usually citing just the most recent
version of the title. (2003, p. 106)
226
Free titles also can be dificult to track unless
the library relies on sites or services that aggregate
free titles, for example the Directory of Open Access Journals or a PAMS vendor. With free titles,
then, the library is often dealing with what are
essentially aggregated collections. Holdings information for the titles in these collections also must
be kept up-to-date with whatever mechanisms
the library employs for loading and maintaining
electronic holdings data. Aggregated databases
tend to have volatile contents, with titles appearing
and disappearing and years of coverage changing frequently. Similarly, some free titles may
be unstable, for example titles offered free for a
limited time, yet may be of great value to library
users. The library must determine whether or not
it can get reliable information about these titles
and manage them eficiently enough to make the
beneit to users worth the staff time required.
Large packages of electronic holdings—
whether purchased or free—often include titles
peripheral to the library’s collection. Manoff
writes,
The more we purchase databases of electronic
journals or compilations of electronic text or
data, the fewer choices we have about the speciic
documents or information we acquire. We buy
the whole package or none of it. The larger the
package, the more likely it is that it will contain
a considerable amount of material that we would
not otherwise have chosen. It is also more likely
that it will duplicate some material that we receive
from other sources. (2000, pp. 859-860)
For both aggregated databases and collections
of free titles, the library must consider whether to
provide access to selected titles in these packages
or all of them. To do so, the library must weigh
several challenging philosophical issues, as well
as signiicant practical constraints. Libraries
often use a variety of criteria to decide which of
these titles to include in their collections, including the scope of the collection and user demand.
One-Stop Shopping for Journal Holdings
Some libraries choose to catalog only those titles
for which they hold archival rights (Sennema,
2004), whether the titles are part of a package or
purchased individually. Carstens and Buchanan
argue for a traditional model of selection based
on user needs, taking a very broad view of the
types of materials to include:
The concept of collection has always included the
physical items held by the library. Most librarians
now include online subscription databases and
paid electronic journals within their concept of
the collection. However, the deinition should be
extended to include the free Web sites included
in the catalog, information available through a
consortium, and perhaps even those resources
available through the library’s document delivery
services. What will make any of these information
resources ‘part of the collection’ is the fact that
the library speciically selects them because of
their value to the library’s clientele and the fact
that the library is prepared to make them available. (2004, p. 40)
Their argument suggests that resources should
be made accessible to users if they it into the
library’s collecting scope, whether or not those
resources are purchased. Another possible criterion is usage: titles that are heavily used, whether
in print or via interlibrary loan requests, are good
candidates for inclusion. Interestingly, however,
the Oregon Health & Science University Library
has found that titles considered in-scope are not
necessarily the most heavily used. For example,
in the 2005-2006 academic year, the ninthmost-popular title in Oregon Health & Science
University’s EBSCOHost databases—out of over
11,000—was People ™ magazine. Yet it would be
dificult to argue that People ™ its in the collecting scope of a biomedical library. Further, there is
a relationship between usage and representation
in the library’s catalog or other systems. Many
users do not request articles via interlibrary loan.
If those users do not know that a title is available
to them, free or otherwise, they will not use it.
Though these philosophical issues can produce
interesting discussions, it is often the practical
considerations—specifically, workload constraints—that determine how libraries manage
these large collections of electronic holdings.
With batch loading tools, it is much easier to load
records for an entire package than it is to pick
and choose speciic titles. Also, since aggregated
databases and collections of free titles are quite
volatile, any selection done initially would have to
be repeated each time an updated list of titles and
holdings was received. So, libraries that purchase
big packages have little choice but to acquire
materials that are out of scope or that duplicate
material already in the collection. Yet loading
large numbers of out-of-scope titles clutters the
catalog, thereby decreasing usability.
Articles: Free and Pay-Per-Download
The outermost two categories of material, free
articles and articles available for a fee, present signiicant challenges for libraries, because the unit
to be controlled is not the journal but the article.
Free articles are distinguished from free journals
in that with free articles, one cannot assume that
a whole journal, or even a whole issue, is freely
available. Free articles are becoming more and
more common. Some publishers allow authors to
pay a fee to allow an article to be available free
to all users, while other publishers allow authors
to deposit copies of their work in institutional or
other repositories such as PubMed Central. Individual articles often are also available for paid
download from journal Web sites or document
delivery services. In some cases, libraries are
granted a set number of free downloads from a
certain publisher as part of a package purchase.
All of these possibilities present useful options
for library users. The article a user wants may
be available free of charge, but the user (or the
library) may pay for an interlibrary loan, because
the library lacks systems that can easily locate
these free articles.
227
One-Stop Shopping for Journal Holdings
Historically libraries have not cataloged
articles, leaving that activity to indexing and
abstracting databases, but libraries may no longer
be able to avoid providing bibliographic control at
the article level. The 2003 OCLC Environmental
Scan notes a trend toward disaggregation, with
articles replacing journals as the least publishable unit, and microcontent becoming a desired
commodity. “Increasingly, the information seeker
doesn’t care what the original container looked
like, and wants to be able to use this microcontent
immediately… Content is disaggregated from its
original container” (De Rosa et al., 2004, p. 100).
Because current library systems are designed to
manage journals, not articles, however, directing
users to these articles seamlessly is extremely dificult, if not impossible. If libraries include records
in their catalogs for every journal for which some
free content is available, they will have to manage
many, many more titles. Constructing detailed, accurate holdings statements would not be possible,
making it dificult to communicate to users which
articles they could expect to access. Link resolvers also do not handle these materials gracefully.
Since holdings are not consistent, they cannot be
loaded into the resolver’s knowledge base. No
centralized database of article metadata exists
for free articles in various repositories. Hence the
link resolver could only offer links to individual
repositories. The list of links could get quite long
and confusing, and the user could potentially click
on each one, only to ind out that the article is not
available free anywhere. Federated search tools
could also provide access to this material, especially if metadata from many repositories could
be harvested or otherwise consolidated.
Articles that can be downloaded for a fee also
present challenges for libraries. Large document
delivery services offer articles from many different journals. Users could be directed to these
services via a link resolver, with either the user or
the library’s document delivery department paying for the service. But in some cases, the library
may have a number of free downloads (sometimes
228
called tokens) available as part of a package deal
with a publisher. How can these free downloads
be presented to the user? The University of
Tennessee Libraries created brief bibliographic
records for journals available to their users only
through paid download or with tokens. They
found that use of these titles, as well as those they
actually subscribed to, doubled when they were
represented in the catalog (Johnson & Manoff,
2003). The Oregon Health & Science University
Library used a different tool to provide access
to some of this material. As part of its contract
with a large publisher, the library received a set
number of tokens, each one allowing a download
from a title offered by that publisher but to which
the library did not subscribe. The library loaded
holdings data for these titles into its link resolver;
once all the tokens had been used, the titles were
deactivated in the link resolver.
ONE-STOP SHOPPING: ONE
LIBRARY’S EXPERIENCE
While previous sections have mentioned the
Oregon Health & Science University’s efforts to
provide one-stop shopping for journal literature,
this section will briely summarize that experience. OHSU’s implementation should be viewed
not as a model to follow but rather as a real-life,
imperfect example illustrating the concepts presented in this chapter.
Like many libraries, OHSU began with a Webbased list of electronic journals in the late 1990s.
When a journal was added to the page, a link was
also added to the catalog record for the title. As
the number of electronic journals grew, the Web
pages became unmanageably long. When the library purchased a suite of full-text databases from
EBSCOHost™—thereby gaining about 11,000
new electronic journals—the static Web pages
were retired in favor of a Web-based database.
Aggregated and free titles were not added to the
catalog, so patrons and staff now had to look in
One-Stop Shopping for Journal Holdings
two places to see if they had access to a given
article. Both users and staff began to complain, so
library staff looked for ways to restore one-stop
shopping for journal holdings.
In 2003, the library agreed to beta-test the
new Electronic Resources Management™ (ERM)
product from Innovative Interfaces, Inc., in the
hope that all journal holdings could be included
in the catalog once again. This module provides
the ability to load delimited text or XML iles
of journal holdings in batches, creating MARC
holdings records and attaching them to existing
bibliographic records or creating brief bibliographic records as needed. In addition, the ERM
module populates a database of holdings, which
is also used by the library’s link resolver (WebBridge™ from Innovative Interfaces, Inc.) as a
knowledge base. With these new capabilities, the
library was able to load holdings from aggregated
collections into the catalog, along with holdings
for some free titles. The OHSU Library purchases
holdings data for collections of free titles (e.g.,
Directory of Open Access Journals, PubMed
Central) from EBSCO A to Z™. Some of these
holdings have been loaded into the catalog, with
others to follow later in 2007. The OHSU Library
is also considering creating brief catalog records
for selected journals with articles available for a
fee, as well as offering access to these articles via
the library’s link resolver. The OHSU Library has
not yet found a way to provide seamless access
to free articles.
Using the catalog plus Innovative’s ERM
module, the OHSU Library is able to provide
one-stop shopping for print journal holdings, individual electronic journals, some journals from
aggregated collections, and some free journals.
Holdings for all versions of a journal, print and
electronic, are consolidated on a single bibliographic record, as shown in Figure 1. Because all
of this data is stored in the catalog, which uses
an Oracle database, the library is able to provide
browsing by title, as shown in Figure 2, by using
SQL to query the database and Cold Fusion™
to display the query results. The library had to
make some compromises, however, to manage
workload. Titles from aggregated databases are
loaded into the catalog only if they have an ISSN.
The ERM module will match incoming holdings
to existing bibliographic records based on title
as well as ISSN, but title matches often result
in holdings attached to the wrong bibliographic
record. Rather than clean up mismatches from
every load, library staff remove all titles lacking
an ISSN from the ile of holdings data prior to
load. Library staff rarely add free titles to the
catalog, unless they are included in a package of
data provided by EBSCO A to Z™. It simply takes
too much time to maintain accurate holdings data
for individual free titles. The library also does
not provide full cataloging for all journals in its
catalog. Instead, the library relies on brief bibliographic records, created by the ERM module, for
two categories of titles: free titles and titles from
aggregated databases, unless a record for the title
already exists in the catalog. These brief records
provide limited access, as they can be retrieved
by title, ISSN, or keyword searches only. See
Figure 4 for an example of a brief record created
by the ERM module.
Despite these compromises, consolidating
journal information in the catalog has simpliied
access to journal literature for patrons and staff
alike.
FUTURE TRENDS
Several emerging trends bode well for seamless
access to journal literature. First, in recent years
library catalogs have come under heavy criticism
for being old-fashioned, dificult to use, and vastly
inferior to commercial retrieval systems such as
Google™ and Amazon™. New discovery platforms with faceted searching, relevance ranking,
and other features borrowed from the commercial
Web should make all library resources—including journals—easier to ind. These new features
229
One-Stop Shopping for Journal Holdings
Figure 4. Brief bibliographic record from Oregon Health & Science University Library
will likely rely heavily on the richness of MARC
data to function well, however, which may mean
that journals represented only by brief records
will not be found as easily by users. Some of the
proposed discovery layers (e.g., Encore from Innovative Interfaces, Inc.) incorporate federated
searching to enhance results from the library
catalog. The NISO MetaSearch Initiative (NISO
MetaSearch initiative, 2005) should make this
technology more effective with a broader range
of resources, helping to bridge the gap between
what is generally included in a library catalog
and what is not (e.g., articles). This notion of a
discovery layer is part of a larger movement to
bury system complexity behind the scenes, rec-
230
ognizing the “don’t make me think” principle of
Web usability discussed earlier in this chapter.
Researchers such as Dempsey advocate moving
a user seamlessly from discovery to delivery,
providing information at the point of need to allow the user to make choices without having to
understand much of anything about how library
systems work (Dempsey, 2006). Some proposed
models include revamping document delivery to
include a variety of options, including purchases
from commercial services such as Amazon™
(Dempsey, 2006). If that can be done gracefully, users can be linked seamlessly to articles,
regardless of whether or not they are part of the
library’s collection.
One-Stop Shopping for Journal Holdings
If this model of seamless document delivery is to include free articles—as it certainly
should—metadata about these articles needs to
be harvested and consolidated into centralized
repositories that can be queried by federated search
tools and link resolvers. Existing standards for
metadata harvesting should be adequate to support this type of centralization, which would allow
libraries and their users to beneit greatly from the
growing open access movement. In order for link
resolvers to it the “don’t make me think” model
of Web usability, however, they need to be able to
query various data sources automatically, behind
the scenes, and offer the user a menu of links
based on what is actually available. Otherwise,
users will remain frustrated with what they see
as the resolver’s failure, when in fact the desired
material is not available in a given location. This
functionality is currently available for querying
knowledge bases of library holdings, but it does
not yet exist for querying data repositories outside
the purview of the library.
Emerging standards such as COinS can also
help bridge the gap between library systems and
the rest of the online world. In order for a standard
such as COinS to be truly effective, however,
users will have to be connected seamlessly to
the appropriate link resolver. They cannot be
expected to know the address of their library’s
link resolver at the point of need. The OCLC
OpenURL Resolver Registry (2006), designed to
direct users to an appropriate link resolver based
on IP address, should address this issue. In the
future, one would hope that the process would
be handled automatically by the software that
processes the COinS.
CONCLUSION
The world of journal literature has changed
dramatically in the last decade and continues to
change rapidly. To respond to these changes effectively, libraries should focus on the needs of
users and ind ways to make journal literature
more easily accessible. A key component in that
vision is providing one-stop shopping for as many
relevant journals as possible, both via the library
catalog and at the point of need via a link resolver.
Currently libraries can provide one-stop shopping
for print and electronic journals, including titles
from aggregated databases, as well as some free
titles. But this vision often must be compromised
as libraries weigh beneits to users against staff
time and resources required to deliver all relevant
journal information to their users. Meanwhile,
providing access to individual articles, whether
free or available for paid download, remains the
most challenging aspect of the one-stop-shopping
ideal. So, libraries cannot provide complete onestop shopping for all journal literature of interest
to their users. But they can provide simpliied
access to some of it and work with vendors and
standards organizations to facilitate access to the
rest. Library users deserve nothing less.
REFERENCES
Anderson, B. (1999). Web lists or OPACs: Can we
have our cake and eat it, too? Library Computing,
18(4), 312-316.
Antelman, K., Lynema, E., & Pace, A. K. (2006).
Toward a twenty-irst century library catalog.
Information Technology and Libraries, 25(3),
128-139.
Apps, A., & MacIntyre, R. (2006, November 9).
Why OpenURL? D-Lib Magazine, 12(5).
Bevis, M. D., & Graham, J. B. (2003). The evolution of an integrated electronic journals collection. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 24(2),
115-119.
Black, S. (2006). Bibliographic control of serials.
Serials in libraries: Issues and practices (pp. 83102). Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.
231
One-Stop Shopping for Journal Holdings
Breeding, M. (2006). Musings on the state of
the ILS in 2006. Computers in Libraries, 26(3),
26-28.
Dublin, OH: OCLC Online Computer Library
Center. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from
http://www.oclc.org/reports/escan/
Briscoe, G., Selden, K., & Nyberg, C. R. (2003).
The catalog vs. the home page? Best practices
in connecting to online resources. Law Library
Journal, 95(2), 151-174.
Dempsey, L. (2006). Libraries and the long tail:
Some thoughts about libraries in a network age.
D-Lib Magazine,12(4). Retrieved November 18,
2007, from http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april06/
dempsey/04dempsey.html
Carstens, T., & Buchanan, H. (2004). The future
of the catalog: A user-friendly academic search
engine. Technical Services Quarterly, 22(2),
37-47.
Chen, X., Colgan, L., Greene, C., Lowe, E., &
Winke, C. (2004). E-resource cataloging practices:
A survey of academic libraries and consortia.
Serials Librarian, 47(1/2), 153-179.
Chrzastojwski, T. E. (1999). E-journal access:
The online catalog (856 ield), web lists, and “the
principle of least effort”. Library Computing,
18(4), 317-322.
Chudnov, D., Cameron, R., Frumkin, J., Singer,
R., & Yee, R. (2005, May 24). Opening up
OpenURLs with autodiscovery. Ariadne (43).
Retrieved November 18, 2007, from http://www.
ariadne.ac.uk/issue43/chudnov/
Cole, J. (2003). Impacts of the abandonment of
catalog records for electronic serials. The Serials
Librarian, 45(1), 27-33.
Cole, Jim E. & Williams, J. W. (1992). Serials cataloging: Modern perspectives and international
developments. New York: Haworth Press.
Collins, M. (2005). The effects of e-journal management tools and services on serials cataloging.
Serials Review, 31(4), 291-297.
Copeland, A. W. (2002). E-serials cataloging in
the 1990s: A review of the literature. The Serials
Librarian, 41(3/4), 7-29.
De Rosa, C., Dempsey, L., & Wilson, A. (2004).
The 2003 OCLC environmental scan: Pattern
recognition: A report to the OCLC membership.
232
Ferguson, C. L., Collins, M. D. D., & Grogg, J. E.
(2006). Finding the perfect e-journal access solution... the hard way. Technical Services Quarterly,
23(4), 27-50.
Fescemyer, K. (2005). Serials clutter in online
catalogs. Serials Review, 31(1), 14-19.
Frazier, K. (2001). The librarians’ dilemma:
Contemplating the costs of the “big deal”. D-Lib
Magazine, 7(3). Retrieved November 18, 2007,
from http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march01/frazier/
03frazier.html
Giles, V. (2003). Single or multiple records for
print and electronic serials titles: When less is
more (more or less). The Serials Librarian, 45(1),
35-45.
Grover, D., & Fons, T. (2004). The innovative
electronic resource management system: A development partnership. Serials Review, 30(2),
110-116.
Hellman, E. (2005). OpenURL COinS: A convention to embed bibliographic metadata in HTML.
Retrieved November 18, 2007, from http://ocoins.
info/
Hood, A., & Howard, M. (2006). Adding value to
the catalog in an open access world. The Serials
Librarian, 50(3/4), 249-252.
Johnson, K., & Manoff, M. (2003). Report of the
death of the catalog is greatly exaggerated: The
E-journal access journey at the University of Tennessee. The Serials Librarian, 44(3/4), 285-292.
One-Stop Shopping for Journal Holdings
Jones, W. (2003). A personal mini-history of eserials cataloging. The Serials Librarian, 43(3),
21-24.
Osmus, L. L. (1996). The transformation of serials
cataloging 1965-1990. Technical services management, 1965-1990. (pp. 171-190). Haworth Press.
Krug, S. (2006). Don’t make me think: A common sense approach to web usability (2nd ed.).
Berkeley, CA: New Riders.
Primich, T., & Richardson, C. (2006). The integrated library system: From innovation to relegation to
innovation again. In A. Fenner (Ed.), Integrating
print and digital resources in library collections
(pp. 119-133). New York: Haworth Press.
Manoff, M. (2000). Hybridity, mutability, multiplicity: Theorizing electronic library collections.
Library Trends, 49(1), 857-876.
Martin, C. K., & Hoffman, P. S. (2002). Do we
catalog or not? How research libraries provide
bibliographic access to electronic journals in
aggregated databases. The Serials Librarian,
43(1), 61-77.
McCracken, P. (2003). Beyond title lists: Incorporating ejournals into the OPAC. The Serials
Librarian, 45(3), 101-108.
McCracken, P. (2004). The OPAC reborn. Library
Journal NetConnect, 129, 32.
Meyer, S. (2005). Helping you buy: Electronic
resource management systems. Computers in
Libraries, 25(10), 19-23.
Mitchell, A. M., & Surratt, B. E. (2005). Cataloging and organizing digital resources : A
how-to-do-it manual for librarians. New York:
Neal-Schuman Publishers.
NISO MetaSearch initiative (2005). Retrieved
November 18, 2007, from http://www.niso.org/
committees/MS_initiative.html
Novotny, E. (2004). I don’t think I click: A protocol
analysis study of use of a library online catalog in
the internet age. College & Research Libraries,
65(6), 525-537.
OCLC OpenURL resolver registry (2006). Retrieved November 18, 2007, from http://www.
oclc.org/productworks/urlresolver.htm
OpenURL referrer (2006). Dublin, OH: OCLC
Openly Informatics. Retrieved November 18,
2007, from http://www.openly.com/openurlref/
Schneider, K. G. (2006a). How OPACs suck, Part
1: Relevance rank (or the lack of it). Retrieved
November 18, 2007, from http://www.techsource.
ala.org/blog/2006/03/how-opacs-suck-part-1-relevance-rank-or-the-lack-of-it.html
Schneider, K. G. (2006b). How OPACs suck, Part
2: The checklist of shame. Retrieved November
18, 2007, from http://www.techsource.ala.org/
blog/2006/04/how-opacs-suck-part-2-the-checklist-of-shame.html
Schneider, K. G. (2006c). How OPACs suck,
Part 3: The big picture. Retrieved November
18, 2007, from http://www.techsource.ala.org/
blog/2006/05/how-opacs-suck-part-3-the-bigpicture.html
Sennema, G. (2004). Our e-journal journey:
Where to next? Serials Librarian, 47(3), 35-43.
Shadle, S. (2006). FRBR and serials: An overview and analysis. The Serials Librarian, 50(1/2),
83-103.
Snavely, L., & Clark, K. (1996). What users really
think: How they see and ind serials in the arts
and sciences. Library Resources & Technical
Services 40, 49-51.
Tennant, R. (2005). Lipstick on a pig. Library
Journal, 130(7), 34.
Tobia, R. C. (2001). Electronic journals: Experiences of an academic health sciences library.
Serials Review, 27(1), 3-17.
Tull, L., Crum, J., Davis, T., & Strader, C. R.
(2005). Integrating and streamlining electronic
233
One-Stop Shopping for Journal Holdings
resources worklows via innovative’s electronic
resource management. Serials Librarian, 47(4),
103-124.
Williams, J. W. (1997). Serials cataloging, 19911996: A review. The Serials Librarian, 32(1-2),
3-26.
Wikipedia. (2006). Five laws of library science. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_laws_of_library_science
Zeter, M. J., Thunell, A., & Maguire, J. (2003). Success in searching for serials: What is the MAGIC
solution? Serials Librarian, 44(3/4), 201-207.
234
235
Chapter XIII
Beyond OpenURL:
Technologies for Linking
Library Resources
George Boston
Western Michigan University, USA
Randle J. Gedeon
Western Michigan University, USA
ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a general overview of the development and implementation of existing techniques
for the reference linking of scholarly research materials, additionally, some of the new techniques designed for advanced linking are described. Also presented are several new technologies currently under
development, with an eye toward enhancing resource discovery and the interlinking of resources. The
progress of computer technology, the adoption of those technologies by the information consumer, and
the implementation of Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 tools to existing resources have combined in opening
up new avenues of linking previously isolated resources together. Information professionals must come
to appreciate and apply these new techniques and in doing so will provide library patrons with a more
user friendly and thorough research experience.
INTRODUCTION
The ready availability of Internet resources has
revolutionized the research process, richly enhancing resource discovery and being presented
with links to related subject matter, with the
major beneit coming from the convenience of
performing research in a virtual environment.
Initially, Internet based resources were located
at static URLs on servers, with established links
pointing toward these addresses. When the
addresses of these resources changed through
relocation to a new server or site redesign these
connections were broken, necessitating frequent
veriication and updating, highlighting the need
for more reliable forms of linking these resources
together. Several techniques have been introduced
in a search to resolve this dilemma, culminating
Copyright © 2008, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
Beyond OpenURL
in the digital object identiier protocol and the
present openURL standard.
The continuing introduction of new computer
technology, an increasing quantity of information,
and the availability and use of new multimedia formats further illustrate the need for the continuing
improvement of linking technologies. This chapter
explores the development and implementation
of linking standards, examines the practices of
today and reviews some of the enhanced linking
technologies currently under development with
a design for meeting future challenges (Frick,
Duncan, & Walsh, 2005).
EARLY LINKING PROTOCOLS AND
THE APPROPRIATE COPY
PROBLEM
A central concern for all types of linking initiatives focuses on directing users to accessible
and licensed material. In order to address the
problem of linking to the “appropriate copy,”
several proprietary and provider speciic linking programs were initiated. In these instances,
a subscriber indicates to a database vendor the
accessible resources for that given institution.
The vendor then applies that information using
proprietary programming providing outbound
links to the appropriate copy. These technologies
present the user with reliable context sensitive
links from abstracting and indexing databases
to an institution’s subscribed resources.
Examples of vendor supplied context sensitive
linking products include: Ebsco’s SmartLinks, the
Institute of Physics’ HyperCite, BioMednet’s Bundled Link, OVID’s OpenLinks and Silverplatter’s
SilverLinker products. Also, several publishers
provide proprietary “link-to-services” such as
Academic Press, the American Physical Society,
Elsevier, and UMI’s sitebuilder. Applying these
services allows for context sensitive linking to
the appropriate copy. The appropriate copy problem can be addressed by using the linking to a
236
library holding by means of a publisher service,
like Silverlinker, or a link resolver, such as SFX,
based on technology developed by Herbert Van
De Sompel. (Grogg & Tenopir, 2000) However,
with the increasing number of electronic resources
available, maintaining these systems increasingly
have become problematic.
At the same time, publishers and providers
were working on providing bidirectional-linking services. Beginning in 1997, one of the irst
efforts for providing outbound linking to related
resources began with the Chemical Abstracts
Service’s Chemport Connection http://www.
chemport.org/. Several publishers and content
providers followed by offering inbound links to
CAS under the name “ChemPort Reference Linking Service” (Grogg, 2004). The Web of Science
aggregator from the Institute for Scientiic Information offers both bidirectional linking between
web of science records and content from selected
publishers. Openly Informatics also provides an
interpublisher linking solution called “Scholarly
Link Speciication Framework.”
While not providing the standards based linking protocol the openURL would later become,
these services were a precursor of the openURL
and basically solved the appropriate copy problem.
OPENURL AND DOI: THE PRESENT
STANDARDS
Two technologies widely recognized today for
solving the problems associated with reference
linking are the openURL and the digital object
identiier (DOI), with both of these technologies
providing a means for dynamically linking electronic resources.
The earliest proprietary linking systems required extensive maintenance and formal interpublisher agreements. These particular problems
were remedied by the Publishers International
Linking Association in 2000 through the work
Beyond OpenURL
of the CrossRef Initiative. The CrossRef system
uses digital object identiiers (DOIs), which are
unique identiiers tagged to the speciic article’s
metadata. The DOI of an Internet resource is permanent, so that the content can always be located,
even if the URL changes. The DOI is governed
by the International DOI Foundation and managed by CrossRef organization which operates
a citation linking system requiring providers to
deposit DOIs and associated citation metadata.
This system allows a researcher to click on a
reference citation on one publisher’s platform and
then directly link to the cited content on another
publisher’s platform. Implementation of the DOI
ensures permanent interpublisher links (Grogg
& Tenopir, 2000). In 2005, the syntax for the
digital object identiier was standardized by the
National Information Standards Organization as
ANSI standard Z39.84.
However, this reliance upon DOI linking
potentially presented drawbacks for the user.
When a user clicks on a link in a reference list of
a journal published by a participating publisher,
he or she goes to the publisher’s Web site, where
access is determined by subscription. In some
instances, full text access may not be available
directly from the publisher but through another
route (an aggregator, secondary provider, or an
institutional repository). Currently, the CrossRef
link only takes the user to the publisher-supplied
full text, not necessarily to the “appropriate copy.”
The DOI reliably identiies where a resource is
located, however it may not identify whether the
user has full text rights or not. CrossRef’s ability to link the user to the full text is extremely
limited in that it can only direct the user to the
URLs supplied by CrossRef members. CrossRef
alone cannot identify those resources to which
the library subscribes (Grogg, 2005).
Beginning in the late 1990’s, research was
conducted examining the possibility of using
journal metadata in creating a dynamic link to
the resource. Beit-Arie, Oren, Caplan, Priscilla,
et al., (2001) Herbert Van de Sompel, and oth-
ers developed the ideas behind the openURL.
This open source means of reference linking
depended on a link resolver to retrieve resources.
The resolver could then be populated with those
resources where full text rights exist. For example,
when an article search is conducted within an
openURL enabled database, the search results will
display outgoing links to the relevant openURL
resolver. Thus, in this case the database is acting as an “openURL source.” Conversely, an
“openURL target” refers to the incoming request
to a speciic electronic resource. Then, when an
incoming request to the openURL link resolver
arrives it takes into account access rights and
directs users to the appropriate full text source.
The openURL protocol is now standardized by
the National Information Standards Organization
as ANSI standard Z39.88. OpenURL version 0.1
has been superseded by version 1.0 furthering the
development of context-sensitive linking (Grogg,
Development, 2006).
Increasingly, the openURL framework is
being marketed by providers. Taking advantage
of this opportunity link resolving software from
Ex-Libris (SFX), Endeavor (LinkFinder) and others become more available and are being widely
adopted. Both of these standards are widely used
to provide context sensitive linking in a cross-publisher setting, as well as from libraries to content
providers. In addition to linking users with the
appropriate full text resource, these systems can
also provide information about related resources
such as the availability of print resources or perhaps directing users to interlibrary loan services
if the resource is not available. The simplicity
and transparency in access offered by openURL
resolvers helps keep patrons happy and helps keep
them coming back (McElfresh, 2005).
THE NEED FOR BETTER LINKING
PROCEDURES
The use of the openURL standard combined with
the added features of link resolving technology
237
Beyond OpenURL
simpliies and improves context sensitive linking
between resources. As a result, various link-resolving technologies have been adopted in academic libraries (see Figure 1 for a comparison of
the request low for various linking services).
The development of these advanced tools
facilitates linking between resources, creating
a more personalized and user-friendly approach
enhancing interoperability and resource discovery in a scholarly environment. However, as
the advantages of these new linking tools have
become apparent these new technologies have
been adopted by a growing number of libraries
and scholarly research providers as well as commercial enterprises.
Figure 1. Request low comparison of linking services
238
LINKING INFORMATION TO USERS
The process of scholarly research and resource
discovery continues to evolve. The combination
of link resolving technology and the openURL
standard have substantively solved the problems
arising from linking to nonauthenticated versions
of the material. The combination of these elements
makes it possible to provide access to the appropriate copy of the material requested, as well as
providing links to related resources. Secondly,
the DOI has solved problems associated with
interpublisher linking by providing a standard
protocol linking to a publisher’s content.
While the techniques of recalling information
have been addressed, the process of resource
Beyond OpenURL
discovery also involves recognizing the existence
of other information sources and providing the
user with appropriate links to these resources.
In accomplishing this, new techniques need to
be created and applied to existing research tools;
thereby providing links to related content and
also providing users with means to access and
utilize these materials. This is accomplished with
the combination of advanced linking procedures
along with the innovative use of computer software
technology and programming.
Current Linking Applications
Vendors offer similar functionality regarding linking to external and internal content, with generally only minor variations. Researchers are often
presented with multiple linking options within an
article or citation that may include: (1) links to the
full-text through a cited reference or the reference
list; (2) links to other proprietary services such
as CrossRef or Scopus; and (3) possibly navigational links within an article or citation taking
the researcher to appendices, charts and tables,
or possibly an outline of the article presented as a
series of links allowing the researcher to quickly
move through an article.
Innovative forms of linking designed to address these linking problems to related materials
have been introduced by content providers, with
some examples including: forward, citation, dynamic, and conceptual or associative linking.
Forward linking, or “cited-by” links provide
researchers with links to articles citing the retrieved article and linking users to more recent
articles on the same topic. This concept was irst
introduced in 2004 by CrossRef and Atypon
and requires that publisher participants deposit
citation metadata with CrossRef, allowing them
to construct the appropriate links. This kind of
linking has been accepted and adopted by several
providers including: the American Physical Society, BioOne, Blackwell’s Synergy, the Institute
of Physics, and others.
The article Five Futures for Academic
Medicine in the journal PloS Medicine (DOI
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020207)
illustrates an example of forward linking. In this
instance, a link is provided to a list of seven other
articles citing this particular article (Awasthi,
Beardmore, Clark et al., 2005).
Conversely, citation or “backward” linking
provides the user with links to items containing
material cited by a particular article. Examples
of forward and citation linking are illustrated by
Blackwell’s Synergy product. Articles within
that product provide both forward and citation
links to the “appropriate copy” via an openURL
link resolver.
Another form of linking gaining adoption is
dynamic linking, a method employing a computer
algorithm to generate links to related resources.
Applying this algorithm is a basic concept of various link resolver technologies. In this case, when
the link resolver receives a request the metadata is
analyzed and links are constructed in a dynamic
environment providing the user with access to
the material as well as links to relevant research
resources such as: local resources, dictionary or
thesauri entries, or possibly subject encyclopedias.
Using the article listed above as an example, we
can see that it provides a link to associated PubMed
and the Google Scholar records.
Conceptual or associative linking has also been
introduced. This linking procedure uses thesauri
data for providing links to further information on
related subjects, thus going one step further than
dynamic linking. This type of “more like this”
form of linking often are used in online bookstores
and other commercial Web sites and have seen
application to scholarly research as well. In fact,
it is being adopted by providers like Blackwell’s
Synergy for offering links to related resources.
By using customized tagging a “conceptual tree”
can be built for directing users to materials from
broader or narrower subject categories (MilesBoard, Carr, & Hall, 2002).
239
Beyond OpenURL
For example, the Emerald Library presents
users with full-text articles that link out to cited
references when available within their database
and also links to companion/afiliated services,
such as JSTOR and Google Scholar. When available, researchers using Emerald will ind links to
JSTOR articles citing the current item and other
articles written by the author. Alternatively, links
into Google Scholar may lead the researcher to
articles citing the author, other articles written
by the author, and related articles.
Researchers searching ScienceDirect are
presented with citations that may contain options linking to the full-text and links within the
article, a PDF of the article and what is termed
the summary plus of that article. This extended
summary includes an abstract, a linked article
outline, possibly tables and graphs, along with
linked references where available. Accessed articles allow the user to link within that article’s
outline, link to references within the body of the
text along with links to all the contained tables,
charts and appendices. ScienceDirect affords
users the option to link out into their companion
product Scopus to ind “cited by” references and
material cited in the article’s references.
A combination of these innovative linking
strategies provides the user with a more useful
and user-centric method of research and resource
discovery while coincidently providing links to a
wide variety of related information sources. These
linking methods allow the user to navigate from
resource to related resource through multiple
databases, all the while expanding or narrowing
the subject as desired.
The introduction of advanced Web technologies further reines the process of scholarly research providing the user with a more convenient
and complete research experience.
Google Scholar and Windows Live
Academic
Recently, the commercial search services Google
Scholar and Windows Live Academic also have
240
adopted in the openURL standard. When conducting a search on these services, links are presented
to the user which allows for a connection from
the search results to local openURL resolvers.
In the case of Google Scholar, a ile containing
an institution’s subscribed resources is scanned.
When a search on Google Scholar is conducted, the
search results are compared with an institutions’
metadata which are then used to create links to
relevant content. Originally, when Google Scholar
was introduced the search results linked directly
to the publisher’s site. However, this did not take
institutional subscription rights into account. In
response to requests for providing links to the appropriate copy within their search results, Google
Scholar was redesigned to act as a openURL source
providing links to an institution’s openURL link
resolver. In 2005, this function became available,
providing Google users with links to the appropriate fulltext copy. Google Scholar requires that
an institution register its openURL resolver and
provide metadata on the institution’s subscribed
resources (Grogg, Innovative, 2006).
In 2006, Windows Live Academic was introduced; like Google Scholar it provides links to an
institution’s openURL link resolver from search
results. However, Windows Live Academic works
in a different fashion from Google Scholar. It
relies on IP authentication to determine when to
display links to the appropriate openURL resolver.
However, the adoption of the openURL standard
by Google and Microsoft illustrate that this information retrieval method is gaining popularity and
is being adopted by nonlibrary systems.
The introduction of Library 2.0 tools provides
new methods of delivering existing library resources making scholarly research and resource
discovery easier and more intuitive.
The integration of links to relevant wikis,
blogs, blikis, and twikis provide users with current research, opinions, and relevant discussions
of topical information. By combining these tools
with appropriate commercial search engines,
podcasting, vodcasting, RSS feeds and SMS these
Beyond OpenURL
resources can provide users with more complete
access to research materials.
The use of these Web 2.0 tools also provides
a more personalized approach to research and
resource discovery than is possible with standard
reference linking. Their introduction and use is
determined to a large extent by the development
of these new tools. “…There’s still a huge amount
of disagreement about just what Web 2.0 means,
with some people decrying it as a meaningless
marketing buzzword, and other accepting it as
the new conventional wisdom” (Notess, 2006,
p. 40).
Library 2.0 Tools
While the innovative use of the DOI and openURL
standards, combined with advanced linking procedures provide links to related content; new tools
are developing to further enhance authentication,
personalization, and related content linking for
the user. These new tools are developed by utilizing new programming techniques and creating
browser based applications, delivering an interactive research experience while also providing
links to subscribed materials and other related
content to the user.
The increasing availability of collaborative
and social networking represented by interactive
applications, such as: Blogs, wikis, social networking and bookmarking, chat services, multimedia,
RSS feeds, commercial search services, and other
Web 2.0 tools, illustrate the move toward new
venues for scholarly research; providing links from
traditional resources to these new sources and
providing a new challenge in the use of openURL
linking services. The integration of these new tools
with link resolving technologies and traditional
library software has now become generally known
as Library 2.0. Library 2.0 is an evolving concept
that will no doubt see ongoing revisions as new
technologies become available.
Browser Tools
Modern Web browsers also provide tools designed to improve the browsing experience that
also can be used in providing links to research
resources. For example using the JavaScript
scripting language to execute applets embedded
in Web pages provides enhancements to Web
content accomplishing this. In addition, with
the introduction of small JavaScript applications
called bookmarklets, applications can be created
and added into the “favorites” or bookmarks of a
Web browser interacting with user input or even
embedded metadata within the Web page to provide linking with various related resources. This
technology can be utilized in several ways to an
enhance library linking, speciically, a bookmarklet can be constructed to automatically add the
authentication proxy preix in front of a link. Also,
bookmarklets can be used in directing users to
a local or remote resource, or perhaps searching
for a highlighted word in a dictionary, resolving
a DOI, or to searching the local catalog.
Another Web service available from within the
browser are based on Context Objects in Spans
(CoinS, http://ocoins.info/). In this instance, a
specialized bookmarklet is constructed to interact
with metadata embedded within a Web page. In
this way, a COinS bookmarklet application is
constructed displaying links to a local openURL
resolver, providing the user with links to fulltext
content and related resources. In his article “Innovative uses of the openURL” Grogg states that
COinS allow Web developers to embed bibliographic metadata within their Web pages providing access to appropriate copy information (Grogg,
Linking, 2006). Currently only a few databases,
including CiteBase and OpenWorldCat, employ
the correct metadata format required to interact
with COinS. The usefulness of this service will
increase as more databases adopt this technique.
For a list on databases supporting COinS see:
http://ocoins.info/#id3205609424).
241
Beyond OpenURL
Ajax is another one of these new technologies
used in creating interactive Web pages and is an
acronym standing for asynchronous JavaScript
and XML. Ajax is not a stand-alone programming
language, rather it is the term used for grouping
a number of complimentary Web technologies
together, with examples including: JavaScript,
style sheets, the XMLHttpRequest object, and
the document object model (DOM) in developing
Web services.
When employing Ajax, Web applications are
constructed allowing the user to update part or
all of a Web page without having to communicate
with the Web server and refreshing the entire
page, thus increasing the Web page’s usability
and speed. The use of Ajax in delivering Web
content can rival the responsiveness of desktops
applications (Wusteman & O’hlceadha, 2006).
There are some drawbacks to using Ajax Web
services though, most notably being the fact that
only modern, graphical browsers current support
all of the features of Ajax, raising issues about
compatibility with the Section 508 Compliance
Standards.
Other Web application support services are
available and capable of providing linking enhancements, such as: JAVA, .NET, Python, PHP,
and Ruby, all of which may be used in developing other Web services. Web applications can be
constructed in several different programming
languages (Lerner, 2006). Each one of these programming environments offers one or more Web
application frameworks and is meant to provide
an environment for developing applications. There
are also applications called widgets that are used
for accessing the API (application programming
interface) of a Web service, an example being
Google Maps or Amazon.com. As the number of
accessible APIs increase, the concept of providing
users with direct links to relevant Web services
will become an increasingly important part of
scholarly research.
Recently, several JavaScript frameworks
like Dojo, Bindows, Prototype, and others have
242
been developed. These are client-side JavaScript
libraries providing for easy and quick construction of interactive Web applications. A more
complete list of these frameworks can be found
at: http://ajaxpatterns.org/Javascript_Multipurpose_Frameworks.
There are a number of ways of delivering and
integrating these various resource discovery tools.
A common way this is accomplished is by including links to resources and Web applications in a
toolbar integrated within the user’s browser.
Toolbars provide links to online catalogs,
search services, and bookmarks to useful links.
Several libraries provide customized toolbars
linking to various local and remote resources such
as George Mason, Penn State, and the University
of Illinois. These and other examples of library
toolbars and other useful library related browser
tools can be found at: http://www.libsuccess.org/
index.php?title=Web_Browser_Extensions.
Recently, Virginia Tech University Libraries
and the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech developed the LibX FireFox extension.
A LibX toolbar can be designed to provide links to
the Library’s OPAC, an institutions openURL resolver, a DOI resolver, and several other resources,
thereby delivering several of the new Library 2.0
tools. Some examples of toolbars made with LibX
can be found at: http://libx.org/editions.php.
Currently LibX, as a FireFox extension only
works with that browser, as does the HALbar toolbar (http://www.asl.edu/library/halbar/) from the
Appalachian School of Law. FastJack (http://www.
gsb.stanford.edu/library/toolbar/index.html)
from the Stanford School of Business provides
an example of a toolbar capable of working with
Internet Explorer, as well as Firefox, providing
more versatility.
Web Applications and Services
Web logs or blogs have the image of being a
social Website or a gathering space, similar to
MySpace or an issue discussion site like Insta-
Beyond OpenURL
Pundit. However, blogs are also being used to
exchange scholarly information and provide a
forum for the dissemination of links to relevant
Web pages, as well as other media related topics. Blogs are also used to announce and market
library resources. The information contained in a
blog is arranged chronologically, enabling readers
to easily identify recent or updated information.
Blogging has been shown to be a useful tool for
broadcasting information to users. (Bhatt, 2005;
Conhaim, 2006)
Recently, we have seen a variety of blogs established for the purpose of scholarly communication.
BlogScholar, located at http://www.blogscholar.
com/, provides news related to academic blog sites,
as well as a directory of scholarly blogs. Notably,
blogs were introduced at the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign providing a place to discuss the impact of new technologies in scholarly
communication, it can be located at: http://www.
library.uiuc.edu/blog/scholcomm/, as well as the
Transforming Scholarly Communications blog
located at: http://info.lib.uh.edu/scomm/transforming.htm.
The increasing popularity of blogs for transmitting scholarly information highlights the need
and desirability of providing users with links to
appropriate Web log resources. Blogs, along with
RSS feeds are examples of “Push” technologies
offering users the capacity to review current
information without being deluged and inconvenienced with email messages.
A number of blogs use real simple syndication
or rich site summary feeds to push information
contained in individual blog entries to users in a
more targeted fashion than what e-mail provides.
Using this method, a user subscribes to the RSS
feed which is actually a selection of links generated by software at the host site providing the user
with the ability to review updated information at
that particular site.
Listservs and email notiications can serve
the same purpose, however the use of RSS feeds
provides the user additional lexibility to review
information in a more targeted fashion. Speciically, RSS can be used to disseminate news,
events or summary information on a particular
topic. Additionally, several electronic journals
and databases use RSS feeds to distribute table
of contents information and current awareness
information, such as Project MUSE, http://feeds.
muse.jhu.edu/latest_issues.html, the American
Institute of Physics, http://www.aip.org/rss.html,
and Blackwell’s Synergy. “Using a variety of methods, content providers create an RSS document,
or feed, and make it available for subscription so
that users can access content when it is added to
the feed” (Cohen, 2005, p. 14).
To read an RSS feed, a reader is required to
transform the actual data, which is delivered in an
XML ile into a readable format. Several commercial and free stand-alone RSS readers are available
like FeedReader, Newsgator and others. Additionally, modern browsers like FireFox, Safari, or the
latest versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer
have RSS readers already integrated into them.
The number of RSS feeds is increasing rapidly.
Directories of these RSS feeds are available at
www.sydic8.com and www.rssfeeds.com.
Ward Cunningham developed the WIKI concept in 1995. Wikis are a collaborative means of
authoring Web pages and exchanging content;
providing a quick and easy method of sharing
information between users, linking to relevant
content, and commenting on particular research
points. Individual entries within a wiki can be easily modiied and updated by the user. As a result,
developing a wiki on a particular topic often leads
to a spontaneous and shared discussion of issues
and may provide the added beneit of increased
collaboration on projects. Traditional wikis allow
anyone to write and edit online documents raising
concerns about the reliability of the information.
(Fichter, 2005)
Initially, wikis were used primarily for software documentation and other technical uses, but
as the concept gained acceptance and software
became more readily available wikis have been
243
Beyond OpenURL
seen cropping up in other disciplines. Recently,
the authoritative nature of wikis has come under
some question. The open and editable nature of
wikis has lead to erroneous entries, resulting in
changes to the basic wiki design in order to address this problem. Illustrating this problem, in a
New York Times article the Wikipedia biography
for John Seigenthaler, Sr. was erroneously edited
by a prankster to imply that Mr. Seigenthaler
was involved in the assassination of the Kennedys. (Seelye, 2005) There are now several wikis
oriented toward scholarly communications, such
as the LISauthor wiki and the JISC Depository
Research wiki. The number of wikis continues
to grow, for those interested parties an expanding
directory is available at http://www.wikiindex.
com.
Wikis and blogs share similar characteristics
in that they are both are quick and easy ways of
posting information on a particular topic, but there
are in fact some differences in their informational
structure. Blogs tend to be more organized and
chronological in their approach, while wikis have
a topical orientation. A hybrid, known as a bliki,
has recently been introduced, with bliki software
taking a middle of the road approach. A bliki is a
blog with wiki characteristics in which blog posts
can be converted into a regular wiki article. The
primary beneit of a bliki is that the originating
blog posting cannot be edited, thereby increasing the authoritative nature of the bliki over a
conventional wiki (Fichter, 2005).
Another modiication of the wiki format is the
twiki. Twikis are structured wikis that have been
extended with the addition of various plugins,
providing users with the ability to create and use
several types of media content. The structured
aspect of a twiki means easier user input and
its ability to accommodate hundreds of plugins
means that the information stored in a twiki can
be made available in a wide variety of formats.
Twikis can also be used to develop Web applications, thereby offering the possibility of creating
dynamic content and can be used to centrally
244
manage documents (Guenther, 2005). Twikis are
presently in use at the Free Library of Philadelphia
and Pace University Law Library.
The introduction of small audio and video
playback machines and their “cool” factor have
made the iPod and related players a common
feature on university campuses. While used
primarily for music they can be used to conveniently deliver lectures, introductions to scholarly
subjects, providing guidance on research strategies, or informing users on how to use research
resources or even deliver complete audio books.
Ipoddler (www.ipoddler.org) and iTunes can be
used to download audio content to a portable
audio device (Notess, 2005). Creating a MP3 ile
or other type of audio ile and loading it onto the
device accomplishes this process. The user can
then play the ile at their leisure. The provision of
these audio iles is called podcasting. Podcasting is
the method of distributing multimedia iles, such
as audio programs over the Internet using RSS
feeds. Although designed primarily for personal
mobile devices, a desktop or laptop computer
can also be used to review podcasts. “Individual
librarians who have been contributing to professional discourse through blogging are turning to
podcasts as another means of distributing content”
(Balas, 2005, p. 31).
Recently, the capability to add video has been
integrated into podcasting, adding an extra dimension to an already useful tool. The combination
of video and audio is called vodcasting. Like
podcasting, this can be played on a small mobile
device or a desktop or laptop PC.
Another available tool is SMS or short messaging service. As the name implies these are
very short text messages gaining popularity as
a peer-to-peer messaging technique. Originally,
these were sent between cell phones, but now
they can also be transmitted from PC’s allowing
for broadcasting of SMS messages to a larger
number of recipients.
SMS can be used to inform users of new resources becoming available, provide quick notes,
Beyond OpenURL
reminders, short directional or “how to” messages
which can be sent to user’s mobile device on research strategies or important topics. They can
also be used to transmit database search results
to a user’s cell phone or other mobile device, acting as a method to temporarily store and retrieve
search results (Reidy, 2004). Utilizing SMS
services to deliver selected content to patrons
provides another way for libraries to improve
research services.
Providing seamless links from traditional
information resources to these new tools provide
the user with an “added value” research experience. Using innovative programming and existing
openURL link resolving products, new applications can be developed that link to these new Web
services, directing our users to the “appropriate
copy” of the desired resource and allowing our
users the ability to fully use these devices to assist
in their research.
Software Tools
Several software tools are developing and are
being adopted which present and organize information in various forms. Utilizing openURL
link resolvers and other software tools are important to establish appropriate resource linking
resources that provide the user seamless access
to content.
Learning management systems like Moodle
or Blackboard are invaluable tools for presenting
scholarly materials in a teaching environment.
Presenting links to users that direct them to appropriate content is a major challenge.
One tool inding wide acceptance and adoption is the federated search engine. In the past,
commercial Internet search engines were designed
around the metasearch concept. However, with
the advent of Metalib, WebFeet, Encompass and
other library-oriented metasearch utilities we now
see this application becoming available for use in
scholarly research.
Before the advent of federated search systems,
a user needed to select a speciic database, search
that database, collect and evaluate results, then
potentially repeat the procedure with another database; a time consuming and ineficient process
requiring the user to select the “right” database,
conduct the search, then evaluate the results. Here
we see that each step is to a lesser or greater extent
different for each database. The various database
interfaces offer different search features and options that the user must learn before being able to
accurately and reliably execute the search. Also,
each database might provide different formatting
features and the consequent results list might
also offer differing information. The advent of
federated searching has greatly assisted library
researchers as illustrated by (Boss & Nelson,
2005; Curtis, 2005).
Federated searching systems simplify the
search procedure by allowing the user to perform
their search once using a common interface and
then harvesting the results from several different
databases all at once. Search results are then collated and presented to the user in a clustered format, eliminating duplicates and organizing them
for evaluation, thus providing a more thorough
search. With the inclusion of an institution’s OPAC,
digital repository, local and remote resources, a
federated search creates a more comprehensive
and complete search, including not only online
resources, but potentially adding an institution’s
print materials and other resources like multimedia or digitized objects. As we see, federated
searching vastly simpliies the research process
and consequently, the number of federated search
engines now being marketed has grown rapidly.
The Library of Congress maintains a list of these
systems that is found at http://www.loc.gov/catdir/lcpaig/portalproducts.html. Although most
of these search engines are sold commercially,
several are available as open source applications
including: DbWiz: http://dbwiz.lib.sfu.ca/dbwiz/,
KeyStone DLS: http://www.indexdata.dk/keystone/, and ARC: http://oaiarc.sourceforge.net/)
245
Beyond OpenURL
Federated search systems do have a potential
drawback. The search syntax and ield structure of
every database is not identical, especially across
providers. Given the general nature of a federated
search, searches conducted on obscure or specialized topics within a federated search environment
may not ind all relevant materials.
Another software method improving resource
discovery of scholarly resources are expert systems. These applications present the user with a
series of questions or a group of menus relating to
their research topic. Responses are analyzed and
presented to the user in the form of a dynamically
produced set of links to appropriate information
sources (Ma & Cole, 2000).
Expert systems are typically designed using artiicial intelligence software in creating a
dynamic question and answer session. A related
technique is known as the “Wizard,” where we
see questions manually created and users are instructed to follow a path or a set of rules directing
them to the appropriate resources.
A third major type of software tool available
is the portal or “My Library” kind of service.
This type of service provides a list of research
resources which can be customized by the user to
relect his or her personal research needs and in
some instances by applying specialized software
an individualized proile is constructed relecting
the individual’s speciic research interests. This
proile can be stored, recalled and executed providing the user with links to material relecting
the person’s speciic interests. It may also be later
reexecuted, modifying and updating the results
relecting ongoing research. “…many libraries
of all types (academic, medical, public, school)
and sizes (small to large) are implementing “my
library” services, eager to join their peers in offering their users a “personalized library experience”
(Ghaphery & Watstein, 2001, p. 276).
The advent of these new software tools provides the user with additional resource discovery
tools. However, as in all research, presenting the
user with links to the appropriate copy is critical.
246
Integrating local openURL resolvers, as well as
innovative browser tools can meet this need.
Local Resources and Linking
Locally mounted research digital resources are
becoming an increasing part of the research
experience. Providing users with links to these
materials, as well as to remotely located digital
archives is an important service. To this end, the
Open Archives Initiative (OAI) was initiated
to build a framework for digital archives. The
Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata
Harvesting (OAI-PMH) provides a standard for
deining metadata to materials contained within
the archive. This standard allows the remote
harvesting of metadata, thus providing the ability
to present the researcher with links from various
local or remote digital repositories. Then, by utilizing mashups, XML programming, and other
technologies to interlink these materials with
related resources they can then be fully integrated
into a libraries’ collection providing users with
the capability to utilize these materials in context
with other resources.
Advanced Linking Mechanisms
One of the principal types of research in the
area of resource linking under investigation is
the ability to present users with information
gleaned from related Web pages found in differing locations. This process is called a “mashup,”
using RSS feeds, JavaScript, or an API, content
originating from different locations is integrated
directly onto a Web page providing the user with
seamless access to these various Web services.
For example, a Web page of openURL links
could use the metadata to display links from a
bibliographic service or a page of geographic data
might be combined with a mapping service API
to display a dynamically generated map. Utilizing
mashups provides a method of extending library
services by using additional Web services from
Beyond OpenURL
other locations to enhance content and provide
users with a more complete and satisfying research
experience. Three factors have been identiied in
constructing mashups, the “right to remix,” creativity, and technical know-how (Fichter, 2006).
John Musser provides a growing list of mashups,
APIs, and related information at: http://www.
programmableweb.com/.
Another application that will have an impact on
resource linking are “tag clouds.” Tag clouds are
groups of dynamically generated links to various
Internet sources that are weighted according to
their metadata with the link text to the content
being displayed in a larger or smaller font depending upon the frequency that that particular link is
accessed. Created in a variety of methods, often by
using Java, Perl, or Ruby, tag clouds can indicate
which links previous searchers have found useful.
Also, tag clouds can be designed to emphasize
links based on other criteria, for example journals
having a higher citation rating would receive
greater emphasis. Properly designed, a tag cloud
presents the user with visual representations in
the form of a clear and unambiguous set of links
to useful materials.
Another factor in designing future linking
technologies will be a tagging protocol using various taxonomies and folksonomies. Taxonomies
are structured forms of organized data and their
description, for example, the Library of Congress
classiication schedules or the Dewey Decimal
System are considered taxonomies. Alternatively,
folksonomies are unstructured and can be deined
by the particular user, responding to how individuals categorize content. Tag clouds from informal
folksonomies are as messy as you would expect
(Notess, 2006). While folksonomies might not
follow the formal structured organization offered
by taxonomies, they do allow users the ability
to link out to content that others have deemed
useful, thereby opening up a more collaborative
research methodology. Integrating tag clouds
that use various taxonomies or folksonomies in
their construction present researchers with links
to various resources providing them with a more
intuitive research experience.
The “Long Tail” and Linking
One of the problems inherent in designing linking
mechanisms is that of the “long tail.”
This concept is based on the statistical distribution of various objects. For example, in the
area of research linking popular items would get
the majority of use, with the less popular getting
proportionately fewer. However, it is these less
popular items that are often considered to be the
most important by our users. As a result it is extremely important that these less used materials
remain accessible. Although popular items are
accessed frequently, the large amount of library
materials accessed infrequently is nonetheless
important to our users and maintaining access
to that infrequently used material is equally important (Notess, 2006). Ensuring access to this
“long tail” information will be a major challenge
for information professionals.
CONCLUSION
In the previous sections some of the existing
tools and those soon available for enhancing resource linking and research were described. The
implementation of these new tools will, to a large
extent, be driven by available technology. One of
the founders of Intel, Gordon Moore projected that
the density of transistors that could be applied
to a computer chip roughly doubled every 24
months. This is now referred to as Moore’s Law
which states that the computing power doubles
every two years. Past projections saw this ending as computer hardware reached the limits of
miniaturization. However, the introduction of
new technologies and software still makes this a
reasonable assumption.
Among the factors effecting the implementation of these new technologies are the storage
247
Beyond OpenURL
capacity of devices, the ease of transmitting information, and above all whether or not new and
better techniques become available. The capability
and interoperability of various devices will also
play a major role in the practicality, as well as in
the design of the services to enhance resource
linking (Balas, 2006; Schmidt, 2005).
Computer hardware advances present new
challenges, however the development of appropriate software applications to fully utilize the
introduction of these new devices present information professionals with new challenges and
opportunities. Programming resources and the
availability of public APIs will allow the creation
of these applications providing library users to a
wealth of context sensitive links and resources.
Boss, S. C., & Nelson, M. L. (2005). Federated
SearchTools: The next step in the quest for onestop-shopping. The Reference Librarian, (91/92),
139-160.
REFERENCES
Fichter, D. (2005). Intranet librarian - intranets,
wikis, blikis, and collaborative working. Online,
29(5), 47.
Awasthi, S., Beardmore, J., Clark, J., Hadridge,
P., Madani, H., & Marusic, A., et al. (2005). Five
futures for academic medicine. PLoS Medicine,
2(7), e207 OP.
Balas, J. L. (2005). Blogging is so last year-now
podcasting is hot. Computers in Libraries, 25(10),
29.
Balas, J. L. (2006). The “magic” of wireless
access in the library. Computers in Libraries,
26(3), 32.
Balas, J. L. (2006). What’s in their pockets? Mobile
electronics. Computers in Libraries, 26(4), 32.
Beit-Arie, & Oren, Caplan, Priscilla, et al. (2001).
Linking to the appropriate copy: Report of a
DOI-based prototype [Electronic version]. D-Lib
Magazine, 7(9).
Bhatt, J. (2005). Blogging as a tool: Innovative
approaches to information access. Library Hi
Tech News Incorporating Online and CD Notes,
22(9), 28(5).
248
Cohen, L. B. (2005). Finding scholarly content
on the web: From google scholar to RSS feeds.
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, 42(SPECIAL), 7-17.
Conhaim, W. W. (2006). Blogging: A modern
tool for an age-old quest. Information Today,
23(2), 27-29.
Curtis, A. (2005). Why federated search? Knowledge Quest, 33(3), 35-37.
Fichter, D. (2006). Doing the monster mashup.
Online, 30(4), 48.
Frick, R., Duncan, C. J., & Walsh, W. D. (2005).
Nuts and bolts of linking: Understanding context
sensitive linking services and implementation.
The Serials Librarian, 48(3/4), 257-264.
Ghaphery, J., Kesselman, M., & Watstein, S. B.
(2001). Personalized information clients: Short
answers to simple questions about “my library”
services. Reference Services Review, 29(4),
276.
Grogg, J. E. (2004). Linking in the traditional
online world. Searcher, 12(6), 34.
Grogg, J. E. (2005). Land of linking. The Serials
Librarian, 49(3), 177.
Grogg, J. E. (2006). The development of contextsensitive linking. Library Technology Reports,
42(1), 14.
Grogg, J. E. (2006). Innovative uses of the
openURL. Library Technology Reports, 42(1),
35.
Beyond OpenURL
Grogg, J. E. (2006). Other linking issues. Library
Technology Reports, 42(1), 38.
on Hypertext and Hypermedia, College Park,
Maryland (pp. 76-77).
Grogg, J. E., & Tenopir, C. (2000, Nov/Dec).
Linking to full text in scholarly journals: Here a
link, there a link, everywhere a link. Searcher,
8(10),
Notess, G. R. (2005). Casting the net: Podcasting
and screencasting. Online, 29(6), 43-45.
Guenther, K. (2005). Socializing your web site
with wikis, twikis, and blogs. (web site management methods using webcasting). Online, 29(6),
51(3).
Lerner, R. M. (2006). At the forge: Extending
web services using other web services. Linux
Journal, 2006(144), 9.
Ma, W., & Cole, T. W. (2000). Genesis of an
electronic database expert system. Reference
Services Review, 28(3), 207.
McElfresh, L. K. (2005). Accessing E-journals
through link resolvers. Technicalities, 25(6), 3.
Miles-Board, T., Carr, L., & Hall, W. (2002). Looking for linking: Associative links on the web. In
Proceedings of the Thirteenth ACM Conference
Notess, G. R. (2006). On the net - the terrible
twos: Web 2.0, library 2.0, and more. Online,
30(3), 40.
Reidy, K. (2004). Succesful messaging services:
SMS [& MMS] 4 biz 2day. EContent, 27(9), 30.
Schmidt, A. (2005). The young & the wireless.
School Library Journal, 51(10), 44.
Seelye, K. Q. (2005). Snared in the web of a
wikipedia liar. (Week in review desk)(rewriting
history). The New York Times, WK1(L).
Wusteman, J., & O’hlceadha, P. (2006). Using
Ajax to empower dynamic searching. Information
Technology and Libraries, 25(2), 57.
Zhu, Q. (2006). The nuts and bolts of delivering
new technical reports via database-generated RSS
FEEDS. Computers in Libraries, 26(2), 24.
249
250
Chapter XIV
Authentication and
Access Management
of Electronic Resources
Juan Carlos Rodriguez
California State University, Sacramento, USA
Bin Zhang
California State University, Sacramento, USA
ABSTRACT
This chapter opens with a discussion of the varying needs of libraries to provide their users with both
local and remote access to electronic resources within the context of the various legal and technical issues surrounding them. An overview of the various types of authentication and authorization mechanisms
currently in use by libraries, their parent organizations and electronic resource providers is presented.
Further discussion follows on the unique needs and requirements of consortia licensed electronic resources and metasearch applications. The chapter concludes with a look at future considerations and
directions libraries and e-resource providers may take with regard to secure and seamless access to
electronic resources.
INTRODUCTION
As late as the early 1990’s, the library’s primary
method of access management to its collections
was either performed at the library’s entrance or
through the use of publicly inaccessible collections or “closed stacks” that required some form
of permission or authorization to access them.
Additional access management was introduced
when it came time to borrow the library materials from the library. Typically this was done by
requiring the library patron to present a valid and
current library card that was issued to them as
a member of the community, a faculty member,
or student of the university. Also, most libraries
were not concerned with providing remote ac-
Copyright © 2008, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
Authentication and Access Management of Electronic Resources
cess to their collections since they still existed
primarily in physical form and all access was
limited to in person. With the introduction of
online electronic resources such as electronic
journals and online databases, these traditional
methods of access management became no longer
suficient. It was no longer possible just to control access through physical methods, additional
methods were needed.
Over the past ten years, the amount of licensed
electronic resources purchased by libraries has
increased dramatically. During the period from
1995 through 2005 the average Association of
Research Libraries (ARL) library’s allocations
of inancial resources devoted to electronic resources (e-resources) had increased from a little
more than 6% to almost 38% of the library’s
entire collections budget (Kyrillidou & Young,
2006). The bulk of these resources have been
electronic journals and index and abstracting
databases. Included in most, if not all, of the
license agreements is the need to restrict access
only to those that are members of the library community. For academic and special libraries this
community generally consists of its faculty, staff
and students. However, it’s much more dificult to
identify a public library’s community considering most members of the community served by
a public library, and often residents of the state,
are potential members of this community. For this
reason access to electronic resources is typically
restricted to computers that are physically in the
library while remote access is generally provided
to those that posses a valid library card.
Initially the use of passwords that were given to
libraries from e-resource vendors to distribute to
its users was the primary mechanism for providing access to e-resources licensed by the library.
However as the amount of e-resources and vendors
grew, so did the workload in managing passwords.
This method quickly became a growing concern
and problem for libraries. As a result, the ability
to restrict access to a particular physical network
location through the use of IP address iltering
soon became the de facto standard on how access
was managed. An IP (Internet protocol) address
is a unique string of four numbers separated by
periods (such as 216.230.155.100) that is assigned
to a device, such as a computer, connected to the
Internet. Typically computers in a library or university have IP addresses that fall into a common
range. For example, a public library may have ive
Internet-connected computer workstations that
have the following IP addresses: 216.239.255.101;
216.239.255.102; 216.239.255.103; 216.239.255.104
and 216.239.255.105. In this example, all ive
workstations share the same irst three strings (i.e.
216.239.255) of numbers. IP address iltering is a
method where the vendor only accepts requests
that originate from registered networked computers that fall within the range of IP addresses
that the library has supplied the vendor. Again,
this method quickly became restrictive as more
and more users began requesting access to these
resources remotely. Thus there became an increasingly important need to implement mechanisms
that addressed licensed restrictions while at the
same time meeting the needs of both local and
remote users.
This chapter will explore the various mechanisms that are currently in place that provide both
authentication and authorization for the variety
of library licensed electronic resources. It will
address issues related to the legal, technical and
privacy issues associated with providing local and
remote access to licensed resources.
BACKGROUND
When a library decides to purchase an e-resource
it must also consider the methods that it will use
to provide access to these resources. Typically,
most e-resources are available for access from the
vendor. Since many pricing models for electronic
resources factor in the size of the user base, the
vendor of the electronic resource requires that access to the electronic resource be restricted only
251
Authentication and Access Management of Electronic Resources
to authorized users of the library. Most license
agreements clearly outline the need to control
access only to those speciied during the license
process. The responsibility to enforce these restrictions generally falls on the library.
The mechanisms to provide access to these resources have changed over the years. Initially these
resources were accessed through the library’s
Web site via A to Z pages or subject-based pages
of databases and e-journals. As the amount of eresources grew it became increasingly dificult
to maintain these pages. Many libraries began
cataloging e-resources and provided access to
them via the library’s Web-based catalog. More
recently, libraries have been using openURL
link resolvers, such as SFX from Ex Libris, as
the linking mechanism that provides access to
these resources.
As the demand and expectation to provide
anytime, anywhere access to the library’s licensed
e-resources grows, so does the need to provide access management mechanisms that extend beyond
IP address iltering. For this reason, a variety of
methods and technologies that provide improved
identity and access management are being evaluated and implemented by both libraries and their
parent organizations. Libraries generally have
been in a good position to take an active role in
developing new authentication mechanisms considering most libraries already have a good idea
of who their users are through the use of patron
databases. However, few libraries have used their
patron databases as a source for their authentication system. In a survey of ARL libraries, Plum
and Bleiler (2001) found that 98% of the libraries
are using some form of authentication. However,
only about 20% of them were using patron databases as their authentication source.
Identity and access management is becoming
more and more important for libraries and their
parent organizations. Identity management is of
critical importance to the provision of controlled
access to the library’s e-resources and services.
It deines which users exist and what roles they
252
have (which access and to what degree of functionality). It comprises creating and deining the
list of users with access to the various e-resources
and assigning access rights in the form of roles.
Access management also deines the roles and
enforces authorization roles—what should a
faculty member have access to, or the undergraduate student? Access management needs a valid
identiication of the user by the authentication
system and the information about which users
are assigned to which groups. The roles deined
here will be used within identity management to
permit library users what they need to be allowed
access to speciic e-resources. Clifford Lynch
(1998) provided an excellent introduction to issues in cross-organizational authentication and
access management in the late 1990’s that has
provided the foundation for future discussion on
this important topic.
The next several sections will discuss the
evolution of the various authentication methods
that have been in place for the past ten years and
look at future methods that are currently under
development. The current authentication methods will be discussed with their strengths and
weaknesses as well as the issues surrounding the
management and maintenance. It will also explore
the relationships that will need to be established
with library’s parent organizations to ensure that
issues related to privacy are resolved and seamless
access is provided. However, before these methods
are discussed, it’s important to understand the
various legal issues associated with providing
access to licensed e-resources.
LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS
In the electronic environment where the traditional
print practice of ownership through purchase is
being replaced by access through license, libraries
need to be aware that licensing arrangements may
restrict their legal rights and those of their users.
Providers of electronic information resources are
Authentication and Access Management of Electronic Resources
employing licenses as a legal means of controlling
the use of their products. As responsible agents for
an institution, librarians must negotiate licenses
that address the institution’s needs and recognize
its obligations to the licensor (American Association of Law Libraries, American Library Association, Association of Academic Health Sciences
Libraries, Association of Research Libraries,
Medical Library Association, Special Libraries
Association, 1997).
Components of most license agreements
generally identify the authorized users, state of
jurisdiction, and the site location; address issues
of remote access, fair use, interlibrary loan, and
indemnity; and contain information relating to
the vendor notiication of Web downtime and
any changes in product software (Wolverton,
2003, pp. 153-154). Moreover, before the license
agreement is signed, careful consideration should
be taken to ensure that the library has the necessary technical resources in place to provide the
mechanisms that will provide appropriate access
deined in the license.
Probably two of the most important elements of
any e-resource license agreement are the determination and deinition of the authorized users and
how the e-resource will be accessed. Librarians
need to pay very close attention to how “users”
are deined in the e-resource license agreement.
Unlike printed materials where users typically
were taken for granted because the general law
of copyright deined the user, e-resources and
who is eligible to access them needs to be clearly
deined in the license agreement (Richards, 2001,
p. 91). As Okerson stated, librarians must carefully
consider who should fall within the deinition of
“users” within their particular library community.
“Users” should at least include the current faculty,
staff, and students of the university. Distance
education students, temporary researchers, and
patrons walking into the library on campus likely
should fall within the deinition of “users.” There
may be additional groups of users who should
be included, for instance, retired faculty if they
retain their university network identiication
numbers for a period of time (as cited in Alford,
2002, p.635-636).
It is also recommended that the library make
every effort to ensure that the deinition of “user”
is consistently applied, whenever possible, for all
licensed e-resources. Otherwise, it will be very
dificult to implement the various authentication
and access management mechanisms that will
be discussed in this chapter if the deinition of
“user” varies from licensed e-resource to licensed
e-resource.
Many licensing principles developed by library
organizations such as the International Federation
of Library Associations and Institutions’ “Licensing Principles” (2001); the “Principles for
Licensing Electronic Resources” (1997) jointly
written by six library associations including the
American Library Association and the Association of Research Libraries; and the “Statement of
Current Perspective and Preferred Practices for
the Selection and Purchase of Electronic Information” by the Libraries and International Coalition
of Library Consortia (1997) recommended that
the deinition of “user” be carefully deined and if
possible as broadest as possible. These principles
also recommend that access to the e-resource
should be permitted regardless of the users’
physical location. Librarians must consider how
users will access the e-resource. Since, most eresources are available over the Internet from the
vendor’s Web site, authentication methods will
need to be determined as well as whether remote
access will be permitted. The mode of access to
the e-resources is closely related to the deinition
of users and should be carefully considered prior
to entering into an electronic licensing agreement
(Alford, 2002).
AUTHENTICATION AND ACCESS
MANAGEMENT
In order to satisfy the contract terms with electronic resource vendors, libraries need to make
253
Authentication and Access Management of Electronic Resources
sure that only authorized users (i.e., faculty,
staff, and students in an academic setting, and
library patrons for public libraries) have access
to these resources. To accomplish this, a form of
access control needs to happen. Access control
is normally a two-step process: authentication
and authorization.
Authentication is the process of validating the
identity of someone. In other words, it addresses
the question of “Are you who you say you are?”
It uses information provided by the authentication source to determine whether the user is really
who s/he claims to be. Authentication is normally
performed by checking against identity credentials
that are usually based on unique factors that only
the user would know (e.g., student/employee ID
number, barcode number, user name, password,
a PIN that is assigned by the integrated library
systems [ILS], etc.).
Authorization is the process to determine if an
identiied user is authorized to perform a function
that the user has requested. Authorization answers
the question of “We already know who you are,
but are you permitted to access this?” Successful
authentication is often the prerequisite for authorization. Authentication and authorization are two
processes that are closely related. For this reason,
the term “authentication” is sometimes used to
refer to both authentication and authorization.
However, it’s very important to recognize that
even though someone’s identity can be veriied
through the authentication process, it does not
necessarily imply that they are able to gain access to the requested e-resource. For example,
alumni and currently registered students of a
university may have access to quite a different
set of e-resources.
It should also be noted that authentication does
not necessarily prove that a particular individual
is who he or she claims to be; instead authentication is more about obtaining a level of conidence
in this claim.
254
ELEMENTS OF AN
AUTHENTICATION SYSTEM
The authentication process consists of ive separate elements. The irst element is the particular
person or group of people to be authenticated. The
person or group-seeking authentication typically
consists of library patrons or group of patrons
such as students and faculty from a university. As
individuals they must present valid credentials and
as a group they must present the authentication
source evidence that any member of this group
is authorized to access the e-resource based on
a trust model.
The second element consists of a distinguishing characteristic that differentiates that
particular person or group of people from others.
Distinguishing characteristics typically include
something you know such as your username, password or library card barcode. It can also include
your location such as a computer workstation in
the library. Additional factors can also include:
something you have such as an ID card and what
you are such as a ingerprint or voiceprint.
The third element, and probably one of the most
important elements a library needs to consider
when implementing an authentication system, is
the authenticator. The authenticator is responsible
for providing the mechanisms that will be used to
distinguish authorized users from nonauthorized
users. The authenticator’s primary responsibility is to positively identify the user’s identity
and indicate whether he or she is authorized to
access the e-resource. Typically this is done by
asking the person for user credentials when the
authentication request is issued. The source of
the user’s identity is the source of authentication.
Authenticators are generally managed either by
the library or its parent organization. In the case
of an academic library the parent organization
would be the university’s computing center.
Examples of authenticators, or authentication
Authentication and Access Management of Electronic Resources
sources, include: Patron database in ILSs (patron
barcode number, patron type, PIN, etc.); institutional directories; student information systems;
institutional information systems (e-mail server,
ftp server, ile servers, etc.); and user data stored
at vendors’ systems. Regardless of what authenticator is used, an authentication process must be
performed that will result in some outcome value
that will be used to determine information about
the person at a later time. The authenticator then
collects the information and passes it on to the
authentication mechanism.
The fourth element is the authentication
mechanism that is used to verify the presence of
the distinguishing characteristics. The authentication mechanism consists of three parts that work
together to verify the presence of authenticating
characteristics provided by the person. The three
parts are: input, the transportation system and
the veriier. The input is generally a computer
keyboard but can be any other device that accepts
the user credentials such as card reader or voice
recognition system. The transportation system
is responsible for passing data between the input
device and the element that conirms the person’s
identity. Typically this is done over a secure and
private network protected by security protocols
such as Kerberos or secure socket layer (SSL). The
third part is the veriication component which is
the access control mechanism.
The ifth element is the access control mechanism that will grant access to the e-resource when
the authentication succeeds or deny access if
the authentication fails. User identiication and
authentication information is passed to access
control over the network and validated against the
information in its database. The access control
mechanism then determines whether the information matches. If a match is detected, the access
control system then issues temporary credentials
authorizing the person to access the e-resource.
As stated earlier, the authenticator or source
of authentication is one of the most important
elements a library needs to consider when imple-
menting an authentication system. For this reason,
it’s worth providing additional information about
commonly used authentication sources.
Almost all libraries maintain a patron database
as part of their ILS. An ILS performs its own
authentication for resources included in its own
collection. The ILS patron database can also be
used by external authentication systems via application programming interface (API) or Web
services. An API is a set of deinitions of the ways
one piece of computer software communicates
with another. Web services are generally XMLbased information exchange systems that interact
with other Web-based applications for the purposes of exchanging data. Such external systems
could include document delivery systems, proxy
servers, metasearch systems, and so forth. Some
ILS vendors provide their patron API as part of
the ILS; others sell it as an additional product or
module. As an authentication source, ILS provides
some unique data about library users that may
not be available elsewhere: patron type deined
by the library, patron status (how many books
are checked out to the patron, how much money
the patron owes the library, etc.).
Another common authentication source available to most academic libraries are institutional
directories that contain student registration data
and employee information. This data is typically
populated to other systems, for example, enterprise
portals, networked ile systems, e-mail systems.
Many institutions use a LDAP directory as the
central repository for basic user information, so
other system can use it for authentication purposes.
LDAP, which stands for lightweight directory
access protocol, is a well-established protocol
for accessing personal data in a directory. LDAP
APIs are available in all major programming
languages. It is very easy for other information
systems, such as ILSs, metasearch systems,
proxy servers, e-mail systems, and so forth, to
authenticate against its user base. Therefore, if
such infrastructure exists in the organization, it
would be the ideal single source of authentication,
255
Authentication and Access Management of Electronic Resources
not only for library systems, but also for all other
information systems.
Patron databases and institutional directories
are usually not used by resource vendors for
various reasons. Most vendors accept IP ranges
alone as an acceptable authentication mechanism,
while some require individual library users to
be identiied. Some vendors assign user IDs and
passwords and require library users to login using
these vendor-created passwords, the same way as
individual subscribers. This presents a challenge
for libraries, especially those libraries that have
to maintain large number of passwords. Many
libraries put IP authentication as a requirement
in the contract, so they do not have to deal with
individual passwords. In addition to IP iltering
and user ID/password, some vendors also allow
libraries to upload their patron data into their
system, so library users will be able to use the
same credentials to access the resource. However
keeping patron data updated on all vendors’ systems is a real challenge, and may not be a realistic
solution for large libraries.
ACCESS POINTS
Libraries provide their users with different ways
of accessing its electronic information resources,
such as the ILS, a library developed Web site
that include listings of available e-resources
and a metasearch system (sometimes referred to
as federated search). Library users may start an
e-resource research session from any of these systems. Many libraries also provide access through
other nonlibrary systems, such as the Learning
Management System (LMS), an enterprise portal,
and so forth. Many of these systems perform authentication. Depending on how the user starts the
research, the user may have different experiences
in terms of authentication. These access points
are briely discussed in the next section.
256
Integrated Library Systems (ILSs)
Usually, when a patron tries to access a resource
that is part of the library’s local collection and
restricted, such as an item in an electronic reserves
collection, the ILS itself will authenticate the
patron. In other words, the ILS will use its own
internal authentication mechanism to authenticate
the user.
However, if the resource resides outside the
ILS, such as an electronic journal, the ILS will
simply redirect the user to the resource itself, or
to another authenticator, such as a proxy server,
which in turn authenticates the user. In this case,
the ILS delegates the authentication to another
authenticator. Some ILS vendors provide a proxy
server as an add-on module that is integrated to
the ILS (e.g., Web Access Management from
Innovative Interfaces, Inc.). These modules authenticate patrons using the ILS’s internal patron
database.
Metasearch Applications
Metasearch applications such as MetaLib from
Ex Libris are becoming increasingly popular in
libraries, especially academic libraries. It allows
users to simultaneously search multiple resources,
and provide alert, saving search history and other
personalization features. Because of these and
other features, metasearch systems are likely to
become the primary access point of electronic
resources by library users. Metasearch systems
provide their own user database, and some
systems can also authenticate against external
sources, such as LDAP directories, ILS patron
databases, and so forth. For licensed resources,
most metasearch systems can also be conigured
to selectively link to a URL-rewriting proxy
server. As we can see here, a metasearch system
actually performs three types of authentication:
(1) authenticate internally using its own user da-
Authentication and Access Management of Electronic Resources
tabase; (2) authenticate against an external source
(e.g., LDAP directory, ILS patron database, etc.);
and (3) authenticate against the users’ computer
IP and redirect off-site users to a URL-rewriting
proxy server.
Link Resolvers
A link resolver allows a patron to ind an appropriate copy of the resource (a fulltext article, an
e-book, etc.) that the library and the parent organization owns or has access to, and redirects the
user to that resource. Most link resolvers do not
perform their own authentication, but they can be
conigured to selectively redirect a user to a proxy
server, or directly to the resource itself based on
the IP address of the users’ computer and on the
status of the resource (whether it’s free or licensed).
Users do not normally start with the link resolver.
Rather, a user will start from somewhere else
(e.g., ILS, a citation database, an e-journal list
Web site, a metasearch system, etc.). Common
types of link resolvers used by libraries rely on
the openURL framework. Examples include SFX
from Ex Libris and WebBridge from Innovative
Interfaces, Inc.
Library Web Pages
Many libraries provide Web pages that list available electronic resources (e.g., A-Z list of databases, e-journals and e-books, etc.) These pages
generally serve as the starting point for library
users to access e-resources. These pages normally
do not perform authentication.
Campus/Organizational Portals
An increasing number of institutions, especially
large academic institutions, are making e-resources accessible through their institutional portals,
LMSs and student information systems. In these
cases, these systems have become the starting
access point to e-resources. These systems all
have their own authentication mechanisms, using
institutional user databases, such as the student
registration system, employee directory, and so
forth. While these systems provide a convenient
“one-stop shopping” environment for users to
access all the resources (not only the resources
libraries can provide, but all other e-resources),
it also presents a challenge. Users may have to
be authenticated multiple times, with different
usernames and passwords. One way to solve this
problem is to use the same source for authentication (such as an institutional LDAP directory).
This method will at least provide the user with
only one username and password to remember.
However, a user may still have to login multiple
times. To eliminate the need for multiple-logins, a
single sign-on (SSO) system may be implemented,
so the user will only have to login once. More
details will be discussed in the SSO section later
in this chapter.
Library Computer Workstations
Computers in libraries are usually set up to allow
easy access to e-resources by the library. This
not only includes all Web-based resources, but
also includes nonWeb resources, such as those
only accessible by special client software such
as SciFinder Scholar, a chemistry bibliographic
and reference research tool, from the American
Chemistry Society. These computers are also
where libraries provide access to e-resources
which are not IP-authenticated, or those with
only limited number of IP addresses, rather than a
whole range. Libraries may also set up Web-based
OPACs to authenticate users using vendor-supplied cookies.
Resource Vendor Systems
Vendor systems always perform authentication.
The most common form of authentication at vendor
sites is IP iltering, although some vendors only
use username/password authentication. Vendors
257
Authentication and Access Management of Electronic Resources
also provide other alternatives, such as patron ID
matching, cookie-based authentication, referring
URL, and so forth. Some vendors also support external authentication. In this case, when a user tries
to access the vendor’s resource, the user will be
redirected to the library’s authentication site. This
authentication method is sometimes referred to as
“CGI” by vendors (common gateway interface or
CGI is an interface that allows applications/scripts
to interact with browsers through the Web server.
As new technologies develop, CGI no longer is
the only way server-side applications interact with
user browsers). “CGI” here refer to any external
authentication mechanisms, whether CGI-based or
not. If any of these authentications fail, vendors’
systems revert back to the username/password
authentication mechanism.
If possible, libraries should use the vendors’
authentication as the last point of authentication.
This will give the library and the institution more
lexibility, and will be able to provide its patrons
a uniied interface.
AUTHENTICATION METHODS IN
USE
As we discussed earlier, there are ive elements
in the authentication process. The fourth element
or authentication mechanism used in the process
is where the “real action” happens. When the
user starts a session by requesting a speciic eresource from an access point, the authentication
mechanism kicks in. At this time, more than one
authentication method may be involved, depending on the particular situation. For example, in
a typical academic library environment, an IP
authentication is irst performed. If the authentication mechanism detects that the user is from an
“on-site” computer, the user gets a “green light,”
and the authentication is complete, so the user is
sent directly to the resource requested. On the
other hand, if the authentication mechanism detects the user is coming from an nonregistered IP,
258
then an additional authentication methods needs
to be involved to identify the user as authorized
user to access the resource. If the user is unable
to successfully be authenticated, then the user is
denied access to the resource. The most common
authentication methods currently supported by
vendors and in use by libraries are: IP address
iltering; credential-based; referring URL and
cookies-based.
IP Address Filtering
Authentication based on the IP address of the
user’s computer is the most commonly used authentication mechanism. IP authentication is also
generally used as the irst method of authentication. If IP authentication fails, other methods will
be used to identify the user. If the user has been
identiied as being “on-site,” the library system
would send the user directly to the resource on the
appropriate vendor’s site, which will perform its
own IP authentication. IP iltering is and should
be performed by both library and vendor systems.
To make vendor-side IP iltering work properly,
a library would provide the vendor with a range
of IP addresses of the network of the library or
the parent organization (e.g., the university that
the library is part of).
An IP range can be expressed in one of the
forms:
216.239.0.0 - 216.239.255.255
216.239.*.*
216.239.0.0/16
All three lines have the same meaning: this covers all IP addresses within this range (i.e., any IP
that is between 216.239.0.0 and 216.239.255.255).
Some vendors (e.g., small journal publishers) only
allow a limited number of IP addresses for each
customer. In this case, you would have to identify
a few workstations, and provide the IP addresses
to the vendor.
Authentication and Access Management of Electronic Resources
IP ranges can be obtained from the network
support personnel at the library or the parent organization, or from the Internet service provider
(ISP), if the library’s Internet access is provided
by an ISP.
IP-based authentication is a good choice if the
library’s user base is physically close and can be
covered by a single network. Situations might
include: access to e-resources is only provided to
users who are physically in the library building;
access is provided only to on-campus users, and
so forth. The assumption is that everyone who is
in the IP range is permitted to access the resource.
If the library or its parent organization shares an
IP range with other users, or the library patron
population is spread out in different areas, IP
iltering does not work. Some vendor contracts
specify that users have to be individually identiied. If this is the case in your library, IP iltering alone is not suficient to satisfy the contract
terms. In this case, an additional credential-based
authentication method needs to be used in addition to IP-iltering.
Credential-Based
Credential-based authentication methods refer to
those that ask and verify identities of individual
library users. The individual’s identity can consist
of a user name and password, library card barcode
number, or other types of identiiers that would
uniquely identify an individual user. Credentialbased authentication is one of the most common
methods in use. They are supported by most information content management systems, as well
as e-resource vendor sites. Common examples
of credential-based systems include: ILS, proxy
server, metasearch systems, e-resource vendor,
and locally created systems.
An ILS normally authenticates users against
its own patron database. Authentication occurs
when a user tries to access personal account-related functions (e.g., renew books, check ines,
place holds, save search history, set personal
preferences, etc.) or restricted resources such as
electronic reserve materials or restricted e-resources that are locally mounted to the ILS. The
ILS itself cannot provide direct authentication
for resources that it does not manage, but it can
perform authentication on behalf of an external
system via patron APIs. For example, a proxy
server can be set up to authenticate users against
the library’s patron database. One advantage
of using the ILS patron data as the authentication source is the ability to ilter users based on
patron status or category (e.g., does the patron
owe money?) or other information that only exists in the ILS patron database. Most major ILS
vendors provide an API to access patron records
(some may provide it as an additional product or
enhancement).
Proxy servers provide remote access to e-resources by irst performing an IP-based authentication, so only true remote users are being served,
then it performs a credential-based authentication
against one or more of the supported sources, including its own user base to determine if the user
should be granted access to the resource. Different proxy server software may support different
external authentication sources. For additional
information on proxy servers, please refer to the
Remote Access section later in this chapter.
Similar to proxy servers, metasearch systems
also have their own authentication mechanism that
can authenticate users against various external
sources as well as their own user base.
As noted earlier in this chapter, most vendors
perform IP-based authentication. In addition, most
major vendors also provide several other forms of
authentication. For example, libraries may provide
the vendor with a list of library card numbers (bar
code numbers in most cases). Some vendors also
support an ID pattern, in which case the library
does not have to upload all the individual bar
code numbers into vendor’s management system.
Instead, the library would provide a pattern of
the patron IDs. For example, if the pattern is: “a
9-digit barcode that begin with 933,” a patron
259
Authentication and Access Management of Electronic Resources
enters a library card number 9339823480 is allowed to access the resource, but 398123403 is
not considered a valid user. Another example of a
patron ID pattern could be “Letters DZP followed
by a nine-digit number.”
Another form of authentication that most (if
not all) vendors support is user ID and password
pairs. In this scenario, the vendor sets up a user
ID and password for each institutional account.
Vendors also typically assign individual subscribers a unique username and password to access its
resources. Although this method may be suficient
for individual subscribers, it represents problems
for institutional users, such as libraries. It is very
dificult for libraries to maintain such password
lists for each vendor the library deals with. One
possible solution would be to embed the various
passwords on the library’s Web site. However,
this method poses several security risks and would
make it very easy to have these passwords sent
to unauthorized users. For these reasons, some
libraries keep the passwords at the reference desk
and require library users to come to the reference desk to receive the passwords. Of course,
this method is very inconvenient for patrons and
would not work for off-site users.
Locally created systems refer to an authentication system that is developed locally by libraries
or their parent organizations using user data
from institutional data sources, such as student
registration system, human resources systems,
and so forth. This type of authentication system
is usually speciically developed to meet the need
of the institution. Many large institutions use
LDAP-based servers as the central repository of
user base and as the authenticator, so all other
applications that need to have access to the user
base are able to authenticate against the repository
using a standard communication protocol. This
approach makes it very easy for different parts
of the organization and for applications to share
the same user data set. It also makes it easy for
end users to access different services on campus
with a single user name and password. The LDAP
260
protocol is understood and supported by most
commercial content management systems.
It should also be noted that an increasing
number of institutions have started to implement
a single sign-on (SSO) system among all applications. A SSO system would eliminate the need for
users to login multiple times. SSO systems will be
discussed in greater detail later in this chapter.
Referring URL
In this scenario, the library is responsible for setting up a secure Web page that only authorized
library users have access to. Authorized users
are directed to the vendor’s site. Vendor’s system
automatically grants access if the user comes
straight from that secure Web site. In order for
this to work, the library would already have an
internal authentication mechanism in place, so
only authorized users can get to the protected
page.
If the library or the parent organization already
has a protected site in place, this can be a very
easy way to provide access to electronic resources.
There is nothing else the library needs to do to
implement this authorization. Keep in mind,
though this form of authentication/authorization
is not as widely supported by vendors as the IP
iltering method.
Cookie-Based Authentication
The way it works in this scenario is that the library obtains a special cookie from the vendor,
and stores the cookie on each of the library’s
public access computers. Cookies are small text
iles that can contain information about a Web
site and its visitor’s actions. These iles usually
are sent from a visited Web site and stored on
the computer. The next time you visit that Web
site, the information contained in the cookie is
sent to the Web site. A common use of cookies is
to store personal information or preference that
will be used to remember you the next time you
Authentication and Access Management of Electronic Resources
visit the Web site. Once the cookies have been
installed, library users will be able to access the
resources from that particular vendor without
the need to login. This authentication approach
is useful if there are only a handful of vendors,
and the number of public workstations is small.
The process is relatively straight forward, but
library staff would have to go through the same
process on every single computer that needs to
access the resource. Also, the cookie is only for
one single vendor, library staff would have to go
through the same process with each vendor on
every workstation. If the library supports multiple
browsers, then the cookies need to be installed on
all of the browsers. This method would also not
work for users who need to access the resources
remotely.
Please note that the term “cookie-based authentication” here only refers to vendor-supplied
cookies. Many other authentication mechanisms
(e.g., single sign-on systems, etc.) use cookies to
store session data, but they do not belong to the
cookie-based authentication we are discussing
here.
SINGLE SIGN-ON (SSO)
As was discussed earlier in the chapter, in an
enterprise-type environment (a university, a large
organization, etc.) where multiple access points for
e-resources exist, a user has to be authenticated
multiple times, even with a consolidated source of
authentication (authenticator). The situation gets
worse when each one of these systems uses its
own authentication mechanism and authenticator.
One way to address this problem is to implement
a so-called single sign-on system.
Single sign-on (SSO, sometimes more accurately referred to as RSO, reduced sign-on) refers
to a type of authentication system where a user
only has to be authenticated once, and is able to
gain access to multiple software systems where
he has access permission, without having to enter
his password again (Wikipedia, December 30,
2007). If there is an infrastructure that allows
users to login once, and be able to access other
e-resource systems without being asked to login
again during the session, then we effectively
have a SSO system, regardless of the method or
technologies used to accomplish it. SSO not only
provides a more convenient user experience, but
because of the reduced number of authentication
systems used, it makes the systems involved
more secure.
How SSO works depends on the implementation (Mencik, 2001). Examples of SSO implementations that are being used include Central
Authentication Service (CAS), Shibboleth, Athens (mainly in European countries), and various
“WebAuth” systems. It should be noted that SSO
itself is not a standard or protocol.
CAS, initially developed by Yale University,
is now part of the Java Architectures Special
Interest Group (JA-SIG) project. JA-SIG is
global consortium of educational institutions and
commercial afiliates supporting open source
software development and promoting open computing architectures for higher education. CAS
is a SSO implementation system that includes its
own protocol (also named CAS). In a “CASiied”
environment, when a user reaches an application system (e.g., a campus portal), the system
redirects the user to the CAS server. CAS then
authenticates the user via a secure database (an
active directory, LDAP, etc.). If the authentication
is successful, the CAS server sends the user back
to the application with a ticket (a randomly-generated number), and a ticket-granting cookie is set
on the user’s browser. The application then sends
the service ticket along with the service identiier
(i.e., the URL to the application server) back to
the CAS server. CAS validates the ticket and the
service identiier. If the validation is successful,
CAS sends the user ID back to the application.
At this point the authentication is complete. The
application server never sees the user’s password
in the whole process. CAS can also communicate
261
Authentication and Access Management of Electronic Resources
with a non-Web service that has its own authentication mechanism and has Web front-end, such
as an ILS, e-mail server, and so forth, via proxy
authentication. In this situation a trust relationship
is established between the nonWeb application
and the CAS (Java Architectures Special Interest
Group, n.d.).
As of this writing, CAS has been adopted by
over 60 institutions worldwide, most of which are
universities. CAS is also supported by some ILS
(e.g., Innovative Interfaces, Inc.), proxy servers
(e.g., EZProxy), and enterprise portals (uPortal,
PeopleSoft and some other content management
systems). Unfortunately very few resource vendors support CAS at this time, but institutions can
still provide SSO for remote users by establishing a SSO between a proxy server and the CAS.
More details about how CAS works can be found
at the CAS site (http://www.ja-sig.org/products/
cas/overview/).
Shibboleth is a project of the Internet2 Middleware Architecture Committee for Education. According to its oficial Web site, “Shibboleth is standards-based, open source middleware software
which provides Web single sign-on (SSO) across
or within organizational boundaries. It allows
sites to make informed authorization decisions for
individual access of protected online resources
in a privacy-preserving manner” (Internet2, n.d.).
Shibboleth takes a different approach than CAS.
In Shibboleth, multilateral relationships are established among different identity providers (IdP)
and resource service providers (SP) by joining a
Shibboleth federation. The IdP is the authentication source that provides veriication of users
attempting to access restricted resources. The SP
is the resource that is protected by the Shibboleth
architecture. A Shibboleth federation provides
part of the underlying trust relationships among
IdPs and SPs that are required for the Shibboleth
architecture to function. Members of the federation (i.e., universities, organizations, e-resource
providers) agree to exchange information using
an agreed upon set of protocols, policies and
practices.
262
When a user of a member university (the IdP)
tries to access a resource at a vendor (a member
SP within the same federation) site, the SP redirects the user back to the user’s home campus
authentication system to be authenticated. This
redirection is referred to as the where are you
from (WAYF) service that is part of the Shibboleth architecture. Once authenticated, the SP
can ask the IdP to provide information about the
user so it can make decisions on whether the user
is authorized to access the resource. When the
user later tries to access another resource from
a different vendor (also a member SP within the
federation), he/she does not have to login again.
IdPs can decide how much information is released
to a SP. User’s credentials are never passed on
to an IdP.
Because both vendors and libraries (or their
parent institution) can be members of the same
Shibboleth federation, authorized users at participating libraries will be able to access e-resources
either from a participating member library or
from the vendor. Access to the e-resource can
be obtained either locally or remotely, without
involving a remote access solution, such as a proxy
server or virtual private network (VPN).
Shibboleth is still relatively new. As of this
writing, the number of vendors that have joined
one of the Shibboleth federations is still limited.
Although it has great potential, implementation of
Shibboleth is not an easy task. More information
about the Shibboleth project can be found at its
Web site (http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/).
Athens was developed by Eduserv Technologies Ltd. of the United Kingdom, and has
been used primarily in Europe, especially in the
UK. Athens stores all of the user’s information,
including username and passwords and what
resources each user is permitted to access in a
central repository. Domain administrators at each
participating institution can load and update its
own user information. Athens has recently added
the capability to allow institutions to integrate
existing local authentication system into Ath-
Authentication and Access Management of Electronic Resources
ens (Eduserv Technologies Limited [Eduserv],
Local Access section, n.d.). Gateways between
Athens and Shibboleth have also been developed
(Eduserv, n.d.; Federal Access section, n.d.). These
gateways allow “Shibbolized” users to access
resources registered in Athens, and registered
Athens users to access “Shibbolized” resources.
When a user at a participating institution accesses
a resource, Athens authenticates the user. If the
authentication is successful, the user is able to
access all the resources from all vendors that
the user is permitted to access. Access can be
obtained either locally at the library or remotely,
without the need to login again.
Athens is a well-established system in Europe,
especially in the UK, and is supported by most
major resource vendors. It also works well for
off-site users. More information about Athens
can be found at the Athens Web site (http://www.
athens.ac.uk/).
The term WebAuth is used by many institutions
to refer to their institution-wide authentication
system. Some of these are SSO implementation
using an existing system, such as CAS, Shibboleth, while others are developed locally, even
though they are all called WebAuth. Some of
them are SSO implementations, other are not. All
these systems are primarily used as enterprisewide authentication systems. It may be dificult
to make them work smoothly with commercial
information resource management systems, such
as ILSs, metasearch tools, and so forth, depending
on how they are developed and whether they supports well-established standards. These systems
do not necessarily address off-campus access
issues, either. To overcome the remote access
issue, a proxy server or VPN can supplement
these systems.
Stanford University (http://www.stanford.
edu/services/webauth/) and Duke University
(https://webauth.duke.edu/) both developed their
own WebAuth SSO systems, and have made them
available for downloading. Both systems are based
on Kerberos 5 for authentication. Stanford WebAuth can also work with Shibboleth as an IdP.
REMOTE ACCESS
Most of the authentication and authorization
methods discussed so far (IP iltering, referring
URL, cookies, etc.) work well with on-site users.
However, they do not address the issue of users
accessing resources from off-site locations such as
a user’s home, work place, or out of town. Libraries are currently using several methods to provide
remote access to their e-resources. Proxy servers
and virtual private networks are two of the most
common methods currently in use by libraries.
Some of the SSO methods, such as Shibboleth,
can also be used to provide remote access.
Proxy Servers
Proxy servers process requests on behalf of another application or system. Typically, the proxy
server sits between a library user’s browser and
the e-resource vendor’s site. When a library
user tries to access a licensed resource, the Web
browser sends the request to the proxy server.
The proxy server then checks the IP address of
the end-user’s computer. If the IP matches the IP
ranges registered with the proxy server, it simply
redirects the user to the resource itself. If there is
no match, which means the user is coming from
off-site, the proxy server performs an authentication. Most proxy servers are able to authenticate
against various types of sources, such as an ILS
patron database, LDAP directory, e-mail server,
and so forth, in addition to its own user database.
Libraries can also import basic user information
(user ID and password) into the proxy servers’
internal user database from other sources. Some
proxy servers also support external authentication
mechanisms, such as a customized authentication
system developed in house by the library or its
parent institution.
Upon successful authentication and/or authorization, the proxy server sends the request to the
vendor site, on behalf of the library user. The
vendor’s site sees the IP address of the proxy server,
263
Authentication and Access Management of Electronic Resources
rather than that of the library user’s computer.
Because the proxy server’s IP address is within
the range of what the library has registered with
the vendor, the vendor authorizes the access, and
the result is sent to the proxy server, which in turn
sends it back to the end user browser.
Most proxy servers that are currently in use
can only proxy Web sites. This means you won’t
be able to proxy any resource that is based-on
Z39.50 or other nonWeb-based resources such as
SciFinder Scholar. This also means that off-site
users will not be able to access resources using
reference management systems, such as EndNote,
ProCite, and so forth. For these resources, libraries
have to ind other ways to provide remote access,
such as using a virtual private network (VPN).
For the purpose of this chapter, we will group
proxy servers into two categories: Traditional
proxy servers and URL rewriting proxy servers.
Traditional proxy servers are typically used to:
for all the sites he/she need to access through
proxy server(s). All the user has to do is to tell
the browser to use the autoconig ile.
To provide remote access to licensed resources,
libraries need to add vendors’ domain names or
URLs into the autoconig ile, so when a user
requests a licensed resource, the request is sent
to the proxy server, instead of the target URL
directly. The following script uses the syntax
speciied in the proxy auto-conig ile format
(Netscape, 1996):
1: function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
2: {
3: var ip = myIpAddress();
4: var proxyserver = “PROXY proxy.library.
yourorg.org:3128”
5: var noproxy = “DIRECT”;
6: if (isInNet(ip, 192.168.0.0, 255.255.0.0))
{ return noproxy; }
7: if (shExpmatch(url, “http://melvyl.cdlib.
•
•
•
•
Improve local users’ access to the Internet
Provide shared Internet access
Provide content iltering for local users
Provide access to protected sites for remotely
authenticated users.
org/*”)) { return noproxy; }
8: if (dnsDomainIs(host, “.ebscohost.com”))
{
9:
return proxyserver;
10: }
11: return noproxy;
Traditional Proxy Servers
12: }
Traditional proxy servers store the content it
retrieves the irst time. When the same content
is requested again, the proxy server compares
the stored content with the remote server. If the
content is the same, the proxy server sends the
stored copy to the user’s browser.
To implement this type of proxy server, the
user’s browser has to be told to use the proxy
server. The user can manually conigure the
browser to use a particular proxy server or use a
library created autoconig ile that redirects the
user’s requests (via the browser) to the right proxy
server for the resources. This script can be hosted
on a library owned Web server. In this case users
do not have to manually conigure the browser
In the script, line 3 deines a variable called
“ip”, which refers to the IP address of the enduser’s computer as seen by the script; line 4 deines
a proxy server, and line 5 deines a variable for
“no proxy.”
Line 6 tells us when the user is accessing the
script from within the institution (IP 192.168.*.*),
the user will be redirected straight to the resource.
No proxy is needed for on-site users.
Line 7 says if a user is trying to access
MELVYL, no proxy server will be involved and
user is sent to the catalog site directly.
Line 8-10 says if a user is requesting any sites
at EbscoHost domain (*.ebscohost.com), the session will be proxy’ed.
264
Authentication and Access Management of Electronic Resources
Line 11 says for all the other requests, proxy
server is not involved and user is sent straight to
the resource.
In this script, Line 7 is not necessary, because
Line 11 would have covered it. Line 8 is the most
important part of this script. It speciies the site
that needs to be proxy’ed. We can repeat line 8-10
to include all licensed resources that need to be
proxy’ed; or we can include all the resources in
one statement by connecting the conditions with
a Boolean OR operator. We can rewrite lines 8-10
as follows:
if (dnsDomainIs(host, “.ebscohost.com”) ||
dnsDomainIs(host, “.gale.com”) ||
dnsDomainIs(host, “.galegroup.com”) ||
dnsDomainIs(host, “.galenet.com”) ||
dnsDomainIs(host, “.galenet.gale.com”)) {
return proxyserver;
}
In addition to the autoconig ile as shown,
all the e-resource sites need to be added to the
proxy server coniguration. Squid, one of the
most popular traditional proxy servers, allows a
separate text ile that contains list of URLs to be
attached to the coniguration ile. Squid supports
Web sites (HTTP), FTP and Gopher protocols.
More information can be found at the Squid project
Web site (http://www.squid-cache.org/).
URL Rewriting Proxy Servers
Unlike traditional proxy servers, rewriting proxy
servers do not store the content. Instead, they
rewrite the URLs of the request. URL re-writing
proxy servers do not require end users to conigure their browsers to implement proxy servers.
All the end user has to do is to point the browser
to a proxy’ed version of the requested Web site’s
URL. Libraries can implement proxy’ed URLs
in their Websites, including the list of databases,
A-Z list of e-journals, subject guides, and so forth.
Other tools, such as link resolvers and federated
search portals, Learning management systems
(LMS) can also be conigured to use proxy’ed
URLs for remote users.
For example, Academic Search Elite from
EbscoHost URL is: http://search.epnet.com/login.
asp?proile=ehost&defaultdb=afh.
A “proxy’ed” version of this URL would be:
http://proxy.library.yourorg.org/login?url=http://
search.epnet.com/login.asp?proile=ehost&def
aultdb=afh.
When a user clicks on a proxy’ed URL, the
proxy server checks to see if the target URL (the
part after url=) is registered with the proxy server.
If the URL is not registered in its proile/coniguration, it simply rejects the access (proxy server
can usually be conigured to either generate an
error message, or redirects the user to the target
URL without proxying). Once a match is found,
the proxy server will check the IP of the user’s
computer. If the user is from an on-site computer,
the proxy server simply redirects the user to the
target URL; if the IP is a remote IP, the proxy
server will make the request to the remote server on
behalf of the user (i.e., “proxy” the user’s request).
The vendor’s server sees the request as coming
from the IP address of the proxy server, not that
of the end user. Because the proxy server’s IP
has already been registered with the vendor, the
vendor system grants access and starts the access
session, sends the response back to the proxy
server, which in turn sends the request back to the
end user’s computer. The proxy server rewrites
all the URLs received from vendor so throughout the session, all the subsequence requests and
responses will go through the proxy server and
be proxy’ed. This not only includes the URL the
server sends back, but also all the URLs embedded in the Web pages. However, because vendor
systems use various ways to present the content,
such as JavaScript, the proxy server cannot always
detect and rewrite them correctly (Zagar, 2000).
Proxy servers are usually able to apply some special coniguration parameters to address special
needs for speciic vendor systems. Examples
265
Authentication and Access Management of Electronic Resources
of what these database-speciic conigurations
might look like in EZProxy, a commonly used
URL rewrite proxy server, can be found at the
vendor’s support site (http://www.usefulutilities.
com/support/db/). Database-speciic issues are
also a constant discussion topic on the EZProxy
mailing list (http://www.usefulutilities.com/support/list.html).
URL-rewrite proxy servers can re-write URLs
by using different port numbers, or using distinct
host names.
In a “proxy by port number” proxy server,
each resource’s URL is assigned a different port
by the proxy server, and the rest of the URL
remains the same. For example, if your library’s
proxy server’s domain name is proxy.library.org
and port 2050 has been assigned to EbscoHost.
EbscoHost’s URL (http://search.ebscohost.com/
login.aspx) would be become: http://proxy.library.
org:2050/login.aspx.
Similarly, http://metalib.calstate.edu:8331/
V may be re-written as http://proxy.library.
org:2051/V.
This strategy works well in most cases, but
it does have some problems, especially when
it comes to irewalls. Most enterprise irewalls
do not allow users to access external Web sites
that use these “nonstandard” ports. Only port 80
(nonsecured) and 443 (secured) are permitted.
Also, if the proxy server is behind a irewall, the
irewall has to be conigured to open all possible
ports to the outside world (Zagar, 2007).
When a proxy server rewrites URLs using
host names, instead of assigning each target
URL a different port number, it assigns a unique
host name for each combination of host name
and port number. The two resources would be
rewritten as:
•
266
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx ->
http://search.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.
org/login.aspx
•
http://metalib.calstate.edu:8331/V -> http://
p8331-metalib.calstate.edu.proxy.library.
org/V
With this method, users behind enterprise
irewalls will be able to access resources through
the proxy server the same way as other users.
There is one catch, however. For this method to
work, the domain name service (DNS) server that
manages the proxy server has to be conigured to
handle this new change. In other words, the DNS
has to be able to resolve any host names ending
with .proxy.library.org (including search.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.org and p8331-metalib.
calstate.edu.proxy.library.org) to proxy.library.
org. To accomplish this, the DNS administrator
needs to set up a “wildcard” entry in the DNS
(assuming the IP address for the proxy server is
192.168.10.15):
proxy.library.org. IN A 192.168.10.15
*.proxy.library.org. IN A 192.168.10.15
The EZProxy support sites has more detailed explanations about wildcard DNS (Zagar,
2007).
Examples of URL-rewrite proxy servers include: EZProxy (http://www.usefulutilities.com/)
and Web Access Management (WAM) from Innovative Interfaces, Inc.
EZProxy, developed by Chris Zagar at Useful
Utilities, was speciically designed for libraries
and has a large customer base. EZProxy supports
a wide variety of authentication sources, including
various ILS patron APIs, FTP, LDAP, referring
URL, CAS, Shibboleth, Athens, and so forth.
Earlier versions of EZProxy rewrote URLs using different port numbers. Recent versions have
added a “new strategy,” which rewrites URLs
using distinct host names for each target host/port
combination (Zagar, 2007). There is also an active
mailing list hosted by State University of New
Authentication and Access Management of Electronic Resources
York. More information about the list and subscription information can be found at http://www.
usefulutilities.com/support/list.html.
WAM from Innovative Interfaces, Inc (http://
www.iii.com/) is an add-on module for Millennium, III’s ILS. It uses Millennium’s authentication mechanism to authenticate users. Like
EZProxy’s “new strategy,” it rewrites URLs by
host names.
There are several advantages to implementing
a traditional proxy server instead of a URL-rewrite proxy server. Since most traditional proxy
server can cache or store sites, performance is
usually enhanced when a user requests a full text
article that has been previously requested before.
The proxy server would send the user the stored
copy without requesting it again from vendor’s
server. Many e-resource systems use javascripts
to direct user to the full text content. Because the
URL is not directly embedded in the Web page
itself, some URL-rewrite proxy servers may not
be able to detect and rewrite them, causing these
URLs not to be proxy’ed. Unlike URL-rewrite
proxy servers, traditional proxy servers do not use
special URLs, so libraries only need to maintain
a single URL for each resource, rather than two
URLs as with a rewrite proxy server.
One major drawback of traditional proxy servers is that each user browser has to be conigured
to use the proxy server or to use an autoconig
ile, which in turn determines when to use a proxy
server (Zagar, 2000). This additional step required
by the user could cause problems, especially for
users with little or no experience coniguring
their browser.
Virtual Private Network (VPN)
Virtual private network is a private communication network over a public network (e.g., the
Internet) using tunneling technologies. Wikipedia deines tunneling as “the transmission of
data through a public network in such a way that
routing nodes in the public network are unaware
that the transmission is part of a private network
… Tunneling allows the use of public networks
(e.g., the Internet), to carry data on behalf of users
as though they had access to a ‘private network,’
hence the name.”
Unlike proxy servers, VPN is a client-server
environment, which means users will have to install a VPN client software on the user’s computer,
in order to connect to the VPN network. Once
connected, a new IP address will be assigned to
the user’s computer. VPN can be set up to only
let identiied resources (by checking the IP of the
requested destination) go through the private tunnel. The end result is: when a user connects to a
resource vendor’s site that is identiied by the VPN
server coniguration, vendor’s server sees the IP
address assigned by the VPN server as the user’s
IP. Since the VPN IP range has been previously
registered with vendor, the user is recognized as
a valid request.
VPNs are normally set up at the institutional
level by network personnel of the library’s parent
organization to provide authorized users (employees and students) access to networked resources
behind the institutional irewall (e.g., shared folders
on networked ile servers, restricted applications
and internal Websites, etc.) securely. Libraries can
provide access to licensed e-resources through
VPN by adding vendor IP addresses to the VPN
proile, so resources at these vendor sites can be
routed through the VPN. This practice, however,
introduces an additional workload for the VPN
administrator. A list of valid IP addresses needs to
be up to date. Also, as vendors expand or change
their network infrastructure, IP addresses could
change on a regular basis. Vendors may not always
inform libraries about these changes which could
result in IP addresses included in the VPN proile
to become out of date. If an IP is not in the VPN
proile, all routing requests to this IP address is
blocked causing the end-users IP address to be
revealed to the vendor’s server. The vendor’s
server would see the request coming from an
unrecognized IP address and would either deny
267
Authentication and Access Management of Electronic Resources
access or prompt the user to enter a password.
One way to resolve this problem is to tell the
VPN server to route any requests regardless the
destination IP. This will makes library’s job easier
and will make library users happy. But this may
add overhead to the institutional network trafic.
If this is not an option at your organization, you
can instruct users that when a particular resource
does not work, disconnect from the VPN server,
and retry (this will activate the proxy server if
one is set up), and inform the library about the
resource, so librarians can investigate and inform
the VPN administrator about the IP discrepancy
and make adjustment to the VPN proile.
A Web-based VPN (WebVPN) service has
recently been developed that eliminates the
need for client software. It uses secure socket
layer (SSL) as the encryption mechanism. Users
establish a VPN connection by logging in to the
WebVPN Website. Once connected to the Webbased VPN service, a separate WebVPN tunnel
area within the browser window is created along
with a special loating toolbar. You must use this
area to gain access to all licensed e-resources. The
toolbar allows you to enter URLs or end the VPN
session. If you open a bookmark or type a Web
page address in the browser window, the visited
page will not be accessed through the WebVPN
server. Since this method is still relatively new,
not all e-resources are supported. Many libraries
that have implemented a Web-based VPN inform
users that not all e-resources are supported and
recommend that they install and use the VPN client
software for resources that do not support WebVPN. WebVPN also does not currently support
nonWeb-based applications. As more e-resource
vendors support this new technology, the ability
to provide remote access to e-resources without
the need to install additional software will become
an attractive alternative.
The advantages of using VPN compared with
proxy servers is that the transmission is secure,
and it also provides access to other resources
available on the VPN supported network such as
268
other university network resources, and nonWebbased e-resources.
Other Remote Access Solutions
Federated identity management systems, such
as Shibboleth and Athens, have been used to
address remote access issues. In these systems,
because a users’ institutional afiliation is known
to service providers (i.e., e-resource vendors), the
vendor site will easily identify authorized users
upon successful authentication, whether on-site
or off-site.
This kind of systems has eliminated the need
of a proxy server or VPN, and users do not need
to login again. One drawback to these systems
is that both the library’s parent institution and all
the vendors have to join the same federation for
this approach to work.
PRIVACY AND SECURITY
Libraries have historically protected their user’s
privacy. Although many authentication systems
require some user identity information, it is possible through the use of anonymous authentication to provide access to these resources without
requiring the user to submit personal information to the authentication system. Some systems
provide guest accounts with minimal privileges.
For example the patron that walks into the library
can sit down at a library public computer and
access its resources without the need to identify
themselves. A guest account would not provide
membership attributes but could have entitlement
values allowing access to e-resources that permit
walk-in or campus users. The American Library
Association policy concerning Conidentiality of
Personally Identiiable Information about Library
Users (2004) states that,
The ethical responsibilities of librarians, as
well as statutes in most states and the District of
Authentication and Access Management of Electronic Resources
Columbia, protect the privacy of library users.
Conidentiality extends to ‘information sought
or received and resources consulted, borrowed,
acquired or transmitted’ and includes, but is not
limited to, database search records, reference
interviews, circulation records, interlibrary loan
records and other personally identiiable uses of
library materials, facilities, or services.
Many authentication systems provide mechanisms that keep their personal identities secret and
instead only identify the user as belonging to an
authorized group of users such an undergraduate of the university. Although authentication’s
implications for privacy do not necessarily equate
violations of privacy, understanding the distinctions requires being aware of how privacy can be
affected by the process of authentication. However,
this awareness is usually absent since authentication usually is connected more with security than
with privacy (Kent & Millett, 2003, p. 1).
The International Coalition of Library Consortia (2002) has established its privacy guidelines
for electronic resources vendors. According to
the guidelines, libraries should require that vendors, at a minimum, meet these guidelines. The
guidelines include:
•
•
•
Privacy of users: PUBLISHER respects
the privacy of the users of its products. Accordingly, PUBLISHER will not disclose
information about any individual user of its
products (hereinafter referred to as “personal
information”), including information about
the speciic content of a user’s searches, to
a third party without the permission of that
individual user, except as required by law.
Authorized use protected: PUBLISHER
will not deny an authorized user access to
its product on account of that user’s election not to permit distribution of personal
information to a third party.
Privacy policy statement: The PUBLISHER will post a privacy policy statement on
•
•
•
its online site. The privacy policy statement
should be easy to ind, easy to use and comprehensible.
Responsibility: PUBLISHER will maintain
full control over its site to prevent any violation of the privacy policy by a third party,
such as an advertiser or ISP.
Monitoring: PUBLISHER will review
regularly the functioning of its Web site to
insure that its privacy policy is enforced and
effective.
Control of authorized use of products:
Nothing in these guidelines is intended
to interfere with a PUBLISHER’s right to
enforce license terms concerning which
users are authorized to use its products. It
is understood and accepted that owners of
licensed Web products may need to transmit
information such as an ip address or a user
id to a third party as part of the mechanism
by which the owner limits use of its product
to authorized users. These guidelines do not
prohibit such transmission.
Libraries should be involved in the planning
and decision making process of any authentication or digital credential system. According to the
Digital Library Authentication and Authorization
Architecture (Gargano, Glenn, Graham, Gurnani,
Houser, Millman, 2000) the development of any
authentication architecture should have the following functional requirements: The individual
requesting access to an e-resource should be able
to choose whether to use a persistent identity or
an anonymous identity for a given transaction; the
library or institution should not reveal information that could be used to identify the particular
individual in order to allow access the request
e-resource; and the information contained in
the certiicate payload should be minimized to
ensure that only information strictly necessary
to determine the institutional afiliation of an
individual and to locate externally stored access
control information.
269
Authentication and Access Management of Electronic Resources
SPECIAL CONSIDERATION
During the last 20 years, the price of e-resources
has increased signiicantly. These increases have
occurred at the same time that the library has
increasingly shifted from print to electronic versions while continuing to grapple with shrinking
acquisitions budgets. To address these changes,
libraries have been relying more and more on
consortia purchases as way to reduce their costs
and still provide access to an increasingly larger
percentage of e-resources. Although, consortia
purchases have great beneits in terms of price
negotiation, they do present some challenges in
providing access to licensed e-resources.
Generally, one contract is written for all participating members of the consortium and is usually
a prerequisite for obtaining a consortial discount.
As in regular license agreements between one
library and the vendor, the deinition of “user”
must be carefully deined to include all possible
users of the consortium. Careful consideration
must be made to ensure that all participating
libraries are able to have their unique deinition
of “user” be part of the consortium deinition of
“user.” Also, as additional libraries join the consortium, their needs and “user” deinitions must
also be factored into any new license or renewal
of an existing license.
Additional factors that will need to be considered include licenses that restrict access to a
limited number of simultaneous users or access
ports. This limitation could be resolved if the
vendors allow alternatives for access during
speciied periods or possibly special locations
such as instruction labs when used for training or
instructional purposes. Other alternatives could
be the use of special training or instructional
passwords or a temporary increase in the number
of simultaneous users for a speciied site.
Most consortia licenses address the “user” deinition by using an aggregate of all the participating
library’s “users.” Typically access is provided to
consortial members via IP address iltering. IP
270
addresses of all consortia members should be
included in the license agreement and allow for
changes as the need arises. Since it is very unlikely
that there exists a comprehensive authentication
source for all the consortia member’s users, the
responsibility of providing remote access will
typically fall on the participating library. However, some larger consortia may have additional
technical resources that could assist a member
library in implementing authentication mechanisms. This may be especially useful for smaller
member libraries without suficient technical staff.
Other mechanisms can be implemented such as
digital certiicates or federated authentication
mechanisms such as Shibboleth.
As the interest and use of metasearch applications increases, so will the need to establish
a widely supported set of standards and best
practices in the use and development of these
metasearch applications. To begin these discussions and to address these issues, the National
Information Standards Organization (NISO)
sponsored a MetaSearch Initiative in 2003. One
of the three groups chartered by NISO was the
Access Management Task Force. As Teets and
Murray (2006) mentioned, the focus of this group
was on gathering requirements for metasearch
authentication and access needs, inventorying
existing processes, developing best practices
given today’s processes, and recommending and
pursuing changes to current solutions to better
support metasearch applications. The task force’s
report identiied eleven environmental factors
that were viewed as critical success factors in
metasearching. The report (NISO Metasearch
Initiative Task Group 1, 2005) also stated that these
environmental factors must also be applied within
three different contexts: the metasearch service
provider, the information service provider, and the
licensing organization and its users. The eleven
environmental factors include: Suitability/effectiveness; ease of implementation, licensing cost,
implementation cost, software expertise required,
security, maintainability, robustness, scalability,
Authentication and Access Management of Electronic Resources
simplicity of understanding, and market acceptance/preexisting implementations.
CONCLUSION
As more and more people ind their place in this
increasingly online world of information, many
users will come to the library already possessing
several online accounts to other personal Webbased resources such as social networking Websites, online commerce and banking sites among
others. Users are already becoming increasingly
frustrated with the need to learn yet another
authentication mechanism to access library eresources. Librarians, publishers and vendors
of electronic resources must participate in the
dialogue to develop and implement new identity
and access management systems. The need to
establish a universal authentication and authorization infrastructure will become increasingly
important as the desired expectation to integrate
the educational and research environments with
the commercial environment increases.
Work is currently underway to establish federated digital rights management systems as well
as other digital identity management frameworks
such as the Liberty Alliance Project (http://www.
projectliberty.org/) and OpenID (http://openid.
net/). The management of digital identities is
a core issue that everyone who uses the Internet for research, recreation, communication or
commerce will need to be aware of. Many individuals may possess multiple identities based on
multiple underlying technologies. Although it’s
very unlikely that a centralized or single identity
system will be implemented, it’s more probable
that an interoperable system of systems will be
developed. A system that will allow individuals
to own and manage their own identities instead of
having them managed by others is also a possible
alternative that will need to be addressed. Libraries
will need to be aware of these new developments
and, if possible, be involved in these discussions.
Of course, much of the success of these new
methods will require the adoption of these new
technologies by the e-resource vendors.
As was evident in the April 1998 workshop
on access management, the ive key properties for the design and adoption of systems that
would enable access for users and libraries while
respecting the rights and interests of authors and
publishers are still very much true in 2007. These
properties include:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Simplicity. The less complex a system of
access management, the more readily it can
be adopted technologically and organizationally, and the more acceptable it is to all
involved in its implementation.
Privacy. Systems that manage access to the
cultural record must protect the privacy of
users from detailed tracking and disclosure
of use. User privacy must not be compromised.
Good faith. Agreements on access to
scholarly information rely on trust among
the parties involved. Users and providers
would each prefer to depend, in an access
management system that implements these
agreements, on reasonable barriers against
abuse rather than complex restrictions that
inhibit use.
Trusted intermediaries. Intermediaries
play an essential role in providing access
to the cultural record as parties trusted by
both users and providers and as eficient aggregators of distribution and usage. System
design must take the role of intermediaries
into account.
Reasonable terms. Access management
systems and license agreements must recognize the distinction between access and use.
Overly tight control of access to a resource
may impose inappropriate constraints on
its use, especially in teaching and research
contexts. The most useful system will not
limit access to speciic user groups known
271
Authentication and Access Management of Electronic Resources
in advance to be interested in a resource but
will be reasonably open to serving unlikely
users whose curiosity and research interests
may lead them in directions not predicted by
those responsible for making the agreements
or designing the systems (Arms, 1999).
Although it is very dificult to predict the
future, it is becoming evident that the bulk of
resources that libraries will be providing in the
next ive to ten years will be increasingly available online. Providing easy and seamless access
to these resources will become one of the more
important challenges that libraries will be facing.
How this is done will need to be discussed not only
among librarians, but also with universities, public
institutions, government agencies, policy groups
and of course the commercial vendors that provide
the e-resources. As more and more information
moves to the Internet so will the need to securely
and effortlessly provide the appropriate access to
this information. The current methods based on
IP-iltering and proxy servers have been in use
for many years and will probably, for the foreseeable future, continue to serve as the primary
method of authentication for local and remote
access to e-resources. However, these mechanisms should eventually be replaced by systems
that provide improved usability, interoperability
and security. A technology that has had a great
deal of potential for replacing both IP-based and
traditional username and password is the use of
digital certiicates. However, despite the beneits
of using digital certiicates, they have yet to be
widely adopted among the library community.
Regardless of the identity and access management
(IAM) system used by libraries to provide access
to their e-resources, it is important to remember
that the goal of any IAM system should be for it
to be seamless, secure, private, simple-to-use and
relatively easy to deploy and manage.
272
REFERENCES
Alford, D. E. (2002). Negotiating and analyzing electronic license agreements. Law Library
Journal, 94, 621-644.
American Library Association (2004). Policy
concerning conidentiality of personally identiiable information about library users. Retrieved
November 21, 2007, from http://www.ala.org/
alaorg/oif/pol_user.html
American Association of Law Libraries, American Library Association, Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries, Association of
Research Libraries, Medical Library Association,
Special Libraries Association (1997). Principles
for licensing electronic resources. Retrieved
November 21, 2007, from http://www.arl.org/sc/
licensing/licprinciples.shtml
Arms, C. (1999). Enabling access in digital libraries: A report on a workshop on access management.
Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://www.
clir.org/pubs/reports/arms-79/contents.html
Eduserv Technologies Limited (n.d.). Eduserv
athens. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from
http://www.athensams.net/
Gargano, J., Glenn A., Graham, R., Gurnani, S.,
Houser, L., Millman, D., et al. (2000). A digital
library authentication and authorization architecture. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://
www.cdlib.org/inside/groups/stas/links.html
International Coalition of Library Consortia
(1997). Statement of current perspective and
preferred practices for the selection and purchase
of electronic information. Retrieved November
21, 2007, from http://www.library.yale.edu/consortia/statement.html
International Coalition of Library Consortia
(2002). Privacy guidelines for electronic re-
Authentication and Access Management of Electronic Resources
sources vendors. Retrieved November 21, 2007
from http://www.library.yale.edu/consortia/
2002privacyguidelines.html
International Federation of Library Associations
and Institutions (2001). Licensing principles.
Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://www.
ila.org/V/ebpb/copy.htm
Internet2 (n.d.). Shibboleth - Internet2 middleware. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://
shibboleth.internet2.edu/
Java Architectures Special Interest Group (n.d.).
CAS overview. Retrieved November 21, 2007,
from http://www.ja-sig.org/products/cas/overview/index.html
Kent, S. T., & Millett L. I. (Eds.) (2003). Who goes
there?: Authentication through the lens of privacy.
Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
Kyrillidou, M., & Young, M. (2006). ARL statistics 2004-05: A compilation of the statistics from
the one hundred and twenty-three members of
the Association of Research Libraries. Retrieved
November 21, 2007, from http://www.arl.org/stats/
annualsurveys/arlstats/index.shtml
Lynch, C. (1998). A white paper on authentication
and access management issues in cross-organizational use of networked information resources.
Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://www.
cni.org/projects/authentication/authenticationwp.html
Mencik, S. (2001). How single sign-on work.
Retrieved November 21, 2007, from shttp://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/ateQuestionNResponse/
0,289625,sid14_cid391596_tax285453,00.html
Netscape (1996). Navigator proxy auto-conig
ile format. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from
http://wp.netscape.com/eng/mozilla/2.0/relnotes/
demo/proxy-live.html
NISO Metasearch Initiative Task Group 1 (2005).
Ranking of authentication and access methods
available to the metasearch environment. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://www.
niso.org/standards/resources/MI-Access_Management.pdf
Plum, T., & Bleiler, R. (2001). User authentication.
SPEC Kit. 267. Washington, D.C.: Association of
Research Libraries.
Richards, R. (2001). Licensing agreements: Contracts, the eclipse of copyright, and the promise
of cooperation. The Acquisitions Librarian, 26,
89-107.
Ragouzis, N., Hughes, J., Philpott, R., & Maler,E.
(Eds.) ( 2006). Security assertion markup language
(SAML) V2.0 technical overview. Working Draft
10. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://
www.oasis-open.org/committees/security/docs/
draft-sstc-saml-01.pdf
Teets, M., & Murray, P. (n.d.). Metasearch authentication and access management. D-Lib Magazine.
Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://www.
dlib.org/dlib/june06/teets/06teets.html
University of California, Berkeley Library (2007).
Proxy server setup instructions. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://proxy.lib.berkeley.
edu/instructions.html
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (2006, December 27). Central Authentication Service. Retrieved
November 21, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Central_Authentication_Service
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (2007, January
18). Shibboleth. Retrieved November 21, 2007,
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (2007, January
30). Single sign-on. Retrieved November 21, 2007,
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_signon
Wolverton, R. E. (2003). E-journal licensing and
legal issues: A panel report. The Serials Librarian, 45(2), 153-156.
273
Authentication and Access Management of Electronic Resources
Zagar, C. (2000, January 24). Proxy server vs.
URL rewriter for authentication. Message posted
to Web4lib listserv. Retrieved November 21,
2007, from http://lists.webjunction.org/wjlists/
web4lib/2000-January/030233.html
274
Zagar, C. (2007). URL rewrting. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://www.usefulutilities.
com/support/rewrite.html
275
Chapter XV
Using Consistent Naming
Conventions for Library
Electronic Resources
Diana Kichuk
University of Saskatchewan, Canada
ABSTRACT
There are no accepted standards governing naming electronic resources in A to Z lists or electronic
resource management (ERM) systems. Current practice supericially resembles cataloging standards
and guidelines, but is substantially ad hoc, and reliant on local adaptation and innovation. A little more
predictability is needed to make inding and using electronic resources easier. This chapter describes
issues related to naming electronic resources and concludes with a draft set of principles and conventions for designating names or titles in the context of A to Z lists and ERM systems. It will also examine
the unique issue of electronic resource volatility and its impact on maintenance. The focus will be on
integrated or continuously updated electronic resources, such as bibliographic and full text databases,
and reference works.
INTRODUCTION
“What is the title?” “What is it called?” Variations of these questions are asked countless times
a day in library physical and electronic spaces.
The success of online information retrieval is
not dependent on correct search strategies and
query syntax alone. In addition to formulating a
topic and keywords, a researcher must also know
which electronic information resources to use
from prior experience or advice, or know how to
go about inding them. As Mary E. Brown puts it,
“to ind the right information, the right name is
needed” (1995, p. 347). Identiication and recall
depend in part on effective naming practices of
publishers and vendors, but ease of access and
use of electronic collections also depend on how
effective a library’s inding aids and systems
are. Successful library naming practices play an
important role in determining that effectiveness.
Copyright © 2008, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
Using Consistent Naming Conventions for Library Electronic Resources
If the name used in a library inding tool, such as
the catalog or database A to Z list, does not correspond with the name or title cited, recalled, or
viewable on the resource itself or some other name
perception, then the researcher’s quest becomes
more dificult, if not doomed to fail.
Although naming electronic resources is
a surprisingly complex task, the problems associated with it are not widely discussed in the
literature. In an intense search using expected
keywords, the author failed to locate articles that
focused speciically on naming problems in the
context of electronic resource management. This
gap is dificult to explain given the centrality of
electronic resources in library collections today.
The relatively small electronic resources librarian (ERL) community has not taken the time to
articulate the problems from their perspective;
their reluctance is due perhaps to a potential
conlict with their standard-bound cataloging
colleagues. Or, a fear that by drawing attention to
the problem in their practice, formal guidelines or
rules will be implemented that interfere with their
management of the dynamic world of electronic
resources? The literature includes sources on
naming related to information retrieval, including how humans name things or concepts, and
how names are recalled. Guides for cataloging
electronic resources, especially serials, are a good
source for deriving the language and description
of good naming practice.
There are no accepted standards governing
naming electronic resources in A to Z lists or
electronic resource management (ERM) systems.
Current practice supericially resembles cataloging standards and guidelines, but is substantially
ad hoc, and reliant on local adaptation and innovation. Each library adopts a practice that changes
over time often resulting in a hodgepodge of naming applications in its systems, even in a single
A to Z list. Assuming it is desirable to compile a
draft set of general principles and conventions,
what should be included? While the hard and fast
rules of the kind found in cataloging standards
276
are not applicable, there is a need for universal
guidelines or harmonization, or at the very least,
internal consistency within a library’s A to Z
lists and ERM systems. In the same way that
bibliographic citations follow sanctioned styles
and are convertible, electronic resource naming
practices should follow a consistent, rational style
within an institution, and be convertible across
institutions. Less ad hoc treatment and a little more
predictability is needed to make inding and using
electronic resources easier for the researcher and
for interoperability within and across institutions,
for example for peer collection comparison and
analyses, or consortia acquisition. How can a
consortium recognize common resources if each
member names a resource differently?
This chapter describes issues related to naming
electronic resources, proposes a set of principles
and conventions for designating names or titles in
the context of A to Z lists and ERM systems, and
briely considers future trends. It will also examine
the unique issue of electronic resource volatility
and its impact on maintenance. The words name
and title are used interchangeably to refer to the
word or set of words by which an electronic resource is known. In addition to a primary title,
or “title proper” in the language of catalogers, a
resource may be known by alternate or variant
titles. That complex of primary and alternate titles
forms what the Digital Library Initiative (DLI)
calls a “title group” (Parker, Anderson, Chandler,
Farb, Jewell, Riggio, & Robertson, 2004, p. 15).
For the purposes of this chapter, an electronic
resource is deined very broadly, as any work
published in electronic form, either on CD-ROM,
DVD, or online. The focus will be on integrated
or continuously updated electronic resources,
such as bibliographic and full text databases, and
reference works.
Using Consistent Naming Conventions for Library Electronic Resources
BACKGROUND
In Libraries, Everything is a Naming
Problem
When Gordon Irlam stated that “In computing,
it is rumoured: Everything is a naming problem”
(1995), he might as well have been referring to
libraries. In libraries, everything, in one way or
another, is a naming problem. Naming objects in
library collections is an ongoing and time-consuming technical services and systems activity.
Every object in a library’s physical or electronic
collections has one or more names or titles assigned
to it. Cataloging, subject classiication, indexing,
document classiication, serials management and
openURL linking services, A to Z lists, ERM,
reference interview and keyword or topic searching, all involve naming exercises. The utility of an
online collection is dependent on the effectiveness
of resource naming in library systems.
The problem of naming electronic resources
in A to Z lists and ERM systems starts with the
decision about which page level to default to for
access—the vendor’s splash or product home page,
the basic or advanced search page, or some other
page? The decision may depend on local practice; a
decision of a reference or subject liaison librarian,
or it may be dictated by the internal logic of the
resource. The choice will vary from one resource
to the next. Publishers and vendors themselves
may not reference a resource consistently from
one page to another on the resource site or in their
information pages. If they differ, which source
should prevail to derive the primary name or title?
Title identiication in the access page itself is often
dificult. Even the typical title banner across the
top of the page may display competing information such as the publisher, vendor, or interface
name. Because of conlicting source information
or vagueness, an ERL may assign a hybrid or
constructed name to suit a perceived local patron
need. This practice may not be consistent with
any known naming standard, but it is a common
across library sectors as any random review of
electronic resource A to Z lists can attest.
Library Standards and Electronic
Resources
Libraries are standard-bound institutions, applying rigorous rules to cataloging, classiication, coding, indexing, and authority work. The
international descriptive cataloging standard, the
Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, 2nd edition,
(AACR2) (2002), for example, includes rules
governing naming library print, audiovisual, and
electronic media in the title statement. Even when
no title exists, there are rules for compiling one.
But standards are never comprehensive, nor can
they be. There are always exceptions that do not
it the rule. AACR2 uses language of suficient
generality and vagueness to leave catalogers with
considerable interpretive or subjective latitude.
This lexibility works fairly well for print and
microilm, since these “old” media are relatively
stable in their presentation, making exceptions
inite. This lexibility becomes a liability in the
case of electronic resources, where presentation
is far from stable and where name changes occur frequently. The standard makers cannot keep
up with the evolving nature of “new” media in
libraries. As a result, a small cottage industry of
additional guidelines and interpretations lourish
between standards editions. The continually updated, Library of Congress Rule Interpretations
(LCRI) (Ofice of Descriptive Cataloging Policy,
Library of Congress, 1989), for example, ampliies and explains existing rules and adds new
ones for areas not covered in AACR2. CONSER
(Cooperative Online Serials) is an international
online serials cataloging program run by the
Library of Congress. Module 31 of the CONSER
Cataloging Manual (2006) is a supplemental
standard speciically geared to deal with the
complexities of cataloging online serials. Module
31 only applies to individual electronic journals
and newsletters, that is, to serials in the narrow
277
Using Consistent Naming Conventions for Library Electronic Resources
sense, and not to databases. While such guides
assist catalogers in interpreting standards, they
also sanction subjective interpretation and make
exceptional applications quasi-standards. When
it comes to the ever-changing ield of electronic
resources with their multiple sources for description information, the cataloger is often at sea,
and must extrapolate from standards applicable
to print media or invent totally new approaches
for emerging realities. Since its irst appearance,
AACR2 has gone through a series of revisions and
updates. Yet it still lags behind the real world of
electronic resources. A so-called third edition,
AACR3, is now under development. This potentially new backward-compatible standard is
intended to address some of the most awkward
problems AACR2 has in application to electronic
resources (Weiss, 2006).
Library systems in general become corrupted
over time. Standards are applied differently from
institution to institution, from one individual to
another, and over the life of a system. As new
standards and local administrative policies are
implemented and displace old standards and
policies, catalogs demonstrate a hodgepodge of
different standards and policy applications. This is
true even in the relatively short time that electronic
resources have been widely accessible in libraries
A spot check of library catalogs reveals that in
many, electronic resource titles receive different
treatment, for example, for capitalization, that is
only explainable as a change in policy or interpretation. The inconsistency remains embedded
in the catalog record unchanged perhaps for the
life of the catalog.
Cataloging standards and guidelines cannot be systematically applied in the creation of
metadata for electronic resource A to Z lists or
ERM records, where their weaknesses in relation
to electronic resources are even more apparent
than in the catalog.
278
The Rise and Fall, and Rise Again of
the Catalog
Some may argue that the traditional catalog is still
the premier library access tool—a comprehensive
index and inding aid to all of the library’s holdings.
The only signiicant content universally excluded
from the catalog is journal articles. They continue
to be covered separately in index and full text
journal databases. Catalog records may however,
include book tables of contents, reviews, and even
book cover images. In theory, catalogs encompass the full range of library collections—print,
microform, kits, and digital or electronic media.
In practice, the traditional catalog does not work
very well as the primary retrieval source for
electronic resources. Early on, libraries identiied
the need to distinguish their valuable databases
that would otherwise languish in the catalog and
created additional access systems—alphabetical
and subject lists, also known as A to Z lists. Lists
by resource type, such as electronic journal lists,
are commonplace. Federated search portals, such
as MetaLib (Ex Libris), provide a uniform search
platform with cross-database search functionality,
and integrate distributed library access systems.
Portals vie with the catalog as the central library
retrieval tool.
But the prediction of the demise of the catalog
is premature. The pendulum appears to be swinging back, and an improved or enhanced catalog is
on the ascendant. The proliferation of separately
maintained library lists for emerging electronic
resource types appears to have abated. Instead, the
database list has become all-inclusive, including a
full range of resource types, excluding electronic
journals and books. The former are still usually
maintained in separate in-house systems or in
serials management or openURL linking services.
Electronic reference works are often included in
electronic resource A to Z lists, perhaps because
their numbers initially did not warrant separate
lists, but more likely because they share seriality
and quick look-up functionality with the biblio-
Using Consistent Naming Conventions for Library Electronic Resources
graphic databases that still make up the bulk of
such lists. Other resource types such as image
collections, data resources and streaming audio
also it easily into a single “database” list. As the
potential for their numbers became clear, it was not
a viable option to have electronic books appear in
separate lists in addition to the catalog. Libraries
routinely catalog individual electronic book collection titles; but after expending so much time
and energy irst creating then maintaining A to Z
lists for electronic journals and databases, creating yet another segregated list for books seemed
impracticable. The need for a more integrated
solution becomes apparent as the range of resource
types expands and their numbers grow. In-house
spreadsheets and systems cannot practically keep
up with the growth and complexity of electronic
collections. They are also inadequate for tracking license information and usage statistics, or
administrator information. ERM systems have the
potential to integrate the various in-house library
applications into a single system and enhance the
catalog. The result is a kind of super catalog with
multiple access points generated from a single
set of records. ERM systems can output A to Z
lists similar to those generated in the past and
more. License information can be integrated and
publicly accessible for the irst time. Current usage statistics harvested from vendor sites can be
viewed by staff without the necessity to maintain
a separate library system. Secondary outputs,
such as resource information pages, can also
be generated. Instead of navigating distributed
systems, the patron can navigate freely from the
macro electronic resource or database level, to the
micro electronic journal or book level in a single
integrated system. The one-stop, super catalog
is easier to use, with fewer “clicks” to desired
content than traditional catalogs (Bracke, 2001,
p.7). ERM systems have the potential to return the
catalog to the center of the library’s information
retrieval service.
Part of the advantage of ERM systems is their
capacity to capture all the relevant names or titles
of an electronic resource so that patrons can ind
them. That capacity depends on moving beyond
naming principles applied in the discipline of
cataloging, including its inclination to catalog
an electronic resource once, then, forget about
it. ERM systems combine the nonstandard, even
unorthodox naming practice applied in A to Z list
creation with the formal standards applied in cataloging. In addition to the primary and alternative
titles in the catalog’s bibliographic record, there is
the potential for a differently derived primary title
and alternative titles. For example, the public name
used by a library’s openURL linking service, the
subscription package name, the often cryptic name
cited on an invoice, and spelling variants are all
potential alternate titles. Both the A to Z list and
the ERM system from which it is ideally derived,
are potentially very current. Catalog records for
electronic resources are either not updated at all
or updated only when major name changes occur, and only after a signiicant passage of time.
Once created, catalog records are rarely revisited
by the cataloger. In contrast, ERM records, like
the ERL maintained spreadsheets on which they
are often based, are works in progress. In an effort to keep up to date with ongoing changes as
they are reported or discovered in their role as
primary acquisitions and technical contact, the
ERL is constantly updating details of the A to
Z list or the ERM record. It is their currency, in
part, that makes these tools so central to electronic
resources retrieval.
Seriality and Electronic Resources
Library electronic collections are currently comprised of a broad range of resources—from the
now familiar bibliographic abstract and indexing
databases, full text aggregator databases, and
book, document and journal collections, to new
kinds of content delivered in new media, including: digital images, streaming audio, data, newspapers, news services, and multimedia reference
works. AACR2 considers electronic resources to
279
Using Consistent Naming Conventions for Library Electronic Resources
be of two types: inite (that is, monographic in
nature or continuing with a limited duration),
and continuing—either serial or integrating. Integrating resources incorporate updates into the
whole. Databases and loose-leaf publications are
integrating resources. Electronic resources can
also exhibit both monographic and serial characteristics (Program for Cooperative Cataloging,
2005). But despite the evidence of monographic
electronic resources, electronic resources are
fundamentally serial in nature, or have the potential to be. Obvious exceptions are life-of-edition
reference works or electronic books. But even they
demonstrate seriality; for example, life-of-edition
reference works are periodically superseded by
a new edition. Even inite monographic works,
such as electronic books and documents, may
be delivered as part of a subscription collection
on a periodically upgraded platform. There is the
potential at least for multiple versions and editions
of monographs, with publicized or unannounced
updates or revisions of the original by the publisher
or the author.
In a conference presentation, T. Scott Plutchak,
a medical library director, guessed that information technology people “would consider all of this
electronic information a database.” Databases
conjure up visions of constant revision. Plutchak
proposed that the concept of what is a serial is
outdated when applied to electronic resources,
where the line drawn between a journal, book,
and database is fading if not being eliminated
altogether (reported in Tonkery, 2006). Melissa
Beck (1995), who prepared the irst draft of module
31 of the CONSER Cataloging Manual, “Remote
Access Computer File Serials,” raised the issue
of the problem of deining serials in AACR2 and
LCRI, as early as 1995, but an expanded deinition has yet to be formalized. Whether or not
an electronic resource is even a publication was
settled early on in order to avoid cataloging them
under the rules for manuscripts. However there
are continuing problems with the notion of seriality applied to electronic resources (Anderson
280
& Hawkins, 1996). When is a work complete?
Licenses often include clauses that permit the
publisher to remove or revise content at their
discretion. In the online environment, the user
has few assurances regarding the completeness
of a work. Has it been abridged or revised? Is the
accessed version, the latest version?
A serial in the narrow sense represented by
print and electronic journals is related to the database and other electronic resources. The latter
are serials in a broad sense. Conventions for their
description, including naming, can draw on robust
serials cataloging standards; but those standards,
closely associated with print serial standards do not
have the lexibility and range to cover electronic
resources, especially outside of the traditional
catalog, in A to Z lists and ERM systems.
DISCUSSION
The Art of Naming Electronic
Resources
The title or name of a library object is what it is
called or known as. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED Online) deines “title” as “an inscription placed on or over an object, giving its name
or describing it,” “a descriptive or distinctive
appellation; a name…” and as “the name of a
book, a poem, or other (written) composition; an
inscription at the beginning of a book, describing
or indicating its subject, contents, or nature…”
(italics added by author). Simply stated, a title is a
name. A “name” is “a word or phrase constituting
the individual designation by which a particular
person or thing is known, referred to, or addressed.” The verb “naming,” means, “to mention
or specify (a person, place, or personiied thing)
by its proper name; to call by the right name.”
Naming electronic resources in library systems
is the act of designating a resource by its proper
or right name or names, or title or titles. Effective
library naming practice ensures that an object is
Using Consistent Naming Conventions for Library Electronic Resources
designated by all the titles by which a patron may
know it. An incorrectly or incompletely named
resource cannot be found readily or not at all. If
it cannot be found, it effectively does not exist,
even though the library has expended substantial
time and money on it.
Unless using the time-honored methods of
browsing and serendipity, retrieval—of print,
microform, or electronic journals, books, articles, or documents, digitized facsimiles and
databases—begins with a name or title. The
source of the title might be a citation in hand,
a recalled title, a subject guide, an A to Z list, a
catalog record, or a bibliographic database search
result. While titles in the catalog or a bibliographic
database are derived using rigorous cataloging or
citation standards, there are no formal standards
for naming electronic resources in A to Z lists,
order records, or ERM resource records. Naming
electronic resources may take some ideas from
cataloging models and other object description
systems, but in reality it follows its own independent and idiosyncratic practice—more art
than science at this juncture in the development
of electronic resources management.
AACR2 Naming Conventions
AACR2 is based on an edition irst compiled in
1967, before electronic resources even existed and
when print was the dominant medium in libraries.
Even microform did not become a familiar library
storage format until later, in the 1970’s (Kichuk,
2000). AACR “remained bound by card catalog
concepts and practices that have no relevancy in
the online world” (Larkin, 2006, p. 287).
Two clauses in AACR2 illustrate the divisions
between traditional cataloging naming practice
and the naming practice in A to Z lists and ERM
systems. Clause 9.0B1, designates the resource
itself as the chief source of information for electronic resources, including the “title proper,” or
primary title. Clause 9.0B2 requires that a “Source
of Title” note, identifying the source of evidence,
must appear in all electronic resource records. The
note is an important tool for tracking a cataloger’s
practice when naming a resource. Unfortunately,
the clause is silent on what should go into the note
and gives only a few inconsistent examples. It does
not articulate standards for what evidence is or
how to describe it. Catalogers have attempted to
compile recommended best practices. A general
guide compiled by Online Audiovisual Catalogers, Inc., for example, tries to clarify evidence
sources and best descriptive practices. It advises
that the title should come from formally presented
evidence, for example, the “title screen(s), main
menus, program statements, initial display(s) of
information, home page(s), the ile header(s) …”
(Subcommittee on the Source of Title Note for
Internet Resources, Online Audiovisual Catalogers, Cataloging Policy Committee, 2005). Clause
12.0B1 recommends that integrating resources
(that is, continuously updated electronic resources)
should be described using the current iteration of
the resource.
Clause 9.0B1 has some application to naming
in A to Z lists and in ERM systems; but the title
or home page does not consistently serve as the
primary title source. Additional and sometimes
crucial sources may, for example, be found in the
order or license information exchanged between
the library and the vendor, the invoice, or the
vendor’s subscription information pages. What did
the library actually subscribe to or buy? What is
the accessible content? While the resource might
link by default to the resource portal, access may
be restricted to a subscription package within it.
The latter may be the source for the primary title,
not the home page. Such details are not normally
available to the cataloger. The ERL, as the acquisition, administration, and technical contact for
electronic resources, will have key acquisition
and access details irsthand.
Clause 12.0B1 ensures that the resource iteration active at the time of acquisition is catalogued.
However electronic resources are not static entities. A to Z lists and ERM systems on which they
281
Using Consistent Naming Conventions for Library Electronic Resources
are based, endeavor to keep up with these dynamic
changes. Cataloging is geared to working with
entities that do not change. The latest iteration
at the time of acquisition and cataloging may be
superseded soon after the catalog record is saved.
There is an endemic lag time before catalog records are updated to relect major changes, even
when the standards permit it. A to Z lists and
ERM systems are mandated to keep up with the
name and description changes in the last iteration
viewable by the patron. While a gap between the
change and their records may exist, these systems
are agile and lexible enough to include vendor announced changes and through systematic review
and serendipity, discover small and large changes
that vendors may never announce formally.
when migrating online. An example of a volatile
name change over the span of only a few years is
Springer’s online journal collection. In 2001 it was
called Link. It changed to SpringerLink a couple
of years later (and for a brief time its primary title
could be transcribed as [SpringerLink]) marking
its evolution into a portal to all of its electronic
content: electronic journals, books, book series,
and databases.
Tracking name changes is an important issue
across library systems. While authority work in
this area is practically nonexistent, each library
tries at least to track the history of a resource title
in its own collection. Consortia also beneit from
title tracking and title currency for such needs as
the identiication of common holdings.
Electronic Resource Name Volatility
Different Perspectives on Electronic
Resource Names
The frequency of name changes complicates
the already complex work of naming electronic
resources. Major and minor title and interface
changes are now launched on a routine basis
as publishers or vendors, driven by marketing
or design reasons, try to perfect their product
presentation. When resources merge or undergo
major transformations, as they often do, a new
name may emerge. Products from some ields, like
business and commerce, are particularly prone to
rapid name and content structure transformation.
Titles that have recently migrated from print to
online may initially assume the original print title,
with or without the modest addition of a word like
“online” to distinguish it from its print equivalent.
But there is a trend away from this close association with print titles, to titles with Web credentials.
Shorter, more graphic titles, including the use of
abbreviations, acronyms, and other Web-friendly
phrasing, are now distinguishing the online version from the print.
Resources with an established print predecessor, such as the MLA International Bibliography,
have strong name identiication in their discipline,
and may demonstrate greater name stability
282
What the title of an electronic resource is may
differ depending on your point of view—whether
you are a patron, acquisitions or reference staff, or
the resource administrator. In addition to the various ways in which an electronic resource presents
itself, there are the various, sometimes contrary,
ways in which everyone, the ERL, reference staff
and patron alike, appropriates the name and refers
to it—by its interface name, for example. When
the library creates an artiicial name to suit a
unique and often time-limited need—for example,
to distinguish a resource available via more than
one interface—the resulting artifact assumes a
life of its own within an institution:
•
The patron. Library patrons have their own
unique strategies for appropriating library
object names. For physical objects they may
recall the color, size, spine design, or the
position on a shelf, or they may remember
the title from the title page or the binding
spine. In the online environment, identiication and recall may include physical and
relational clues. For example, a patron may
Using Consistent Naming Conventions for Library Electronic Resources
•
track the number of clicks from a start point
or recall a prominently named interface, or a
persistent icon. How the user knows the resource, depends primarily on the resource as
perceived in the act of information retrieval.
The “stimulus-as-received is given a name by
the user” (Collantes, 1995, p. 117). Collantes
concluded that part of the problem of naming electronic resources could be resolved
by not only including more primary and
secondary evidence based alternate names
but also popular names. Those designated
titles play a signiicant role in how the user
will try to access a resource. By anticipating potential titles in library systems, such
as an ERM enhanced catalog, patrons have
the potential to ind a resource no matter by
what name or names they know a resource
as.
The selector. The selector views the electronic resource as primarily an information
source or research tool. She may refer to it
by its print equivalent title or by some other
name such as the name of the subscription
package, rather than by the title from the
current home page of the electronic resource.
The ERL must identify what the selector
is actually selecting. That is, what will the
library subscribe to or license? Once acquired, the primary title is posted in the A
to Z list, or the ERM system on which it is
based. If it differs from the primary title, the
subscription name can be added to the ERM
system record as one of several alternative
titles. The electronic resource known as
Microbiology Abstracts is actually a set of
three abstract and index databases the vendor
CSA promotes as the Microbiology Collection. Microbiology Abstracts is actually the
long established print equivalent title. The
CSA Illumina menu of databases does not list
Microbiology Abstracts1. Yet some libraries
may choose to continue to refer to the three
databases as Microbiology Abstracts, or by
•
•
their promotional name, Microbiology Collection, in their A to Z list, believing that
the databases will be found more readily by
this descriptive title rather than the actual
long and dificult to remember titles of the
databases.
The cataloger. The cataloger is restricted by
the practice of cataloging with item in hand
or on view at the time of acquisition. Thereafter only when major title changes occur is
the record revised. Since the cataloger is not
cognizant of most of the details related to
acquisition or access, the cataloger is often
unaware of major and minor title changes
to electronic resources. Rigorous cataloging
standards of transcription are often contrary
to the ERL’s primary principle of representing the resource as perceived currently by
the user. For example, the cataloger may
not transcribe the title with capitalization,
instead imposing a standard catalog record
syntax for titles, capitalizing the irst letter
only of a title regardless of how it is spelled
in the evidence, for example, “Academic
search premier,” instead of “Academic
Search Premier.”
The electronic resources librarian. The
ERL regards resource names or titles as
multifaceted and changeable and recognizes
every change, large or small, as signiicant.
From the moment a price quote or trial is
requested, to the establishment of a new
license and its ongoing renewal, the ERL
communicates using a variety of names
or titles, depending on who the audience
is—collections librarian or selector, systems
or acquisitions staff, students or faculty, and
the publisher or vendor, and what the context
is—the subscription package, the license,
the serials management and openURL services, or the invoice, resource home page
or sub-pages and product descriptions. All
are correct. All are relevant, depending on
the context. The familiar name of the print
283
Using Consistent Naming Conventions for Library Electronic Resources
•
•
equivalent may be appropriate when communicating with faculty. The public name
used by the openURL service may be appropriate when assisting a patron to read the
menu of links to full text targets. The name
of the subscription package is the appropriate
name when communicating with a vendor
sales representative.
The publisher or aggregating vendor. The
publisher or vendor may have one or more
ways of referring to the same product at
various levels within the resource itself or
information pages. Constantly tweaking or
radically changing the title in pursuit of a new
“it” name, even they have trouble keeping up
with the name changes they have generated.
The sometimes archaic and cryptic names
itemized in invoices are evidence of the
disconnection between vendor marketing
and accounts payable staff.
The third-party vendor. Because vendors
may package and therefore name their thirdparty resources differently, especially if they
add value, when libraries migrate from one
platform to another, the resource name may
change even though the content is identical.
Ovid Technologies, Inc. for example, names
its enhanced version of Medline, Ovid Medline®.
PROPOSED NAMING
CONVENTIONS
A to Z Lists
Currently most electronic resource A to Z lists
(see Table 1) are dynamically derived from updated in-house databases or, more rarely, they are
continuously updated static HTML lists. Federated search portal services, such as MetaLib (Ex
Libris), which enable searching across a library’s
electronic collections, may also have an A to Z
list output functionality. A growing number of
libraries now have A to Z lists output from recently
implemented ERM systems. Naming practices
for library in-house systems are an odd mix of
adaptations of cataloging practice and ad hoc
innovations to suit local needs and the dynamic
reality of electronic resources. The following proposed general principles and conventions are not
intended to be deinitive or prescriptive. This is a
irst attempt to describe models of good practice
in naming electronic resources2. It is recognized
that as electronic resources evolve, so must
Table 1. A sample research databases A to Z list derived from an in-house library system
Research Databases A to Z List
Algology, Mycology & Protozoology Abstracts (Microbiology C) SEE
Microbiology Abstracts
Bacteriology Abstracts (Microbiology B) SEE Microbiology Abstracts
CINAHL Plus with Full Text: Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health
Literature
Industrial and Applied Microbiology Abstracts (Microbiology A) SEE
Microbiology Abstracts
Medline (CSA)
Medline (OCLC)
Medline (OVID)
Microbiology Abstracts
PreCINAHL™ SEE CINAHL Plus with Full Text
284
Using Consistent Naming Conventions for Library Electronic Resources
conventions or practice. The use of cataloging
standards as a source of models for language and
description for naming conventions is based on
the circumstantial identity of the title and description ields in an A to Z list and catalog records.
But that identity is somewhat misleading, since
these applications are usually so different in their
outcome and use. The following principles and
conventions apply speciically to A to Z lists derived from in-house database systems rather than
portal or ERM systems. ERM systems differ, for
example, by permitting a repeatable alternate title
ield, making added primary title qualiiers and
see references redundant. As a result, the output
may be a more streamlined and longer, but have
equal or even greater effectiveness over the inhouse A to Z list, while adding the considerable
beneit of an integrated system.
•
•
•
Conventions
•
General Principles
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Normally, only one entry per resource—the
primary title
A linked see reference from an alternate
title to the primary title is used if needed for
clarity or ease of use, for example, a former
title. However, see references are used sparingly and deleted after usefulness ends.
The chief source for the title and description
information is the resource itself
The title is based on the last iteration of the
resource
Formally presented evidence in primary
sources is used irst. Only when it fails to
provide a title are secondary sources consulted. If further evidence is required, other
library sites can be consulted for consensus
or to discover alternative treatments.
Naming strives to designate what the user
perceives as the title on the default screen
and subsequent screens of a resource
The typography and form of a name has
signiicance. The title is transcribed exactly
as presented according to wording, symbols,
capitalization, and punctuation.
Overall consistency in syntax and treatment
is sought for the whole list
When deriving a title unconventionally,
consistency and internal logic are strived
for. However, unconventional titles are an
exception in the list.
The title is updated when major or minor
changes are reported or discovered. While
major changes are the most important, all
changes to the title as viewed by the user
are signiicant.
•
Primary evidence or the chief source for an
electronic resource title or name are the:
Title screen
Home page
Initial display of information
Prominently displayed title banner
graphics and text
In the absence of a prominent title banner, self-evident title graphics and text
in the primary source
Secondary or supporting evidence for an
electronic resource title include:
“About” information pages
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
pages
Running titles on secondary pages
The HTML header title ield coded in
the document and viewable in the Web
browser title bar along the bottom of
the screen
Encoded metadata
Labeled buttons in navigation bars or
embedded text links to the resource
Track-back labeling in resource subsidiary pages
“Librarian” or “Libraries” information
pages on vendor or publisher sites
285
Using Consistent Naming Conventions for Library Electronic Resources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
286
Subscription information pages on
vendor or publisher sites
Vendor or publisher product information or description pages
Vendor or publisher communiqués or
newsletters about current or forthcoming changes to a resource
Electronic resource details or information pages from other library Web
sites
News items about the product posted
in news services and blogs
The exact transcription of a name may
require the use of lowercase and uppercase
letters. Exceptions may be necessary if a
library system cannot alphabetize the transcribed name properly.
A title is not italicized unless it is italicized
in the primary or secondary evidence.
Nonessential content in the source is excluded from the primary title or subtitle,
including:
Introductory words obviously not intended to be part of the title or subtitle,
for example “Welcome to”
Splash page linked content, for example: “English|French,” “Enter”
Tagline phrases that are not meaningful subtitles, for example “The world’s
best science and medicine on your
desktop”
A publisher or vendor name is included if
it is an integral part of the presented title
Parallel titles, such as English and French
language equivalents, may both be transcribed as a compound title or as separate
primary titles
A meaningful title may be constructed for a
resource with a generic title by the addition
of a corporate name or resource scope (NRC
Research Press Journals)
The title is updated to relect major changes
announced by the vendor or on discovery.
Major changes may also require catalog
revisions. Minor changes are changed on
discovery:
A major change to a title implies a substantial transformation that will change
the alphabetical order or the recognition
value of the title, for example, when:
The irst three words (except initial
articles, prepositions or conjunctions) are deleted, changed, or
reordered
A part or all of the title changes
from the full form to an acronym
or initialism, or vice versa
Changes occur after the irst three
words that change the meaning,
subject or scope of the title, including geographic, frequency, or
coverage scope (CRSP 1925 US
Stock Database)
There is an addition or deletion at
the end of a title of a word or words
that indicates the type or scope of
the resource, such as “Journals,”
“Online,” “Collection,” or “Full
Text”
There is an addition, deletion, rearrangement, or name change of a
corporate body name where it is
an integral part of the title
A substantially different or new
name is launched. The resource
itself may be unchanged or have
undergone a major revision. Either
way, the newly named resource is
regarded as new. A superseded by
statement may be considered for a
brief period to transition patrons to
the new resource.
A minor change to a title represents
a small revision that is not major, for
example, when:
An abbreviated word or symbol
is spelled out, or vice versa (&,
and)
Using Consistent Naming Conventions for Library Electronic Resources
•
Numbers or dates are spelled out,
or vice versa
Capitalization is changed to lowercase, or vice versa
Hyphenated words are unhyphenated, or vice versa
Two-word compounds are joined
into one-word compounds, or vice
versa
A singular term is changed to a
plural form, or vice versa
A spelling is changed
Articles, prepositions, or conjunctions are changed
A trademark is added or deleted
at the end of the name or title
(®,™)
There are changes in punctuation
An electronic resource has several hierarchical or derivative layers, only one of which is
designated as the opening or default page.
The library may bypass the publisher or
vendor-designated default and select a page
that conforms to local policies or needs. The
default may be, for example:
The resource home page—the prevalent
default
A portal home page—a framing device or gateway to multiple resources
usually with added value, for example
cross-searching functionality
A splash page—a welcoming page that
may include high-impact visuals about
the resource or present language of
platform choices. For example, Canadian academic libraries may choose to
default to the English and French splash
page for Government of Canada online
resources
Either a basic or advance search
screen
A page presenting a segregated hyperlinked list of a library’s electronic
•
•
•
book or journal title subscriptions in a
collection
Selected qualiiers are added to the title
consistently or occasionally. The qualiiers
may be quasi subtitles added to the primary
title as a string of words. The latter may
appear in parentheses, after a colon, or on
a separate line. Qualiiers are often used to
distinguish a nondescriptive primary title,
or a duplicate name. The syntax may be
determined by technical limitations in the
system. For example, a familiar acronym
may be added to the primary title in order for
the acronym to be searchable from the Web
browser “Find” function. Some examples of
common qualiiers are:
Acronym (Oxford English Dictionary
[OED])
Aka or popular name (UNSTATS)
The full form of an acronym in the
primary title (CINAHL: Cumulative
Index to Nursing and Allied Health)
Publisher or vendor name (Medline
[CSA])
Interface or platform name (Academic
Search Premier [EBSCOhost])
Scope, such as “Journals,” “e-Books,”
or “Annual” (AACR Journals)
Subtitles are transcribed to expand meaning
and context, and to add signiicant keywords.
Subtitles are separated from the primary title
by a colon or dash, or appear on a separate
line. Subtitles resemble qualiiers, but they
appear alongside the title in the primary
evidence. They include:
Meaningful subtitles or tag lines
A statement of responsibility or issuing
body presented as an integral part of a
sub-title (Digital Engineering Library:
McGraw-Hill Engineering Online)
To avoid frequent updates, rolling coverage
dates or edition statements are avoided unless the resource is inite, or if the information is essential for identiication.
287
Using Consistent Naming Conventions for Library Electronic Resources
•
•
If a resource splits into two or more resources, separate entries are created for each
one and a see reference from the former title
may be used, at least temporarily.
Separate entries for different access levels
may be considered, for example, for the:
Portal
Interface
Vendor
Collection
Sub-databases or resources
ERM Systems
ERM systems (see Table 2) are a recent library
management solution for electronic resources.
It is still early days, but ERM applications have
already distinguished themselves as a base library
system. An ERM system integrates order record
information, provides access to standardized usage statistics, and exposes license information.
It consolidates the array of desktop and library
spreadsheets and in-house applications that proliferate in libraries grappling with the problem of
managing their electronic collections. It enhances
the traditional catalog through the addition of a
broad range of potential alternate titles or access
points derived in the broadest and noncatalog
standard sense impractical in spreadsheets or
in-house A to Z lists. The addition of alternate
names normally excluded by standard cataloging
practice increases the probability of successful
search outcomes and effective library systems.
Similarly for A to Z lists presented above, the
following proposed principles and conventions are
not comprehensive or unassailable. Indeed, since
ERM systems are so new and our experience with
them so shallow, whatever is suggested here may
turn out to have a very short half-life.
Table 2. Sample ERM records for research databases
ERM Resource Records
288
Resource Name:
Algology, Mycology & Protozoology Abstracts
(Microbiology C)
Primary name
Alternate Names:
Biological Sciences
CSA database collection name
Microbiology Abstracts
Print equivalent name
Microbiology Collection
Subscription package name
Interface:
CSA Illumina
Interface/platform name
Vendor:
CSA
Vendor name
Resource Name:
Microbiology Abstracts
Primary name
Alternate Names:
Algology, Mycology & Protozoology Abstracts
(Microbiology C)
Database part
Bacteriology Abstracts (Microbiology B)
Database part
Biological Sciences
CSA database collection name
Industrial and Applied Microbiology Abstracts
(Microbiology A)
Database part
Microbiology Collection
Subscription package name
Interface:
CSA Illumina
Interface/platform name
Vendor:
CSA
Vendor name
Using Consistent Naming Conventions for Library Electronic Resources
General Principles
•
The general principles applied to naming in A to
Z lists, also apply to ERM systems, with some
exceptions and additions:
•
•
•
•
Multiple names or titles are permitted. In addition to a primary title, all relevant alternate
titles may be added. A library decision to
index alternate titles with the primary title
makes all of the titles equally accessible
through the ERM enhanced catalog.
The use of alternate titles makessee references and qualiiers redundant. By their
addition related records are automatically
cross-linked.
Alternate titles are based on the same
primary and secondary resource-speciic
evidence that is used to identify primary
titles. However, they are not limited to these
sources.
There is greater latitude in designating alternate names than permitted in cataloging,
including the potential for:
Surrogate titles that suit local needs
(Russian Newspapers)
Titles originating in external systems,
such as serials management and
openURL linking services. They typically assign a unique public title that appears as the resource title in the library’s
linking service menu. For example,
CINAHL Plus with Full Text is cited
as EBSCOHOST CINAHL Plus with
full text, in the SFX openURL linking
service menu presented to patrons when
they click on the library linking service
link embedded in database citations.
Conventions
Many of the naming conventions for A to Z lists
also apply to ERM systems. But there are several
differences:
•
Alternate or variant resource names or titles,
may be added. The range of possibilities
include:
Acronyms or initialisms (WOS)
Full form of a resource or a corporate
name known by its acronym or initialism (National Research Council)
Full form of an acronym in the primary
title (Cumulative Index to Nursing and
Allied Health)
Commonly known as name (Grove
Dictionary of Art)
Parallel title in another language
Alternative spellings
Alternative syntax, including spaces
(ABI Inform)
Print antecedent name (Excerpta
Medica)
Subscription package name (IEEE/IEE
All Society Periodical Package)
A superseded title
Portal name (ISI Web of Knowledge)
Serial management or openURL service public title (GaleGroup InfoTrac
Academic Index)
Publisher or vendor names and interface or
platform names may be included as separate
ields in a resource record, giving them
greater prominence in descriptions, and
readily searchable by patron and staff.
FUTURE TRENDS AND NAMING
CONVENTIONS
ERM Systems and Naming
Despite the importance of names and naming in
library systems, there are no applicable regional
or international standards on the horizon to deal
with the problem of naming electronic resources
in noncatalog library systems. There is even some
indication that naming practices for electronic
resources are becoming more inconsistent with
289
Using Consistent Naming Conventions for Library Electronic Resources
the passage of time. As electronic resources
proliferate, grow more diverse, and sever close
ties with print, and as publishers launch names
based more on Internet design principles than
on print antecedents, confusion abounds about
electronic resource names in library systems.
The evolution of noncatalog library systems for
electronic resources, such as A to Z lists, grew
out of the necessity to expose essential and costly
resources that would otherwise languish within
the restrictive conines of the library catalog. As
electronic collections grow, A to Z lists are becoming longer and more complex, using added value,
such as brief descriptions and indicator icons to
assist users with identiication and access. The
isolated, manually created and managed A to Z
list is now happily superseded by dynamically
generated lists based on databases. ERM systems
represent a new development, integrating the advantages of electronic resource segregation and
special treatment with the library’s monolithic
integrated library system (ILS). This integration
has the additional advantage of potentially avoiding, or at least substantially reducing, redundancy.
ERM system development and application has not
yet matured suficiently to judge whether it can
potentially resolve all naming issues related to
electronic resources and library systems.
Name Hierarchies
ERM systems expose “also known as” names
that encompass a much broader range than permitted by international cataloging standards. For
example, unconventional name sources, such as
openURL linking services or acquisitions packages and invoices. Currently, prominent ERM
systems differentiate the full range of names in
only two levels: primary and secondary. But this
may change in the future. Instead of the current
practice of lumping names together alphabetically in two ields, ERM records could include a
hierarchy of names, with some of the following
categories:
290
1.
2.
Primary name or names:
a. The principle name (see previous suggested conventions). For example, CSA
Neurosciences Abstracts
b. One or more principle “also known as”
name or names intended to appear in an
A to Z list in addition to the principle
name. The utility is similar to a “see”
reference:
i. Name segment by which a resource
could reasonably be identiied.
For example, Neurosciences Abstracts for CSA Neurosciences
Abstracts.
ii. Third-party publisher’s name
for a resource differing from the
name assigned by a vendor. For
example, MEDLINE® for Ovid
MEDLINE®.
iii. Secondary name or names elevated
to primary name status for the purpose of populating an A to Z list
with appropriate access points for
continuing or temporary reasons
internal to the library.
Secondary name or names:
a. Secondary “also known as” names:
i. Alternate spellings
ii. Acronyms
iii. Interface name
iv. Vendor name
v. Popular name
vi. Name of print equivalent
b. Superseded names
c. Names of collection parts or sub-databases
d. Name of the collection of which a resource is a part
e. OpenURL service knowledgebase resource name, for example, SFX target
name
f. Name used in library ILS acquisitions
module:
Using Consistent Naming Conventions for Library Electronic Resources
g.
i. Subscription name
ii. Package name
iii. Invoice line item name
Ad hoc names, created to improve access locally
International Unique Identiiers
Most electronic books and journals are assigned
international unique identiiers: electronic international standard book number (eISBN) or
electronic international standard serial number
(eISSN). However, research databases and many
electronic reference works are not. The lack of a
standard identiier that remains constant through
name revisions and renaming poses a problem
for identiication and synchronicity across bibliographic, ERM and order records for a resource.
An international standard identiier is needed
for all electronic resources. Ideally part or all
of the standard identiier would migrate with an
electronic resource from one vendor or platform
to another. This is not however how eISBNs and
eISSNs work. They are modeled after print ISBNs
and ISSNs and are assigned by publishers. The
unique distribution model for electronic resources
may require a different approach for assigning
unique identiiers than for print. Given that a
vendor may host various third-party resources
and through its proprietary platform and delivery
in various formats transform the presentation of
the resource and to some extent its content, it
would be worthwhile to consider identiiers that
are constant across various platforms for the
same resource.
International standards agents such as the
Digital Library Federation’s Electronic Management Initiative (DLF ERMI) are actively creating important standards for ERM, for example,
for electronic resource license expression and
usage statistics collection. Resource names are
treated in a very general way in DLF’s ERM
resource ield descriptions. Both DLF standards
and ERM applications, such as Innovative’s, have
not moved beyond this initial development stage.
More progress is being made towards a unique
identiier for research databases, where the topic
has been raised by such leaders in the ield as
Ted Koppel, Ex Libris’ Verde (its ERM service)
Product Manager (Koppel, 2006, p. 8).
Database and Electronic Reference
Work Name Authority Control
The library community is familiar with the concept of authority control applied to author names
in catalogs. Could the same concept of authority
work be applied to the changeable electronic
resources and be utilized within ERM systems?
Currently, deriving names is a local application.
Copy cataloging might beneit part of the process,
but catalog copy arrives too late in the process for
ERM record creation. Consulting a name authority database would make the work of assigning
names signiicantly easier for electronic resources
staff. It would reduce the duplication of effort
across libraries and ensure the use of common
name across libraries. Publishers and vendors
are already considering delivering skeletal ERM
records, including names, to subscribing libraries
that could be loaded into an ERM system much
like MARC records into a catalog.
CONCLUSION
Libraries have adopted new naming practices for
their electronic resource A to Z lists and ERM
systems. These practices are currently inconsistently applied across institutions and even
within an institution or individual system. Just as
patrons become confused about what databases
are called, staff lose track of resources with their
constant name changes, and libraries are unable
to recognize identical holdings in peer libraries
or within consortia. There is an immediate need
for internationally recognized naming conventions that will bring improved recognition and
291
Using Consistent Naming Conventions for Library Electronic Resources
indability to electronic resources in library systems. ERM systems, with their wide latitude for
naming, appear to make naming a nonissue by
permitting users and staff to access a resource by
whatever name they know a resource as, at least
potentially. In practice, the application of names
in ERM systems requires conventions to establish
the range of names and their hierarchy. The implementation of A to Z lists and early ERM systems
exposed the fundamental problems related to naming electronic resources. It is hoped that further
ERM system development and application, and
the involvement of international standards bodies will soon bring electronic resources naming
issues closer to resolution.
REFERENCES
Anderson, B., & Hawkins, L. (1996). Development of CONSER cataloguing policies for remote
access computer ile serials. The Public-Access
Computer Systems Review, 7(1). Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://epress.lib.uh.edu/
pr/v7/n1/adne7n1.html
Anglo-American cataloguing rules (2nd ed.)
(2002). Ottawa: Canadian Library Association,
the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, and the American Library
Association.
Beck, M. (1995). CONSER cataloging manual:
Module 31, Remote access computer ile serials.
Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress.
Bracke, P. J. (2001). Access to remote electronic
resources at the University of Arizona. Science
& Technology Libraries, 20(2/3), 5-14.
Brown, M. E. (1995). By any other name: Accounting for failure in the naming of subject
categories. Library and Information Science
Research, 17(4), 347-385.
292
Collantes, L. (1995). Degree of agreement in naming objects and concepts for information retrieval.
Journal of the American Society for Information
Science, 46(2), 116-132.
CONSER (2006). CONSER cataloging manual:
Module 31, Remote access electronic serials
(online serials). Washington, D.C.: Library of
Congress. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from
http://www.loc.gov/acq/conser/module31.html
Irlam, G. (1995). Naming. Retrieved November
21, 2007, from http://www.gordoni.com/web/naming.html
Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR
(1999). Revising AACR2 to accommodate seriality.
Ottawa: Library and Archives Canada. Retrieved
November 21, 2007, from http://www.collectionscanada.ca/jsc/ser-rep6.html
Kichuk, D. (2000). Library space study. Unpublished internal report, University of Saskatchewan
Library, Saskatoon.
Koppel, T. (2006). An Introduction to the rapidly
changing world of ERM standards. Ex Libris
White Paper. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from
http://www.exlibrisgroup.com/resources/various/Koppel_ERM_Standards.doc
Larkin, M. R. T. (2006). AACR3 is coming―what
is it? [Report on a presentation by P. J. Weiss]
Serials Librarian, 50(3/4), 285-294.
Nicklen, J. E. (2003). Serials cataloguing and
harmonisation. A brieing session paper. UKSG
Conference, April 7-9, 2003, Edinburgh. Retrieved
November 21, 2007, from http://www.uksg.org.
uk/presentations3/nicklen.pdf
Ofice of Descriptive Cataloging Policy, Library
of Congress (1989). Library of Congress rule
interpretations. Washington, D.C.: Cataloging
Distribution Service, Library of Congress.
Parker, K., Anderson, I., Chandler, A., Farb, S.
E., Jewell, T., Riggio, A., & Robertson, N. D. M.
Using Consistent Naming Conventions for Library Electronic Resources
(2004). Electronic resource management: Report
of the DLF ERM Initiative, Appendix E: Electronic
resource management system data structure.
Washington, D.C.: Digital Library Federation.
Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://www.
diglib.org/pubs/dlf102/
Program for Cooperative Cataloging / BIBCO
(Revision) (2005). Integrating resources: A
cataloging manual. Appendix A to the BIBCO
participants’ manual and Module 35 of the
CONSER cataloging manual. Washington, D.C.:
PCC/BIBCO. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from
http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/bibco/irman.pdf
Riggio, A. et al. (n.d.). Report of the DLF electronic resource management initiative, Appendix
D: Data element dictionary. Retrieved November
21, 2007, from http://www.library.cornell.edu/
cts/elicensestudy/dlfdeliverables/DLF-ERMIAppendixD.pdf
Subcommittee on the Source of Title Note for
Internet Resources, Cataloging Policy Committee
(CAPC) (2005). Source of title note for internet
resources (3rd ed). Online Audiovisual Catalogers, Inc. (OLAC). Retrieved November 21, 2007,
from http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/units/cts/
olac/capc/stnir.html
Tonkery, D. (2006, May 8). Best of show—what’s
a serial when you are running on internet time.
Liveserials [blog]. Retrieved November 21, 2007,
from http://liveserials.blogspot.com/2006/05/
best-of-show-whats-serial-when-you-are.html
ENDNOTES
1
2
CSA’s Microbiology Collection includes: Algology, Mycology & Protozoology Abstracts
(Microbiology A), Industrial and Applied
Microbiology Abstracts (Microbiology B),
and Bacteriology Abstracts (Microbiology
C).
Several resources were consulted for appropriate wording and structure for the
following naming conventions, especially
resources related to cataloging serials
(Riggio et al., 2006) (OLAC CAPC, 2005)
(Nicklen, 2003) (Joint Steering Committee
for Revision of AACR, 1999).
293
Section V
Electronic Resource
Management Systems (ERMS)
295
Chapter XVI
Standards, the Structural
Underpinnings of Electronic
Resource Management Systems
Ted Koppel
Ex Libris, USA
ABSTRACT
Electronic resource management (ERM) software is in the spotlight as a new management tool within
libraries. Built to manage all steps in the lifecycle of an electronic product, ERM systems must interoperate with existing Integrated Library System (ILS), public service, and inancial software already in use
within the library. Although ERM software leverages and expands earlier standards work (MARC, Onix
for Serials, openURL, metasearch, etc.), most contemporary ERM systems are built using the DLF-ERMI
speciication as the underlying guide for data element and functional requirements. Recent efforts, such
as SUSHI and the License Expression Work Group, are deining new standards and protocols to address
new ERM issues. Further, experience in the era of electronic resource management has pointed out the
need for additional standards and protocols, which are discussed in this chapter.
INTRODUCTION
Standards—particularly those approved by national or international standards bodies—are the
core of almost all-recent development in the library
automation industry. From the early days of library
systems (arbitrarily assigning the starting date of
library automation as we know it to the development of the MARC communications format by
the Library of Congress in the mid-1960’s), the
use of industry-developed and industry-accepted
standards has made interoperability and the sharing of bibliographic data possible. As an outcome
of the widely accepted MARC platform various
derivatives and related standards and protocols
evolved. For example, the Z39.50 search protocol,
the Bath Proile, the U.S. National Proile, and
several others have their roots in early work done
with the MARC record.
Copyright © 2008, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
Standards, the Structural Underpinnings of Electronic Resource Management Systems
Electronic resource management (ERM) is
now moving into the spotlight as a crucial management tool in the world of library management.
Delivery of information using electronic products
has been part of library service for several decades,
beginning in the mid-1970’s with SDC Orbit databases, NASA RECON, Lockheed Dialog, and (a
bit later) BRS, all of whom delivered abstracting
and indexing data through idiosyncratic retrieval
mechanisms. Most of these early systems were
built by large R&D corporations not in the library
arena that were searching for ways to handle a large
and growing number of technical and research
reports. (Bourne & Bellardo-Hahn, 2003)
The “modern” era of electronic resource
management began around 1999 or 2000, with
the conluence of several different trends. First,
technology was such that large collections of
full-text material—e-journal, e-book, or other
types of electronic materials —could be stored
and retrieved rapidly. High-density magnetic and
optical storage hardware costs dropped markedly.
Second, the cost of delivery plummeted. Broadband Internet service, delivered over high-speed
access lines, and the ubiquitous availability of
the Internet meant than any library, and, indeed,
any person, could download large chunks of data
in seconds. Third, user needs and user behavior
changed. As end users (to distinguish them from library-based or institutional users) came to depend
on the Internet for all of their information needs,
they expected immediate information delivery.
Finally—and no less important than the irst three
factors—economics in the information industry
changed. The cost of library resources (paper and
electronic subscriptions) skyrocketed and caused
libraries to closely examine their needs. Recession
and economic malaise kept acquisitions money
tight and put many libraries into contraction, rather
than collection, mode. Rather than searching for
new services to provide, libraries had to make
decisions about which services to cut.
[Why did e-resource pricing take such a huge
jump? That is a topic for another chapter. The
296
author of this chapter suggests reviewing various
publications from the Association for Research
Libraries (ARL), North American Serials Interest Group (NASIG), the United Kingdom Serials Group (UKSG), and industry journals such
as Serials Librarian, Against the Grain, and so
forth, for background and ongoing evidence of
the tremendous rise in the cost of serials over
the last decade.]
We see the result of these four factors today.
In many large university libraries electronic resources constitute 50% or more of the library’s
acquisitions budget. (Kyrillidou & Young, 2006)
Some special libraries, particularly in the medical
and pharmaceutical industries, spend 90% or more
of their materials budget on electronic resources.
The shift from paper-based resources to electronic
resources has meant that old, paper-centric management tools have become inadequate. The ERM
industry is reacting by developing and integrating
new tools, developed speciically for the complex
world of electronic resource management.
This chapter discusses standards and protocols
that are the foundation of current ERM applications. It describes existing standards and how they
are being adapted and changed in an ERM world.
Finally, it introduces several new and developing
standards and makes suggestions for new ERMbased protocols for the future.
THE EARLY DAYS OF ERM
STANDARDS
Electronic resource use began to rise in the late
1990’s due to the conluence of factors described
earlier. For iscal, legal, management, and other
reasons, libraries felt they had to track contracts,
licenses, and similar data elements related to
the electronic resources they were purchasing.
Some libraries developed their own local ERM
systems—MIT’s VERA, Harvard University’s
Harvard ERM, and Boston College’s ERMdb,
for example. Many libraries used spreadsheets or
Standards, the Structural Underpinnings of Electronic Resource Management Systems
Microsoft® Access (or other database) software to
organize and maintain their records. A few libraries developed multiple hybrid systems—one to
handle contracts, another to handle statistics, and
a third to handle processing worklow and acquisitions steps. Of course, some libraries based their
record keeping (and still do!) on large collections
of photocopies kept in ever growing ile folders.
Each of these different electronic resource recordkeeping systems was idiosyncratic and local to
the institution; each followed its own rules, stored
and maintained locally relevant data elements,
and interoperated with nothing else.
DLF-ERMI
Libraries began to consider the burden of managing their electronic resources in the late 1990’s.
Tim Jewell’s Selection and Presentation of
Commercially Available Electronic Resources:
Issues and Practices (Council for Library and
Information Resources, 2001) was an early examination of the issues facing libraries in the areas
of electronic resource acquisition, licensing, and
management.
By late 2001, staff at large academic libraries
recognized that a standard approach to electronic
resource management would beneit them all,
and provide leadership to the library community
as well. Library staff from Harvard, Yale, MIT,
UCLA, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, the University
of Washington, and others organized the Electronic Resource Management Initiative under
the auspices of the Digital Library Federation
(DLF ERMI) and began to design a speciication
for an electronic resource management system.
This small group worked with a larger “reactor
panel” to ensure that there would be widespread
understanding and acceptance of the work being
done. In late 2004, this group published, on the
Web, a document called “Electronic Resource
Management: The Report of the DLF Initiative.”
It was subsequently released in paper in mid-2005.
This report, along with its six substantial appen-
dices, has come to be known as the “DLF spec.”
In particular, Appendices A, D, and E (covering
ERM function, ERM data elements, and ERM
data structure) are the bases of most of the commercial electronic resource management systems
on the market today.
It is important to note that the DLF-ERMI
speciication is not an oficial standard in the
sense of having been approved and registered
by a standards-issuing agency such as the US
National Information Standards Organization
(NISO), the International Standards Organization (ISO) or similar. It has, however, become a
de-facto standard because of its adoption (at one
degree of adherence or another) by all of the ERM
systems currently on the market.
COUNTER
Parallel with the DLF ERMI project was the
creation of COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources). The
COUNTER group deined sets of data elements,
several electronic resource usage reports, and
the delivery format for those usage reports.
COUNTER’s goal was to ensure that statistics
released from any publisher would be delivered
in the same standard XML format and therefore
would be easier for any system working with
them to ingest and manipulate. COUNTER puts
weight to its effort through the use of its Code
of Practice, which outlines the minimum levels
of data presentation that qualify as COUNTER
compliant. Release 2 of the COUNTER code of
Practice for Journals and Databases (published
April 2005) and release 1 of the COUNTER
Code of Practice for Books and Reference Works
(published March 2006) each details a set of
auditing requirements and tests to ensure the
completeness and consistency of statistical data
being delivered by publishers, if they want to be
considered COUNTER compliant.
297
Standards, the Structural Underpinnings of Electronic Resource Management Systems
ONIX for Serials
Another relevant standards effort that took place
during the early 2000s was ONIX for Serials.
ONIX (standing for Online Information Exchange)
for Books is an initiative of the publishing industry,
largely in the UK, to enable different players in the
publishing supply chain to share information about
books being published. Most of the ONIX work
has been done by, or under contract to, EDItEUR,
a group based Great Britain promoting standards
for electronic commerce in the book and serials
industry sectors. ONIX for Books is a highly
granular, descriptive XML structure that carries
not only tightly deined bibliographic elements,
but also data about a book’s color and weight,
advertising plans and vendor participation, and
extending even to the number of cartons of that
book that could be shipped on a freight pallet.
The serials publishing industry saw the potential for deining and using a similar granular
group of data elements for a number of purposes,
and ONIX for Serials was started. Participating
in this project was the U.S. National Information
Standards Organization (NISO), and EDItEUR.
Together NISO and EDItEUR created the Joint
Working Party for the Exchange of Serials Subscription Information. The Joint Working Party
has three subgroups, each working with a different
area of serials information exchange:
•
•
298
Serials online holdings (SOH), an XML
format for communicating serials holdings
in electronic form. SOH is most useful in
transmitting serials holdings information
between different systems that need relect
identical holdings information.
Serials release notiication (SRN), an XML
format for the announcement of a new serials
issue or article. This SRN message might be
sent by the publisher or subscription agent to
announce the release of an issue or article,
and thereby forestall a cacophony of claims
should that issue be late in shipping. If the
•
SRN notiication refers to an en electronic
publication, it can act as a trigger for various
e-journal retrieval mechanisms to retrieve
the new issue. As ERM systems mature
and pay-per-use models become common
in the ERM world, article-level SRN data
will become useful both to openURL and
ERM systems.
Serials products and subscriptions (SPS),
an XML format for communicating serials
catalog data (from vendor to customer, for
example) or details of existing subscriptions
The Joint Working Party and its three subgroups are, at the time of this writing, inishing
their work and publishing the three XML formats
for trial and use by the library and publishing communities. The SRN group is expanding its 2006
draft (which concerned itself with issue releases)
to include article notiications. The inal SRN
document is expected some time in 2007.
In addition to the standards efforts mentioned
earlier, various other developments relating to
electronic resources were taking place. Although
these may not be speciically relevant to the development of a current electronic resource management system, each of them dealt with some
aspect of electronic resource service delivery,
and therefore contribute to the requirements of
an ERM system.
OpenURL and Link Resolution
Link resolution (using Z39.88, the openURL
standard) began commercially with the Ex Libris
SFX® link server and has grown to be a necessity for libraries that want to deliver full text to
users eficiently. It was based on Herbert von de
Sompel’s research on citation linking at Ghent
University (Belgium) in the late 1990’s. The
path that openURL took from concept (Von de
Sompel & Beit Arie, 2001) to NISO standard is
an interesting one, because it speaks both to the
Standards, the Structural Underpinnings of Electronic Resource Management Systems
advantages and disadvantages of a collaborative
standards development effort.
Link resolution is usually made available on the
article citation level in an abstracting and indexing database (or sometimes a footnote) which is
marked with an openURL icon. Clicking on that
icon begins a process in which the article citation
is turned into a URL-anchored metadata string
(known as the openURL) which is transmitted
to a link resolver. The link resolver receives the
incoming string, parses it, and presents the data
elements (which may include some or all of the
following: title, author, ISSN, journal name, volume, page, date) to the link resolver.
Central to the concept of link resolution is a
database (or knowledge base) that holds information about which full text journals are delivered
by which electronic products. Depending on the
sophistication of the link resolver, pointers to
additional sources of information about the item
desired may be provided. For instance, a link
resolver may point to several sources for the full
text of an article, but also provide links to the
publisher’s Web site, the library catalog, an interlibrary loan or document delivery service, and
other relevant sources of information.
Key to the success of openURL use is localization—that is, the knowledge base described above
must be made aware of what a speciic library
holds. This is known as “providing access to the
appropriate copy.” Otherwise the link resolution
is generic and inexact. Vendors in the openURL
category have taken different approaches to
localizing electronic resource data, but the goal
of all link resolver products is to provide locally
relevant results.
The speciic functions of a link resolver are the
decision and responsibility of the vendor that has
developed that speciic resolver software. In all
cases, however, the Z39.88 openURL standard is
used as the underlying communications mechanism between the article database (or source of
citation data) and the openURL link resolver.
Metasearch
Known by a number of different names—metasearch, aggregated search, parallel search, federated search, broadcast search, cross-database
search—metasearch describes the ability of a
software product to search multiple databases,
often from multiple and different suppliers, and
report the results back to the end user as an collected set of uniformly presented result citations.
To the end user, metasearching means illing in
a single search box, selecting (or not selecting)
several resources in which to search, and having
all of the result citations displayed in a single
stream.
Metasearch services require a high degree
of sophistication on the part of the software that
does the actual searching, because the target
database from one vendor may be accessed differently from another vendor’s data. Therefore,
any metasearch system must be lexible enough
to perform searches using Z39.50, proprietary
APIs, SRW/SRU, screen scraping, and dozens of
variants of each of these methods.
Early metasearch programs—largely based
on screen scraping—placed a heavy processing
load on the information providers whose resources
were being taxed much harder than before by the
large number of automated searches being sent
to their sites as a result of metasearch software.
In order to address that issue, and several related
metasearch challenges, NISO convened a group
in 2004 which was named the Metasearch Initiative.
Three major issues were identiied as crucial
to solve for metasearch to lourish:
a.
b.
Authentication and authorization of users
when an intermediary (metasearch agent)
is used to search
Discovery and collection description (so
that a metasearch user can be aware of all
relevant data collections)
299
Standards, the Structural Underpinnings of Electronic Resource Management Systems
c.
Search and retrieval: What metadata can a
search contain (for use by the resource in the
search process) and what metadata can the
content provider return with the data to make
presentation of results more sensible?
Under the Metasearch Initiative umbrella,
three standards committees were formed. Each
had the goal of examining all relevant information
and making recommendations about best practices
or standards that would be useful. Their results
are contained in Table 1.
As these reports, standards, and documents
have only recently been published, metasearch
system developers and content providers are only
now (January 2007) beginning to modify their
software to use these directives.
Summary
In 2007, four years after these seminal developments in the library automation industry, the
following trends appear to be continuing:
•
•
•
•
Electronic resource adoption continues to
grow at double-digit rates
Sophisticated management tools are entering
the ERM market
Libraries (customers) increasingly realize
that paper-resource management tools do
not work for electronic resources
Current e-resource management applications still require tedious effort to collect
statistics, enter license data, and perform
many other tasks
EMERGING STANDARDS IN THE
ERM INDUSTRY
All electronic resources management systems
have certain characteristics in common. Among
them, ERMs all promise to organize, retain, store,
and report on licensing information and the permissions granted to the library by the publisher
or publisher’s agent. They all promise to collect,
Table 1.
Committee
Charter
Product
BA – Access
management
Ranking of Authentication and Access Methods Available to
the Metasearch Environment
Best Practices document that suggested
that IP authentication, imperfect as it
is, was best approach for Metasearch
authentication
BB1 – Collection
Description
Speciication
Collection & Service Descriptions
Z39.91 - Draft standard (2007) : means of
describing collections, where a collection
is deined as an aggregation of items. Uses
Dublin Core Application Proile. Vote
expected 2007.
BB2 – Information
Retrieval
Information Retrieval Service
Description Speciication
Z39.92 - method of describing
Information Retrieval oriented electronic
services, including but not limited to those
services made available via the Z39.50,
SRU/SRW, and OAI protocols. Uses
ZeeRex standard
BC1
Search/Retrieve
NISO RP-2006-02, NISO Metasearch
XML Gateway Implementers Guide
BC2
Search/Retrieve
NISO RP-2005-02, Results Set Metadata
BC3
Search Retrieve
NISO RP-2005-03, Citation Level Data
Elements
300
Standards, the Structural Underpinnings of Electronic Resource Management Systems
manipulate, and calculate user statistics from
all the different vendors and publishers that are
supplying electronic resources. Current software
requires library staff to collect these data elements
by themselves and then upload or manually enter
the data into their ERM—tasks that are tedious
and time consuming. ERM software, which brings
central management to electronic resources, relies
on the library’s entry of complete and accurate
data to be truly useful as a management tool.
The following two standards—both in development—will ameliorate this burden.
SUSHI
SUSHI—Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative) is a protocol that will allow
an ERM system to request from a publisher,
through a Web service request, the delivery of
an XML ile (in COUNTER format) of usage
statistics for a particular customer during a
particular month. SUSHI, if and when adopted
by the publisher community, has the potential
to practically eliminate the need for libraries
to chase down and retrieve statistical data from
hundreds of different electronic resource suppliers. As of this writing (January 2007), SUSHI is a
“draft standard for trial use,” a status that allows
developers to work with the standard and report
problems (and give the standards committee time
to ix the problems) before submitting the draft
standard to a inal vote.
Original SUSHI participants were Ex Libris,
Innovative Interfaces, Swets, and EBSCO. Ex
Libris and Innovative developers wrote proofof-concept client applications and Swets and
EBSCO wrote proof-of-concept server software.
Early success was achieved in November 2005
when both client applications were able to retrieve
message payloads (that is, COUNTER statistics
iles) from each of the test servers. Early in 2006,
ISI-Thomson Scientiic joined the group and is
working on software that would let its product
act as both a server and a client. In addition, a
number of other companies in the library automation and content provider industries have signed
on as observers and are experimenting with the
draft SUSHI standard.
SUSHI is a Web service, meaning that data
is passed between parties using “normal” Web
protocols and ports (80 and 443). With a Web service, as opposed to another telecommunications
approach, problems with security and irewalls
are minimized. The library’s ERM (or other)
software initiates the Web service conversation
by sending a request message to the content provider. This request contains information about the
requester—what library, the library’s customer
number, a username and password, and the name(s)
and chronological period of the report(s) being
requested. The responder (that is, the content
provider) responds with a message acknowledging
the request, and includes a “payload”—that is, a
COUNTER-XML formatted data ile containing
the statistical data that was requested.
The use of COUNTER iles means that the
structure of the “payload” being shared between
parties is XML, a well known and easily parsed
data structure.
As of this writing, SUSHI testing among parties continues. Innovative Interfaces has released
a version of its ERM with SUSHI support. The
Verde product from Ex Libris will include a SUSHI
protocol data collector in version 3.0, to be released
in 2007. Other ILS systems are preparing their
SUSHI harvesting software. The SUSHI steering group is encouraging publishers and content
suppliers to provide SUSHI servers and services
as quickly as possible. Since vendor participation
is crucial to the success of this protocol and to
widespread automated statistical data harvesting,
anything that can be done to reduce technological
hurdles to implementation is beneicial. Several
SUSHI webinars took place in late 2006 and
were primarily aimed at publishers and vendors,
to promote the adoption and use of this standard
across the industry.
301
Standards, the Structural Underpinnings of Electronic Resource Management Systems
SUSHI planners are looking at several additional protocol enhancements as the protocol
begins to be used and accepted. Some areas of
future development include the issuing of a “claim
ticket” when a server is too busy to provide the
report at the time of a request, and the expansion
of the menu of reports available. Currently SUSHI handles COUNTER Journal Report-1 [JR1];
COUNTER has deined several other reports
which will also be retrievable.
License Expression Delivery
A major role for any ERM software is to store
and make accessible information that relates to
license terms—that is, the rights and responsibilities that a library has with relation to the resource
being used.
Current practice is for libraries and vendors
(or agents) to negotiate a license, which is memorialized on paper and stored in some piece of
furniture. License and permission data for end
users is offered inconsistently, if at all. If a library
happens to be using an ERM system, completing
entries in the licensing section is usually an onerous manual task, involving marking up a version
of the paper license. This method of license data
entry is not only slow and ineficient but is also
prone to error (both typographical and substantial,
based on the legal verbiage and skill level of the
staff member doing data entry.)
The publishing world and the library world
(and its ERM systems) both recognize the beneit
of license terms exchange in a machine-readable,
structured format that would be easily parsed and
loaded. Replacing the manual entry process, an
XML loader would immediately ill in an ERM’s
licensing module with whatever data had been sent
by the publisher. Then, as updates are required
based on negotiations between the parties, the
draft license would be archived and replaced by
data from more recent downloads. In principle,
machine updating of complicated ields would
be a huge beneit to all parties—from publish-
302
ers and vendors, to the libraries that are covered
by the licenses and to other consumers of the
resource’s data.
For a license exchange protocol to be effective,
there must irst be agreement on what terms are to
be included in the XML structure and how they
are to be represented. The original DLF ERMI
group deined about 160 licensing terms as part
of the original speciications. EDItEUR also
prepared a similar, but not identical, approach to
licensing in its draft document, ONIX for Licensing Expressions.
Rather than work at cross-purposes, these two
groups decided to combine efforts and explore
whether a single standard for the exchange of
license information between libraries and publishers was possible. This combined effort, called
the License Expression Working Group (LEWG),
began its work in January 2006. Support for the
group comes from the DLF, EDItEUR, and the
Publishers Licensing Society (UK). Membership
as of mid-February 2006 was 59 institutions,
including ILS and ERM vendors, publishers,
universities, digital rights management organizations (such as the Copyright Clearance Center in
the U.S.), and several national libraries. LEWG
bases its work on a draft ONIX for Licensing
document released in August 2005, along with
several sample publisher licenses made available
by large publishers with an interest in the outcome
of this group.
As might be expected with a committee of
this size, a smaller working group emerged. The
working group has done some work over e-mail,
but a face-to-face meeting in December 2006 led
to signiicant progress in the License Expression
project. Prior to December 2006, a wide gap separated the DLF-ERMI approach to license terms
from the ONIX approach, which can be described
as multi-dimensional and highly granular. Among
the decisions taken in December 2006 was a new
approach where the ONIX for License Expression creators would create a subset of their data
in an ERMI “dialect” for ease of exchange and
mapping.
Standards, the Structural Underpinnings of Electronic Resource Management Systems
Work of the LEWG is sensitive, because the
results of this effort may have weighty consequences for stakeholders in this group. Publishers
and agents are interested in asserting their content
ownership and unambiguously describing the
rights that they are granting to licensees. Libraries,
on the other hand, want to respect the rights of
publishers while at the same time providing the
greatest access and service to their user populations. A inal draft of the License Expression
standard should be available in mid-to-late 2007,
at which point the “draft standard” status will
begin. A inal license expression standard format
can be anticipated in mid-2008.
b.
FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES FOR
STANDARDIZATION
The ERM industry is in its infancy. Existing
systems have begun to meet the needs of libraries
in 2006. Still, by the end of 2006, ERM system
sales in the United States numbered no more than
500—meaning that thousands of U.S. libraries
have yet to discover the eficiencies that an ERM
system can deliver. As libraries integrate ERM
functionality into their processing, they will
have higher expectations of functionality and
interoperability, and increased standardization
possibilities will begin to emerge. The author sees
the following areas as emerging opportunities for
standardization in the next several years:
c.
IP address communication and a standardized protocol for communicating
IP address changes: Despite the tendency
of IP addresses to change as networks expand and network topology at user sites is
improved, IP address authentication is still
the most used method of user authentication
for electronic resources. (In fact, the NISO
Metasearch Initiative (Standards Committee BA – Access Management, see above)
in 2005 noted in its recommendations that,
e.
a.
d.
at present, IP authentication and password
authentication were the two best practices for
authentication for electronic resources use.)
Communication of IP address changes from
libraries to vendors could be made far easier
through the use of a communications protocol that would pass IP address information
updates and acknowledgments electronically. Note that some early discussions on
this issue—as part of a clearinghouse—took
place in late 2005, but no further progress
has been made.
Communication of incidents and breaches
from ERM to vendor: Almost all ERM
systems track performance and service interruptions on the part of the vendor. A system
of automatically reporting service glitches,
through a communications protocol, would
capitalize on an ERM’s tracking logs and
directly report problems with a vendor’s
system. Among the beneits of this approach:
immediate notiication of problems to the
vendor, and a large reduction in telephone
call handling of problems, because notiication would be automatic.
Similar to (b): A vendor-initiated protocol to
advise customers of service interruptions.
ERM-to-ERM data sharing protocol:
Each ERM system vendor wishes, of course,
to keep and satisfy their own customers. Nevertheless, there are times when the sharing
of information between ERM systems will
be a requirement. Intraconsortium sharing of
data is an example of this need for sharing.
Currently, almost all ERM systems use the
DLF ERMI speciication as the core set of
data elements in their ERM. Sharing those
elements is a logical next step.
An international unique identiier assigned to collections (including packages
and interfaces): As of this time, MARC
records and unique identiiers exist for
e-journals and e-books, but not for the collections (often packages and interfaces) in
303
Standards, the Structural Underpinnings of Electronic Resource Management Systems
f.
which they are delivered. As a result, there
is no consistent way of referring to collections. Titles are sometimes used for this
purpose, and artiicial, temporary identiiers
are sometimes assigned, but no system that
has international acceptance or recognition
has been devised. The ERM industry would
rapidly take advantage of such an identiier,
when created.
Acquisitions record and transaction sharing data elements: Related to (d). Libraries
may use an ILS from one vendor and an ERM
system from a different automation vendor.
Both systems need to share data related to
materials acquisitions, invoices, funding,
and payment amounts. An acquisitions record-sharing format would enable libraries,
vendors, consortia, payment agencies, and
other interested parties to easily transfer data
from one automation platform to another.
The Digital Library Federation chartered a
subcommittee led by Norm Medeiros to look
into the need for such a standard in November
2006; the subcommittee published a white paper
in January 2007 (Medeiros, Miller, Adam et al.,
2007) which surveyed several libraries and ERM
vendors. It is unclear whether that white paper
will trigger further standards activity.
ERM STANDARDS AND THE
FUTURE
ERM systems sit in the center of a number of
interactions—some internal to the library (such
as interoperability with an OPAC, a link resolver,
and a metasearch engine) and some calling for
interoperability with external sources of data.
Interoperation across an industry is far easier
and more eficient if shared, negotiated, and accepted standards exist. Lacking standards, time
and effort are wasted on idiosyncratic solutions
to individual library problems.
304
Therefore, by working with vendors and publishers to deliver ERM data eficiently through
standards-based mechanisms, the ERM industry
can enhance the value of its products as a core
component in delivering library management
solutions.
REFERENCES
Bourne, C. P., & Bellardo Hahn, T. (2003). A history of online information services, 1963-1976.
Boston: MIT Press.
Kyrillidou, M., & Young, M. (2003). ARL library
trends 2003-04. Retrieved November 21, 2007,
from www.arl.org/stats/arlstat/04pub/04intro.
html.
Medeiros, N., Miller, L., Adam, C., et al. (2007).
White paper on interoperability between acquisitions modules of integrated library systems
and electronic resource management systems: A
draft for comment. Retrieved November 21, 2007,
from www.haverford.edu/library/DLF_ERMI2/
ACQ_ERMS_white_paper.pdf
Van de Sompel, H., & Beit-Arie, O. (2001). Open
linking in the scholarly information environment
using the OpenURL framework. D-Lib Magazine, 7(3). Retrieved November 21, 2007, from
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march01/vandesompel/
03vandesompel.html
KEY TERMS
Standards: Industry-accepted description or
deinition relating to expected behavior, quality,
or function
Protocols: A standard set of industry-created
and approved instructions for communication and
data exchange
Standards, the Structural Underpinnings of Electronic Resource Management Systems
Electronic Resource Management: Broadly,
activities and tools used by a library to manage
their investment in electronic products. More
inely, electronic resources management refers
to several speciic management areas (acquisitions, access, worklow, trial, statistics, costs,
etc.) that have been deined by the Digital Library
Federation.
Metasearch: A process where one or more
data sources are searched simultaneously and
results are collected and presented to the end
user as a single set.
Link Resolution: A process used by the
openURL standard to parse an incoming
openURL string, determine its data elements,
compare the data elements to a resolver’s data
store, and return relevant referral information to
the end user
License Expression: The signiicant terms of
a publisher’s license (referring to the customer’s
privileges when using that publisher’s content).
Generally, the expression refers to a format or
structure of license terms that is different from
the (prose) text of the license
Harvesting: An automated service used to
collect (or harvest) data of a particular type for
indexing, retrieval, and use by another computer
system
Integrated Library System (ILS): An older
model of delivering library automation services
to libraries. Provided by a single software vendor,
an ILS generally provided an OPAC, circulation
system, acquisitions and serials control, and
sometimes other modules, all based on the same
data model and designed to work together.
305
306
Chapter XVII
Challenges and Potentials of
Electronic Resource Management
Yvonne Wei Zhang
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, USA
ABSTRACT
This chapter will focus on two ERM services, ExLibris’ SFX and III’s ERM. ExLibris’ SFX is an example
of a link resolver, whereas III ERM is an example of an ERM system. The discussion of these ERM services will focus on key issues encountered during ERM implementation at Cal Poly Pomona. The main
objective of this chapter is to make the readers aware of the challenges and potentials ERM services
offer, distilled from the experiences gained at Cal Poly Pomona.
INTRODUCTION
During the past decade, there has been phenomenal growth in the number of electronic resources
including electronic journal packages and full
text aggregations acquired by libraries. Cornell
University Libraries projected that by 2005 their
holdings will become mostly digital (Cornell
Libraries, 2000). Though this prediction has yet
to come to pass, the Association of Research
Libraries (ARL) expenditure trend data (Association of Research Libraries, 2002) showed that
academic libraries are “in the midst of a profound
shift toward reliance on electronic resources,
and this reliance seems to have deepened just
within the last year or two as libraries have shed
paper journal subscriptions to help pay for online
access.” Since providing access to electronic
resources have become such a major part of the
library services, it was crucial for libraries to
tackle these new challenges head on.
As early as 2000, librarians began to search
for a working tool to help manage electronic resources. Some of the in-house solutions included
home grown A-Z list, paper iles, spreadsheets,
and stand-alone databases (i.e., using Microsoft
Access). Virtual Electronic Access (VERA) developed at MIT and Digital Acquisitions Database
developed at UCLA were two of the most wellknown in-house examples. In July 2000, Digital
Library Federation (DLF) Electronic Resource
Management Initiative (ERMI) was formed
Copyright © 2008, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
Challenges and Potentials of Electronic Resource Management
to create standards such as functional requirements, worklow diagrams, and data dictionary
(Digital Library Federation, 2004). Based upon
these standards, commercial electronic resource
management (ERM) services began to appear
in two major categories: Link resolver and ERM
systems. Link resolver is a linking function based
upon openURL that works with a majority of the
electronic resources and ties together information
about the cited resource, the user, and the library’s
online subscriptions. An ERM system can either
be stand-alone software or a module within the
integrated library system (ILS).
This chapter will focus on two ERM services,
ExLibris’ SFX and III’s (i.e., Innovative Interfaces
Inc.) ERM. ExLibris’ SFX is an example of a link
resolver, whereas III ERM is an example of an
ERM system. The discussion of these ERM services will focus on key issues encountered during
ERM implementation at Cal Poly Pomona. The
main objective of this chapter is to make the readers aware of the challenges and potentials ERM
services present, distilled from the experiences
gained at Cal Poly Pomona.
BACKGROUND
California State University (CSU) purchased
ExLibris’ SFX in the summer of 2002. SFX
implementation among all 23 CSU campuses
was subsequently carried out in phases during a
span of four years. The CSU’s main SFX server
resides at the chancellor’s ofice, managed by the
system SFX coordinator. Each library of the 23
CSU campuses is an instance managed by the
individual library’s SFX Team. Cal Poly Pomona,
an instance of CSU/SFX main server, was one
of the irst CSU campuses to roll out SFX to
the public in Sept. 2002. From that experience,
knowledge was gained in areas such as consortia
speciic tasks, workload and staff support, and
implementation strategies.
In addition, Cal Poly Pomona purchased III
ERM as a “natural” extension of the library’s
ILS system right after the product was publicly
released in Oct. 2004. As the implementation of III
ERM occurred at a time when there was limited
guidance and proven “best practices” available,
the lessons learned revolved around deining code,
record creation, batch load troubleshooting, and
constantly improving the current practices for
better ERM utilization in the future.
SFX CHALLENGES AND
POTENTIALS
ExLibris’ SFX is a context-sensitive linking service commercially available since 2001. Based
upon the openURL standard approved by the
National Information Standards Organization
(NISO), SFX provides links from one information
resource to another, such as e-journal databases
and full text aggregations, in a transparent manner
to the public (Lagace, 2003). Using SFX allows
the library to offer a consistent menu/user interface which promises direct links not only to the
full text, if it is available, but also to alternative
resources, customized at the library’s discretion.
In addition, SFX not only generates a customizable
and updatable journal title list for the library’s Web
site but also provides on the same list pertinent
coverage data as well as print holdings. Although
the success and the usefulness of SFX depend
upon many factors such as the source database
metadata, the construction of the openURL string,
the resulting target database structure, and the local libraries’ collection development (Wakimoto,
2006), a link resolver such as SFX is considered
by both the library users and the librarians as a
signiicant step forward for full text search and
delivery across multiple databases.
The key issues encountered during SFX
implementation at Cal Poly Pomona included
staff qualiications and support, SFX menu set
up, target activation and update, and teamwork
in a consortium environment.
307
Challenges and Potentials of Electronic Resource Management
Workload and Staff Support
Ex-Libris gives the clients two options for SFX
service. Option one sets up the SFX server at the
local library site. This requires higher technical
level and expertise (i.e., Unix server related knowledge) for the staff, but allows for a considerable
saving in cost. The other option sets up the SFX
server at the Ex Libris site. As a result, high-level
technical skills are not required for the staff, but the
cost is considerably higher. Which option is better
depends upon not only the inancial solvency of
the library but also upon local staff qualiications
and staff support availability. If the library has
the necessary staff with the proper qualiications,
running its own SFX server makes more sense.
It is less expensive and it offers local libraries
more control and lexibility. Once established, a
relatively high level of independence and stability
can be achieved with respect to SFX, except for
the ongoing updates and maintenance. If help is
needed, SFX listserv (i.e., SFX-METALIB-DISCUSS-L@listserv.nd.edu) and Ex Libris help desk
are readily available to provide a good support
system. For libraries where stafing and technical
support are insuficient, SFX service via SFX main
server at Ex-Libris site is the reasonable choice.
These libraries will still have to handle libraryspeciic content and databases that are different
from the default SFX knowledge base (KB).
Obviously, staff deployment will differ in libraries running their own SFX server from those
that rely on Ex Libris to run the SFX server. In
this case, as CSU maintains its own SFX server
at the Chancellor’s Ofice site, it is vital that
the consortium has at least one full time position dedicated as the system SFX coordinator,
preferably librarians with system related knowledge and experience. In June 2002, CSU hired
a system coordinator/librarian with substantial
technical background including instructional
technical consulting, database development and
management using SQL (i.e., structured query
language) databases, library catalog Web server
308
maintenance, and visual basic programming. In
addition, clearly deined SFX responsibilities and
staff deployment at both the chancellor’s ofice and
the local instance levels needed to be worked out.
The system SFX coordinator at the chancellor’s
ofice has complete overall administrative responsibility over the SFX main server and its KB. If
needed, this person can override what has been
previously modiied at the instance level. At the
individual library instance level, each SFX team
has discretionary control over its own instance’s
admin. The team is responsible for managing the
unique set of electronic resources that are different from those in the SFX KB (i.e., once a local
change is made it will stay intact with every new
system update) and for managing SFX menu set
up, source and target activation, statistics, and
monthly report review.
SFX-speciic work can be divided into two
categories, the initial implementation and the
regular maintenance over the long haul. Thus,
staff deployment for both the short term and the
long term needs to be considered and planned.
During the initial implementation of SFX, the staff
needs to have qualiications in the areas of: (1)
basic knowledge in Unix and HTML in order to
navigate SFX server environment, moving around
directories, opening, copying, and altering iles;
(2) basic cataloging experience in order to resolve
bibliographic problems; (3) basic understanding
of proxy, CrossRef, DOI, and openURL in order
to select proper criteria for SFX target, based
upon related speciications; (4) basic knowledge
of aggregated databases content and structure in
order to perform SFX menu customization and
logic design. To support ongoing maintenance of
SFX, the staff needs to have qualiications in the
following areas: (1) competence with Excel and/or
Word in order to create proper SFX DataLoader
feed iles; (2) basic understanding of SFX structure
and functions in order to perform maintenance
at different layers/levels of a speciic target, i.e.,
the SFX hierarchical structure of “targets
services portfolios threshold” (similar to
Challenges and Potentials of Electronic Resource Management
“packages services journal titles coverage data”); (3) basic knowledge of cataloging in
order to facilitate the updating of changes made
in the library catalog to SFX.
At Cal Poly Pomona, the SFX team initially
consisted of two people, the systems librarian and
the assistant university librarian (AUL) for technical services (both have cataloging background).
Since neither could devote full attention to SFX
because of other responsibilities, it was decided
to divide the SFX work into two portions. The
systems librarian took care of SFX menu set up,
in close consultation with reference librarians
and SFX sources (i.e., databases where users start
their search), and SFX A-Z list generation for
the library catalog on a monthly basis. The AUL
for technical services took care of SFX targets
(i.e., databases where users retrieve their search
results) including portfolio and threshold editing,
troubleshooting, and SFX monthly report review.
During the initial implementation stage, if there
were a batch of portfolios needing to be edited for
SFX, additional staff assistance was occasionally
required to produce proper SFX DataLoader feed
iles. Between the two librarians, around 30-40%
each of their time was spent on SFX implementation during June – Aug. 2002. Since then, about
10% each of their time has been spent on SFX
related maintenance and troubleshooting. In 2005,
Cal Poly Pomona’s SFX team expanded to include
ive people. The original two librarians continue
to oversee troubleshooting; one library assistant
(LA) IV and one LA III in technical services support routine maintenance; one systems specialist
supports SFX source, A-Z list, and statistics.
Currently, on average, each person spends about
5-10% of his/her time on a regular basis.
Merged Target
One of the beneits of SFX in the CSU consortia
environment is the ability to identify common
databases across all campuses for centralized
control by the system SFX coordinator, instead of
separate controls at the local library level. These
identiied common databases are called “merged
targets.” In addition, each individual campus may
select and submit local databases as another type
of merged targets controlled by the system SFX
coordinator. To become a merged target, a database
must fulill one of the following conditions: (1)
the library subscribes to the entire package as a
whole (i.e., American Chemical Society [ACS]
journals consists of 51 journal titles in the SFX
KB. This entire package matches exactly both in
title as well as in coverage with Cal Poly Pomona’s
subscribed ACS package.); (2) the database must
be an A&I database such as Ebsco Academic
Search Elite (ASE); (3) the database must be an
online search engine or service such as Google
Scholar. Conversely, the following conditions will
preclude a database becoming a merged target:
(1) the library only subscribes to part of the package (i.e., Chicago University Press package has
43 e-journal titles in the SFX KB and Cal Poly
Pomona subscribes to only 15 titles of the package), therefore, local maintenance is required; (2)
the library’s online access coverage is different
from the default coverage provided in the SFX
KB, therefore, local maintenance is required; (3)
the database is acquired on a temporary basis (i.e.,
Latino literature by Alexander Street Press was
purchased by a grant).
Although the merged target option can save
substantial time and effort for the local libraries,
maintaining an accurate and updated library speciic merged target list at both the main server and
the local instance levels is by no means an easy
task, due to the dynamic nature of the merged
target list. Although most of the SFX work can be
carried out separately and independently at both
local instance and main server levels, some work
has to be done in synch. For example, merged
targets need to be deactivated completely at the
local level to ensure they are properly controlled
at the main server level. Also, if the library’s A-Z
list needs to be directed/populated into a different
system, such as Google Scholar, in a manner such
309
Challenges and Potentials of Electronic Resource Management
that Cal Poly Pomona’s SFX full text icon will
appear next to the proper citation, the appropriate
action needs to be carried out at the CSU SFX
main server. In situations like these, close communication and judicious follow ups between the
two parties is a must.
SFX Menu
How to set up the SFX menu best to meet the
individual library’s needs can also be a challenge. In addition to modifying or customizing
the “look and feel” of the SFX menu, applying the
appropriate “display logic” will allow the menu
to display the most pertinent information and to
avoid a cluttered and confusing interface for the
users. What should be displayed on the SFX menu,
how should the services be ordered, whether and
when links should be suppressed are some menu
related questions that should be considered.
Based upon reference staff input and preference, Cal Poly Pomona uses the following display
logic for the SFX menu: (1) if “Get full text” is
available, do not display “Get TOC” or “Get abstract;” (2) if “Get full text” is available, do not
display “Get document delivery.” Otherwise, do
display; (3) if “Get full text” is available, do not
display the statement/label “No full text available,” and so forth. As a result, when there is no
full text, SFX is able to direct users to related
abstract and/or table of content as well as to library
delivery services such as document delivery and
consortia services such as LINK+ ( i.e., LINK+
is a union catalog of contributed holdings from
the participating 46 libraries in California and
Nevada). When full text does exist, the menu
will suppress all options except the linking to
the library’s online public access catalog (OPAC)
and related/expanded Web resources via Google
Scholar and Web search engines like Alta Vista,
Yahoo. To facilitate proper SFX menu display,
especially in cases where duplicated titles are
covered by multiple databases, Cal Poly Pomona
developed its own criteria to select and activate
310
the “best suitable” database(s) (i.e., it will be
discussed later in the article).
Since SFX has become an important and usually the preferred method for full text search for
students, the SFX menu has the potential to be,
and in Cal Poly Pomona’s case has been, utilized as
a “marketing tool” to publicize important library
services. For example, under a category called
“Research Questions? Ask a Librarian,” users can
click and connect instantly to services such as E-Z
Workshop, AskNow (i.e., a chat service staffed
by local librarians and across the United States
24x7), and In Person Help, and so forth.
Database Activation
Usually, the databases requiring the most maintenance are those that the library has only partial
subscription and those that have online coverage
different from the SFX KB. There are three levels
of activating a particular portfolio (i.e., journal) in
these databases: target level, services level (i.e.,
including full text, abstract, and table of content
service choices among others), and the portfolio
level (i.e., where the proper journal title and associated coverage data need to be reviewed and
activated). Portfolio activation tends to be the
most complicated due to issues such as target
name differences, multiple providers, and multiple
subdatabases, and so forth. For example, the database name “AIP” at Cal Poly Pomona may not
be the exact database name used by SFX (i.e., it is
called AIP_SCITATION in SFX). Also, the journal title “National Civic Review” is provided by
multiple databases such as Ebsco ASE and Wiley
Interscience in SFX. Some targets/packages have
dozens of subdatabases such as Proquest which has
83 subdatabases in the SFX KB. Thus, locating a
speciic Proquest title/portfolio among all those
subdatabases takes time and effort. When dealing
with the multiple providers situation in SFX, the
following criteria are used: (1) activate based upon
the level of full text access, such as journal title
level, issue level, or direct full text level linking.
Challenges and Potentials of Electronic Resource Management
Choose direct full text level linking if available;
(2) activate target with the most complete coverage for the speciic portfolio; (3) activate target
with full text in both PDF and HTML formats
over those with only one format; and (4) activate
all if in doubt. Combining these local activation
criteria with the SFX menu display logic, Cal Poly
Pomona’s SFX menu reduces clutter by linking
only to the most complete and updated databases.
To deal with the multiple subdatabases situation
in SFX, a good approach seems to be manually
locating the proper subdatabase for a particular
portfolio via the “Search Object” function prior
to portfolio editing.
Depending upon the amount of portfolios to
be activated in SFX, the staff has at its disposal
two options. The irst option is to update manually
when the amount is manageable. Using “Search
Object” in SFX admin, one can quickly identify
the title in its proper target for editing by ISSN,
EISSN, and titles, and so forth. After each update,
it is good practice to save the change and then
verify the result using the “tester” icon next to
the portfolio to conirm the intended change. The
second option is to update SFX via the DataLoader
when there are batches of titles. Although creating
a proper feed ile for the DataLoader requires work
and attention, the DataLoader (see Figure 1) is
the preferred vehicle for SFX updates at Cal Poly
Figure 1. SFX DataLoader
311
Challenges and Potentials of Electronic Resource Management
Pomona. When creating a feed ile, experience
has shown SFX seems to handle simple text iles
such as the ones created by Notebook better. Files
created in Microsoft Word or Excel sometimes do
not work well, because there are hidden tags that
cause loading problems. For portfolio update, the
feed ile usually contains three columns: one for
ISSN (i.e., SFX prefers print ISSN over EISSN),
one for availability such as the status “ACTIVE”
or “DEACTIVE,” and one for the speciic coverage
data (i.e., threshold in SFX terms with a formula
like “$obj->parsedDate(“>=”,1997,undef,
undef)”). In addition to manually creating the
feed ile, the library’s ILS III is sometimes used
to extract and export related ISSN of a particular
package for a feed ile. The DataLoader always
produces a load report at the end of each load,
thus, the staff will be able to trace a problem
easily if necessary.
A-Z List
Currently, most of the SFX A-Z lists (i.e., e-journal
title list) and the local library catalog serve different functions. Although they complement each
other to meet user needs, neither is yet able to deliver all the information users demand by itself. At
Cal Poly Pomona, there is in fact a large difference
between the SFX A-Z list and the library’s catalog,
because the library has only cataloged e-journal
packages (i.e., no full text database cataloged) in
the past. Cal Poly Pomona’s SFX A-Z list, on the
other hand, covers all the accessible electronic
resources regardless of the cataloging status. In
spite of the differences, it is imperative that the
SFX A-Z list and the library catalog match one
another for all of the e-journals cataloged in the
library catalog. These titles need to be updated
in SFX in a timely fashion for the following
reasons: (1) to ensure proper online access to the
full texts; (2) to avoid “blind hit/error message”
when e-journal titles are no longer acquired by the
library; and (3) to avoid “blind hit/error message”
if the e-journal title’s coverage data is different
312
from the SFX KB. In other words, while what is
in SFX may not exist in OPAC, what is in OPAC
has to be accurately relected/activated in SFX.
To carry out this process, the appropriate SFX
admin rights and permissions need to be assigned
to the staff responsible for cataloging e-journal
titles. Once a new title is cataloged, a staff member
will investigate and activate the title in SFX as
part of the cataloging process, after making sure
it is not part of a package or not part of a merged
target. The staff will follow the same procedure
and deactivate the title in SFX in the event the
online access is cancelled or terminated.
Because Cal Poly Pomona’s SFX A-Z list
serves different functions when compared to the
library catalog, the library has taken advantage of
that fact and selected certain types of electronic
resources to be covered only in SFX. HighWire
Press publications and DOAJ (i.e., directory of
open access journals), for example, do not warrant cataloging treatment based upon content
and coverage restrictions. However, these two
databases are activated in SFX to make them
available, as they present potential full text access
values for the users.
III ERM CHALLENGES AND
POTENTIALS
In the fall of 2002, University of Washington
Libraries partnered with III to develop an electronic resource management module based on
DLF ERMI. Being the irst vendor to integrate
electronic resource management into its library
system, III named the product/module “ERM”
(Tull, 2005). III ERM enables libraries to keep
track of their e-journal licensing and purchasing details using a single system, to streamline
worklows, and to eliminate the need to maintain
separate databases (Innovative, Inc., 2006). It
introduced new types of records, the electronic
resource (ER) record and its satellite/associated records including the contact and the license records.
Challenges and Potentials of Electronic Resource Management
The ER record describes the resource and allows
the staff to keep track of important data such as
statistics, change history, and access notes, and
so forth. The license record provides contractual
details, while the contact record contains relevant
contact information mainly for system and access
support. In addition to MARC record loading,
ERM enables libraries to create coverage-holding
records (i.e., e-checkin records) and to link them to
bibliographic records automatically via batch load.
It also enables linking between holding records
and their parent ER records as part of the loading
process (Tull, 2005). The end result of this twolayer linking provides direct full text access with
updated coverage data to a bibliographic record in
OPAC. In addition, the automated loading process
improves the library’s cataloging eficiency to an
extent not previously possible.
The key issues encountered during III ERM
implementation and maintenance at Cal Poly
Pomona include staff support, data provider
selection and proile creation, record setup, and
batch load tasks.
Workload and Staff Support
At Cal Poly Pomona, ERM staff qualiications
are similar to library technical services staff
qualiications including knowledge and experience in acquisition and cataloging. In addition,
an in-depth knowledge of a library system such
as III Millennium (especially competence in
creating list/query functions) is crucial, because
III ERM is closely integrated with III ILS. Familiarity with database management and a basic
understanding of license terms and regulations
are some additional key qualiications.
The ERM implementation was divided into
two phases at Cal Poly Pomona. During phase I,
which took place from Oct. 2004 to Feb. 2006,
ER, contact, and license records (i.e., some of
them are brief records) were created for all package databases. They comprised the majority of
the library’s electronic resources. ER records
for single e-journal titles that have license contracts were also created. During phase II, which
took place from Mar. to Dec. 2006, coverage
data purchased from Serials Solutions (SS) was
added via ERM batch load to most of the package
databases. Now, in addition to keeping up with
regular maintenance and updates associated with
coverage load, the primary objective is to fully
utilize the system so that III ERM will serve as
a “one stop shopping” for electronic resource
management at Cal Poly Pomona.
Initially, the ERM team at Cal Poly Pomona
responsible for ERM implementation consisted
of two people, the AUL for technical services and
an experienced LA IV. The AUL has cataloging
background and the LA IV has substantial experience and expertise in both bibliographic control
and III systems. Because they have other responsibilities, they devoted about 30%-40% each of
their time on ERM during the implementation.
This combination worked well with the initial
decision-making, dictionary development, and
ERM record creation during phase I. During the
ERM implementation phase II, Cal Poly Pomona
relied heavily on listserv help and outside contacts
(i.e., University of Nevada at Reno) to help resolve
some of the technical problems associated with
batch load. At present, approximately 95% of the
library’s electronic resources are loaded into ERM
(i.e., about 150 databases consisting of 10,000
e-journal titles). The ongoing maintenance of
these databases includes enrichment of records,
order record creation and links, and a newly created ER Unit consisting of one LA III and a LA
I currently carries out routine coverage updates.
This ER unit of technical services handles all
electronic resource related tasks including ERM,
which by estimate represents 20%-30% of the total
unit tasks. The original ERM team will continue
to oversee ERM operations particularly in the
areas of troubleshooting and identifying future
developments such as additional indices, public
displays, and statistics generations.
313
Challenges and Potentials of Electronic Resource Management
Since ERM allows libraries to record and track
substantial contractual details in the license record, and the person managing the record is most
likely not the person who performs the license
review, how to best arrange staff support for license record creation becomes an issue. In some
academic settings, license review and approval
are done by campus counsel outside of the library.
Because license related work presents “unfamiliar
territory” for most library staff, it would be ideal
for the person responsible for the license review
to create the license record once an agreement has
been reached as all the details are fresh and clear
(Duranceau, 2000). If that is not possible, special
consideration and training need to be given to the
staff performing the license record creation. At
Cal Poly Pomona, this is not a problem, because
one member of the ERM team is the librarian
who oversees the license review process. Once
the license is reviewed and approved by the dean
of the university library, this librarian creates a
license record in ERM immediately. The license
is then scanned by a LA with an Epson scanner at
the LA’s workstation. The scan quality is not set
to high for the following reasons: (1) the higher
resolutions require more disk storage; (2) it is
unlikely the library will display the license to
the public; and (3) there is at least one print copy
iled in the library. The librarian then saves the
digitized ile on Cal Poly Pomona’s Intranet which
is not only accessible to all university employees
but also secure, has suficient storage capacity,
and is backed up regularly by campus network
specialist. The Intranet URL is then recorded in
the “License location” ield of the license record
at the end of the process.
Data Provider
In order to load and append a coverage holding
record to the correct bibliographic record as well
as the ER record via ERM batch load, the library
needs to have a coverage data feed ile (i.e., a CSV
(comma-separated values) ile) to begin the linking
314
process. Some libraries generate their own iles by
harvesting via link resolver services like SFX or
by contacting publishers directly. Most libraries,
however, purchase coverage data from commercial
data providers such as SS, because local creation
and maintenance of coverage data is time and
labor intensive. One of the most important criteria
for choosing a good data provider is the scope
of the provider’s KB and the quality of its data
including how frequently the data gets updated.
A sophisticated and easy to use database interface
is another crucial selection criterion. Cal Poly
Pomona chose SS as its coverage data provider
because: (1) SS has been exclusively providing
coverage data to libraries for years; (2) based upon
III ERM libraries’ experience, SS provides the
required data elements and seems to it the best
with III ERM; and (3) cost is reasonable as Cal
Poly Pomona is under CSU/SS contract.
Creating the library’s proile in the provider’s
database such as SS is a dificult task. Database
naming convention is different from provider to
provider. Elsevier, for example, not only has multiple subdatabases but also has identical names for
these subdatabases like: Elsevier ScienceDirect
and Elsevier SD ScienceDirect Complete, and so
forth. “IEEE Xplore” is the database name Cal Poly
Pomona uses, but in SS it is called IEEE Digital
Library or IEEE Electronic Library Online. Thus,
identifying the proper package for a target journal
title can be a challenge. In addition, title activation
and related coverage review are extremely time
consuming and labor intensive as well. It cannot
be rushed because the quality of the proile directly
impacts the quality of ERM batch load. When
creating Cal Poly Pomona’s proile in the SS KB,
the library staff had to consult several lists/sources
such as the SFX KB and CSU SEIR (i.e., CSU
system wide electronic information resources) to
help reconcile and identify the proper database
names and related coverage data. Although it took
a couple of months to set up an accurate proile,
the staff considers the SS client center (i.e., SS
admin interface) one of the best-designed data
Challenges and Potentials of Electronic Resource Management
provider databases. Many useful features such
as “Package level coverage default” and “Bypass
proxy” options make the edit process easier and
faster. Once a proile is established with care,
there will be less ongoing maintenance required
and the library will be able to generate updated
coverage data for all e-journal titles identiied in
SS at any time.
ERM Record
ERM enables libraries to have centralized and
enhanced control of electronic resources not
possible in the past. ER record works well with
packages such as IEEE Xplore and Ebsco ASE,
but does not necessarily work well with single
titles outside of a package. For a single e-journal
title acquired under a license contract, it is logical to use an ER record because ERM provides
the ability to track and organize license related
data. For a single e-journal title acquired without license contract, there are different opinions
(i.e., potential solutions) among ERM libraries
searching for the best practice. One suggestion
advocates the creation of an umbrella ER record
for all single titles, so that it resolves the batch
load issue and creates a consistent public display
for all e-journals. The drawback of this suggestion is the fact that this kind of ER records will
not contain any common data for the individual
unrelated titles. Another suggestion is the creation
of an ER record for every single e-journal title
that already exists in the library catalog. Some
view this approach as redundant and unnecessary. Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting
Initiative (SUSHI) generation could also impact
the decision on the scope of ER records, because
the automatic harvesting of SUSHI statistics only
applies to titles in ERM. Even if publishers were
able to provide usage data based on COUNTER
standard, titles outside of ERM will not generate
SUSHI statistics at present. As single titles not
covered by ERM represent a small portion of Cal
Poly Pomona’s electronic resources and most of
them are free (based upon print subscriptions
through Ebsco), thus, more vulnerable in terms of
access and stability, it was decided to keep them
“outside” of ERM for now.
For some databases, choosing the appropriate
entry for the ield called “Resource name” of an ER
record can be problematic. Proquest, for example,
has multiple independent databases like “Safari
tech books online,” each having a different set of
contents. Some databases are even more complex,
where the provider’s name, the platform’s name,
and the package name are all mixed together such
as Scitation, the relaunch of the Online Journal
Publishing Service (OJPS) of AIP. At Cal Poly
Pomona, the most well known name associated
with a package/database is chosen as the resource
name in an ER record, regardless whether or not
it is the provider’s name, the platform name, or
the package name. The rest of the related names
are tracked as Alternative resource names, even
though in some cases they are not package alternate name at all. In cases where there is confusion,
“qualiiers” are added to allow for differentiation.
For example, the library subscribes to Proquest
products through the CSU consortium as well as
the local site contract. In this case, two ER records
were created in ERM, one for Proquest (CO) (i.e.,
Chancellor’s Ofice) and one for Proquest (NONCO). For complex title situations, the “unpopular”
names are not only provided as alternate resource
names but also explained in detail in note ield(s)
of the ER record.
How to best index the resource name, separately or together with the general title (i.e., as a
potential indexing option), is another discussion
topic among III ERM libraries. Unlike some of
the III ERM libraries that prefer to index resource
name together with the general titles, Cal Poly
Pomona currently chose to keep it indexed separately. This decision is based upon the following
reasons: (1) resource name is generally a package title, which is quite different from individual
e-journal title under general title index; and (2)
since Cal Poly Pomona elects not to display the
315
Challenges and Potentials of Electronic Resource Management
ER record in the library catalog, the title/name
is mostly used by library staff. Including them
in the general title index may cause unnecessary
confusion for both library users and staff.
During the initial ERM implementation stage,
there were times when codes needed to be deined,
potentials needed to be identiied, and new codes
and local customizations needed to be initiated
while creating ERM records. For example, “Right
type” of the ER record has seven values including “Archival terms” which might require local
interpretation or clariication. It is, therefore,
important to set up a local data dictionary to
capture what has been decided for consistency
and for overall quality of the library’s ERM
database (i.e., for more details visit: http://www.
csupomona.edu/~library/BibAccess/ermcodedic.
html). For example, as a Portico member library,
Cal Poly Pomona is currently recording Portico
participation status in the “Archival provisions”
ield of a license record. This practice is recorded
in the dictionary as a local practice. Some of the
local customizations in place at Cal Poly Pomona
include: setting up an additional index for “Resource author,” using ERM display options (i.e.,
governed by wwwoptions) to add headers (i.e., Full
text from:) and banners (i.e., “Title” and “Holdings”) to improve public display, and modifying
license record ixed ields such as “License code
1” to “Interlibrary loan” provision.
Batch Load
One of the major enhancements built in III ERM
system is its ability to load not only MARC record
but also coverage data through batch load function in minutes. A feed ile such as SS review ile
contains information such as ISSN, EISSN, title,
start date, end date, provider name, and URL.
When ERM batch load inds the matching ISSN
and/or title (i.e., or any other combination based
upon speciic criteria) in the library’s catalog,
it creates an e-checkin record and attaches it to
the proper bibliographic record while being ap-
316
pended/soft-linked to the appropriate ER record.
When ERM batch load does not ind the matching
ISSN in the library’s catalog, it does one of the
following two things. In the event it inds multiple
identical ISSN or title, it will generate an error
message in the load report indicating it failed to
set up a proper e-checkin record. Or, if libraries choose to do so, it can create a mini record
instantly. The mini record is created based upon
a template designed speciically for the batch
load. In cases where the matching is complex
or problematic, a special criterion “Alt-lookup”
provided in III ERM may offer additional matches.
For example, Cal Poly Pomona uses the unique
system generated bibliographic record number
as the “Alt-lookup” value to facilitate successful
matching and loading.
The best and the safest way to run ERM
batch load is to start small. As the key element
of soft-linking is the ield in the ER record called
resource ID, one must make sure the resource ID
matches exactly with the resource provider name
in the data feed ile. Otherwise, one may choose
to edit the coverage spreadsheet conversion rules
ile in III ERM to allow matching under different
provider names (see Figure 2).
At Cal Poly Pomona, the large feed ile generated by SS is divided into smaller package speciic
iles. If any modiications have to be made, SS is
updated prior to loading. After the load is completed, the load report is saved immediately as the
report is session speciic. Problems such as unsuccessful match, mini record errors, and display
errors found in the report are then addressed. The
titles that failed the batch load are usually those
with similar wordings and/or ISSN especially in
title change and/or multiple dates situations. For
example, “Antennas and Propagation newsletter,
IRE Professional Groups on” changed its title to
“Antennas and Propagation Society newsletter,
IEEE,” then to “Newsletter (IEEE Antennas
and Propagation Society),” then to “Antennas
and Propagation magazine, IEEE,” and inally to
“IEEE antennas & propagation magazine” over
Challenges and Potentials of Electronic Resource Management
Figure 2. III ERM conversion rules
a span of 48 years. ERM cannot handle this well
and logs the titles as errors. In situations like that,
it is usually most helpful to avoid soft-linking all
together. Creating e-checkin records and linking
them to the proper ER record manually (i.e., hard
linking) was the choice at Cal Poly Pomona. This
method also applies to the case of multiple dates
for a single title such as “IEEE proceedings. G,
circuits, devices, and systems.” To take advantage
of the ERM batch load capability/potential, Cal
Poly Pomona also loaded full text databases that
were never cataloged before such as Ebsco ASE
and Wilson Omni into the library catalog. As
a result, there were thousands of mini records
created as “by-products” of the ERM batch load
and added automatically into OPAC for library
users.
ERM Coverage Edit is found to be a convenient
tool for batch load editing at Cal Poly Pomona.
It works particularly well when: (1) editing data
such as title, URL, diacritics, and coverage data;
(2) deleting and breaking the soft link at both
the title and the package level; and (3) browsing
batch load package list and its content. Coverage
Edit, however, cannot perform the following: (1)
view the change result after each edit directly;
(2) delete the corresponding e-checkin record
in the library catalog; and (3) edit an e-checkin
record created outside of batch load. Nevertheless, Coverage Edit is heavily used at Cal Poly
Pomona, because it provides the most direct way
to identify the proper e-checkin record for edit.
In Coverage Edit mode, the staff can use natural
expressions for dates such as: 20050601 (i.e.,
year, month, and date) instead of a ixed pattern,
such as 856 |k 2001-2005, |i 01-12, |j 01-31 (i.e., for
Jan. 1, 2001-Dec. 31, 2005), in cataloging mode.
One can also sort by a speciic column such as
“title,” “ISSN,” “Start_date,” and so forth to help
identify and edit the correct title more easily, or
select multiple titles for deletion by using only
one click. Coverage Edit also allows the staff to
get rid of a package already loaded by clicking
on the package level deletion button. Because
317
Challenges and Potentials of Electronic Resource Management
the staff cannot remove e-checkin records from
the catalog in Coverage Edit, he/she will have to
capture and delete those records of the package
via III's “Create lists” function.
Inaccuracies and Discrepancies
Based upon Cal Poly Pomona’s experience, there
will always be inaccuracies and discrepancies
associated with ERM batch load. Inaccurate
coverage data is one of the major concerns. Data
provider services such as SS get their coverage
data from publishers in most cases. As the data
provider’s customer is the general public, most
services cannot and do not distinguish library A’s
holding from library B’s. As a result, individual
libraries may need to modify the coverage data
obtained from commercial data provider to match
their own. Other types of inaccuracies/discrepancies also complicate ERM batch load. Different
treatment in title changes and differences between
the print and the online format for the same title
are some examples.
In SS, there are two options a library can choose
to modify coverage data for a speciic database.
First, at the package level, SS offers a useful feature that allows a library to set up its own default
coverage. This feature is “intelligent” enough to
change all related titles’ coverage to the new default
date (i.e., 1995) while keeping the titles that have
a start date later than the new default date (i.e.,
1997) intact. For titles that have start date prior
to the new default date (i.e., 1993), SS will mark
them and allow the staff to manually update the
titles later. For example, Elsevier ScienceDirect
(SD) offers a ive-year contract with CSU starting
in Jan. 2006 with a package in which most of the
titles have a start date of 1995. The Elsevier SD
package in SS, however, has titles with coverage
back to the 19th century. In this case, it makes
sense for Cal Poly Pomona to change the package
default start date to “1995”—present,” so that most
of its SD titles will have an accurate coverage
data. The second option to modify coverage data
318
is at the individual e-journal title level. This is by
far more time consuming and tedious. Emerald
database, for example, is “notorious” at Cal Poly
Pomona because none of the titles’ coverage data
in SS matched. SS informed Cal Poly Pomona the
discrepancy exists as Emerald generates customized coverage data for each customer. Thus, there
is a big discrepancy between Cal Poly Pomona’s
data and SS’. In situations like this, the staff had
no choice but to manually revise all Emerald
titles in SS based upon Cal Poly Pomona speciic
coverage data before loading.
When dealing with discrepancies between
the library’s catalog and SS, what is already
established in the catalog is given more weight.
For example, the print title “IEEE transactions on
parts, materials, and packaging” started in Jun.
1965 and changed its title to “IEEE transactions
on parts, hybrids and packaging” in Apr. 1971.
The online equivalent of the irst title in IEEE
Xplore started in Jan. 1965 and ended in Dec.
1971 before the second title began. Accordingly,
the bibliographic records were not changed but
the coverage data in the corresponding e-checkin
records were updated. The print publication “Antennas and Propagation Society newsletter, IEEE”
(1963-1973) changed its title to “Newsletter (IEEE
Antennas and Propagation Society)” (1973-1987).
Its online version has only one single title “IEEE
Antennas and Propagation Society newsletter”
for the entire period of 1963-1987 with one single
URL. In this case, the two bibliographic records
were maintained and the same URL was used for
the two e-checkin records.
Despite the discrepancies, SS’ data is usually
accepted as is for two reasons. First, the magnitude
of the editing work is usually beyond the library’s
ability to handle. Second, in a full text database
environment, depending upon the database structure, it could be technically dificult to identify
and conirm what exactly are the start date and
the end date. For example, Lexis-Nexis has a start
date Jan. 1, 1984 in SS, but with the way LexisNexis database is organized, it is dificult to verify
Challenges and Potentials of Electronic Resource Management
that Cal Poly Pomona indeed had full text access
starting Jan. 1, 1984. After consulting with the
reference staff, the decision was made to spotcheck the package coverage data (i.e., check every
other 10th title in the case of a large package) after
each batch load. If there are coverage errors, they
are corrected, i.e., the coverage holding data said
“Jan. 1, 1995 – present,” while in fact the library
online access started in “Jan. 1, 2000 – present,”
If there are inaccurate coverage data, they are
accepted as they are, that is, SS data says “Jan. 1,
1995- present” while in fact the library has “Jan.
1, 1993 – present” (i.e., more online access than
indicated). In the event most of the coverage data
are OK (i.e., 80% is accurate), the load is accepted
as is. Otherwise, each title is ixed with the correct
data. For ongoing maintenance, the library decided
that databases with embargo restrictions such as
Ebsco ASE will receive updates on a quarterly
basis, whereas other databases such as JSTOR
will be updated yearly.
CONCLUSION
ExLibris’ SFX and III ERM have become important parts of the library’s resource management
tools at Cal Poly Pomona. Although each service
brings its own set of challenges to the library staff,
they are considered major and effective enhancements in providing access to electronic resources
to users from the librarians’ perspective.
SFX works well with most of Cal Poly Pomona’s heavily used databases such as Ebsco ASE
and Wilson/OmniFile Full Text Mega. Thus, the
students can take advantage of SFX’s contextsensitive linking functions to the fullest extent
possible. However, SFX is not perfect. It does not
work well with some databases such as OCLC
FirstSearch ERIC, especially with ED (i.e., Eric
document) iles, largely due to target databases’
metadata and structure limits. Also, SFX A-Z list
is slow to navigate between pages because it is a
large HTML ile, and it only offers “title” search
capability. To remedy the situation, Cal Poly
Pomona plans to add other SFX features such as
“Citation Linker” and print holdings “look-up”
when time permits. These features will make the
search process faster and improve SFX service by
connecting the A-Z list to print holdings as well
as the library OPAC directly.
III ERM is considered a “rainstorm in a drought
season” product for the library staff at Cal Poly
Pomona, even though the staff realizes the library
has yet to fully tap ERM’s full potential. III ERM
enables the library to add online coverage to the
existing bibliographic records and to produce
thousands of automatically created mini records
for titles covered by full text aggregations such
as Ebsco ASE. Furthermore, the close integration
between III ERM and ILS presents an array of
possibilities for librarians. For example, providing the best record available (i.e., print record)
with the fullest information to the users instead
of multiple records for aggregators is now a possibility, because the URL and the online coverage
data are now delivered via an e-checkin record
instead of a bibliographic record. Another possibility/potential involves utilizing batch load’s
automatic mini record creation function to catalog
selective materials such as GPO (i.e., Government
Printing Ofice) and Juvenile collections. For statistics gathering, the library is now able and will
harvest SUSHI statistics when publishers’ usage
data is available. With the III ENCORE release in
the making, new technologies similar to Endeca
Information Access Platform (Antelman, Lynema,
& Page, 2006) and the tighter integration between
ILS and ERM are expected to bring about even
more future possibilities. As discussed earlier, one
of the major concerns associated with III ERM
continues to be inaccurate coverage data issues.
The inaccuracies observed are not usually caused
by III ERM or SS, but are the result of a mixture
of circumstances such as different bibliographic
control practices between the library and the
data provider, consortia speciic coverage holdings derived from CSU contracts, and a library’s
319
Challenges and Potentials of Electronic Resource Management
ability to sustain quality maintenance. Thus, the
inaccurate coverage data issue will most likely
not be solved by III ERM and may not be resolved
any time soon.
The good news is that ERM is constantly evolving. ERMI phase II, being developed under the
auspices of DLF, has focused its attention in the
areas of data dictionary, license expression, and
usage data. From the ILS vendors’ perspective,
ERM is moving towards enhanced interoperability
with ILS especially in the acquisitions functions
(Medeiros, Miller, Chandler, & Riggio, 2007)
such as renewals and payments and in the serials
functions such as overlap holding comparison
(Fons & Jewell, 2006). Integration between link
resolver and ERM system is also being worked.
From the ERM libraries’ perspective, the next
generation ERM is expected to have a more sophisticated public display, the capability to use
complex data models and tools such as Oracle,
and a single authoritative data store (Antelman,
2005). Being part of the “modularity” technology
infrastructure (Calhoun, 2006), ERM will play a
key role in enhancing and transforming traditional
ILS functions into a library delivery system that
embraces “simplicity and immediacy” (p. 2), as
Riemer (2006) stated.
REFERENCES
Antelman, K. (2005). Implementing a serial work
in an electronic resources management system.
Serials Librarian, 48(3/4), 285-288.
Antelman, K., Lynema, E., & Page, A. K. (2006).
Toward a twenty-irst century library catalog.
Information Technology and Libraries, 25(3),
128-139.
Association of Research Libraries (2002). Collections and access for the 21st-century scholar:
changing roles of research libraries. ARL: A
bimonthly report on research library Issues
and actions from ARL, CNI, and SPARC. 225.
320
Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://www.
arl.org/newsltr/225/index.html
Calhoun, K. (2006). The changing nature of the
catalog and its integration with other discovery
tools. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://
www.loc.gov/catdir/calhoun-report-inal.pdf
Cornell University Libraries (2000). Cornell University Library digital futures plan: July 2000 to
June 2002. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from
http://www.library.cornell.edu/staffweb/CULDigitalFuturesPlan.html
Digital Library Federation (2006). DLF electronic resource management initiative. Retrieved
November 21, 2007, from http://www.diglib.
org/standards/dlf-erm02.htm
Duranceau, E. F. (2000). License tracking. Serials
Review, 26(3), 69-73.
Fons, T., & Jewell, T. (2006, May). Envisioning the
future of ERM systems. Paper presented at the 21st
Annual NASIG Conference, Denver, Colorado.
Friedlander, A. (2002). Dimensions and use of the
scholarly information environment: Introduction
to a data set assembled by the Digital Library
Federation and Outsell, Inc. Washington, D.C.:
Digital Library Federation and Council on Library
and Information Resources. Retrieved November
21, 2007, from http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/
pub110/contents.html
Innovative, Inc. (2006). Digital collections. Electronic resource management. Retrieved November
21, 2007, from http://www.iii.com/mill/digital.
shtml#erm
Lagace, N. (2003). The OpenURL and SFX linking. Serials Librarian, 44 (1/2), 77-89.
Medeiros, N., Miller, L., Chandler, A., & Riggio, A. (2007). White paper on interoperability
between acquisitions modules of integrated library
systems and electronic resource management systems: A draft for comment. Retrieved November
Challenges and Potentials of Electronic Resource Management
21, 2007, from http://www.haverford.edu/library/
DLF_ERMI2/ACQ_ERMS_white_paper.pdf
Riemer, J. J., (in press). Restrategizing bibliographic services and the one good record.
LRTS.
Tull, L., Crum, J., Davis, T., & Strader, C. R.
(2005). Integrating and streamlining electronic
resources worklows via Innovative’s Electronic
Resource Management. Serials Librarian, 47(4),
103-124.
Wakimoto, J. C., Walker, D. S., & Dabbour, K. S.
(2006). The myths and realities of SFX in academic
libraries. Journal of Academic Librarianship,
32(2) 127-136.
321
322
Chapter XVIII
Panorama of Electronic
Resource Management Systems
Margaret Hogarth
University of California, Riverside, USA
Vicki Bloom
University of California, Riverside, USA
ABSTRACT
Management of electronic resources requires more features and ields than legacy integrated library
systems (ILS) can provide. Relationships between title, package, platform and publisher, incident and
breach records, changeable holdings, license, and access restrictions cannot easily be captured. Usage
combined with cost is needed for collection development and public services decisions. This chapter
demonstrates how the Electronic Resource Management Initiative reports, library-developed systems, and
existing and in-process standards help the continuing development of compensating electronic resource
management systems and their integration into ILS. Much more work and discussion is needed in order
to maximize the use of these resources and their data. Modular, extensible, standards-based tools will
supplement legacy ILS and their valuable business and bibliographic data. Vendor-provided bridging
tools, also based on these standards, will enable and maximize data movement between systems.
INTRODUCTION
During the last 20 years, libraries have witnessed
an unprecedented growth in the availability of
electronic content, particularly among serials. A
survey done by Duranceau and Hepfer in 2002
of six institutions found that average e-collection
growth had been 1,100% in 5 years (2002, p. 317).
In 2003, 75% of scholarly journals offered online
access as did most commercial publishers (Cox
& Cox, 2003).
Budgets relected this shift in emphasis. In
1994-1995, 63 ARL libraries reported spending
$11,847,577 on electronic serials; nine years later in
2003-2004, 110 ARL libraries spent $269,601,241.
Over ten years ago, 82 ARL libraries reported
Copyright © 2008, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems
electronic resources expenditures as 3.6% of total
materials expenditures, compared with 111 ARL
libraries in 2003-2004 averaging 31.33% (Kyrillidou & Young, 2005, p. 21). The numbers are
most likely higher today. In an effort to cope with
rising costs, libraries formed consortial buying
arrangements to purchase these resources.
Where libraries had owned materials, they
now provided access. This represented a shift
of paradigm proportion. In the new world of
electronic resources, libraries discovered that
more processes, people, and data collection were
involved. The straight line from the subject selector
to acquisitions to cataloging and inally, the shelf
no longer worked. Electronic resources demanded
licenses, record-keeping of URLs and IP authentication, permissions, and new payment options
such as prepayment, packages by discipline, pay
per view, and micropricing (Schulz, 2001), along
with many other needs. While MARC 856 ields
were added to catalogs beginning in 1995, dealing
with changeable holdings and updating records
presented tough challenges to those managing
electronic content. As electronic content became
available, so did the various options for delivery.
For instance, free online with the print subscription was common, as was a subsequent change
in subscription to print + online at an additional
charge. Technical services departments around the
country bravely tried to track these resources in
meaningful, useful ways. But they all discovered
one common denominator: their integrated library
systems were deemed inadequate for these kinds
of complicated tasks.
BACKGROUND
Library catalogs have struggled to keep up with
electronic resources’ needs. Linking to electronic
resources led to catalogs repurposed as information gateways, moving beyond an inventory list
function. In response to these changes, libraries
began to develop supplemental systems to ad-
dress shortfalls in online cataloging, acquisitions
and other systems; these supplemental systems
captured data not easily stored or easily retrievable from ILS systems. Administrative data
about electronic resources was captured in paper
iles, spreadsheets and other receptacles, not the
catalog. Permitted uses, needed by interlibrary
loan and other staff, could not easily be tied to
the catalog record. A-Z lists built on Web sites,
spreadsheets capturing license terms, administrative information, and package information
quickly became unwieldy. Usage statistics, as
they began to trickle in, were not easily corralled
into cost per use igures, the illusive holy grail of
collection development departments everywhere
(Medeiros, 2006).
LOCALLY DEVELOPED ERMS:
EARLY DEVELOPMENT
Libraries began to cobble together supplemental
systems and tools in an effort to shore up informational needs required by electronic resources.
Using spreadsheets, paper iles, databases, and
combinations of these, data about electronic
resources began to be consolidated on an ad hoc
basis, and in response to local needs. Those institutions able to build higher level local systems or
tools invested a great deal of time and resources
into their projects. Often development involved
partnerships between librarians and information
technology staff. Development in many cases
took signiicant time. Some systems were used
then later discontinued as commercial products
began to enter the market. A few systems that were
created were never oficially launched and others
were underutilized due to inadequate data.
These initial early systems attempted to address more than one of the following functions:
1.
Listing/descriptive: Ability to generate AZ lists in facile ways, including titles from
323
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems
Table 1.1. Locally developed ERMs:Early development
1998
Locallydeveloped
systems, Phase 1
Open Source
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
2001
Jewell/DLF
Report
OpenURL
Linking
2002
ERMI Steering
Group formed
Locally-developed
systems, Phase 2
aggregator databases. Tie titles to package
information.
License: Track and convey permitted resource uses at the point of use to patrons.
Financial/purchasing: View titles by package, publisher or interface to align subscriptions more eficiently. Monitor upcoming
renewals.
Process/status: Track the processing
progress of electronic resources as they are
acquired, licensed, and implemented. Alert
patrons when resources are temporarily
unavailable.
Systems/technical: Track resource performance issues and episodes.
Contact and support: Store correspondence, service histories, and/or technical
support.
Usage: Capture usage data and/or locations
of publisher-produced usage data
(Jewell, 2001).
All of the early systems lacked interoperability with their ILS, required dual data entry
and/or downloads from the ILS or other systems
and upload into the ERMs. Examples of early
local systems were: Serials Cybrarian, Taylor
University’s TPAS, MIT’s Vera, The University
of Washington and Cornell’s CORC, Grifith
University Library’s ERD, Pennsylvania State’s
ERLIC, Johns Hopkins HERMES, and UCLA’s
ERDb.
324
2003
COUNTER
2004
ERMI Report
First integrated
ERMS
Commercial
products with
ERMS features
2006
SUSHI
ERMI-2
Steering
Group
formed
2007
SERU
As a irst step, many libraries developed Webbased lists of electronic resources geared for
patron use. Examples include Serials Cybrarian
and Taylor University’s TPAS.
Gary O. Roberts developed Serials Cybrarian in 1998 for Alfred University in New York
to maintain, search and link to e-journal holdings. A second version was developed and made
publicly available for purchase in 2001. While
popular with colleagues at Alfred University, the
product was not commercially successful (Sitko
et al., 2002). The library later chose to purchase
TDNet (Cooper & Lester, 2005).
The Taylor Periodical Administration System
(TPAS) was a database Web application with
a search interface (Taylor Periodical List) for
print and online periodicals. It also included an
administrative interface for storing and managing
administrative data about periodicals.
The irst system, developed in 2001, was a
home grown system based on ASP and Microsoft
Access. It used vendor title lists combined with an
Excel list of print titles. The database was maintenance intensive, requiring manual merging of
title information from disparate vendor title lists,
combined with print subscriptions, additions and
cancellations. Even with its limits, TPAS became
a critical library tool, the second most used after
the library catalog.
A revision in 2003 added functionality to the
administrative module. Enhanced searching allowed searches by subject and ISSN, as well as
by keyword in title. Full text holdings became
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems
more reliable. Database architecture was robust
and scripting language was added to address the
increased trafic and system load. When SFX,
ExLibris’ openURL linking tool was launched,
it was integrated into TPAS.
On the technical end, the process to add a
periodical and compare incoming title lists with
existing title lists needed simpliication, as did
functional output to usable ile formats. Autodelete was needed in the monthly update process.
Despite obvious development time and energy,
TPAS still required subject ields, on-the-ly
reports for management and statistics information, XML functionality, and postupdate ind and
replace functions (Wissman et al., 2005).
Aside from providing descriptive listings of
electronic resources, the need to record and communicate license information to staff and users
drove development of MIT’s Vera and the University of Washington systems license database.
In response to usability test complaints about
navigation and use, MIT Libraries developed
a database-backed Web site, Vera, using FileMaker Pro to replace a tool developed in 1999.
By 2001, Vera was being used to track licenses,
manage URLs and handle proxy information for
e-resources, including aggregator titles. It also
associated selectors with resources. Searchable
by subjects using an expanded lat list of librarygenerated database subjects, Vera was intended
to provide one-stop access. The results screen
showed title, coverage dates, format, licensing
restrictions, and icons indicating online and
remote availability (through shortcut persistent
URLs) (Hennig, 2002).
The University of Washington’s license database went a step further. In development in
2001, ields were created for vendor, status, date
signed, duration, and captured permitted uses
such as e-reserves, course-packs, downloading,
copy, scholarly sharing, walk-ins, commercial
use, special terms, and archival/ongoing access
rights. Additionally, a digital registry was used
to generate the production database and e-journal
lists, with the ability to add subjects and categories
(Jewell, Appendix B, 2001).
Several systems recorded inancial and purchasing data in addition to listing and license
functions. Examples include Cornell’s CORC,
Grifith University’s ERD and Pennsylvania
State’s ERLIC.
Cornell’s CORC (Cooperative Online Resource Catalog) system was based on 35 elements
relevant to electronic resources including selector,
genre, access, number of simultaneous users,
price and payment history. Based on the Dublin
Core resource description framework plus elements needed to describe and manage licensed
electronic resources, CORC was meant to initiate
some standardization among projects going on at
UCLA, University of Washington, Notre Dame
and Penn State University. A simple Web-based
database was to be completed in 2001 (Chandler,
2000). Cornell switched to Innovative’s ERM in
2005 (Medeiros et al., 2007).
In 1998, Griffith University Library in
Queensland, Australia switched to using one record for both print and electronic journals. After
the Grifith team saw an ERLIC presentation
at NASIG in 1999, they decided to use Access
stored in ORACLE architecture to develop their
Electronic Resources Database (ERD). ERD was
a staff tool where data could be recorded in one
place. Data came from the catalog record and local subject descriptors were added (Schulz, 2001).
Its management reports included a summary of
journal holdings, journals by currency, by fund
code, order status, by publisher and by database.
ERD was thought to be a database solution until
library systems could cope (Schulz, 2001).
ERLIC (Electronic Resources Licensing and
Information Center) was developed for Pennsylvania State’s 23-campus university system. Built
in Access in 1999 for acquisitions and renewals,
it evolved into a tool for ordering, access, authentication and licensing information. In 2001 they
switched to a Cold Fusion base which eventually
changed to Oracle. In designing the tool, they
325
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems
took care to assess stakeholders’ information
needs. They identiied as their priorities the
need to access data and critical documents, the
ability to generate reports, update records, track
problems, new products, and access privileges,
and generate an e-journal list. Later, they added
an optical image database for licenses. Since it is
a large multicampus system, Penn State created
a billboard function to alert the public of access
problems, trials, and new resources (McCaslin,
2003).
As the database grew larger, ERLIC became
cumbersome to update and query, taking more
staff time to maintain the data. Although it was
a large system, some information needs still were
not being met. Some critical documentation was
not handy and not available outside technical
services, and acquisitions iles were not secure
(Alan, 2002).
Johns Hopkins University’s HERMES (Hopkins Electronic Resource Management System)
tracked the approval process in addition to listing,
license, and process/status functions. Beginning
in 1999 with a need to manage links for electronic
resources, a Web-based database was built that
allowed generation of alphabetic and subjectspeciic lists of resources, both licensed and
unlicensed, on the library Web site. Elsewhere in
the library, speciications for a license-tracking
database were discussed. This work was folded
into the project, along with worklows and approval processes. Called HERMES, this new
system would automatically capture appropriate
data from the ILS using XML and scheduled updates. This allowed interoperability with existing
and future systems. Staff using HERMES were
assigned speciic functional roles allowing local
changes to be made without modifying code. In
2001, planning was inluenced by the information
available on Web Hub. HERMES was scheduled
to go live in the spring of 2003 then became open
source software (Cyzyk & Robertson, 2003).
UCLA’s Electronic Resources Database
(ERDb) tried to address most ERMS functions.
326
In 2001 Sharon Farb and Angela Riggio and their
team at UCLA established guiding principles for
its Electronic Resources Database project:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Know your users and uses
Avoid unnecessary duplication
Accommodate growth
Design for lexibility
Have one database but many views
Deine metadata elements
Have the ability to implement in phases
Provide for usage data *
(Farb & Riggio, 2002)
(* Note: It is not clear here whether usage
data refers to the ability to collect usage data
or where to access usage data.)
These principles proved to be very inluential
to later planning and development of ERMS by
academic libraries, consortia, and vendors and
other agencies.
UCLA’s “one database, many views” design
principle lent itself to capturing the complex nature of the electronic resource, and signiicantly
inluenced ERMS design and function for the
industry. Fields communicating life cycle information, such as acquisition, implementation,
product maintenance and review were presented
and grouped in ways that were meaningful to staff
work processes (Jewell et al., 2004).
The records set up the distinction between
publisher/producer, issuing body (corporate,
association, society, etc.), and access provider
(supplier of information), although the information was not always easily available (UCLA, mhr
and lss, 2002, Examples of publisher…) But the
system, for instance, did not have a package listbuilding function.
Like all the other systems mentioned, UCLA’s
system was burdened by similar workload demands. Plain and simple, the input and editing
of data increased as the number and complexity
of titles, packages, exceptions, and variations increased. UCLA also had to contend with complex
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems
consortial possibilities, pricing, and problems.
Data needed to be standardized for migration and
synchronized with the OPAC. Most importantly,
electronic resource management had not been
systematized in the organization and a formal
structure of worklow with clearly deined roles
had not been established. (UCLA, 2004, UC survey pp. 2, 5). This severely limited the usefulness
and applicability of the ERDb. UCLA and the UC
campuses are exploring other systems (Medeiros
et al., 2007).
THE CRY FOR STANDARDS
As the community of librarians working on
electronic resource management systems grew in
scope and proile, Tim Jewell and Adam Chandler
of Cornell University formed Web Hub in 2001,
a site for exchanging information. Information
posted on Web Hub inluenced projects under
development (Jewell, 2006).
A group of librarians interested in electronic
resource management issues met at ALA 2001.
From those discussions, interested librarians
organized a formal meeting at ALA Midwinter
2002. Tim Jewel of the University of Washington
gave an overview of the pivotal DLF Report, Selection and Presentation of Commercially Available Electronic Resources: Issues and Practices
to the 34 attendees. This report summarized the
electronic environment, the tremendous growth
in electronic resources and associated stafing
and iscal responsibilities, and practices, coping
mechanisms and tools that libraries have developed to manage these resources. It discussed
effects from consortial efforts and scholarly
communication reform, and the complications
of managing changeable aggregated resources.
After featuring ERMS efforts at various universities, the report noted the need for standards,
affordable commercial systems, and the beneit
of cooperative efforts.
Nathan Robertson, HERMES Committee
member from Johns Hopkins, and Sharon Farb
of UCLA gave presentations on local electronic
resource management systems. Tim Jewell and
Nicole Hennig of MIT shared information about
MIT’s Vera, and Lib-Lion, the next generation
tool for Penn State after ERLIC.
Tim Jewell and Diane Rosolowsky discussed
their “Draft Plan and Discussion Paper: Terms and
Deinitions for Managing Electronic Resources.”
Attendees requested that a metadata standard
be developed for descriptive metadata, access
restrictions, license details, and administrative
management. Three groups were formed to focus
on access, identiication and licensing, to report
at the 2002 ALA Annual Conference (Cyzyk &
Robertson, 2003; Chandler, 2002a).
As librarians shared their systems’ functions
and data elements on Web Hub, it became obvious
that standards would help systematize the similar
issues that the libraries were building systems to
address (Jewell, 2006).
From these efforts an informal steering group
Table 1.2. The cry for standards
1998
Locallydeveloped
systems, Phase 1
Open Source
2001
Jewell/DLF
Report
OpenURL
Linking
2002
ERMI Steering
Group formed
Locally-developed
systems, Phase 2
2003
COUNTER
2004
ERMI Report
First integrated
ERMS
Commercial
products with
ERMS features
2006
SUSHI
ERMI-2
Steering
Group
formed
2007
SERU
327
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems
grew around Jewell, Chandler, Farb, Angela Riggio (UCLA), Robertson, Ivy Anderson (Harvard),
and Kimberly Parker (Yale). The steering group
joined with Patricia Harris and Priscilla Caplan at
NISO, and Daniel Greenstein (DLF) in efforts that
led to the Workshop on Standards for Electronic
Resource Management in May 2002. About 50
librarians and vendor representatives attended
the workshop from EBSCO, Endeavor, ExLibris,
Fretwell-Downing, Innovative Interfaces, Sirsi,
and Serials Solutions. At the workshop, Jewell
discussed the need for standards for data sharing;
Robertson presented a model entity relationship
diagram for managing license metadata, and
discussed descriptive metadata. Farb discussed licensing issues and UCLA’s mantra, “one database,
many views.” Anderson described function and
data requirements for access and administration
and challenges to standards development. Attendees came to consensus that it would be helpful to
have standards to guide the development of ERM
systems. In order to reduce duplication of effort
and development costs, promote interoperability
and data sharing, the steering group chose to
pursue a formal collaboration that included best
practices (Jewell, 2006; Chandler, 2002b).
The 2002 ALA meeting in Atlanta had a follow-up meeting, attended by 80 people, about 50
from the NISO/DLF meeting and 10-15 from ALA
Midwinter. Representatives from Endeavor, ExLibris, Ebsco and other vendors were there. At that
time Tim Jewel and the University of Washington
were preparing to work with Innovative Interfaces
(III) to build an electronic resource management
stand-alone module. This tool would tie license
information to the title level, group aggregator
titles, and communicate to users when resources
were unavailable. At the same meeting, Christa
Easton of Stanford reported that they were moving a previous system into an Access database.
Colorado Alliance was continuing development
of Gold Rush, as was Johns Hopkins’ HERMES,
Nathan Robertson reported. Penn State’s ERLIC2,
had outgrown its Access form and was moving
328
to Cold Fusion/Oracle. The Tri College Consortium was building their system in Filemaker, as
reported by Norm Medeiros. Emory University
Library was using an MS SQL server with an
Access front-end for staff and an .asp front end
for patrons. Kimberly Parker of Yale University
Library described moving metadata for 1700 journals into their system. Ivy Anderson of Harvard
University detailed functional areas and elements
for access and support and emphasized a life cycle
perspective, reiterated UCLA’s guiding principle,
“one database, many views.” Also discussed at
the meeting were the roles of centralized and
localized needs and practices.
At that time, Tim Jewell and the steering
group were working on a proposal to the DLF in
support of standards for e-license management
that would result in a report on state of the art
e-license management systems, speciications
for metadata management, and an XML scheme
(Chandler, 2002c).
ERMI
In Fall 2002, the DLF became oficial sponsor of
the Electronic Resource Management Initiative
(ERMI) project (Cyzyk & Robertson, 2003).
ERMI would begin the work of standardizing
access to and information about electronic
resources. Reactor panels of librarians and vendors were formed to provide advice. Standards
would accelerate vendor development efforts at
reduced cost and risk. Products with predictable
data streams were important to shops with selfdeveloped systems that may want to transfer to a
commercial system later. It was also hoped that
libraries could exchange permitted uses during
applicable practices such as interlibrary loan.
ERMI Deliverables
ERMI deliverables included a road map and problem deinitions, worklow diagram, functional
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems
speciications, an entity relationship diagram,
data elements and deinitions, XML schema, and a
inal report. Emphasis was on the use of standards
to maximize areas of common interest, to reduce
vendor development costs and time investment,
and the use of “predictable pathways,” easing
transfer of data from existing library systems
(Jewell et al., 2004).
ERMI: Guiding Principles
Guiding principles for ERMS functional requirements of selection and acquisition, access,
administration, user support, renewal and retention were:
•
•
•
•
“Print and e-resource management and
access should be through an integrated
environment”
“Information provided should be consistent,
regardless of the path taken”
“Each data element should have a single
point of maintenance”
“ERM systems should be suficiently lexible to make it possible to easily add new
or additional ields and data elements”
Librarians needed to see relationships between titles, packages, interfaces, and licenses.
At the same time, the ability to control staff access and views to protect information integrity
and to group task-related ields was important.
Resource discovery was needed for collection
development. The business end of electronic
resources demanded tie-in with pricing, cancellation, renewal, consortial, and similar information
(Jewell et al., 2004).
Main worklow processes were diagramed:
Product consideration and trial processes, license
negotiation, technical evaluation, business negotiation, product maintenance and review (Jewell
et al., 2004). The ILS would perform ordering,
budgeting, and fund accounting functions, as
well as store the bibliographic record. Additional
ERMS core functions included the ability to export
data from the ILS for analysis, the ability to talk
to the ILS, link resolution services, and federated
search tools. The system should also store and/or
point to usage statistics, and record and generate URIs (Jewell, et al., 2004, 4.3.1. Functional
Requirements, ¶ 14, 16-19).
Libraries would then take the information
about electronic resources stored in the ERMS
and use it to inform Web-based resource pages
with license permissions, off-campus access,
temporary access interruptions and other timely
information (Jewell et al., 2004).
The data structure mapped the entity relationship diagram. The data dictionary showed element
type, functionality, optimality, repeatability, suggested values, and notes (Jewell et al., 2004). A
“quick-ix” set of license terms and larger set of
license elements were focused on for XML deliverables once it was realized that a much broader
discussion was needed for other possible data
transfer functions (Jewell et al., 2004).
ERMI: Reactions
Reactions to the DLF ERMI were positive, with
vendors subsequently developing systems that
leaned heavily on the document’s deliverables
(Jewell, 2004). Still to be addressed were consortial issues, particularly when dealing with
different ILS and ERMS systems, maximizing
usage data, following resource succession paths,
and continuation of work on data standards (Jewell
et al., 2004).
LOCALLY DEVELOPED ERMS: THE
SECOND PHASE
In 2002 the digital environment continued to grow
exponentially. User behavior supported increased
use of digital resources and fueled the demand
for easier, more convenient, Google-like functionality. Electronic resources demanded more
329
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems
Table 1.3. Locally developed ERMs: The second phase
1998
Locallydeveloped
systems, Phase 1
Open Source
2001
Jewell/DLF
Report
OpenURL
Linking
2002
ERMI Steering
Group formed
Locally-developed
systems, Phase 2
and more management, yet ILSs were not able
to capture the complex nature and relationships
of these resources. Libraries continued to build
local automated tools to ill the gap.
Bibliographic databases increased in numbers
and size, with the complimentary need to present
those resources to users in various ways (Jewell
et. al., 2004). Even though vendors had begun
providing A-Z lists of journals based on database
holdings, these lists did not work well with the
ILS. OpenURL solutions, citation-based linking
in context, added a complex layer to management
of electronic resources. Additionally, license
agreements had supplanted copyright law, often
accompanied by complex negotiations, necessitating the need to track negotiations’ progress.
License terms themselves were dificult to capture
in a systematic, standardized way. The growth in
consortial purchases had done much to complicate this picture. At the same time, staff needed
to know more about electronic resources such as
status, access details, permissions, and so forth.
Planned, cyclical reviews of electronic resources
were needed, as well as the ability to report their
usage (Jewell et. al., 2004).
Despite development of tools and the initial
commercial products with some ERMS functions,
the need to manage e-resources far preceded the
general release of the irst commercial ERMS
from Innovative Interfaces in 2004 (Duranceau,
2004). Local systems continued to be developed,
often inluenced by ERMI. Several local systems
are surveyed by ERMS function below.
330
2003
COUNTER
2004
ERMI Report
First integrated
ERMS
Commercial
products with
ERMS features
2006
SUSHI
ERMI-2
Steering
Group
formed
2007
SERU
Listing tools continued to be developed, as exempliied by Montana State University and USC.
Montana State University created a Master Serial
List using Excel to track information in 2002.
With columns for title, ISSNs, price (several years’
worth), LC classiication, subscription service,
package, print version, electronic version, and
notes, reports could be generated with package
level detail, including number of titles, subscription length, notes, contact name, e-mail, and
phone. Access was for staff only through a shared
network drive (Marshall & Kawaski, 2005).
University of Southern California’s health sciences consortial libraries had a system for populating Web sites with e-resources in place since
1999 but needed a combined database and port
that met the university’s standards for hardware
and software. The libraries wanted one database
for both systems and users to search (Brown,
Nelson, & Wineburgh-Freed, 2005). Inluenced
by Web Hub, in particular UCLA, Washington
State University, and The Tri College Consortium
(Bryn Mawr, Haverford, Swarthrone), phase I duplicated the preexisting tool. Phase II, developed
later, included free Web resources, licensed, paid,
books, journals and databases (Brown, Nelson,
& Wineburgh-Freed, 2005).
Searchable by multiple ields, changes in the
database trickled down to hierarchical data. More
reporting was needed, including titles by gateway
and selector, and the ability to run reports without
programmer intervention. Staff ability to add and
delete subject categories without the programmer’s
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems
involvement was also needed (Brown, Nelson, &
Wineburgh-Freed, 2005).
In response to local needs, a variety of systems
were developed that focused on speciic ERMS
functions.
In 1996 BEOnline was developed at the Library of Congress in an effort to address issues
in identifying, selection and cataloging electronic
resources. The process and tool included cataloging guidelines, selection criteria, worklow, and
trafic manager. TrackER was developed to replace
BEOnline and put into production in 2003 to assist in the distribution and tracking of electronic
resources. Based on ECIP (electronic cataloging
in publication), recording basic bibliographic
information, TrackER virtually tracks a resource
through selection, cataloging and access. The
database was searchable by title, subject, catalog
ID, OCLC and LCCN numbers, URL, language or
access ID. TrackER was made available to libraries
able to support the Oracle and UNIX architecture
(Hayes & Lerner, 2004; ALCTS, 2004).
The EJournal Project, Kansas Regents Libraries version 4.0, January 2001, both a staff and
public tool, allowed search by title, package, or
publisher. Journals and databases were included.
Results showed producer, contact information,
titles licensed under the package, informational
URL, number of users, package code, licensed
through, access type, sent to contracts, sent on
date, contract status, canceled + date, ILL information, and public notes. It is unclear where
this information intersected with staff and public
interfaces, but it appeared to be a robust license
and package tool (The EJournal Project, 2001).
Originally developed by the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries (CARL), Gold Rush,
a resource discovery and management system,
provided a public search interface for serials
including an openURL link resolver, A-Z list,
article inder, and browsing capabilities. Importing and exporting of data was done by Gold
Rush staff. Custom ield mapping was needed in
order to interact with an ILS (Baker & Blocker,
2005; Machovec, 2002). Now sold by TLC, Gold
Rush produces a real-time A-Z journal title list
and a collection analyzer that allows comparison
of titles lists from aggregators, publishers and
indexing/abstracting services with or without
subscriptions (TLC, 2005). This hosted service
provides automated data updates and synchronization, manages URIs, IPs, license elements, usage
statistics and reports on the resource and package level, and tracks price history. It also stores
scanned licenses and has renewal alerts. Records
are enhanced with additional Library of Congress
and medical subject headings. Gold Rush does
not track breach or access problems (Machovec,
2002; Meyer, 2005; Wilson, 2006).
University of North Carolina, Greensboro took
a different approach with Journal Finder, whose
functions included listing, usage and providing
document delivery. In August 2001 Journal Finder
launched and allowed, without mediation, access
to any print or electronic article needed whether or
not owned by the library. Journal Finder included
online and print holdings, document delivery options and links to other library catalogs. Through
the use of icons, the search results screen directed
users to online, print or document delivery options. Usage statistics were also gathered. Data
from publishers, aggregators, complimentary access, and free Websites was entered and checked
periodically for accuracy.
The library used vendor title lists to populate
the database, and decided against using Library
of Congress subject headings, instead using a
vocabulary based on the university’s academic
departments. Aggregator titles were not included.
The database was a good interim solution until
vendors could provide a product with the ability to search sets and license through a central
interface (Felts, 2001).
Oklahoma University’s LORA (Library Online
Resource Access) tool focused on listing, license,
and process/status functions, and was developed
for databases, electronic journals, and resources.
Patrons could search by title, type of resource, and
331
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems
by subject heading. Patrons could view descriptions, coverage dates, resource provider, physical
location in the library, usage information, and
status. There was a link to licensing information,
the ability to report technical problems, a list of
restrictions such as simultaneous users, a link to
download an Endnote connection ile, link to user
guides if available, and announcements. LORA
serves as a central point to license information
since many librarians work on licenses (Robbins,
& Smith, 2004).
Utah State University Library’s ColdFusion
E-Journal Database was developed in response
to unwieldy hand management of journal lists.
Primary functions were listing, license and tracking inancial/purchasing information. Built using
ColdFusion, the database incorporated aggregated
titles, allowed tracking of license agreements,
provided access by title, publisher, subject and
keyword, and showed multiple access points and
corresponding holdings. When it became available, the library subscribed to Serials Solutions
to help populate the database. Even so, keeping
up with data for consortial purchases remained
a problem, including managing copies of license
agreements, tracking renewal dates and getting
accurate lists of titles included in the subscription
(Brewer, Rozum, & Shrode, 2004).
The University of Illinois at Chicago used
various paper and spreadsheet tools that proved
inadequate and cumbersome. Mircea Stefancu
(electronic services librarian) developed an
electronic version in 2002, which evolved into a
database, DOLLeR (Database of Library Licensed
Electronic Resources), built by Jay Lambrecht
(interim associate university librarian). The database had good bibliographic information, current
holdings, the URL, order and payment information (including the history), vendor information,
circulation information (including use statistics),
licenses negotiated and maintained, contacts
listed and updated, worklow and problem reports
(Stefacu, Bloss, & Lambrecht, 2004).
332
Some systems addressed most ERMS functional requirements such as Boston College
Libraries’ ERMdb. Built in 2004 based on the
DLF’s recommended functional requirements,
the system provided 2 views, a read-only and a
write version, and integrates with the Aleph ILS,
SFX and MetaLib. A crystal reports function
allowed report viewing and exporting in Word,
Excel and PDF (Boston College Libraries, n.d.;
Kidd, 2004).
In building the ERMdb, Boston College followed the DLF ERM best practices, but designed
their own metadata schema and cross-walked it
to the DLF ERM schema. They also designed
the user interface, functional requirements and
worklow (Wolfe, 2005).
E-Matrix, North Carolina State was a license
management tool meeting most ERMS functional
requirements, was built on the DLF’s data element
scheme and has additional features. E-Matrix was
built to support acquisition and licensing, collection management, and resource discovery. The
system was built to allow migration of data into
E-Matrix from existing systems. The system uses
FRBR (functional requirements for bibliographic
records). E-Matrix captures license, subscription
information, statistics, technical support information, remote access, evaluative data, and vendor
data into the administrative metadata. It leveraged
the authority in the ILS database with descriptive
and administrative metadata (Pace, 2004).
E-Matrix brought together print and electronic
versions of the same work. It distinguished between library-selected titles and aggregated titles.
The system allowed resource discovery, and could
store patron queries. New lists were easily created. It used SFX, LC subjects and catalog data,
including fund codes, to populate the database,
and had robust reporting functionality. While
implementing, they found that the technical services worklow needed radical changes, and that
nonstandard data is not so bad and that standard
data is not so good (Pace, 2006).
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems
As commercial systems became available,
libraries needed to weigh the advantages of maintaining a home grown system with the costs of
populating a new system. Over time, more and
more libraries have chosen to go with commercial
systems due to staff and resource demands.
ERMI 2
The DLF Electronic Resource Management Initiative, Phase II (ERMI 2), currently in progress,
continues work started in phase I. ERMI 2’s
steering group comprises chair, Timothy Jewell
(University of Washington), Ivy Anderson (California Digital Library), Adam Chandler (Cornell),
Trisha Davis (Ohio State University), Sharon Farb
and Angela Riggio (UCLA), Linda Miller (Library
of Congress), and Nathan Robertson (University
of Maryland Law Library) (Digital Library Federation, 2005, General Strategy, Oversight, and
Outreach, ¶ 1). http://dlfermi.blogspot.com/
ERMI 2 activities are focused in three major
areas:
1.
2.
Reviewing and revising the data dictionary
for consistency and extensibility.
Incorporating standardized licensing terms
(based upon EDItEUR/ONIX transmission
standard-based license messaging standard
and digital rights expression efforts by NISO
for museums and archives frames) with the
3.
hope that they can be based on ERMI data
elements.
Extracting and analyzing usage data using
ARL E-metrics and Project COUNTER and
SUSHI.
(Digital Library Federation, 2005)
As part of the ERMI2 effort, a draft white
paper on the “Interoperability between Acquisitions Modules of Integrated Library Systems
and Electronic Resource Management Systems”
was released for comment in January 2007
http://www.haverford.edu/library/DLF_ERMI2/
ACQ_ERMS_white_paper.pdf. The effort focuses on the need to automate how acquisitions
data moves from the ILS to the ERMS. The paper
updates conversions of ERMS at four libraries and
describes worklows (Medeiros et al., 2007). We
can anticipate interesting developments as these
efforts continue.
COMMERCIAL SYSTEMS
With libraries’ increasingly demanding ways to
harness electronic resources, commercial enterprises began to step in and ill the void. Systems
ranged from serial vendors, serial data vendors,
ERMS to publication access management systems
(PAMS) and openURL linking. While these
vendors based their systems on ERMI functional
requirements, most did not include all ERMS
Table 1.4. ERMI 2
1998
Locallydeveloped
systems, Phase 1
Open Source
2001
Jewell/DLF
Report
OpenURL
Linking
2002
ERMI Steering
Group formed
Locally-developed
systems, Phase 2
2003
COUNTER
2004
ERMI Report
First integrated
ERMS
Commercial
products with
ERMS features
2006
SUSHI
ERMI-2
Steering
Group
formed
2007
SERU
333
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems
Table 1.5. Commercial systems
1998
Locallydeveloped
systems, Phase 1
Open Source
2001
Jewell/DLF
Report
OpenURL
Linking
2002
ERMI Steering
Group formed
Locally-developed
systems, Phase 2
functions. Most, however, did integrate print
and electronic holdings and provide an access
and activation service for journals, A-Z listing,
and openURL linker. Frequently, they offered
management of license status and a repository for
signed licenses. A few offered resource management worklows, incident reports, ways to store
contact information, and trialed resources. It
was the rare system (e.g., HERMIS) that tracked
statistics’ site information. All the commercial
systems were Web based and in most cases, commercially hosted (Duranceau, 2005).
Examples include: TDNet, JournalWebCite,
HERMIS, EbscoNet, SFX, and SerialsSolutions’
ERMS. Associated tools include LibSGR (Villanova University).
The University of South Carolina had been
maintaining e-resources both in the library catalog and on their Web site, a tedious and dificult
process. By investing in TDNet, they had hoped to
streamline the worklow yet expand their source of
data. Their aggregator titles, for example, had not
been included in the catalog and were dificult to
ind. Retrieval of usage statistics was also dificult.
Launched at the university library in 2000, TDNet
allowed access to ejournals, electronic indexes
and other resources at the Library (McMullen &
Wilmott, 2005). Modular in design, TDNet had
multiple components, and has been purchased by
a broad spectrum of libraries worldwide. Its Ejournal management (EJM) component provided
an A-Z list, coverage, database/vendor information, print holdings and tables of content. The
334
2003
COUNTER
2004
ERMI Report
First integrated
ERMS
Commercial
products with
ERMS features
2006
SUSHI
ERMI-2
Steering
Group
formed
2007
SERU
EJM results included additional services for “ask
a librarian” and ILL. TDNet included: TES, an
eContent searcher; CMS, a catalog maintenance
service; and TOUR, an openURL resolver. TOUR
became available in 2003 (McMullen & Wilmott,
2005; Duranceau, 2005).
OpenURL resolvers usually provide an A-Z
listing service in addition to resolving openURLs,
linking citations within context. Resolvers are
bundled with many database products, are locally
developed and come as stand-alone products.
Herbert Van de Sompel developed SFX and the
openURL framework at the University of Ghent. SFX was irst available in 2001, introducing
the concept of context-sensitive linking. Now a
NISO standard, users can link from a “source”
(Abstracting & Indexing) database to a target (full
text) (Wakimoto, Walker, & Dabbour, 2006).
SFX transmits metadata for resources in the
knowledge base on the following ields: full
text (including DOIs), holdings, ILL, reviews,
abstract, table of contents, author/cited author,
reference/cited reference, cited book, cited genome, cited record, author e-mail, Web search,
and Web services such as links to order services,
request forms, or other Web forms that can use
bibliographic information (ExLibris, 2006,). The
depth and variety of linking depends on the degree
to which the metadata is supported by vendors,
publishers and hosting services. Like many other
systems, SFX offers browsing and searching of
subscribed/licensed titles (including aggregated
titles) and Citation Linker. Citation Linker’s title
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems
search is dependent on exact title, which can be
problematic. Keyword searching was incorporated
in the version 3 release. SFX also permits Z39.50
searching of the library catalog (Holman, 2005).
Local items and holdings can be added and their
syntax checked. Furthermore, titles can be manually added to a publisher portfolio (Ives, 2005).
SFX supports various tools that maximize the
value of the data in the knowledge base including overlap analysis and exporting in various
formats for other systems. Exports can be saved
for comparison, lessening maintenance efforts.
ONIX import tool (for licenses) is available in
command-line form. Mapping is available for
SOH iles from EBSCO Information Systems
(ExLibris, 2006).
The large serials vendor, EBSCO added several modules to its EBSCONet product, the selfnamed serials management system for ordering,
searching, claiming and renewing periodicals.
The EJS basic interface allows search and access
to subscribed e-journals whereas the enhanced
EJS provides statistical reports for subscribed
services. It includes a customizable journal title
list for print and electronic journals and easy
to generate usage reports. EBSCONet also has
its own URL link resolver named LinkSource,
and is widely purchased in the library industry.
Customers, however, found maintenance of the
title list labor intensive. Recommendations for
future enhancements included more sophisticated
alphabetization and the addition of MeSH and
LOC subject headings (Lingle, 2005).
HERMIS is a serials subscription agent that has
begun to embed ERM-like services in its subscription services (Duranceau, 2005). It is available in
two levels of service versions of OttoSerials 3.0,
the serials management system. The hosted staff
tool notiies clients of publisher/vendor changes,
including policy changes. It provides an ordering/payment/renewal/cancellation service and
links to publishers’ licenses. The system stores
scanned licenses, too. Libraries create an activation proile with contact and IP information that
HERMIS staff use to activate titles. Data can be
exported to other systems. The product supports
resource identiication and evaluation, ordering
and payment, renewals and cancellations, licensing, activation, and technical access management.
COUNTER-compliant usage tracking is available
to higher-level customers. A-Z lists or openURL
linking is not provided, but is offered through industry partnerships (Collins, 2005; Harrassowitz,
2006; Library Technology Reports, 2006).
Developed by Ben Adams and Jefferson H.
Clark in 2001, JournalWebCite was meant to be
a one-stop access point for electronic journals
whether single titles, in a package, or as part of
an aggregated database. Print and microform
holdings could be incorporated as well. JournalWebCite could provide XML, HTML, CSV
and MARC-ready exports for incorporation into
library catalogs. Reports included subscription,
journal, database, collection development overlap,
provider cost, database cost, expiration, usage
statistics (90 days), global usage statistics (end
of year), and top ten targets. In 2002 it was noted
that publisher embargo periods by title were not
easily available. The tool included Library of
Congress subject headings (Sitko et al., 2002). In
early 2003 TDNet took over the JournalWebCite
customer base (EContent, 2003).
LibSGR is a tool focused solely on managing
usage statistics. Developed by Andrew Nagy,
LibSGR compiles usage statistics for journals.
His work inluenced ERUS, an open source program focused initially on indexing and abstracting database statistics gathering. Tables include
journal, vendor, publisher, and department. Fields
include: title, ISSN, call number, format, vendor,
publisher, holdings, microholdings, status, department, location, and cost. It appears to still be in
use (Anderson, 2004; LibSGR, n.d.).
Serials Solutions’ ERMS addresses many
ERMS functions. The Serials Solutions’ listing
service was irst developed by Peter McCracken
and his brothers and released in 2005. The data
was leveraged into a fully-functioned ERMS.
335
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems
This hosted service is closely integrated into the
other products of the company (Duranceau, 2005;
Library Technology Reports, 2006; Sitko et al.,
2002; Szcyrbak & Pierce, 2003)
ERMS allows for discovery, overlap analysis,
trials, access, click-through and search statistics,
and status management. Features include an A-Z
list, subject browsing, title searching and journal
linker, exportable data iles, proxy management,
and custom metadata. Print holdings can be included (Sitko, et al., 2005, p. 178). While library
data must initially be imported into Serials Solutions ERMS, the brief MARC records that libraries
add to incorporate aggregate holdings into the
catalog must be manually deleted if journals are
discontinued (Szcyrbak & Pierce, 2003). Libraries can add notes, include non-journal resources,
contacts, manage licenses, display terms of use,
monitor acquisition worklow, record incident
reports and usage statistic benchmarking, allowing comparison between institutions, and manage
vendor usage statistics (Duranceau, 2005; Serials
Solutions, n.d). Unmediated database updating
with the datafeed (Ives, 2005) was not available.
Bought by Proquest in 2004, Serials Solution
continued development of a license management
module and e-journal worklow tracking (Collins,
2005) and in the summer of 2006 merged with
SirsiDynix with the goal to produce a suite of
ERM products for their ILS systems (Breeding,
2006).
Many of these products enjoyed and still receive
wide support in the library community because
libraries could easily justify their procurement
without re-thinking their approach holistically or
waiting for the appropriate integrated ERMS to
be available. Many of the commercial projects, in
addition, meet the needs of institutions who are
concerned about the costs of full blown systems
or do not use the larger ILS vendors which are developing ERMS. In the meantime, these products
provide vital services that are an intrinsic part of
library for both patrons and staff.
INTEGRATED SYSTEMS
Integrated systems, those systems associated
with integrated library systems, include ExLibris’
Verde, Innovative Interface’s ERM, and VTLS’
Verify. All are ERMI compliant. Horizon Information Management System from SirsiDynix is
in development and will be targeted to libraries
or consortia (SirsiDynix, 2006).
Endeavor’s Meridian is Web-based, uses an
Oracle database and tracks selection, evaluation,
acquisition, maintenance, and access in accordance with license terms. The system manages
restrictions, users, trials (including evaluations),
history and renewals. A stand-alone, Meridian is
available as a hosted or on-site installation and
integrates with linking and metasearch systems.
Rules are assigned at the package level, and the
system shows hierarchical relationships. Usage
restrictions can be displayed in the OPAC or on
Table 1.6. Integrated systems
1998
Locallydeveloped
systems, Phase 1
Open Source
336
2001
Jewell/DLF
Report
OpenURL
Linking
2002
ERMI Steering
Group formed
Locally-developed
systems, Phase 2
2003
COUNTER
2004
ERMI Report
First integrated
ERMS
Commercial
products with
ERMS features
2006
SUSHI
ERMI-2
Steering
Group
formed
2007
SERU
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems
A-Z lists. Web services are used to pull data from
the ILS; periodic updates will be needed.
Future support of SUSHI and storage of usage
statistics is in development, as is a tagged license
function. An SQL reporting tool using the CogNos business intelligence-reporting program is
bundled with the system, and mapped to canned,
schedulable queries. Reports are e-mailed. Queries allow the use of wild cards, and left, right and
center truncation. It is possible to give selected
faculty read rights for collection development
purposes (Jones, 2006; Duranceau, 2004).
Verde from Ex Libris maximizes use of the
data in the knowledge base to manage evaluation,
selection, acquisition, processing, and cancellation. It has the ability to track perpetual access,
management history, incidents and breaches.
Verde is a stand-alone staff product that works well
with SFX and Ex Libris’ ILS, Aleph. Data is sent
using SOAP and Web services to other systems.
Worklows are set to role-based authentication
and can be customized.
Based on the following entities, interface,
package, e-constituent (e-journal, e-book), contacts and tasks (both external and internal), roles,
management, and license permissions (140-150
terms), characteristics and terms are inheritable. Verde allows cross-institutional search and
retrieval.
Future development will include consortial
searching, SUSHI retrieval, vertical calculation
(an e-constituent used in the context of a package
and interface) and horizontal calculation (use of
an e-journal from all sources). Cross-consortium
worklow and voting, and cost per package and
per e-title will be added (Koppel, 2006a).
In 2002 the University of Washington Libraries
formed a development partnership with Innovative
Interfaces (III), along with Glasgow University,
Ohio State University, and the University of
Western Australia to develop an ERM that would
integrate licensing and purchasing details using
a single interface, streamline worklows, eliminate the need to maintain separate spreadsheets
and databases, and store and selectively display
information in the online catalog for staff and
patrons. ERM’s functions are: selection, licensing, purchase, maintenance, user support, public
access, collection analysis, holdings’ overlap
analysis, and tasks in one GUI interface with the
ILS. Used as both a staff and public tool, ERM
was released in Spring 2004, and was the irst
ERM on the market (Duranceau, 2004; Fons,
2006; Tull et al., 2005).
ERM’s entities are resource, license, and
contact. The ERM tracks renewal dates, authentication, proxy data, and content descriptions.
As a standalone it maintains resources, track
licenses, and manages coverage data. Integrated
with Millenium, it is used as a portal for all digital
subscriptions. Data is stored in one central database, and is fed to staff and public modules. ERM
supports journal 1 COUNTER-compliant statistics, and automated e-mail. ERM has reporting
capability, a real-time A-Z list, e-resource search
tool, and can be integrated with WebBridge (an
openURL linking tool). ERM is able to operate
in a consortia environment, supports SUSHI, and
calculates cost-per-use information, combined
with SUSHI use data. XML server support allows
delivery of bibliographic information in XML
format, although not yet to the license level. Mock
bibliographic records are used for packages. ERM
works with ScholaryStats. Future reports will
include usage reports by subject by cost analysis.
Library of Congress subject headings will be
incorporated. A tool for export and re-import of
data in batch is planned (Fons, 2006, Innovative
Interfaces, 2006; Tull et al., 2005).
VTLS’ Verify is a standalone or ILS-integrated
tool for trial, selection, ordering, contracting,
installation, licensing, training, and public accessibility, including worklow and the approvals process through 400 data elements. Verify
sends e-mail alerts for renewal, review, or event
notiications, and has ields for cost information,
payment information including invoice and check
numbers, agreement start and end dates, modes
337
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems
of access, restrictions, links to resources or metadata records, copyright restrictions, contracts and
licenses (entry, storage, display of digital copies), registered IP addresses, holdings, including
print runs, and shows the relationship between
aggregators and publishers. Comments on trial
resources can be captured. There are separate
record views for public (Web-based) and staff
(GUI); views can be customized by user class.
On the single interface, patrons can view access
restrictions, copyright information, printing and
ILL permissions. Information is organized in
hierarchical tree structure in the spirit of FRBR
(functional requirements for bibliographic records) http://www.frbr.org/.
All data elements can be reported on, including usage statistics on number and time of access
to each e-resource. Verify data supports MySQL
and Oracle databases and has consortial enhancements. Language and interface translation can
be done using the Unicode UTF-8 character set
(Duranceau, 2005; VTLS, n.d., 2004).
With these products, ILS producers hope to
leverage the huge investment in time, stafing and
funds that libraries have poured into ILS systems.
The vendors continue development.
OPEN SOURCE
Open source programs, those programs that are
freely available and encourage adaptation, are
an alternative to libraries without the budget, but
with the IT resources necessary to develop these
resources. There are several open source tools
that have ERM or related functionality: ERUS,
Request Tracker, jake, PubList, HERMES, and
ERTS.
ERUS, Electronic Resource Usage Statistics,
developed by Trinity College, Villanova University and Simmons was to be used for collecting,
managing, and analyzing electronic resource
usage statistics. The process began in the fall
of 2004 at Simmons using PHP and MySQL by
Megan Fox and Dr. Gary Geisler, and expanded
to include Lori Stethers at Trinity College and
Andrew Nagy at Villanova University. Development included assessing the current practices
for data collection, analysis and utilization of
e-resources statistics. They identiied challenges
and ideal conditions for managing usage statistics
and gathered insight into a model for providing
access via a single, database-backed Web interface. Automation, standardization and compliance
quickly became primary foci.
Database design was slow as the process was
hung up on the discussion of entities. The software
learning curve was steep. Functionality focused
on running reports and importing data. Data collection continued to be dificult. Scripts to extract
data sent by e-mail still required customization. By
the end of 2004 database development was stated
as being “actively begun” (Anderson, 2004).
Request Tracker, an open source software program, creates e-mail tickets for incident reporting
and resolution caption. It enhances communica-
Table 1.7. Open source
1998
Locallydeveloped
systems, Phase 1
Open Source
338
2001
Jewell/DLF
Report
OpenURL
Linking
2002
ERMI Steering
Group formed
Locally-developed
systems, Phase 2
2003
COUNTER
2004
ERMI Report
First integrated
ERMS
Commercial
products with
ERMS features
2006
SUSHI
ERMI-2
Steering
Group
formed
2007
SERU
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems
tion and management statistics, and supports
evaluation of e-resources. Further standardization
is needed (McCaslin, 2003,).
PubList and jake are open source efforts to
address listing needs. jake was created at Yale
University School of Medicine in early 1999 in
an effort to track relationships between titles,
databases and vendors in a cooperative effort.
Jake was freely available through the GNU general public license (GPL), and organizations were
encouraged to use, copy and modify jake while
observing the GPL. Using title lists from vendors
and publishers, they added coverage dates, id
codes, URL construction rules, title abbreviations,
and Library of Congress and Dewey classiications. A typical record showed which resource
the title, volume, issue, and pages appeared in,
linked to the resource and provider, and showed
whether it included citations and/or fulltext.
Users could download title lists from resources
with and without the jakeid, and generate simple
MARC records.
The creators realized how valuable the information could be for collection development.
Publisher details planned to be added. Institutions
could add other information to their implementation of jake such as technical support contacts, key
license agreement terms, technical requirements,
remote access information, usage statistics (where
to get them, how to process them, where they are
stored), and local link information. Maintenance
to jake stopped in 2002 (Chudnov et al., 2000;
Notess, 2000).
PubList is a free resource based on Ulrich’s
international periodicals directory data, launched
in 1998, and owned by Infotrieve since 2000.
Infotrieve’s proprietary services are available
through the site, also. Free registration allows
searching by title, publisher, subject, circulation
data (said to be in development on the site), and
ISSN. Records have ields for title, publication
type, frequency, ISSN, country, language, editor,
publisher and contact information. Missing are
price information, irst year published, Dewey
and LC call numbers, and parallel and ceased
title information. Errors are not uncommon, but
PubList might be useful as a free resource for
organizations with limited resources where currency is not crucial (Jasco, 2003; Notess, 2000;
PubList, 1998-2001).
HERMES and ERTS are more fully functioned
ERMS open source tools. In 2000 the HERMES
(The Hopkins Electronic Resource Management
System) committee formed and set functional
requirements for a new system. The system was
for patrons to identify and access electronic resources of Johns Hopkins University Libraries,
and to help staff facilitate the process of selecting, purchasing, and managing these resources.
A full worklow and approvals process to support
selection, procurement, and implementation of
e-resources was needed, with dynamic lists for
public display. Staff needed automatic notiication of changes in status and scope to e-resource
ordering and licensing, and link management for
e-resources, automatic update of URLs in the
backend database, campus proxy server, library
Web site, and so forth. They wanted a single interface for staff viewing, updating, reporting and
administering e-resources, and robust, custom
report generation. They needed to appropriately
restrict use, yet have the system be interoperable
with present and future systems.
HERMES automatically captured data from
the ILS through XML DTD for bibliographic
data import. It could also be used as a standalone system. The system was designed around
functional roles, tasks, rights, and responsibilities. Inserting additional worklow steps was a
simple process.
HERMES was released as open source software for other libraries to customize and use.
Currently, Johns Hopkins Libraries are using
Dynix for their catalog and SFX for the A-Z list
(Cyzyk & Robertson, 2003,).
Developed in 2001 for the Tri-College Consortium (Bryn Mawr, Haverford, & Swarthmore),
the Electronic Resources Tracking System (ERTS)
339
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems
had several goals: allow access to license information, provide statistical reports not available
from the ILS, and notify staff when e-resources
are about to expire.
License information was particularly important. ERTS stored ILL, print and reserve restrictions, number of simultaneous users, e-mail
notiication when new content becomes available,
archival guarantee, license, and comments.
ERTS was made available as freeware. Plans
for a worklow model were in process, as was a
database to handle trials. ERTS did not provide
access to any resources and would outgrow its
humble origins to be decommissioned in 2004.
The Tri-College Consortium chose VTLS’ Verify
in 2005 (Medeiros et al., 2003; Medeiros, 2006;
Medeiros et al., 2007; Tri-College Consortium,
2003).
For most libraries, open source will not be
a viable solution: the data is simply too vast
and changeable, and library talent must be used
elsewhere. For libraries without funding support
some tools may be a possible option. As standards,
modularity, and facile systems increase, open
source tools may become more commonplace.
EVALUATION OF ERMS
When acquiring an ERMS it is important to deine
the institution’s goals for the ERM and to understand its capabilities. ERMS are not acquisitions
systems but will need to work closely with the
ILS covering those functions. Cooper and Lester
(2005, pp. 29, 31, 33, 34) suggested the following
goals for the ERMS:
Also important:
•
•
•
•
Meyer (2005, p. 20) and Cooper and Lester
(2005, pp. 29, 31, 33, 34) offer some suggestions
to ask when evaluating ERMS. Purchasing and
contract details that could be asked:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
2.
3.
4.
340
An accurate representation of ejournals
inside aggregator databases
A representation of ejournals that are subscribed to and free journals
One-stop shopping for serials regardless of
format
Usage statistics at the database and title
level
When was the product released?
What is the pricing structure, including initial price and costs for continuing operation
and maintenance?
What is the estimated amount of time from
contract signing to live system?
Is it available as a stand-alone, or as a component of one of your other products?
Where is the system hosted?
What is the primary market (academic,
public, school, corporate)?
How many systems are in place?
How many systems are fully implemented?
This could provide insight into how ready a
system is for widespread use.
Technical details to be considered:
•
1.
The ability to view permitted uses (staff and
patrons)
The ability to view collections of other
institutions in the consortium
The ability to export data using Web services
to other library services
The ability to generate reports that will inform library decision making; these reports
will combine traits of the various database
entities.
•
•
•
Does it have operating system compatibility
(Windows, Mac, Unix, Linux)?
How frequently will system updates be
made?
Can the vendor provide additional services
beyond the A-Z list?
Do you want or need additional serials
management services? It is best to think
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems
•
•
•
•
about ERMS in holistic terms of needs and
functions.
Full or brief catalog records
Notiication of changes in titles in the
system
Tables of contents alerting service
OpenURL link resolver
Federated searching over all electronic
databases and the online catalog
Statistical reports on usage of titles
and databases
Which data management capabilities does it
support? URI management, data import/export in ONIX, library-deined data elements,
IP address management, individual license
data elements, usage statistics management,
storage and retrieval, COUNTER-compliant
usage statistics?
What data import/export formats are available? Data import and export can be incredibly time and labor consuming.
What communication protocols are available?
What interface options are available (Webbased HTML, Web-based Java, Windows,
Mac, interface based on ILS or existing
system)?
Interoperability with other systems can be
a major stumbling block. One may want to
clarify:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Does it integrate with your knowledgebase
or PAMS product?
Does it integrate with openURL link resolvers?
Does it integrate with federated searching
tools?
Does it integrate with public access tools
(OPACs, A-Z lists, etc.)?
Does it provide automated data updates and
synchronization?
Does it integrate with ILS’s from other
vendors?
Functional requirements depend on what the
organization would like to capture. In signiicant
combination, data from an ERMS can inform
many decisions. Some requirements that will help
the planning effort can include:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
What are the available reporting options: resource level, package level, custom reports,
reporting with usage statistics, reports with
evaluative elements?
Does it provide different user permissions
and access levels?
Does it track subscription life cycles?
Does it tract contact history for license
negotiation?
Does it track price history?
Does it provide automated notiication for
renewals?
Does it provide access to e-resource holdings
data?
Does it provide access to print holdings data
when both print and electronic copies are
held?
Does it support breach logs or tracking for
access problems?
It is important for an institution to understand
what the system is capable of, and how the library’s
needs intersect with the system’s functionality. Be
careful not to assume that the ERMS will solve all
information needs. It may solve some, but much
depends on the institution’s data and its quality.
Being realistic will cultivate much better buy-in
from the stakeholders.
IMPLEMENTATION OF ERMS
Preparing for an ERM is labor and time intensive.
Unfortunately, the system is only as good as the
completeness of its data. It takes time, discipline
and perseverance to get the initial data in, dificult tasks when staff are busy. Many libraries
with ERMS struggle to maintain disciplined data
341
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems
•
entry. This is complicated by the fact that multiple
staff are often responsible for entering particular
entities. A generic task and timeline are listed
below to help libraries anticipate implementation
needs for an ERMS.
•
•
•
List entities in the database, and then the
ields for those entities
Determine which ields your institution
will use, which will be required ields, and,
if applicable, the possible values for those
ields
Interpret institution data and populate Excel
spreadsheets with ields and data
Prepare staff for the ERM and build buyin
Upload data
Test uploaded data
Deine staff roles and set permissions
Set tasks and worklow
Test staff and permissions data
Set drop-dead date when new system will
be functional, and where data maintenance
changes need to take place
Train staff
Release system to staff
Provide a mechanism for staff feedback
Modify worklows with staff input
De-brief staff on implementation process;
incorporate feedback into institutional
change mechanisms
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
For the irst year, add the ERMS to meeting
agendas so staff can provide feedback and
stay informed
Incorporate usage data into regular review
of resources
Set up audit calendar, and link checking
mechanism
STANDARDS
Several existing standards and those in-process
contribute to the matrix of tools that begin to address electronic resources and their management.
SERU (shared e-resource understanding), in draft
form March 2007, is a shared set of understandings
to which publishers and libraries can point when
negotiating the sale of electronic content http://
www.niso.org/committees/SERU/. It is hoped that
this standard will reduce the negotiation burden
for both libraries and publishers. ONIX for Serials including SPS (serials products and subscriptions), SOH (serials online holdings), SRN (serials
release notiication), ONIX for licensing terms (in
process), COUNTER and SUSHI help, but more
standards are needed.
Ted Koppel, Verde Product Manager, ExLibris, (2006, Visions of ERM; 2006, Electronic
Resource Management) suggests several more
standards as being useful:
Table 1.8. Standards
1998
Locallydeveloped
systems, Phase 1
Open Source
342
2001
Jewell/DLF
Report
OpenURL
Linking
2002
ERMI Steering
Group formed
Locally-developed
systems, Phase 2
2003
COUNTER
2004
ERMI Report
First integrated
ERMS
Commercial
products with
ERMS features
2006
SUSHI
ERMI-2
Steering
Group
formed
2007
SERU
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems
•
•
•
•
•
•
A standard for communicating IP address
changes to content providers
A standard for vendors to communicate
real-time availability
A sub-library unique library identiier (for
branches)
A unique collection identiier for aggregators
and databases, like an ISBN per e-package/
collection
A standard for exchange of acquisitions
order record, invoice record and vendor
information
A standard for open access and other pricing
models for the ERM
Other useful standards would include:
•
•
•
•
•
•
A standard for title and subject list generation
A standard for holdings information, including enumeration, with post-application to
ILS systems
A standard for exchange of acquisitions
renewal and trial records
A standard to help capture Association of
Research Libraries (ARL) statistics
A standard for capture, storage, and querying usage statistics by title, publisher, vendor
and platform
A standard to integrate openURL linkers
into the ILS
(Fons, 2006)
All standards need to be compatible with ERMI
standards, and based on Web services.
FUTURE TRENDS
The necessity of ERMS will affect libraries in
myriad ways. The transformative tendencies of
the industry will offer new directions as companies merge. For example, the mergers such as
that of Endeavor with ExLibris in 2006 will have
unknown effects on libraries with traditional
ILS products. ERMS will demand new stafing
models, a shift of stafing from the print to electronic worklow, and further drive outsourcing of
some acquisition processes. The iscal fallout is
still unknown. The implementation of an ERMS
will funnel huge staff needs and efforts into an
intense setup period. Industry factors such as the
evolution of additional services offered by vendors
that are associated with emerging standards will
be a certainty.
Patrick Jones of Endeavor (2006) predicts that
vendors will begin to ask libraries to pay for usage
statistics. Vendors will then add value to usage
statistics by integrating impact factors, relative
value for money between resources and subjectbased analysis of usage and costs. Integration of
citation analysis would also be useful, as ISI is
doing with the Web of Knowledge JUR trial.
Ted Fons, innovative product manager of Innovative Interfaces (2006, Future of ERM Systems)
points out that very few vendors have SUSHI
servers. Integration of ERMs into the ILS is a
necessity. He predicts that there will be increased
use of the coverage data in the knowledge base
using vendor-neutral data since patrons beneit
from access information scope notes, announcements, new features and content will be integrated
into resources. Promotion of library sponsorship
of access will increase. Access based on license
terms will be the norm.
Automation of administrative tasks will
increase, as SUSHI proves, and tools to allow
collection analysis will be offered as part of a
suite of services. Areas with potential for automation include IP registration, trial administration,
activation, renewal, incident reporting, sample
license review, and license exchange. Renewals,
payments, contributions to cost, and cost-per-use
calculations will be provided by incorporating
SUSHI and COUNTER data into the acquisitions system. A system for comparing print and
electronic serials holdings is needed. Vendorindependent integration systems should provide
343
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems
tools for integration of data using Web services.
These changes would require cooperation between
system developers and content providers.
Ted Koppel (2006a) predicts there will be a
move away from aggregators to more title selection
with more truth in pricing. The ILS will reform
around the ERM, discovery tools and digital objects. There will be demands on content providers
for SUSHI, and license expression transmission.
Additionally, there will be increased transparency for content providers on pricing, and the
demise of aggregator packages. There will be
a blurring of lines between electronic resource
management and digital resource management.
There will be pay-per-view support and tracking within the ERM. The ERM will serve as the
nexus between legacy systems and the e-product
world. The ERM will supplant the ILS for many
back-room functions.
Timothy Jewell, in a presentation given December 15, 2005 to Rutgers University Libraries’
Electronic Resources Access and Integration Task
Force, also stated that a future function of ERMS
is to serve as an institution registry. Established
by a third party but maintained by participating
libraries, vendors would be notiied of changes systematically by the registry (Smulewitz, 2005).
For the future, standardization will be key to
maximizing the business and holdings data in
ILS and the detail needed in ERMs. If standards
are not developed and embraced by vendors, data
loading and translation will be a time-consuming and labor intensive process. Interoperability,
particularly with legacy ILS systems will be
vital for success. A modular approach is needed
so that institutions can maintain their ILS but
use different interfaces to display information
as needs arise. There is great potential for standards-based bridging systems between legacy ILS
and ERMs. Hopefully, the synergy of librarians
producing standards and the industry responding
will continue.
344
CONCLUSION
Integrated library systems (ILS) have not kept
pace with the record keeping, functionality and
information demands of electronic resources.
ILS do not adequately record the relationships
between package, journal, interface, and e-product. The print acquisition record and worklow is
not suficient to capture the demands of licensing,
implementation, tracking and maintaining electronic resources. Usage statistics have become
more accessible and standardized, but the ILS
lacks an entity to record them. With exponential
growth in electronic resources, libraries began
developing local systems in an effort to cope with
management and maintenance of these resources.
Tim Jewell’s report Selection and Presentation of
Commercially Available Electronic Resources:
Issues and Practices illustrating libraries’ similar
approaches to electronic resource management
practices, worklow and stafing needs, paved the
way for the Digital Library’s (DLF’s) Electronic
Resource Management Initiative (ERMI). The
report is a road map for functional requirements,
XML schemas, document type deinitions, worklows and the electronic resource life cycle.
The impact of this report cannot be underestimated. Unprecedented in the information environment, it resulted in vendors developing tools
according to speciications from librarians. The
resultant series of tools from integrated library
system and other vendors, subscription agents,
publication access management services (PAMS)
and nonproit organizations have addressed various ERMS functions.
Electronic resource management systems
need to be standards-based, modular, extensible,
interoperable with existing tools, have data import/export capabilities, and integrate with Web
services so data can be displayed in catalogs,
Web sites, portals, and other preexisting services.
The perfect ERMS is an abstraction depending
on the relationship with the ILS, interoperability,
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems
data completeness, and staff buy-in to evolved
worklows.
Continuing development is needed. With
the sheer volume of electronic resources and
luidity of holdings and link data, manageable
automation techniques are needed that maintain
data authority and control. Best practices and/or
standards need to be developed for loading and
transferring data into an ERM, as its functionality is only as good and as complete as its data.
Libraries will continue to struggle with the tension
between proprietary information products and
their adherence to standards and interoperability
needs. Synergistic efforts of librarians, standards
organizations, publishers and vendors will result
in new products and services.
REFERENCES
Alan, R. (2002). Keeping track of electronic
resources to keep them on track. NASIG 2002.
Retrieved November 22, 2007 from http://www.
library.cornell.edu/cts/elicensestudy/pennstate/
PSUN/ASigPresentation2002.ppt
Breeding, M. (July, 2006). Strategic development:
SirsiDynix and Serials Solutions. Smart Libraries
Newsletter, Library Technology Guides. Retrieved
November 22, 2007, from http://www.librarytechnology.org/ltg-displaytext.pl?RC=12102
Brewer, K., Rozum, B., & Shrode, F. (2004). Developing a database for e-journals that improves
both access and management. In D. C. Fowler
(Ed.), E-serials collection management: Transitions, trends, and technicalities (pp. 253-264).
Binghamton, NY: Haworth Information Press.
Brown, J. F., Nelson, J. L., & Wineburgh-Freed, M.
(2005). Customized electronic resources management system. Serials Librarian, 47(4), 89-102.
Chandler, A. (2000). An application proile and
prototype metatdata management system for licensed electronic resources. Retrieved November
22, 2007, from http://www.library.cornell.edu/cts/
elicensestudy/ApplicationProile.htm
Chandler, A. (2002a, January 30). ALA midwinter
2002 meeting. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from
http://www.library.cornell.edu/elicensestudy/
alamidwinter2002.htm
ALCTS (2004, December). LC announces TrackER software availability and speciications. ALCTS
Newsletter Online, 15, 6. Retrieved November 22,
2007, from http://www.ala.org/ala/alcts/alctspubs/
alctsnewsletter/v15n6/tracker.htm
Chandler, A. (2002b, May 20). Notes, NISO/Digital Library Federation workshop, May 10, 2002.
Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://www.
library.cornell.edu/elicensestudy/nisodlf/home.
htm
Anderson, C. (2004, December). ERUS December
2004 report. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from
http://web.simmons.edu/~andersoc/erus/reportdec04.html
Chandler, A. (2002c, June 14). ALCTS-sponsored
meeting on e-resource management metadata at
ALA, June 14, 2002. Retrieved November 22,
2007, from http://www.library.cornell.edu/elicensestudy/alaannual2002/home.htm
Baker, G., & Blocker, L. (2005). Electronic resource management systems (ERMS). PowerPoint
presentation. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from
http://www.lib.utk.edu/~elecser/ts-erms.ppt
Boston College Libraries (n.d.). ERM database
documentation. Retrieved November 22, 2007,
from http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp_ulib/staff/
erm/erm-db
Chudnov, D. et al. (2000). Jake: Overview and
status report [Jointly administered knowledge
environment, Electronic journal database at Yale
University]. Serials Review, 26(4), 12-17.
Collins, M. (2005). Electronic resource management systems: Understanding the players and how
to make the right choice for your library. Serials
Review, 31, 124-140.
345
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems
Cooper, P. S., & Lester, D. (2005). One-stop serials
management with TDNet. The Serials Librarian,
47(4), 27-34.
Cox, J., & Cox, L. (2003). Scholarly publishing
practice: The ALPSP report on academic journal
publishers’ policies and practices in online publishing. Rookwood, UK: John Cox Associates.
Cyzyk, M., & Robertson, N. (2003). HERMES:
The Hopkins Electronic Resource Management
System. Information Technology and Libraries,
22(1), 12-17.
Digital Library Federation (2005). DLF electronic resource management initiative, Phase II.
Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://www.
diglib.org/standards/dlf-erm05.htm
Duranceau, E. F. (2004). Electronic resource
management systems from ILS vendors. Against
the Grain, 16(4), 91-94.
Duranceau, E. F. (2005). Electronic resource
management systems, part II: Offerings from
serial vendors and serial data vendors. Against
the Grain, 17(3), 59-60.
Duranceau, E. F., & Hepfer, C. (2002) Stafing
for electronic resource management: The results
of a survey. Serials Review, 28, 316-320.
EContent (2003, Feb 18). TDNet takes over JournalWebCite customer base. EContent: Digital content strategies & resources. Retrieved November
22, 2007, from http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/ArticleReader.aspx?ArticleID=4057
The EJournal Project (2001). (Tool Web site).
Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://
www.lib.ksu.edu/databases/ejournal/search.
jsp?searchletter=A
ExLibris (2006). Users Guide.
Farb, S. E., & Riggio, A. (2002). UCLA electronic
resources database project overview. PowerPoint,
ALA Midwinter Meeting, 2002. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://www.library.cornell.
346
edu/cts/elicensestudy/ucla/ALAMidwinter2002.
ppt
Felts, J. W., Jr. (2001). Now you can get there
from here: Creating an interactive web application for accessing full-text journal articles from
any location. Library Collections, Acquisitions,
& Technical Services, 25(3), 281-290.
Fons, T. (2006). Future of ERM systems (PowerPoint Presentation) California Digital Library
Institute. Electronic Resource Management,
presenter, November 10, 2006. Representative
of Innovative Interfaces.
Harrassowitz (2006). Electronic journal services,
HERMIS 3.0. Retrieved November 22, 2007,
from http://www.harrassowitz.de/periodicals_ejournals.html
Hayes, A., & Lerner, S. (2004). Tracking electronic
resources at the Library of Congress (PowerPoint
presentation). Retrieved November 22, 2007, from
http://www.loc.gov/catdir/TrackERALA2004.
ppt
Hennig, N. (2002). Improving access to e-journals
and databases at the MIT libraries: Building a
database-backed web site called “Vera.” The
Serials Librarian, 41(3-4), 227-254.
Holman, J. (2005). Can SFX replace your homegrown periodical holdings list? Serials Librarian,
47(4), 79-88.
Innovative Interfaces (2006). Electronic Resource
Management. [brochure]
Ives, G. (2005). Transition to e-journals at Texas
A&M University, 1995-2004. Serials Librarian,
47(4), 71-78.
Jasco, P. (2003). Peter’s picks and pans. Online,
27(2), 72-74.
Jewell, T. D. (2001). Appendix B: Functions and
data elements for managing electronic resources.
Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://www.
library.cornell.edu/elicensestudy/u-washington/
FinalAppendixB.xls
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems
Jewell, T. D. (2001). Selection and presentation
of commercially available electronic resources:
Issues and practices. Retrieved November 22,
2007, from http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/
pub99/contents.html
Jewell, T. (2006). Electronic resource management
systems: What should they do? In P. M. Bluh &
C. Hepfer (Eds.), Managing electronic resources:
Contemporary problems and emerging issues (pp.
9-34). Chicago: Association for Library Collections & Technical Services.
Jewell, T. D., et al. (2004). Electronic resource
management: Report of the DLF electronic resource management initiative. Washington, D.C.:
Digital Library Federation.
Jones, P. (2006). California Digital Library Institute: Electronic Resource Management, presenter,
November 10, 2006. Representative of Endeavor
Meridian.
Kidd, K. (2004). Local e-resource management
systems: Boston college libraries. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://www.library.cornell.
edu/cts/elicensestudy/webhubarchive.html
Koppel, T. (2006a). California Digital Library
Institute: Electronic Resource Management,
presenter, November 10, 2006. Representative
of ExLibris.
Koppel, T. (2006b). Visions of ERM. Presentation
at NISO Managing Electronic collections, Strategies from Content to User, Denver, Colorado,
September 28-20, 2006.
Kyrillidou, M., & Young, M. (Eds.) (2005). ARL
statistics, 2003-2004. Washington, D.C.: Association of Research Libraries.
Library Technology Reports (2006). The ERMI
and its offspring (Chapter 2). Library Technology
Reports, 42(2), 14-21.
LibSGR (n.d.) LibSGR: Library statistics gathering and reporting (tool Web site). Retrieved No-
vember 22, 2007, from http://libofice.villanova.
edu/libsgr/index.php
Lingle, V. (2005). Implementing EBSCO’s A-toZ… Serials Librarian, 47(4), 43-54.
Machovec, G. S. (2002). Gold rush: Electronic
resource discovery and management system. The
Charleston Advisor, 4(1). Retrieved November
22, 2007, from http://www.charlestonco.com/features.cfm?id=98&type=np
Marshall, S., & Kawasaki, J. L. (2005). The
master serial list at Montana State University: A
simple, easy to use approach. The Serials Librarian, 47(4), 3-15.
McCaslin, S. (Recorder) (2003). Alan, R., & Hsiung, L.Y., presenters. Web-based tracking systems
for electronic resources management. The Serials
Librarian, 44(3/4), 293-297.
McMullen, K., & Wilmott, D. (2005). Taming
the e-journal jungle: The University of South
Carolina’s experience with TDNet. Serials Librarian, 47(4), 35-42.
Medeiros, N. (2006). House of horrors: Exorcising electronic resources. In P. M. Bluh, & C.
Hepfer (Eds.), Managing electronic resources:
Contemporary problems and emerging issues
(pp. 56-66). Chicago: Association for Library
Collections & Technical Services.
Medeiros, N., et al. (2003). Managing administrative metadata: The tri-college consortium’s
electronic resources tracking system (ERTS).
Library and Technical Services, 47(1), 28-25.
Medeiros, N., et al. (2007). White paper on
interoperability between acquisitions modules
of integrated library systems and electronic
resource management systems: A draft for
comment. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from
http://www.haverford.edu/library/DLF_ERMI2/
ACQ_ERMS_white_paper.pdf
347
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems
Meyer, S. (2005) Helping you buy: Electronic
resource management systems. Computers in
Libraries, November/December, 19-24.
Notess, G. R. (2000, Oct/Nov). PubList and jake:
Free periodical reference sources [review of two
databases]. Econtent, 23:5, 64-66.
Pace, A. K. (2004). Disintegrated library systems
and electronic resource management: Dismantling library systems. Presentation at ALA, 2004.
Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://www.
lib.ncsu.edu/presentations/2004ala/IRRT_pace.
ppt
Pace, A. K. (2006). E-matrix: Electronic resource management at NCSU. PowerPoint
presented to Amigos, May 11, 2006. Retrieved
November 22, 2007, from http://www.lib.ncsu.
edu/presentations/2006Amigos/ematrix.ppt
PubList (1998-2001). About PubList.com. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://www.
publist.com/about.html
Robbins, S., & Smith, M. (2004). Managing eresources: A database-driven approach. In D.C.
Fowler (Ed.), E-serials collection management:
Transitions, trends, and technicalities (pp. 239251). Binghamton, NY: Haworth Information
Press.
Schulz, N. (2001). E-journal databases: A longterm solution? Library Collections, Acquisitions,
and Technical Services, 25, 449-459.
Serials Solutions (n.d.). ERMS electronic management system. Retrieved November 22, 2007,
from http://www.serialsolutions.com/promotion/
ERMS/images/ErMS.pdf
SirsiDynix (2006). Horizon information management system. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from
http://www.dynix.com/products/erm/ .
Sitko, M. et al. (2002). E-journal management
systems: Trends, trials, and trade-offs. Serials
Review, 28(3), 176-194.
348
Smulewitz, G. (recorder). (2005). Minutes of
december 14, 2005 meeting. Rutgers University
Libraries’ Electronic Resource Access and Integration Task Force. Retrieved November 22, 2007,
from http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/staff/
groups/eratf/minutes/eratf_05_12_14.shmtl
Stefancu, M., Bloss, A., & Lambrecht, J. (2004).
All about DOLLeR: Managing electronic resources at the UCI library. Preprint of Serials
Review, 30(3), 194-205. Retrieved November 22,
2007, from http://www.library.cornell.edu/cts/elicensestudy/uic/AllAboutDOLLeR_web.html
Swets Information Services (2004). Retrieved
November 22, 2007, from http://informationservices.swets.com
Szczyrbak, G., & Pierce, L. (2003). E-journal
subscription management systems and beyond.
The Serials Librarian, 44(3/4), 57-162.
TLC (2005). Gold rush: A discovery and management tool for electronic Resources. Retrieved
November 22, 2007, from http://www.tlcdelivers.
com/tlb/pdf/goldrush.pdf
Tri-College Consortium (2003). Electronic
resources tracking System (ERTS). Retrieved
November 22, 2007, from http://www.haverford.
edu/library/erts
Tull, L., Crum J., Davis, T., & Strader, C. R.
(2005). Integrating and streamlining electronic
resources worklows via innovative’s electronic
resource management. Serials Librarian, 47(4),
103-124.
University of California, Los Angeles (2004).
UC electronic resources management planning
meeting campus/CDL survey: Electronic resources management at UCLA, March 4, 2004.
Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/sopag/appen06surveyinalucal.doc
University of California, Los Angeles, mhr and
lss (2002). ERBd examples of publisher, Issued
Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems
by and access provider. Retrieved November
22, 2007, from http://www.library.cornell.edu/
elicensestudy/ucla/2003/Examples%20of%20P
ublisher,%20Issued%20By%20&%20Access%
20Provider%2012-19-02.doc
VTLS (n.d.). Verify [brochure]. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://www.vtls.com/brochures/verify.pdf
VTLS (2004.) Verify: Verify for yourself, eresource management can be easy! Retrieved
November 22, 2007, from http://www.vtls.com/
Products/verify.shtml
Wakimoto, J. C., Walker, D. S., & Dabbour, K. S.
(2006). The myths and realities of SFX in academic
libraries. Journal of Academic Librarianship,
32(2), 27-136.
Wilson, H. W. (2006). Gold rush quick facts.
Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://www.
hwwilson.com/documentation/WilsonWeb/goldrush-quickfacts.htm
Wissman, M. et al. (2005). Taylor Periodical
Administration System. Retrieved November
22, 2007, from http://www2.taylor.edu/library/
upland/sjo/tpas.html
Wolfe, R. H. W. (2005) Managing the metadata
morass: Applying cataloging skills beyond the
traditional catalog: Boston College Library Catalogers. Metametametadata. Retrieved November
22, 2007, from http://www.metametadata.net/mt/
archives/2005_04.html
349
350
Chapter XIX
The Impact of Locally Developed
Electronic Resource
Management Systems
Marie R. Kennedy
University of Southern California, USA
ABSTRACT
As libraries dramatically increased their numbers of licensed electronic resources in the 1990s, such
as online journals and databases, they realized the need for a record-keeping system that would help
manage the details of acquiring and maintaining them. Since no off-the-shelf product existed, some
libraries developed their own tools to manage electronic resources. This chapter discusses the development of locally designed electronic resource management systems; the process of developing the tools
at several academic institutions is traced, with a focus on the aspects of the systems unique to each
university. Locally developed electronic resource management systems have lead academic institutions
to engage with other institutions and vendors building similar tools. As a result, community-wide efforts in identifying key elements for managing electronic resources have begun to emerge. These efforts
lay the foundation for the future successful development of tools and standards to assist in electronic
resource management.
INTRODUCTION
In the 1990s libraries began to see a dramatic
increase in publication of and patron interest in
electronic resources. Delivering materials to a
user’s computer desktop in digital form brought
with it a multitude of considerations for providers
of information in academic settings. Due to the
rapid acquisition of electronic resources libraries
had to quickly create new worklows for technical
processes such as managing and renewing license
agreements and “processing” virtual products, as
well as develop new communication structures and
stafing worklows related to electronic resources
(Gardner, 2001).
Copyright © 2008, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
The Impact of Locally Developed Electronic Resource Management Systems
As libraries acquired an increased number of
electronic resources, such as online journals and
databases, they realized the pressing need for a
recordkeeping system that would help manage
the details of maintaining the resources. Since
no off-the-shelf product existed, and traditional
serials vendors did not provide management
services for electronic resources, some libraries
began developing their own tools to assist them
in managing electronic resources.
In this chapter we will recount the impetus
for the creation of several locally developed
electronic resource management systems. The
process of building such tools will be described in
detail, as reported by the libraries that developed
them (Cyzyk & Robertson, 2003; Farb & Riggio,
2002; Hennig, 2002; Loghry & Shannon, 2000).
In addition to the creation of the management
system itself, the administrative and stafing
changes will be discussed, as evidenced in the
literature (Duranceau & Hepfer, 2002; Gardner,
2001; Loghry & Shannon, 2000; Montgomery &
Sparks, 2000).
As the idea of locally designed and built
electronic resource management systems became
more accepted, academic institutions began to
seek assistance outside their universities to build
their own systems. Examples of universities
collaborating with other universities as well as
commercial vendors and their impact on effective group management design will be presented
(Chandler & Jewell, 2005; Digital Library Federation, 2004; Digital Library Federation, 2006;
Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, 2006; Johns
Hopkins University, 2004). The development of
the individual management systems and the byproducts of those systems, such as administrative
metadata and the automatic exchange of serials
data, will be noted (Chandler & Jewell, 2005;
Jones, 2002). The process of developing these
electronic resource management systems, and
their eventual expansion, will be discussed as
a possible model for organizing effective future
library tools (Conger, 2004).
THE STATE OF LIBRARY
ACQUISITIONS AS ELECTRONIC
RESOURCES EMERGE
The delivery of electronic resources has transitioned from physical formats such as tapes, 3.5”
loppy disks, and CD-ROMs (CD) and DVDs
to remote databases and the currently common
format of delivery via the Internet. Since large
amounts of data could be stored on a CD, companies began to offer their proprietary resources
in this format rather than in print or on earlier
electronic formats such as loppy disks. The CDs
acted as early databases, allowing users to “search”
the CD for data. The CDs were either used at
individual workstations or networked to allow
for simultaneous searching by multiple patrons.
The acquisitions department had to begin working more closely with their systems or technology
department in order to ensure that the material
delivered on CD was made appropriately available.
In contrast with today’s current expansive publishing on the Internet, relatively few publishers and
vendors produced CD products, so the worklow
paths that were initially developed were addressed
at an ad hoc level.
As users grew comfortable with accessing
content on their desktops rather than in print,
publishers explored other options that would
allow them to provide more frequent updates to
their content, with quicker production times, and
took advantage of an Internet-based format for
delivery of materials. The move from CD- and
remote database-delivered material to delivery
via the Internet quickly gained popularity among
library users; libraries nationwide cite a sudden
and dramatic increase in purchases of electronic
resources (Montgomery & Sparks, 2000, p. 13).
In 2003 the Association of Research Libraries
reported that in just ten years the average percentage of a member institution’s total budget
on electronic resources grew from 3.6% to 25%
(Young & Kyrillidou, 2004).
351
The Impact of Locally Developed Electronic Resource Management Systems
The issues surrounding the increase of publication of electronic journals were compounded for
library staff, as no mechanism was in place for
their management. The issues were diverse, with
large issues such as deciding who had negotiating
and signing authority for the license agreements
required to lease the electronic content delivered
over the Internet, to smaller issues such as iguring out how to organize large electronic journal
packages and conceiving a mechanism to remind
staff to renew electronic journal subscriptions so
that patron access to the material was seamless
and uninterrupted.
CHANGES IN STAFFING AS A
RESULT OF LICENSE
AGREEMENTS
As the steps for securing access to an electronic
resource are complicated, so are the stafing
needs. Whereas a print purchase requires action only within the acquisitions department, an
electronic resource lease or purchase may require
action both within and outside of the acquisitions department. Jewell notes that these new
requirements mean that library staff are playing
“new and important specialized roles” to ensure
success in the acquisition of each electronic resource (Jewell & Mitchell, 2005, p. 139). In this
new role, the acquisitions staff member maintains
communication with other required parties during
this negotiation process, keeping all stakeholders
informed of the progress. After the purchase,
the acquisitions staff member may contact the
library’s systems department to verify access to
the resource or to plan its maintenance. In this
way, the acquisitions member acts as a liaison
throughout the life of the resource in the library.
Gardner’s 2001 survey identiies the following
departments that may play a role in resolving a
license agreement: acquisitions, the library director, collection development, the assistant director,
and systems (Gardner, 2001).
352
The effect of electronic resources on other
departments is also evident after the resource has
been leased. In Duranceau and Hepfer’s informal survey reported in 2002 they note that “we
ind few, if any, ‘routine’ tasks related to digital
resource management” (Duranceau & Hepfer,
2002, p. 317). Montgomery and Sparks note that
a shift toward more electronic resources affects
a variety of library departments and resources.
Circulation/access services see a decreased need
for reshelving and manual statistics gathering.
Reserves are affected as students’ access materials electronically rather than in print. Information
services are affected as seemingly fewer reference
questions are asked; and the systems department
is pressed for more assistance with infrastructure
needs (Montgomery & Sparks, 2000).
CREATING LOCALLY DEVELOPED
ELECTRONIC RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
As library staff expressed a need for a mechanism for clear communication about the status
of a license being negotiated, an active resource
needing maintenance, or a report of funds spent,
most libraries began a series of paper lists or
worksheets to assist them (Kennedy, Crump, &
Kiker, 2004; Loghry & Shannon, 2000). As the
number of electronic resources grew it became
clear that the paper lists could not be effectively
shared among the staff needing access to them.
Library staff needed a computer program that was
designed to hold all the information related to an
electronic resource so that it could be viewed from
all the stakeholders’ computer desktops, yet no
such software existed. Without an off-the-shelf
program available to assist them in organizing
their resources, many libraries turned to their
own library or university staff for assistance in
creating one.
Many universities attempted to create their
own electronic resource management systems,
The Impact of Locally Developed Electronic Resource Management Systems
with varying degrees of success. Some created
complete systems to manage many aspects of
electronic resources processing at their libraries,
while others focused their efforts just on speciic
aspects of managing the resources. Of the known
electronic resource management systems and initiatives, three stand out as pioneers: Massachusetts
Institute of Technology’s VERA, Pennsylvania
State University’s ERLIC, and University of
California Los Angeles’s ERDb. There are other
notable systems, such as Gold Rush, HERMES
and the Tri-College Consortium’s ERTS, which
will also be discussed in detail.
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology’s VERA
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
library launched VERA (Virtual Electronic
Resource Access) in 2000. The program was developed to respond to two speciic issues that had
been identiied at MIT: the library staff needed a
centralized location in which to store information
about eight aspects of license management, and
the library needed an improved access point for
patrons (Duranceau, 2000; Hennig, 2002). Until
VERA was created, staff had to input information about licenses and access using a variety of
tools; VERA gave them one centralized data tool.
More importantly, MIT also wanted to improve
user access to its licensed electronic resources;
VERA was designed to make lists of its electronic
titles easier to use.
The VERA program was created using FileMaker Pro software. MIT decided to use this
database software because they had a site license
for it and staff members were already familiar with
its use (Hennig, 2002). Using a known software
program to build the new system proved to be a
smart decision because: (1) staff were likely to use
VERA since they were familiar with its software;
and (2) the developers could focus solely on the
design of the tool instead of having to learn a
software program and develop a new tool at the
same time (Kennedy, 2004).
VERA was designed to be both a front-end
and back-end system. The front-end, or patron
view, allows searches by title, subject, keyword,
or provider. The back-end, or staff view, allows
staff to enter data into the Web-enabled version
of FileMaker Pro. Since it is Web-based, staff
outside of acquisitions can make changes to the
title database from their own workstations without
having to download software to their computers.
The changes made are available to the public
the following day, as the “working copy” of the
program is uploaded each night to replace the
existing live version (Hennig, 2002, p. 251).
Other than the ability to view text, patrons
are presented with several icons with their search
result (Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Libraries, 2006). If the information is relevant
to the search result, then the icon is displayed in
the “More” ield of the results screen. A legend of
icons appears on the search results screen, assisting the patron to understand the access restrictions
and permissions in a visual format. Staff activate
the appropriate icons from the back-end view of
VERA in order to display them to the public.
Pennsylvania State University’s
ERLIC
Pennsylvania State University’s (PSU) Electronic
Resources Licensing and Information Center
(ERLIC) was constructed in 1999 as a way to track
orders. The system was designed for acquisitions
functions, and so the Microsoft Access-based
program was initially populated with data related
to acquisitions processes. In a 2000 conference
presentation, Cochenour notes that though ERLIC
was originally constructed in order to track and
claim invoices for electronic resources it quickly
grew to encompass information about license
agreements and to share information about the
resources (Cochenour, 2000).
ERLIC grew quickly once the stakeholders
of the PSU electronic resources were identiied.
PSU identiied the stakeholders as staff in the
353
The Impact of Locally Developed Electronic Resource Management Systems
following departments: acquisitions, cataloging,
collection development, public service and systems. In order to meet the demands of these staff
members ERLIC was designed to house information about funds and budgets, the status of orders
and license agreements, and electronic resources
access points. Microsoft Access was chosen as
the development tool due to its relational database
nature; views for different stakeholders could be
customized to display only the elements relevant to
that department. Cochenour commented in 2000
that the program had not spurred major changes in
the daily worklows of the various stakeholders;
this smooth incorporation of a system into the daily
activities of a group is the result of considerate
design based on a careful needs assessment that
was conducted before beginning to build ERLIC
(Cochenour, 2000). In 2001 the library added Cold
Fusion Web pages to provide better license tracking and user authentication (Alan, 2002).
University of California Los
Angeles’s ERDb
The University of California Los Angeles’s
(UCLA) Electronic Resources Database (ERDb)
was drawn from several working principles, the
irst of which is to “know your users” (Farb &
Riggio, 2002). In designing their ERDb UCLA
irst developed a staff working group known as
the Steering Committee on Access to Electronic
Resources (SCAER) (University of California
Los Angeles Library, 2006). The documents of
this committee are freely available and include
reports on its vision of the electronic resource
management system, a list of contacts in each
department that report to the SCAER, and a month
by month timeline of steps to be completed in the
development of the ERDb (available at http://staff.
library.ucla.edu/groups/scaer/).
The architecture of the staff view of the system
is constructed on Microsoft Access software, and
is served to the public view through Cold Fusion
(University of California Los Angeles Library,
354
2002). The ERDb has a staff view back-end and a
patron view front-end. The back end has multiple
ields for text entry and many pull down options
for choosing keyword descriptors for a particular resource. A particularly useful feature of the
ERDb is found on the troubleshooting screen,
which houses problem reports for each resource.
This trouble history tracks the problems of a
resource over time and offers help in correcting
a problem when similar issues occur (Farb &
Riggio, 2002).
SOME SUCCESSFUL ELECTRONIC
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
SySTEMS, WITH A SPECIALIzED
FOCUS
The electronic resource management systems
discussed to this point focus on tools developed
for a speciic university setting. There are three
additional locally developed systems that are
notable for their successes in other areas. Gold
Rush was locally developed and then made
commercial, HERMES was locally developed
and then made available as freeware, and the
Tri-College Consortium’s ERTS was created as
a consortial management system; each will be
briely described.
Gold Rush
The Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries, a
nonproit group, developed the electronic resource
management system called Gold Rush. It was
created as a result of information gleaned from
various academic institutions about what elements
an ideal electronic resource management system
would contain; from this information the standalone system was built (Collins, 2005). Stockton
and Machovec note that the alliance hoped that by
being constructed as a consortial tool Gold Rush
would act as a “database of databases” (Stockton
& Machovec, 2001, p. 53).
The Impact of Locally Developed Electronic Resource Management Systems
Gold Rush is a Web-driven system that is
hosted remotely, so that libraries that use it do
not have to download any software. It contains
a variety of modules: subscription management,
openURL link resolver, a public interface to allow A-Z searching, and a reporting feature for
collection development assistance (Gold Rush,
2006). Of particular note is an email feature, which
notiies a deined group of people when a license
agreement will be coming due for renewal. This
feature is customizable, with the ability to alert
different groups of people for different resources,
if desired. There are also several “views” available, giving each staff member access only to
relevant modules of the system. Gold Rush does
not integrate with a library’s catalog, though the
data can be drawn out of or into the program to
reduce double keying. The system is available for
an annual licensing fee.
HERMES
The electronic resource management system,
HERMES, was designed at Johns Hopkins University throughout 2000, and was built in 2001. It
was developed in PostgreSQL and served through
Cold Fusion (Jewell, 2005). It is constructed of
modules, to which staff may be given access to few
or many. The available modules are: authorization,
selection, acquisitions, catalog interface, catalog,
library computing services, public display, administrative search, report, scheduled notiications
(Cyzyk & Robertson, 2003). Since the system is
open source, another library may choose to add
or delete modules to suit its needs.
An interesting feature of this system is the automated subject indexing. Based on a bibliographic
record’s subject headings, the cataloging interface
allows a mapping to HERMES’s subject schema.
The cataloger enters the mapping for the irst entry, and thereafter the system uses a look-up table
to determine if the newly entered bibliographic
record has a similar mapping structure; if it does
it is automatically entered into the system.
The developers of HERMES deined particular
roles, or groups, that would enter data into the
system. These roles were identiied in order to
make certain that only necessary staff would be
allowed access to the material. The roles include
license management, budget management, purchasing, and cataloging, to name a few (Cyzyk
& Robertson, 2003).
The Tri-College Consortium’s ERTS
The Tri-College Consortium developed their
Electronic Resources Tracking System (ERTS)
because the “paper iles maintained by Serials
Librarians have proven inadequate in both accessibility and organization” (Medeiros & Pascale,
2003). The Tri-College Consortium, made up
of the libraries of Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and
Swarthmore Colleges, shares many electronic
resources, but paper iles maintained at one college
are not useful to the libraries of the remaining two
schools. The design of this system, therefore, was
planned to serve the consortium in managing the
resources licensed by all three colleges.
The ERTS began construction in 2001 using
FileMaker Pro and is shared with the other colleges in the consortium by the use of FileMaker’s
sharing feature. The system contains a public view
and a technical services view; the public view is
made available through the Web. In addition, a
design focus serves the function of generating
reports that cannot be derived from the individual
colleges’ integrated library systems. The reports
available are: 60-day expiration alert, purchase
type, pay date, expenditure comparison by purchase type, and acquisition count (Medeiros &
Pascale, 2003).
The program is constructed of four modules:
licensors, purchases, vendors, titles. Each college
adds information to the modules, reusing existing
data, if possible. For example, their stated intent
of the licensing module is “to have one licensor
record for all libraries that use that license, even
if our terms differ slightly” (Medeiros & Pascale,
355
The Impact of Locally Developed Electronic Resource Management Systems
2003). Sharing this administrative metadata at the
consortial level enables the three college libraries to have the same information if they need to
contact technical support for a resource, request
a new license agreement, or renegotiate a price
upon renewal. The construction of a database with
shared information relects the efforts of three
colleges that have gone to great lengths to accomplish this community effort. The consortium
has constructed a suggested worklow for how to
best handle licensing electronic resources in each
library. The ERTS is available for download as
shareware.
CHARACTERISTICS OF AN IDEAL
ELECTRONIC RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
As locally developed electronic resource management systems cropped up across the academic
library community it became evident that each
served the needs of a particular institution, but
was not necessarily effective in another setting.
In evaluating the locally developed electronic
resource management systems and the literature
about them, authors attempted to identify the
characteristics of an ideal system (Jewell, 2001;
Jewell, 2005; Kennedy, 2004). In 2004 Kennedy
suggested that the “dream” program would contain the following functions: notify appropriate
staff before licenses expire, integrate with library
management system to eliminate double keying,
maintain current/appropriate vendor contact information, track funds used to purchase resources,
eliminate paper shufling from one ofice to another, track consortia purchases, update in real
time, and produce ad hoc reports (Kennedy, 2004).
The Digital Library Federation has since deined
47 requirements to construct a comprehensive
system, and a Council on Library and Information Resources report lists nearly 150 functions
or data elements (Jewell, 2001; Jewell, 2005).
More recent focus in this area has concentrated
356
on further identifying elements that would enable methods for capturing and delivering usage
statistics (Digital Library Federation, 2004; Fons
& Jewell, 2006).
THE LIMITATIONS OF LOCALLY
DEVELOPED ELECTRONIC
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
SYSTEMS
Each of the six locally developed electronic
resource management systems that have been
discussed may be considered successful because
of their approach to design. Each was constructed
to speciically address the particular needs of its
institution, or a perceived user group, but may
not encompass all aspects of an ideal electronic
resource management system. Appendix B of a
Council on Library and Information Resources
report which lists the data elements for MIT’s
VERA, PSU’s ERLIC, and UCLA’s ERDb, shows
clearly that though there is some overlap in the elements these systems encompass, they are distinctly
different from one another (Jewell, 2001).
Although they created successful programs,
the universities that developed in-house programs
are slowly migrating away from them, in favor
of commercial products (see Pennsylvania State
University, 2006, for example). Much work has
been done within the library and vendor communities to co-develop new tools and work
together to add functionality where individual
in-house programs cannot. The in-house programs
have provided a time-limited solution for these
universities, and as academic institutions move
toward more consortial purchasing, continuing
to heartily develop the in-house programs is not
time eficient. Most of the in-house tools developed failed with some interoperability problems,
the consistent issues being a lack of integration
with the library catalog, requiring redundancy of
data, and scalability issues. Solutions for some
of these issues were generated by librarians and
The Impact of Locally Developed Electronic Resource Management Systems
vendors working together to create communitywide initiatives.
COMMUNITY-WIDE EFFORTS IN
MANAGING ELECTRONIC
RESOURCES
As institutions sought communication related to
the development of electronic resource management systems outside their university boundaries
several impressive initiatives were constructed.
The Digital Library Federation created an initiative called the Electronic Resource Management
Initiative, run by a steering group of members
from seven academic institutions; information
sharing initiatives such as the Open Digital Rights
Language and the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
were developed; and interest in creating standardized license agreement language became evident.
These and a number of additional community
efforts will be discussed in this section.
Electronic Resource Management
Initiative
As institutions realized that effective communication about their common problem of managing
electronic resources could lead to satisfying
solutions they began to seek discussion outside
their own academic institutions. The “Web hub
for developing administrative metadata for electronic resource management” was constructed to
facilitate the sharing of information about institutions developing their own electronic resource
management systems (Chandler & Jewell, 2005).
The Web hub was a Web site managed by Adam
Chandler and Tim Jewell (no longer updated as
of February 2005), which listed the names of the
universities that were building systems or creating initiatives to address their own electronic
resource management needs. The site also listed
descriptions of the systems and contact persons
at each university. The site was built so that uni-
versities could read how other institutions were
developing their tools, and could communicate
with those universities if they had similar needs.
The Web hub was a successful facilitator for those
institutions that were considering building their
own electronic resource management systems
but needed more information or support before
beginning their projects.
The creators of the Web hub started the Digital
Library Federation’s Electronic Resource Management Initiative steering group in 2001. The
purpose of the Electronic Resource Management
Initiative (ERMI) was to deine an essential list
of data elements that would construct a full and
complete electronic resource management system
(Chang, 2003). In addition to deining the data
elements, the group sought to develop worklows
and promote standards for the management of
the data (Digital Library Federation, 2006). The
Web hub served as a fertile space from which
the ERMI could pull information to begin their
discussions.
In the inal report of the Digital Library Federation’s ERMI seven functional areas required to
construct a comprehensive management system
are identiied: “listing and descriptive;” “licenserelated;” “inancial and purchasing;” “process and
status;” “systems and technical;” “contact and
support;” and “usage” (Digital Library Federation,
2004, p. 4). By identifying these functional areas
the ERMI hopes to convey accurately to vendors
or others wishing to build management systems
what elements are needed (Chandler, 2004).
As the Digital Library Federation’s ERMI
outlined its own goals it also included conversations with library vendors. By communicating
with the vendors the ERMI created a successful
ongoing rapport about what was needed to develop
a complete electronic resource management system. By including vendors in this discussion the
ERMI could provide the data backbone of a system
that could then be developed by the vendors; in
this way libraries could depend on vendors for
development support and collaboration rather than
acting as independent system creators.
357
The Impact of Locally Developed Electronic Resource Management Systems
Standardized License Agreements
Another area of electronic resource management
that has had community-wide efforts to streamline
is in developing standardized license agreements.
A major challenge to the timely management of
electronic resources is the often ambiguous or
dificult language in which license agreements are
worded. These agreements are legally binding, yet
many librarians in charge of implementing them
often have little or no training in how to interpret
their language. As a result license agreements
at some libraries are forwarded from a library’s
acquisition department to a legal signatory for
the university, stopping the acquisitions process
until the license has been rewritten to have agreeable terms for both the publisher/vendor and
the university. This time lag is a major problem
for an acquisitions department that is used to a
standardized, on-time worklow. In addition to
the break in worklow, tracking the progress of
a license agreement that is passed back and forth
from vendor/publisher to the legal signatory for
the university is a challenge.
To counter this dificulty there have been
attempts to simplify the language of a license
agreement so that they can be quickly agreed
upon and signed, providing patrons with prompt
access to the materials licensed. In 2000, John
Cox constructed ive model license agreements,
the development of which were sponsored by subscription vendors (Cox, 2000). These licenses are
in the public domain and are meant to be altered
to it the speciic needs of a particular licensing
situation. Yale also offered a standard license
agreement, written under sponsorship by the
Council on Library and Information Resources
and the Digital Library Federation. Yale’s license
notes, in brackets, the sections of the license that
the library is to complete (Yale University Library,
2001). They also offer a best practices short form
of the license.
As of 2007 the National Information Standards
Organization is sponsoring a working group titled
358
Shared E-Resource Understanding. This group
is charged with developing some guidelines that
publishers and licensors of electronic resources
can use to establish a iscal relationship without the
inclusion of a written license agreement. Negating
the requirement for a written license in favor of
simply agreeing in principle on how electronic
resources will be used is a step toward more
open and collegial working relationships between
publishers and their resource licensors.
The Open Digital Rights Language
An effort to disambiguate the language used in
license agreements about what users may/may
not do with the information, the open digital
rights language has created a data dictionary
that deines the rights and limitations. Written
as an XML document, the language is meant to
be interoperable, meaning that the terms used in
one instantiation mean the same as in another.
The language can be used for a variety of electronic resources, whether they are describing the
rights and limitations of a traditional electronic
journal or a digital image, audio, or movie (Iannella, 2002).
The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
Dublin Core is a metadata schema that was designed to help describe data in a consistent way
across platforms. It is similar to the open digital
rights language (ODRL), yet its focus is on broad
resource description, rather than focusing speciically on rights and limitations. The Dublin Core
has proven itself to be an internationally successful tool due to its scalability; it is constructed
of only 15 elements, each of which is optional,
and all may be repeated (Dublin Core Metadata
Initiative, 2006). This lexible set of descriptors
can be applied to almost any kind of resource.
One of the descriptors particularly relevant to
this discussion is the element “rights.” This ield
can hold information regarding licensing rights
The Impact of Locally Developed Electronic Resource Management Systems
and limitations for a particular resource or for
a group of resources. To promote maximum
interoperability, the ODRL and the Dublin Core
Metadata Initiative teamed together as of 2005 to
begin discussions about how to merge the access
rights elements of their two vocabularies.
Other Concepts
As a result of broad discussion surrounding
electronic resources the standardization of
administrative metadata became an important
topic. Administrative metadata can be loosely
deined as information about electronic resources
that facilitates their management. Data such as
resource title, rights and limitations, license terms
and dates, and budgeting information may be
considered administrative metadata. As more of
this metadata is created inside electronic resource
management systems it has become clear that
a standardization of the information would be
beneicial for comparison across resources. Another standardization effort that would assist in
sharing data is the automatic exchange of serials
data (Jones, 2002). If the metadata about serials
could be standardized then the data could be
shared between systems without any extra keying, allowing for more accurate data (no typing
errors) and freeing staff to pursue other tasks.
Usage statistics is a current effort in standardization as well, with hopes that counting web page
visits and article downloads can be standardized
to facilitate usage comparison between different
publications (Fons & Jewell, 2006).
CHANGING COMMUNICATION
PATTERNS DUE TO LOCALLY
DEVELOPED ELECTRONIC
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
SYSTEMS
It is clear that the problem of managing electronic
resources motivated librarians to act outside of
their usual environment into a more public role.
This movement outside of the normal work setting
occurred when license agreements began to be
required for the leasing of electronic resources.
This necessity pushed some librarians to collaborate with university ofices (often general
counsel) in order to negotiate and sign the license.
The format of the resource itself also required that
librarians communicate with systems or technical staff to ensure that it was activated correctly.
Acquisitions librarians who may not have had
much communication with patrons before also
learned to clarify and correct access problems
with the electronic resources. These new models
of communicating outside of the normal work
environment may have had a positive effect on
the development of the community-wide efforts
in managing electronic resources.
Within one’s university setting one acts in
one’s role; in this way librarians are tied to existing power structures and role expectations.
By irst working to develop local solutions to
electronic resource management and then community-wide solutions librarians took themselves
out of their traditional roles. Librarians who had
gained enough knowledge about how to develop
their own locally designed electronic resource
management systems contributed to the wider
discussion of developing a management system
at the national level. By working outside of their
libraries’ hierarchies, thrusting themselves instead
into peer collaboration with librarians from institutions across the United States, librarians may
have created an ideal development environment.
Conger suggests that this collaborative, rather
than hierarchical, working environment may have
contributed to the successes of community-wide
development of electronic resource management
systems (Conger, 2004, p. 29).
These collaborations on deining elements
of a successful electronic resource management
system have not included just librarians, but
vendor representatives as well. By including the
vendor community in deining key elements of
359
The Impact of Locally Developed Electronic Resource Management Systems
an electronic resource management system, the
Digital Library Federation’s Electronic Resource
Management Initiative (ERMI) steering group
was able to negotiate early on what roles each
would play in the future development of such
systems. The librarians and vendors brought their
own expertise to the discussion, broadening it
with a variety of approaches and ideas. Systems
vendors have, in fact, begun constructing electronic resource management modules that follow
the data elements outlined in their collaborations
with the ERMI (Grover & Fons, 2004; Meyer,
2005). In this way, system vendors and ERMI
members may be viewed as co-developers of these
new systems. By creating this kind of diverse,
creative working group the members naturally
developed a sense of ownership in the outcome.
They deined not only a management system but
also a model for future successful communications with each other.
SUMMARY
Tasking themselves with identifying new ways
in which to manage electronic resources has
given librarians alternate communication models
from which to work. Creating locally developed
electronic resource management systems helped
to unify the library communities at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Pennsylvania State
University, and the University of California Los
Angeles. Then as those groups began to work
outside their institutions they developed what
Emery calls a “library enterprise network,” or
library groups that act as nodes in a wider network,
collaborating on a speciic task (Emery, 2005). It
is this wider network that librarians have learned
to create for themselves, and it predicts future
successes in forthcoming development tasks.
360
REFERENCES
Alan, R. (2002). Keeping track of electronic
resources to keep them on track. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://www.library.cornell.
edu/cts/elicensestudy/pennstate/PSUNASIGPresentation2002.ppt
Chandler, A. (2004). Electronic resource management. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://
metadata-wg.mannlib.cornell.edu/forum/index.
php?date=2004-09-24
Chandler, A., & Jewell, T. D. (2005). A web
hub for developing administrative metadata for
electronic resource management. Retrieved November 23, 2007, from http://www.library.cornell.
edu/cts/elicensestudy/
Chang, S. (2003). The DLF electronic resource
management initiative. OCLC Systems & Services,
19(2), 45-47.
Cochenour, D. (2000). Taming the octopus:
Getting a grip on electronic resources. Serials
Librarian, 38(3/4), 363-368.
Collins, M. (2005). Electronic resource management systems: Understanding the players and how
to make the right choice for your library. Serials
Review, 31, 125-140.
Conger, J. E. (2004). Collaborative electronic
resource management. Westport, CT: Libraries
Unlimited.
Cox, J. (2000). Model generic licenses: Cooperation and competition. Serials Review, 26(1),
3-9.
Cyzyk, M., & Robertson, N. (2003). HERMES:
The Hopkins Electronic Resource Management
System. Information Technology and Libraries,
22(1), 12-17.
The Impact of Locally Developed Electronic Resource Management Systems
Digital Library Federation (2004). Electronic
resource management: Final report of the DLF
initiative. Retrieved November 23, 2007, from
http://www.library.cornell.edu/elicensestudy/
dlfdeliverables/DLF-ERMI-FinalReport.pdf
Digital Library Federation. (2006). DLF electronic resource management initiative. Retrieved
November 23, 2007, from http://www.diglib.
org/standards/dlf-erm02.htm
Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (2006). DCMI
metadata terms. Retrieved November 23, 2007,
from http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmiterms/
Duranceau, E. F. (2000). License tracking. Serials
Review, 26(3), 69-73.
Duranceau, E. F., & Hepfer, C. (2002). Stafing
for electronic resource management: The results
of a survey. Serials Review, 28(4), 316-320.
Emery, J. (2005). Beginning to see the light:
Developing a discourse for electronic resource
management. Serials Librarian, 47(4), 137-147.
Farb, S., & Riggio, A. (2002). UCLA electronic
resources database project overview. Retrieved
November 23, 2007, from http://www.library.
cornell.edu/cts/elicensestudy/ucla/ALAMidwinter2002.ppt
development partnership. Serials Review, 30,
110-116.
Hennig, N. (2002). Improving access to e-journals
and databases at the MIT libraries: Building a
database-backed web site called “VERA”. In J.
Cole, & W. Jones (Eds.), E-serials cataloging:
Access to continuing and integrating resources
via the catalog and the web (pp. 227-254). Binghamton, NY: Haworth.
Iannella, R. (2002). Open Digital Rights Language
(ODRL) version 1.1. Retrieved November 23, 2007,
from http://www.w3.org/TR/odrl/
Jewell, T. D. (2001). Selection and presentation
of commercially available electronic resources:
Issues and practices. Washington, DC: Council
on Library and Information Resources.
Jewell, T. D. (2005). E-resource management
systems: Past, present, and future. Retrieved
November 23, 2007, from http://www.sirsidynixinstitute.com/Resources/Attachments/Slides/jewell_20051207.pdf
Jewell, T. D., & Mitchell, A. (2005). Electronic
resource management: The quest for systems and
standards. Serials Librarian, 48(1/2), 137-163.
Johns Hopkins University. (2004). HERMES.
Retrieved November 23, 2007, from http://hermes.
mse.jhu.edu:8008/hermesdocs/
Fons, T., & Jewell, T. (2006). Envisioning the
future of ERM systems. Paper presented at the
meeting of the North American Serials Interest
Group, Denver, CO.
Jones, E. (2002). The exchange of serials subscription information. Bethesda, MD: National
Information Standards Organization.
Gardner, S. (2001). The impact of electronic journals on library staff at ARL member institutions:
A survey and a critique of the survey methodology.
Serials Review, 27(3-4), 17-32.
Kennedy, M. R. (2004). Dreams of perfect programs: Managing the acquisition of electronic
resources. Library Collections, Acquisitions, and
Technical Services, 28(4), 449-458.
Gold Rush (2006). Welcome to Gold Rush. Retrieved November 23, 2007, from http://grweb.
coalliance.org/
Kennedy, M. R., Crump, M. J., & Kiker, D. (2004).
Paper to PDF: Making license agreements accessible through the OPAC. Library Resources &
Technical Services, 48(1), 20-25.
Grover, D., & Fons, T. (2004). The Innovative
electronic resource management system: A
361
The Impact of Locally Developed Electronic Resource Management Systems
Loghry, P. A., & Shannon, A. W. (2000). Managing selection and implementation of electronic
products: One tiny step in organization, one giant
step for the University of Nevada, Reno. Serials
Review, 26(3), 32-44.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries.
(2006). VERA: Virtual electronic resource access.
Retrieved November 23, 2007, from http://libraries.mit.edu/vera
Medeiros, N., & Pascale, C. (2003). The Tri-College Consortium’s electronic resource tracking
system (ERTS). Retrieved November 23, 2007,
from http://www.haverford.edu/library/erts/
Meyer, S. (2005). Helping you buy: Electronic
resource management systems. Computers in
Libraries, 25(10), 19-24.
Montgomery, C. H., & Sparks, J. L. (2000). The
transition to an electronic journal collection:
Managing the organizational changes. Serials
Review, 26(3), 4-18.
Pennsylvania State University Libraries. (2006).
Serials and acquisitions services tactical plan
05/06-07/08. Retrieved November 23, 2007, from
362
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/admin/adup/tactical/serials_acq_plan_rev072006.pdf
Stockton, M., & Machovec, G. (2001). Gold Rush:
A digital registry of electronic journals. Technical
Services Quarterly, 19(3), 51-59.
University of California Los Angeles Library
(2002). SCAER vision of access to electronic
resources. Retrieved November 23, 2007, from
http://staff.library.ucla.edu/groups/scaer/vision_rept.doc
University of California Los Angeles Library
(2006). Staff intranet: Steering committee on access to electronic resources (SCAER). Retrieved
November 23, 2007, from http://staff.library.ucla.
edu/groups/scaer/
Yale University Library (2001). CLIR/DLF model
license. Retrieved November 23, 2007, from http://
www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/modlic.shtml
Young, M., & Kyrillidou, M. (2004). ARL supplementary statistics 2002-03. Retrieved November
23, 2007, from http://www.arl.org/stats/pubpdf/
sup03.pdf
363
Chapter XX
The Future of Electronic
Resource Management
Systems:
Inside and Out
Ted Fons
Innovative Interfaces, Inc., USA
ABSTRACT
The core functional requirements for electronic resource management systems have been identiied and
implemented in varying depths by commercial and library system developers. As use of these systems
increases, novel needs have been revealed. These new needs reside on both sides of the end-user spectrum.
Library staff have a need to analyze their electronic collections for comprehensiveness, title overlap,
cost-per-use, usage distribution within journal packages and other collection analysis functions. They
also have the need to automate administrative tasks like IP registration, incident reporting, activation,
renewal, sample license review, and license exchange. Library patrons and public services staff have
a need to understand the full range of permissions and restrictions for electronic resource use at the
local and consortial levels. They also have the need to be alerted when electronic resources have been
upgraded, enhanced or when system outages are planned or are on going. Those needs are manifest at
all levels of access: the discovery services platform, online public access catalog, the link resolver, the
metasearch environment, A-Z list, and so forth. Since the electronic resource management system already
stores permitted and restricted uses, it is the ideal source for that data at all levels of patron access. As
electronic resource management systems evolve, the functional requirements should evolve to describe
the library’s needs for a system that acts as a collection development and analysis tool and as the source
for critical access and license data for patrons wherever they access the library’s electronic resources
and to support the requirements of libraries in a consortial arrangement.
Copyright © 2008, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
The Future of Electronic Resource Management Systems
INTRODUCTION
Electronic resource management (ERM) systems have followed a traditional path in library
system development. As the worklow impact
and overall importance of electronic resources
grew in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, library
staff developed local systems to meet speciic
functional requirements. As the worklow and
overall impact of electronic resources increased,
library professionals collaborated on formalizing
functional requirements and the ideal data elements for ERM systems. This effort took the form
of the Electronic Resource Management: Report
of the DLF Electronic Resource Management
Initiative (Jewell et al., 2004). Over time, the
locally developed systems could not adequately
meet staff needs or could not be maintained and
enhanced over the long term. In the early 2000’s,
library professionals approached commercial
system developers to build systems to match the
now-formal functional requirements and data
elements. It was widely understood that the commercial system developers had the development
resources and long-term commitment to providing
systems that would meet the needs of electronic
resources librarians. These systems were to varying degrees integrated with integrated library
systems and other systems already in use by the
library (Fons & Grover, 2004). As the middle
2000’s approached, a robust market of competing
systems grew and libraries began to implement
the commercial systems at the local and consortial levels. As these systems were developed and
the core functional requirements were met, new
functional requirements have evolved and pressure is now being applied to system developers
to build systems that can grow with the evolving
requirements.
The new functional requirements for staff
cluster around the need to make routine administrative tasks more eficient through automation
and interface development and improved data
analysis and reporting.
364
Usage statistics harvesting is a prime example
of the need for automation of routine administrative tasks (Chandler & Jewell, 2006). A critical
need is integration with other local systems like the
integrated library system (ILS), the link resolver
engine and knowledgebase and perhaps most
importantly, integration with the administrative
functions of the content providers and subscription agents that provide access and licensing
services. Another critical need is for standardized
license data to facilitate the review of terms for
proposed resources and automated population
of the ERM system (NISO, n.d.). Librarians are
also looking for enhanced reporting functions
that maximize the value of harvested usage data
and other locally held data such as cost. Access
to acquisitions data within the ERM system for
enhanced reporting and troubleshooting has arisen
as a functional need for ERM systems (Digital
Library Federation, Acquisitions Interoperability
Subcommittee, 2007).
As the primary functional requirements for
staff have been met, the need to provide data from
the ERM system to library patrons has become
an increasingly important functional requirement.
Libraries are looking to provide the terms and
conditions of use at all points of access to content.
These access points include link resolver displays,
A-Z lists of electronic journals, the online public
access catalog, metasearch environments and the
new discovery services platforms such as Encore
from Innovative Interfaces and Primo from ExLibris that provide an enhanced resource discovery
and delivery experience for patrons.
BACKGROUND
Before the appearance of commercial ERM systems, electronic resource management was typically handled by a combination of automated and
non-automated solutions. Libraries used analog
management systems to track contact information
and the printed versions of contracts. Some librar-
The Future of Electronic Resource Management Systems
ies used the integrated library system unmodiied
for tracking electronic resources (Tull, Crum,
Davis, & Strader, 2005). Finally, other libraries
developed local systems for tracking their electronic resources (Jewell, 2001). UCLA’s ERDb,
North Carolina State University’s E-Matrix and
MIT’s Vera are notable examples. The Electronic
Resource Management Initiative (ERMI) documents authors took advantage of that collective
experience to document the critical data elements
and functional requirements for the ideal ERM
system. The commercial vendors responded
strongly to this effort. Beginning in 2004 when
Innovative Interfaces introduced its Electronic
Resource Management product, there followed a
series of releases from other commercial vendors.
The ILS vendor Endeavor developed Meridian and
Ex Libris developed Verde. The publication access
management service Serials Solutions introduced
their Electronic Resource Management System.
Noncommercial organizations such as the Colorado Alliance (“Gold Rush”) also appeared in the
market during this period (Duranceau, 2004).
First-generation commercial ERM systems
were developed to create a single system that
would serve as the database of record for metadata related to electronic resources. They were
built to describe the components of an electronic
resource including the electronic product, interface, resource, contacts and license (Jewell et al.,
2004). To facilitate an eficient worklow they
were designed to record details of the steps in the
acquisition and licensing of the resource—including recording the details of the administrative
tasks such as IP registration, activation and other
stages of the administrative process. Title lists
for journal packages and article databases along
with access metadata like linking rules, embargo
periods, coverage dates, and static URLs were also
a core feature of these systems. Knowledgebase
data and methods of maintaining data currency
provided users with a list of available titles and
access points for link resolvers and public displays where they were available. Acquisitions
details like pricing models; negotiation notes and
quotes were also stored in the ERM. Worklow
paths and responsibilities and tasks were a basic
functional requirement along with contact details
for platform vendors, publishers, data providers,
and consortium partners were all important components of the irst generation ERM functional
requirements.
To varying degrees all of these systems have
satisied the core functional requirements and
matched the data elements recommended by
the ERMI model. As these systems have been
implemented by libraries; the need for a new set
of functional requirements has been exposed. The
following section describes a new set of useful
functional requirements for ERM systems.
STAFF NEEDS
The evolving staff needs within ERM systems
fall into three categories:
•
•
•
Automation: The need for enhanced eficiency through automation of routine
administrative tasks and interface development.
Analysis: The need for sophisticated
analysis of existing data to provide a deeper
understanding of library holdings to and
make informed decisions about the return
on investment for electronic resources.
Consortium requirements: The need to
track license terms at the appropriate level
and to manage title metadata that is shared
and unique in a consortial environment.
Automation
As ERM systems have matured, libraries have
sought new eficiencies through standardization of
data. The License Expression Working Group has
been convened to develop an industry standard for
the description of the license terms that govern a
365
The Future of Electronic Resource Management Systems
licensed resource (NISO, n.d.). The need for such
a standard lies in the library’s time-consuming
task of analyzing license documents and coding
them according to the features of the local ERM
system. This has proven to be a labor-intensive
task that requires the skills of a staff member
deeply familiar with license terms. The evolved
functional requirement is a feature built into the
ERM system that will accept a feed of license data
and populate the ERM system with the appropriate
terms of use and other license elements as proiled
by the library. Additionally, ERM systems should
offer a view of license terms for resources that
are not currently licensed—such as those that
are undergoing a trial or other resource selection review process. The ideal application would
connect to the system of the content provider or
a clearinghouse of license documents and allow
the selector to review the proposed license terms
before purchase or at any time during the evaluation process. A Web-services based request and
response model should be in place and integrated
with the ERM application. This would allow the
user to make real-time, just-in-time requests for
licensed or under-trial electronic resources. An
industry-standard license description format
would provide the backbone for this model.
The automation of routine administrative tasks
provides a rich source of new functional requirements for ERM systems. Interfaces between ERM
systems and content provider or subscription agent
administration systems would facilitate the automation of administration functions such as:
IP Registration
As local networks grow or are reconigured, libraries must broadcast a list of IP address ranges
to their content providers. This is particularly
true for libraries in a consortial arrangement or
agreements with partner institutions and afiliated
institutions. This task is required in addition to
the registration of IPs when new resources are
licensed. Current methods are labor intensive
366
and the actual registration mechanism can vary
from provider to provider. As libraries look to
the new generation of ERM systems they want
to see a single model for IP registration enabled
by standards-based protocols within the ERM
system.
Activation
As with IP registration, this critical part of the
worklow varies from provider to provider. A
single activation mechanism enabled by a standard
protocol among all providers could have the effect
of avoiding service problems and improve overall
eficiency. Automating this activity would have
the additional beneit of blending the activation
action itself with the recording of the event in the
ERM system—thereby contributing to overall
eficiency.
Renewal
While renewal might involve a review of license
terms or renegotiation of some aspects of the license, where the license is being accepted without
revision, it should be possible to indicate an intent
to renew or to commit to renewal via communication between the ERM system and the content
provider or licensing agency. Where both parties
agree to a standard protocol, the amount of staff
administrative activity should be attenuated by
the automated system.
Incident Reporting
Incident reporting is the activity whereby the
library notiies the publisher or platform provider
that there is a problem with access to an electronic
resource or one of its components. It is the administrative function that is perhaps in the greatest
need of automation. Current ERM systems allow
staff to record the details of a service incident at a
detailed level—including title details for journal
packages and the reporter and reportee. The fact
The Future of Electronic Resource Management Systems
that this process is not automated contributes to
ineficiency. Library staff are forced to report
incidents through provider-speciic mechanism
and then record the details of the incident in the
ERM system for long term analysis and to seed
follow up tools provided by the ERM system.
This should be a single event with a feedback
loop based on an agreed-upon protocol.
License Review
As described above, there is a need for a request and
response protocol for license terms. This would
facilitate the review process for not-yet-licensed
resources and allow the library to review current
or proposed standard license terms for renewing
licenses. This mechanism would create the foundation for an automated method for populating
the ERM system with license terms.
What is needed here is a standard model
for communication between the ERM system
and the content provider or subscription agent’s
administrative system. Each of these administrative functions shares the same identiiers; the
only difference between the exchanges is in the
administrative data transferred. See Table 1.
While no model currently exists for this data
exchange, a Web services model with a common
request and response syntax could be developed
between ERM system developers and content
providers or subscription agents.
Analysis
ERM systems have a number of data elements
that make them an ideal source for advanced
data analysis. They contain or have access to the
knowledgebase of titles, links, embargo periods
and coverage dates for all licensed and unlicensed
ejournal content available to the library. Some
ERM systems have contain cost data provided
by the acquisitions system from an integrated
library system or loaded through interfaces.
Combined, all of this data can serve as the input
for advanced analytical tools. Libraries need these
tools to inform decisions on subscription renewals, aggregation and publisher-direct cost/beneit
comparisons and as evidence for challenging the
principles of title bundling—particularly with
the bundled ejournal packages. Data-informed
analysis tools could provide libraries with concrete
evidence of the use pattern within packages and
a detailed understanding of the value for money
for the little-used titles within a package.
Standard statistical methods can provide valuable tools in the analysis of the patterns of use
Table 1. Core data elements for automation of administrative tasks
Administrative Function
Identiiers
Request or Report
(Client)
Response
(Server)
IP registration
Institution identiier
Resource identiier
IP addresses
Conirmation
Activation
Institution identiier
Resource identiier
Activation request
Conirmation
Renewal
Institution identiier
Resource identiier
Renewal request
Conirmation
Incident report
Institution identiier
Resource identiier
Incident description
Conirmation
License review
Institution identiier
Resource identiier
License request
License data
367
The Future of Electronic Resource Management Systems
within a package. The spread of usage of journals
within a package can be analyzed by the following
statistical measures:
•
•
•
Mean to measure average usage within a
collection
Median to identify the middle point in usage
within a collection
Skewness to identify asymmetry of the
distribution of usage values within a collection
Quantile analysis to group journals into one
hundred bins (percentiles) or ten bins (deciles)
where journals are arranged from least usage
to highest usage and then divided into the bins.
This arrangement facilitates histogram views and
percentage of usage calculation.
Using these measures, libraries could understand how much on average resources are used
(mean), the abstract distribution of usage with in a
package (median) and test for unequal distribution
of usage with a package (skewness and quantile
analysis). These latter tools can provide perhaps
the most revealing analysis of distribution of
usage. Quantile analysis can be used to expose
unequal distribution of usage within a package.
For example, if a set of journals are arranged
in equal groups of deciles from least usage to
highest usage, it possible to quickly calculate and
analyze the share percentage of each decile. If usage is highly unequal, then the greatest share of
total usage will be in the top deciles. In extreme
cases, this analysis will show that a few of the
most highly used journals comprise the majority
of total usage within a package. To illustrate the
potential usefulness of this analysis, sample usage
data from three ejournal collections licensed by
an ARL library were analyzed using the Stata
statistical analysis tool. See Tables 2-4.
In the case of the American Chemical Society, the top decile comprises 30.11% of the total
usage—under a third. For the Ovid journals the
share of the top decile is 46.72%—just under
368
Table 2. American Chemical Society: Quantile
analysis of 2006 usage
American Chemical Society, 2006 Usage
Quantile
Group
Quantile
1
Share
51.00
0.48%
2
83.00
1.02%
3
152.00
2.06%
4
281.00
3.74%
5
426.00
4.05%
6
440.00
6.26%
7
561.00
7.46%
8
1127.00
13.24%
9
2687.00
31.57%
10
30.11%
Table 3. Ovid journals: Quantile analysis of 2006
usage
Ovid Journals - Lippincott Williams &
Wilkins, 2006 Usage
Quantile
Group
Quantile
Share
1
2.00
0.45%
2
4.00
0.80%
3
8.00
2.03%
4
12.00
3.10%
5
17.00
3.16%
6
25.00
5.58%
7
37.00
8.39%
8
53.00
11.82%
9
88.00
17.95%
10
46.72%
half. The most extreme case is Science Direct
where 68.33% of total usage (approaching three
quarters) is accounted for by the top ten percent
of the journals.
Skewness is simply a statistical description of
the curve that describes the usage. Again, if a set of
journals are arranged in deciles and a graph of the
usage is produced, a highly unequal distribution
The Future of Electronic Resource Management Systems
Table 4. Science Direct: Quantile analysis of
2006 usage
Elsevier – Science Direct, 2006 Usage
Quantile
Group
Quantile
can be highly unequal. As an analytical tool,
these measures could provide electronic resource
management staff a concrete measure of the true
usage of bundled journal packages.
Share
1
4.00
0.09%
2
12.00
0.37%
3
22.00
0.79%
4
37.00
1.32%
5
60.00
2.24%
6
88.00
3.27%
7
125.00
4.69%
8
199.00
7.34%
9
341.00
10
Collection Analysis Tools
The utility of ERM systems is expanded dramatically when collection analysis tools are present.
The most useful tools and candidates for new
functional requirements are:
Cost-Per-Use Analysis
11.55%
68.33%
of usage will show a highly negative skew—that
is most of the usage will be crowded within the
top deciles. This provides an easily comparable
measure of the inequality of usage distribution
among packages. A gradually rising curve that
does not deviate signiicantly from the median
value would demonstrate a more even distribution of usage among journals and an extremely
low skewness score would be assigned. See Table
5 for mean, spread of usage for journals within
the package and skewness analysis for the same
packages analyzed above.
These data show that there is tremendous
variation in usage of journals within a package
and the distribution of usage within the deciles
When cost igures are available to the ERM system, the ERM system can use the payment data
to support electronic resource collection analysis
functions—especially cost-per-use igures. For
example, where title-level usage data is stored in
the ERM system, payments for those titles stored
on the system can be used to calculate cost-peruse igures for each. Those same usage and payment igures can then be combined to calculate
average resource- or package-level costs-per-use.
This would allow libraries to make meaningful
comparisons across content platforms offering
similar content. The goal of these calculations is
typically not to determine extremely high or low
cost amounts, rather it is to provide concrete cost
igures at the use level for reporting to faculty,
staff, funders, selectors or other analysts of the
relative cost of the library’s licensed resources
(Fons & Jewell, in press).
Table 5. Statistical summary for sample packages
Package
Mean
Smallest
Usage Count
Largest
Usage
Count
Skewness Score
American Chemical Society, 2006 Usage
745.6071
20
3337
1.636924
Ovid Journals - Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2006 Usage
37.98857
1
352
2.790133
Elsevier – Science Direct, 2006 Usage
221.7717
0
56811
25.14667
369
The Future of Electronic Resource Management Systems
Overlap Analysis With Cost-Per-Use
Analysis
Where packages contain identical titles, it is
useful to understand the degree to which titles
overlap and the holdings ranges overlap. When
identifying candidates for selection review, it is
useful to understand the degree to which titles are
available in other packages. Overlap analysis tools
should generate percentages for unambiguous
analysis. Where possible, resource-level costper-use igures should be included to provide a
value-for-money dimension. Relative cost-per-use
can be a valuable tool in understanding which of
multiple resources provides the maximum value
for money spent.
Usage Statistics Harvesting
The most signiicant challenge to making acquisitions data available to the ERM system is the
location of the acquisitions system of record for
the institution. The majority of ERM systems are
offered as parallel applications to the ILS. Where
the acquisitions and ERM systems are built on the
same platform, it possible to have direct access
to the cost data described above. Where these
systems exist in parallel there are no existing
standards for the automated exchange of cost data.
The Acquisitions Interoperability Subcommittee
of the DLF’s ERMI phase II project has identiied the core data elements for exchange between
systems (Digital Library Federation, Acquisitions Interoperability Subcommittee, 2007). The
challenge for ERM system developers is to build
interfaces to acquisitions systems to import that
data. The ideal application would allow requests
carrying the appropriate institutional credentials
and speciic resource identiiers. The return data
would follow an industry standard for processing
into the ERM system. Until such a model can be
developed, ERM systems should accept data in
proprietary formats from a variety of sources.
The development of the Standardized Usage
Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) or Z39.93
standard at last provides libraries with an eficient
method for gathering usage statistics across all
of their COUNTER-compliant content providers, and thereby to support and streamline these
kinds of analyses. SUSHI harvesting capability
should be a baseline functional requirement for
all ERM systems. In addition to cost and usage
data, future ERM systems should have access
to bibliographic data elements like subject and
publisher to provide the full range of analysis
tools (Fons & Jewell, in press).
Consortium Requirements
Acquisitions Data
•
As previously discussed in the section on cost-peruse analysis, acquisitions data can be useful in the
ERM context. In the ERM system, acquisitions
data can support cost analysis and a set of use
cases related to supporting the electronic resource
lifecycle. These include payment veriication for
resources that have been reported as unavailable by users and the relative cost at the journal
level for aggregated journals and publisher-direct
subscriptions.
370
Managing electronic resources that are available
through the library’s consortial memberships has
become an important requirement for ERM systems. Both at the library and the consortial level,
it is important to track these components:
•
View of consortial (shared) resources.
Here it is critical to track the license terms
as they apply to each member of the consortium. Libraries need to understand the
terms and conditions that apply to the use of
the shared resources and to what extent they
can share the resources with their extended
user community.
View of library-speciic resources. In a
system that tracks consortial resources it
must be possible to ilter searches and views
The Future of Electronic Resource Management Systems
•
to the resources that are made available
exclusively through the library’s funds.
Proposed and trialed resources. Libraries
in consortia want a mechanism to publish
resources that are under consideration for
purchase. A feedback mechanism for each
library’s purchase preference is a useful
component of this feature.
Libraries have pursued consortial arrangements because of the perception that the buying
power of a collection of libraries offers a wider
range of resources than could be acquired by each
library acting independently. These arrangements
have allowed libraries to expand their resources
through the “big deal” from resources that they
license directly to resources that they license
collectively and to resources that are available
outside of their speciic subscriptions, but are
available through the consortial coniguration.
These resources that are not owned directly, but
are available for use through consortial negotiations are not tracked well in current ERM systems.
The requirements above combine to provide a
rich area for improvement with next-generation
ERM systems.
PATRON AND PUBLIC SERVICES
NEEDS
Current ERM systems have been designed to
support the acquisitions worklow, collection
analysis and on-going management of electronic
resources. However, the need for a tool for public
services staff in supporting electronic resources
for library patrons and for the library patrons
themselves remains signiicant. Library public
services staff frequently support inquiries about
the current status of and access parameters of
electronic resources. The ERM system is designed
to store information about resource status, incident
status and the speciic terms and conditions for
use. This information should be exposed at all
points of description and access. More importantly, it is not uncommon for licenses to require
the library’s best efforts to express the terms and
conditions to the end user. Therefore, all public
points of access should display:
Terms and Conditions of Use
Perhaps the most critical data for public services
staff. The ability for public services staff to consult an easily-accessible interface that describes
the terms and conditions such as authorized
categories of users and terms of core activities
like interlibrary loan allows faster resolution of
access problems and rapid resolution of patron
inquiries.
Resource Availability and Advisory,
With Forecast for Problem
Resolution When System Outage is
Ongoing
When resources are not available because of
scheduled outage, unscheduled outages or administrative error, it is critical for public services staff
to be able to communicate the current status of
the issue to library patrons and to have a resource
to consult when library patrons inquire about the
status of a resource. The public display component
of the ERM system is the ideal location for this
information. Coupling these displays with the
incident reporting functionality described above
would maximize eficiency within the system.
The advisory component of the public display
would allow the library to go beyond the simple
service outage notiication feature. The advisory
component would also allow the library to promote some aspect of the resource that might be
relevant to the moment or to broadcast new content
sponsored by the library or library consortium.
For example, the library could promote the recent
addition of new titles or other enhanced content
and to provide credit to the funding agency.
371
The Future of Electronic Resource Management Systems
Resource Scope/Description
As with appropriate resource selection where
there are multiple resource options, a scope note
displaying at the point of discovery or access, the
ERM system becomes both the system of record
for all metadata about a resource and a reference
tool for library patrons. Resource scope notes and
general description has the potential to help a user
determine the type of resource being accessed
(journal collection, article database, index, etc.).
It can also help the user determine the depth of
treatment of topics, for example general knowledge/multidisciplinary or specialized resource.
Technical Requirements for Access
As Web browsers mature and incorporate helper
applications, this component is less critical than
it has been in the past. However, the broadcast of
technical requirements for access can be useful
for specialized databases where speciic helper
applications are required for ile types included
in the resource.
The advantage of including information from
the ERM system in public access applications
extends beyond the description of access terms
and resource descriptions. It also provides the
library with the opportunity to centralize all
information about the electronic resource including resource features, enhancements, and library
value-adds and library sponsorship of researchrelated content.
Discovery Services Platform, Link
Resolver and Metasearch Views
The value of ERM data in public views is not
restricted to the online public access catalog and
A-Z lists of resources and journals. It extends to
external points of access such as the discovery
services platform (Encore and Primo are examples), link resolver and metasearch environment.
Library patrons accessing licensed content should
372
have a clear understanding of access rights and
restrictions as well as relevant administrative
data describing the nature and availability of the
desired content. Particular attention should be
paid to providing information about the technical
requirements for full text access to content. This
includes browser versions required and suggestions on secondary applications required for accessing content. All of this data should be available
in the ERM system. Where the ERM system and
the link resolver share the same platform, these
linkages should be built in. Where the systems do
not, interoperability methods should be developed
between systems to allow the real-time request
for the appropriate data elements.
Exposing ERM data to public interfaces share
some of the same challenges that we saw in making
cost data available to the ERM system. The ERM
system often does not share the same platform
as the public interfaces and no standards exist
for the query and supply of the data elements
identiied previously. The development of an
industry-standard model for the request of this
data is a positive direction for the development
of the next generation of ERM systems.
CONCLUSION
The rapid development and implementation of
ERM systems in the library marketplace shows
that ERM systems are important components of
the contemporary library management toolset.
ERM systems were important enough to libraries
that they evolved from locally developed systems
to commercial products sold by commercial
software vendors. However, ERM systems must
evolve to provide features beyond those provided
by the irst-generation commercial ERM systems.
The SUSHI standard demonstrates that it is not
only possible, but highly desirable, to develop
new standards to bring greater eficiency to
electronic resource management. As SUSHI used
Web services technology, that same technology
The Future of Electronic Resource Management Systems
could be used to bring new eficiencies to routine
administrative tasks such as IP registration, activation, renewal, incident reporting and license
review. Data standards for license data will further
facilitate those interfaces. Standard statistical
techniques should be applied to the analysis of
ejournal packages to give electronic resource professionals the tools they need to make informed
decisions about electronic resource purchases and
the quantitative analysis data required to successfully negotiate with electronic resource providers.
And inally, new technologies and intra-industry
cooperation should be sought for the sharing of
ERM data with the critical public interfaces. In
all, there is much room for growth in electronic
resource management systems and their proiles
as a critical tool for professional management of
the library’s most critical resources will continue
to grow.
REFERENCES
Chandler, A., & Jewell, T. D. (2006) Standards
– Libraries, data providers and SUSHI: The
standardized usage statistics harvesting initiative.
Against the Grain, 18(2), 82-3.
DLF Electronic Resource Management Initiative,
Phase II, Acquisitions Interoperability Subcommittee (2007). White paper on interoperability
between acquisitions modules of integrated library
systems and electronic resource management systems: A draft for comment. Retrieved November
23, 2007, from http://www.haverford.edu/library/
DLF_ERMI2/ACQ_ERMS_white_paper.pdf
Duranceau, E. F. (2004). Electronic resource
management systems from ILS vendors. Against
the Grain, 16(4), 91-94.
Fons, T. & Grover, D. (2004). The innovative
electronic resource management system: A development partnership. Serials Review, 30(2),
110-116.
Fons, T. & Jewell, T. D. (in press). Envisioning the
future of ERM systems—NASIG 2006 Proceedings. The Serials Librarian.
Jewell, T. D. (2001). Selection and presentation
of commercially available electronic resources:
Issues and practices. Washington, D.C.: Digital
Library Federation.
Jewell, T. D. et al. (2004). Electronic resource management: Report of the DLF electronic resource
management initiative. Retrieved November 23,
2007, from http://www.diglib.org/pubs/dlf102/
ERMFINAL.pdf
NISO, License Expression Working Group (n.d.).
Retrieved November 23, 2007, from http://www.
niso.org/committees/License_Expression/LicenseEx_comm.html
Tull, L., Crum, J., Davis, T., & Strader, C. R.
(2005). Integrating and streamlining electronic
resources worklows via innovative’s electronic
resource management. The Serials Librarian,
47(4), 103-124.
373
374
Chapter XXI
In the Eye of the Storm:
ERM Systems are Guiding
Libraries' Future
Ted Koppel
Ex Libris Inc, USA
INTRODUCTION
Electronic resource management (ERM), as a tool
for library management, grows in importance
every day. The ERM industry has matured greatly
over the past decade. Just ten years ago, the irst
journals began to be published on the Web in signiicant volume; by 2007, many smaller colleges
and some large research libraries have moved to
complete or nearly complete electronic-only access (Ives, 2006). The Association of Research
Libraries reports that the average ARL research
library now spends over 31% of its materials budget
on electronic resources, with a large proportion of
these libraries spending more than 50% of their
materials budget on electronic resources (Kyrillidou & Young, 2006).
In a relatively short period of time, libraries
have struggled to redesign not just the nitty-gritty
of policies, procedures, systems for managing
their resources, but especially their roles in the
information delivery process, to meet the demands and opportunities of a digital landscape
for information seeking and research. Changes
have been revolutionary, but libraries and publishers have adjusted rapidly and there are now
systems, best practices documents, and evolving
standards on which to build future enhancements
Libraries are working with less chaos and more
conidence in managing e-resources. But this
calm is deceptive—libraries are in the eye of
the growing storm that will soon reveal more
revolutionary change.
In this chapter, we will examine the most signiicant of these changes, show how they present
challenges for libraries, and suggest how electronic
resource management systems (ERMs) could
evolve to help libraries meet these challenges. We
conclude that ERMs represent just a step towards
the “new ILS” (integrated library system)—that
the next “heart” of library management will be
something past the ERM, and believe that it is
imperative that libraries work carefully to push
ERM system development in ways that support
and advance, rather than undercut, the libraries’
missions.
This chapter will examine following major
trends in electronic resource management and
Copyright © 2008, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
In the Eye of the Storm
look at critical opportunities for ERM system
use and development in each area:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Ubiquity of high speed communication
platforms and inexpensive mass storage
Changes in user behavior / increased competition from non library search engines
and content sources, user-centric design;
the need to get metadata where users are,
rather than asking them to come to library
Web sites or tools.
Disintegration of the ILS: End of ILS as the
gateway/gatekeeper. The case for integration
and/or interoperability; and incorporation
of user-generated content in end-user tools
and services.
Evolving pricing and access models, including changing fortunes of the Big Deal and
the associated practical and philosophical
issues; open access; usage-based pricing; and
cost-effectiveness measures for e-resources,
pay per view.
Intellectual property struggle: Digital rights
management models, licensing concerns and
trends
Technical, as well as philosophical archiving
issues, including the development of third
party cooperative archiving
In addressing these key trends in e-resource
management, we will look at how the emergence
of local and then commercial ERM systems relate to these trends, and how the mission of the
ERM system has expanded to encompass many
library functions (e.g., serials control, acquisitions,
license metadata storage). We will examine the
differing expectations for ERM systems from
various players in the market (libraries, publishers, and ERM system vendors) and how “mission
creep” should be addressed, including the specter
of ERM systems as digital rights management
delivery mechanism.
RECENT MAJOR TRENDS IN
ELECTRONIC RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT
Hardware and Software Changes
Three major hardware and software advancements
during the last ten years have enabled the library
world to rapidly adapt to electronic resources are
the primary means of information delivery to
their constituencies. Lacking any of these three,
electronic resources would not have been able
to lourish to the extent that they have, but the
late 1990’s and early 2000’s delivered a “perfect
storm” of technological advancement.
Assisted by the 1996 U.S. Telecommunications
Act that continued deregulation of communications companies, a number of telephone, cable,
and other participants in the telecom industry
began an orgy of iber-optic data line construction
across the United States (and indeed, the rest of
the world participated as well). Millions of miles
of “dark iber” (referring to excess capacity in a
carrier’s iber optic lines) were buried in anticipation of future use. Telephone companies developed
ambitious business plans to carry huge amounts
of data, based on predictions of data transmission
demand multiplying for years.
The dot-com bust (2000-2001) resulted in a
huge oversupply of iber data carrying capacity.
Lack of demand for data transmission, the oversupply of capacity, and advances in multiplexing
and data communications hardware combined to
make high-speed data transmission extremely
inexpensive. Colleges and universities rewired
their campuses to take advantage of new, faster
data transmission. New offerings for the enduser consumer, such as cable modems, DSL, and
broadband Internet service, brought high speed
data to almost all locations in the United States. A
2004 map showed almost the entire United States,
with the exception of some small areas in northern
Alaska and northwestern Utah, having access to
at least one high speed or broadband provider.
375
In the Eye of the Storm
Some areas of the country have access to as many
as four providers (High Speed, 2004).
Inexpensive mass storage is a second factor
contributing to the “perfect storm” of technological change in the last decade. Server hard disk
drives tumbled in price. Advances in technology
allowed for storage capacities to become exponentially larger while costing less and less. Fault
tolerance (or 100% uptime) guaranteed by RAID
(redundant array of inexpensive disks) became
affordable. Data storage—formerly a major and
limiting cost to providing large scale information
retrieval—became cheap and commoditized. Using inexpensive storage, content providers were
better able to make the economic case for investing in, publishing, and delivering their products
electronically.
Perhaps the most important technological factor enabling electronic resources as an industry to
succeed was the creation and broad acceptance of a
common platform for computers of all types—the
Web browser. Prior to the Web browser, information retrieval was most often done using a lineby-line (telnet) interface, or, in some cases, with
a dedicated client that handled communication
with a content provider’s server.
Netscape 1.0 was released in late 1994, and
Internet Explorer in early 1995. By version 4
(1997-1998)—after several software revisions
and technology enhancements—Web browsing
became an integral part of our environment.
Additional browsers—both for Windows and for
different hardware platforms—were developed.
Although minor differences between the browsers
remain even in 2007, Web browsing as a platform
for the delivery of information services is a completely accepted and standard means of access.
Line-based information retrieval is virtually nonexistent at this time, and very few client-based
systems still exist.
User Behavior and Expectations
Much has been written concerning the ways that
end users approach the Web in order to ind in376
formation. To the dismay of many in the library
world, library catalogs are used (as the starting
point of information gathering) by only 3% of information seekers (OCLC, 2005). Search engines
(Google and others) are the launching point for
86% of all queries. Some groups in the library
world have looked inward, trying to understand
where and why libraries have failed to be relevant
in the information delivery process. Other groups
have taken a defensive stance, castigating Google
and its brethren as part of the “evil empire” and
casting aspersions as to the completeness and quality of search engine retrieval. However, general
consensus has evolved in the last year or two to
be as follows: irst, the large search engines are
here to stay—they are not going to disappear,
and therefore let us coopt them or work with the,
rather than ight them. Second, the success of
search engines such as Google shows that their
approach is doing something right, and therefore
the library world may be able to learn something
from it.
Internet users have become used to entering
their search in a single box on an uncrowded
screen. They expect a search that will bring back
“some” results. They expect that the search results
will be ranked and presented in an order that relects relevance to their search argument. Users
do not want to be bothered with prequalifying
sets or completing a screen full of search parameters—they want to enter a simple argument and
rapidly receive useful results. Many users draw
no distinction between the 8 billion pages that are
indexed and free on Google and the multitude of
expensive electronic products that are paid for
and provided by the library.
Further, users are no longer willing to go into
a library to retrieve the information they need.
The personal computer workstation acts as an
enabler—the user feels that he should be able
to ind the information he needs whether he is
at home, in the classroom, on the beach, or in a
restaurant. Information (and access to that information) is moving from the library to the user.
In the Eye of the Storm
From a service delivery standpoint, the library has
a greater burden, because it may not even see its
users. The users, however, have an expectation
that the library will server them.
Disintegration of the ILS
The integrated library system—for decades
the way that library automation systems were
designed and delivered—is in the process of falling apart. Early library automation practice was
for one systems vendor to provide for the entire
library’s management needs—one uniied set of
modules controlled circulation, an OPAC, acquisitions, serials control, and sometimes interlibrary
loan. This was largely due to the way that the ILS
industry evolved—Innovative Interfaces’ original
product was an acquisitions system, TLC/CARL’s
was a public access catalog, NOTIS’ was a circulation system, etc.
The move towards disintegration accelerated
in the early 2000’s as a result of three different
trends. First, a number of systems vendors began
to develop automation products that were agnostic—that is, they were designed to work with,
and complement another vendor’s ILS system.
Examples include ExLibris’ SFX link resolver
and MetaLib metasearch module, TLC’s Online
Selection and Acquisitions (Web-based acquisitions service), TLC’s AuthorityWorks (Web-based
authority control for any ILS), AquaBrowser (an
OPAC graphic front-end), and to some degree
resource sharing systems such as SirsiDynix’s
URSA (Universal Resource Sharing Application)
and Innovative Interface’s INNReach. Each of
these systems was designed with interoperability
in mind. As a result of this trend, libraries are able
to choose the “best of breed” in each different
functional area with the (not-always-realized)
expectation that they will all work together.
A second trend pushing the disintegration of
the ILS is the technical maturity and sophistication of libraries and library staff. Twenty years
ago, library automation was considered something
akin to magic. In contrast to that era, powerful
personal computers are used by (and understood
by) hundreds of millions of users. Network management is no longer mystical when consumers and
library users can install their own home routers
and wireless networks. Graphic user interfaces
are so ubiquitous—almost every application uses
one—that libraries and users alike have little patience for a poorly designed interface. Computing,
Web page development and management, and
similar skills are far more accessible than ever
before. As a result, libraries feel that they can
act as their own systems integrators instead of
purchasing services and software from a single
vendor.
The third trend, as mentioned earlier and elsewhere in this book, was the rise of e-products as
a major service delivered by the library. Library
processes are changing (and will continue to do
so) as the electronic products are purchased by
libraries in greater numbers. The line between
serials acquisitions, monographic acquisitions,
and electronic resource processing is becoming
increasingly blurry. Traditional technical processing will evolve as physical items become a smaller
percentage of library procurement and electronic
products a much larger proportion.
Pricing
Pricing of electronic products continues to be
controversial. The mission of libraries is to collect and distribute information in whatever form
it takes, and make it available to the libraries’
clientele. Academic and research libraries need
to subscribe to a broad range of journals to fulill
their mission. Publishers are, of course, aware of
the library’s mission, and have for years—long
before the advent of electronic resources—priced
their journals at rates considered exorbitant by
libraries. As electronic resources consume a larger
percentage of a library’s materials budget, publishers have tried to defend their subscription base
by tying access to an e-journal to the continued
377
In the Eye of the Storm
subscription of a paper journal, and vice versa.
Further, publishers introduced the concept of
the “Big Deal” in which a library would receive
large portions of a publisher’s electronic journal
output in exchange for severe limitations on that
library’s ability to manage its collection and cancel titles that it no longer needs. Various models
of the “Big Deal” exist within today’s electronic
product market, each with different bundles of
e-products and with different terms that affect
the library.
Many libraries are satisied with “Big Deal”
pricing, because it allows them to continue to
receive (and in many cases, expand the number
of) journals—paper and electronic—in their collection. Other libraries have opted away from the
“Big Deal” because they felt publisher product
bundling ran counter to the library’s responsibility
to purchase wisely only those titles that were consistent with the university’s curriculum. Further,
restrictions on Big Deal titles (e.g., restricting
interlibrary loan) prevent a library from fulilling its traditional sharing role in the academic
community.
Partially in reaction to the “Big Deal,” but
largely to apply some rationality to electron
journal pricing, several different no-cost or lowcost alternatives have been started. The Public
Library of Science (www.plos.org) “is a nonproit
organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world’s scientiic and medical
literature a freely available public resource.” PLoS,
a private, nonproit organization, makes journals
freely available online without use or distribution
restrictions. In a similar way, the Directory of
Open Access Journals (www.doaj.org) lists and
links to almost 3000 electronic journals that are
freely available for use.
Open access publishing is very much an evolving phenomenon in academia. Some open access
models required that the articles’ authors pay a
certain amount in order to have their articles peer
reviewed and made available to the public. PLoS,
for example, charges the author $2500 per article
378
submitted. Other open access models charge
nothing (because of external funding support)
or are hybrids.
Another approach to high electronic resource
product pricing is the “pay per use” or “pay per
view” model, in which article citation information
is made freely available. A user wishing to use a
particular full text resource must pay an a’la-carte
price for the article; the price is usually set by the
publisher. Financial arrangements can be made
between the library and the publisher for more
eficient user interaction. Pay per view’s appeal
to the library is clear—the library need not subscribe to a journal—the end user pays for what
he wants. Even in cases where libraries subsidize
article purchases, there is the assumption that the
single-article purchase prices will not total the
amount that a subscription would have cost.
Pay-per-use has its disadvantages as well. Besides being expensive, most pay-per-use library
models deliver the document to the one person who
requested it. No one else; least of all the library,
beneits from the purchase. The articles are not
collected or shared; there is no net addition to the
library’s collection on behalf of future users.
Intellectual Property
Intellectual property and digital rights management in the era of electronic resources management is increasingly complex as well. Although
many publishers are attempting to secure the
reprint and resale from their authors, this is by
no means common and successful across the industry. Publishers and aggregators make available
what they are legally allowed to deliver, which
can make for inconsistent or spotty delivery of
full text of certain publications. This becomes
particularly acute in the aggregation and delivery
of backiles of older material, because publishers
a decade or two ago did not attempt to secure
rights to electronic publication and distribution.
Some publishers have gone back to article authors
to retroactively secure those rights, while others
have not.
In the Eye of the Storm
Most ERMs do not have a role to play in the
protection or delivery if intellectually property
other than to act as a higher-level gateway to the
material itself. On an administrative level, an ERM
system may chose to store information about the
level of completeness of a title’s (or package’s)
full text delivery, but this has not yet become a
major factor in ERM user.
In some areas, the library appears to be blurring the line between an ERM system and a DRM
(digital rights management) system. DRM systems
concern themselves primarily with digital objects,
their description, and their rules for use. Generally DRM system-manage their data on an object
level, since each object (a ilm clip, sound bite, or
perhaps a photograph) will have distinct metadata
differences from one another. However, most
ERM systems can be, with a little imagination,
made applicable to management of digital sets as
well as e-journals and e-books. After all, sets of
digital objects are often “packaged” in a similar
way as e-journals. Therefore, DRM expectations
will be imputed onto ERM systems, causing them
to begin to change.
Perpetual Access and Archiving
Libraries worry that e-books or e-journals may
disappear from availability over time. This may be
because a publisher or aggregator loses the rights
to distribute that title, or it may because the title
is no longer economically viable, for example.
In any case, several different alternatives have
arisen to attempt to ensure that electronic journals continue exist and be available in an online
form even after the publisher may have ceased
publishing the title.
Note that in this chapter we are not discussing
perpetual access to titles that the library may have
subscribed to but for which they have dropped the
subscription. That situation is a contractual/legal
one which may allow the library ongoing access
to the years for which it was a subscriber. This
discussion is about those titles which are no longer
being published, where otherwise access would
be permanently denied.
Several approaches have developed to archive
electronic manifestations of journals. LOCKSS
(for “Lots of copies keep stuff safe”) is open source
software that provides librarians with an easy
and inexpensive way to collect, store, preserve,
and provide access to their own, local copy of
authorized content they purchase. LOCKSS, as the
name implies, is distributed (local) software that
enables libraries to make immediate and contemporaneous copies for their own use, and maintain
those collections ad ininitum. Further cooperative agreements between LOCKSS members can
allow distributed collecting and shared use of
LOCKSS-stored materials. LOCKSS libraries
are audited to ensure that appropriate publisher
permission has been received and that usage and
distribution rules are being followed.
Another archiving-preservation approach
has been developed by JSTOR (www.jstor.org).
JSTOR is a not-for-proit organization with a
dual mission to create and maintain a trusted
archive of important scholarly journals, and to
provide access to these journals as widely as
possible. JSTOR offers researchers the ability
to retrieve high-resolution, scanned images of
journal issues and pages as they were originally
designed, printed, and illustrated. JSTOR scans
and archivally stores scholarly journals in various
collections (arts and sciences, health and general
science, biological science, etc.). Citations are
indexed and searchable from within the JSTOR
interface; libraries can access the journals for
which they have contracted. JSTOR’s collection
and coverage are continually growing; however,
their selection criteria call for complete (or nearcomplete) journal runs.
Portico, a more recent entrant in the preservation ield, performs a similar task. From the Portico
Web page: “The Portico service offers a permanent
archive of electronic scholarly journals, thereby
providing protection against the potential loss of
access to e-literature integral to a library’s col-
379
In the Eye of the Storm
lection.” Portico provides all libraries supporting
the archive with campus-wide access to archived
content when speciic trigger events occur, and
when titles are no longer available from the publisher or other source. Trigger events include:
•
•
•
•
A publisher stops operations
A publisher ceases to publish a title
A publisher no longer offers back issues
Upon catastrophic and sustained failure of
a publisher's delivery platform
Portico also provides a reliable means to
secure perpetual access, if participating publishers choose to designate Portico as a provider
of post-cancellation access. In addition, select
librarians at participating libraries are granted
password-controlled access for veriication and
audit purposes only.
Other preservation and archival centers exist,
and still other new ones are in formation. Although
not all will survive the economic tests being demanded of a perpetual archive, one can assume
that many will, and that there will be consistent
availability of titles that would otherwise have
disappeared for various reasons.
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE
This concluding chapter will try and predict the
future of electronic resources management:
1.
380
More demands for interoperability between
systems of all types: ERM systems are in
some ways a catalyst for interoperability
in the future. They need to share data with
computers and servers of all types; this will
become increasingly more of a demand as
time goes on. Therefore, it is possible to foresee interoperability requirements with:
a. Publishers: In addition to SUSHI
and license expressions, the ability
for publishers to announce uptime
2.
and downtime (in real time). Also, the
ability for libraries to directly update
the publishers with new or changed IP
addresses
b. Agents: The ability for serials subscription agents’ servers to directly download payment and pricing information
from their servers to the libraries’ ERM
systems for immediate updating
c. ILS: Direct data exchange between
libraries’ ERM systems and their
ILS software, whether or not they are
supplied by the same company. Speciically, companies that try to sell an
integrated ERM-ILS solution will ind
themselves losing in the marketplace.
d. Direct interaction between ERMs,
accounts payable, and other budget
management systems
e. Interoperability with third party systems such as copyright agencies and
rights management concerns, to ensure
that copyright fees are assessed and
collected in a consistent way
More pressure on subscription agents to add
value to the ERM process
a. Subscription agents have had less of a
role as the number of paper subscriptions has diminished and the number
of e-subscriptions has increased.
Aggregation and billing services are
somewhat less in demand than previously.
b. As a result, subscription agents will
need to (and are trying to!) ind a valueadd role in the e-product supply chain.
These new roles may include:
i. Billing aggregators
ii. Statistics collection and distribution aggregators using SUSHI or
other mechanisms
iii. License collection aggregators
iv. Data feeds to ERM systems
v. Full text or document delivery
purveyors
In the Eye of the Storm
3.
4.
Opportunities for niche players to ind a role
in the ERM process
a. As the ERM industry matures, opportunities will arise for niche players
to develop businesses around management areas that are not handled by any
parties. An early example can be seen
in ScholarlyStats, who have developed
a business in collection, normalization,
and repackaging of statistical data.
Perhaps this is not a glamorous area,
but it is an important one and libraries
are willing to pay for the high quality
output.
b. Some of ‘enhanced MARC record’
supply (made available by ExLibris’
MARCit and Serials Solutions) are
examples of niche products for which
there is a market and a supplier, It is
dificult to predict what the next one(s)
will be, but it is safe to assume that
there will be places in the market for
a number of different services.
Pricing transparency from vendors
a. ERM systems provide a hitherto
unavailable degree of incisive and
analytical information about usage,
duplication, and pricing of the resources
that they are purchasing. As libraries
become savvy to the power of, and begin to use these new tools to affect their
subscription negotiations, it is possible
that we will see the following:
i. For vendors of aggregated packages and some selected packages:
truth in pricing. Prices that show
value.
ii. Less padding of packages with
low-use and low-value titles, and
real pricing for valuable titles.
iii. Ultimately, potentially the breakup of the aggregated package and
a move towards per-title pricing
where the customer, not the vendor,
makes the choice.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Vastly increased use of pay-per-view
pricing
a. As the traditional aggregator model
ceases to exist, libraries will still want
occasional access to titles that do not
meet their criteria for ongoing subscriptions. Pay-per-view, now a very small
percentage of electronic resources use,
will grow as an alternative means of
e-resource delivery.
A slow move towards rational and consistent
copyright and licensing terms, systematically applied across academic libraries. Rather
than each publisher or aggregator pushing
its own idiosyncratic and inconsistent set of
copyright rules and fees to the market, there
will be movement towards lattening and
rationalizing these terms across the industry. This will come as a result of customer
pressure and negotiation with publishers.
New standards for new functions. We have
already seen new standards such as SUSHI
and the (nascent) License Expression Working Group. As the ERM industry matures
and interoperability (see above) becomes
more important, additional standards will
be needed:
a. Acquisitions data exchange format (for
sharing of fund, invoice, cost, price,
and other information)
b. Unique identiiers (across the industry)
for packages and collections
c. A protocol for the exchange of uptime
and downtime information
d. A protocol for the delivery of IP address
changes from library to vendor
e. A pay-per-view data sharing protocol
for PPV transactions
The ERM (and the novel concept of ERAMS)
will cease to exist. ERMs and ERAMS take
too narrow a view of library resources, in
that they deprecate the value of paper and
other nonelectronic resources. The phrase:
“Electronic Resource Access and Manage-
381
In the Eye of the Storm
ment Systems” (or ERAMS) is attributed to
Martha Whittaker, then of Serials Solutions,
by Lorcan Dempsey in his blog (Dempsey,
2007). The ERM, combined with the disintegration of the traditional ILS and the
reshaping of the library around discovery
and delivery, will evolve into the RM (that
is, generalized resource manager) or perhaps
the URM (the universal resource manager).
The “electronic” focus of ERM will stop
being a delineator of library function,
and become an adjective—one of many
categories in the greater world of resource
management.
REFERENCES
Dempsey, L. (2007). Lorcan Dempsey’s weblog.
Retrieved November 23, 2007, from orweblog.
oclc.org/archives/001250.html
382
High Speed Providers by Zip Code (2004). Retrieved November 23, 2007, from www.cablemodem.net/images/coverage_map.gif
Ives, Gary (2006). Transition to E-Journals at
Texas A&M University, 1995-2004. Serials Librarian, 47(4), 71-78.
Kyrillidou, M., & Young, M. (2006). ARL library
trends 2003-04. Retrieved November 23, 2007,
from www.arl.org/stats/arlstat/04pub/04intro.
html
OCLC Inc. (2005). Perceptions of libraries and
information resources: A report to the OCLC
membership. Retrieved November 23, 2007, from
www.oclc.org/reports/pdfs/Percept_all.pdf
383
Compilation of References
17 U.S.C. §107-122 (2001 & Supp. 2005).
21st Century Department of Justice Appropriations Authorization Act. (2002). Retrieved November 17, 2007,
from http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/pl107-273.
html
Alabama Commission on Higher Education (2006,
December 12). NAAL index. Retrieved November 12,
2007, from http://www.ache.state.al.us/NAAL/
Alan, R. (2002). Keeping track of electronic resources
to keep them on track. Retrieved November 22, 2007,
from http://www.library.cornell.edu/cts/elicensestudy/
pennstate/PSUNASIGPresentation2002.ppt
Albitz, R. S. (2002). Electronic resource librarians in
academic libraries: A position announcement analysis,
1996-2001. Portal: Libraries and the Academy, 2(4),
589-600.
ALCTS (2004, December). LC announces TrackER
software availability and speciications. ALCTS Newsletter Online, 15, 6. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from
http://www.ala.org/ala/alcts/alctspubs/alctsnewsletter/
v15n6/tracker.htm
Alford, D. E. (2002). Negotiating and analyzing electronic license agreements. Law Library Journal, 94,
621-644.
Alford, L. (2000). The impact of digital resources on
organization and management of collection development and acquisitions. Paper presented at the IFLA
Conference Proceedings, Jerusalem, Israel. Retrieved
November 12, 2007, from http://www.ila.org/IV/ila66/
papers/168-180e.htm
Allgood, J.E. (2006). Friend or foe?—Digital resources
within library collections. Against the Grain, 18(2),
24-30.
Allison, D., & McNeil, B. (2000). Database selection:
One size does not it all. College & Research Libraries,
61(1), 56.
American Association of Law Libraries (2001). Competencies of law librarianship. Retrieved November 17, 2007,
from http://www.aallnet.org/prodev/competencies.asp
American Association of Law Libraries (2004). Principles
for licensing electronic resources. Retrieved November
17, 2007, from http://www.aallnet.org/committee/reports/
LicensingPrinciplesElecResources.pdf
American Association of Law Libraries, American
Library Association, Association of Academic Health
Sciences Libraries, Association of Research Libraries,
Medical Library Association, Special Libraries Association (1997). Principles for licensing electronic resources.
Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://www.arl.
org/sc/licensing/licprinciples.shtml
American Law Institute (1981-2006). Restatement of the
law second, Contracts 2d: As adopted and promulgated
by the American Law Institute at Washington, D.C. St.
Paul, MN: American Law Institute Publishers.
American Library Association (2004). Policy concerning conidentiality of personally identiiable information
about library users. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from
http://www.ala.org/alaorg/oif/pol_user.html
American Library Association (2005). Draft core competencies. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://www.
Copyright © 2008, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
Compilation of References
ala.org/ala/accreditationb/Draft_Core_Competencies_07_05.pdf
American Library Association (2006). UCITA: Impact
on libraries. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from http://
www.ala.org/ala/washoff/WOissues/copyrightb/ucita/
impact.htm
American Library Association (2006). UCITA: UCITA
& related legislation in your state. Retrieved November
18, 2007, from http://www.ala.org/ala/washoff/WOissues/copyrightb/ucita/states.htm
Anderson, B. (1999). Web lists or OPACs: Can we have
our cake and eat it, too? Library Computing, 18(4),
312-316.
Anderson, B., & Hawkins, L. (1996). Development of
CONSER cataloguing policies for remote access computer ile serials. The Public-Access Computer Systems
Review, 7(1). Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://
epress.lib.uh.edu/pr/v7/n1/adne7n1.html
Anderson, C. (2004, December). ERUS December 2004
report. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://web.
simmons.edu/~andersoc/erus/reportdec04.html
Anglo-American cataloguing rules (2nd ed.) (2002).
Ottawa: Canadian Library Association, the Chartered
Institute of Library and Information Professionals, and
the American Library Association.
Antelman, K. (2005). Implementing a serial work in
an electronic resources management system. Serials
Librarian, 48(3/4), 285-288.
Antelman, K., Lynema, E., & Pace, A. K. (2006). Toward a twenty-irst century library catalog. Information
Technology and Libraries, 25(3), 128-139.
Apps, A., & MacIntyre, R. (2006, November 9). Why
OpenURL? D-Lib Magazine, 12(5).
Arms, C. (1999). Enabling access in digital libraries: A
report on a workshop on access management. Retrieved
November 21, 2007, from http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/arms-79/contents.html
Association of Research Libraries (1997). Principles
for licensing electronic resources, inal draft, July 15,
384
1997, by the American Association of Law Libraries,
the American Library Association, the Association of
Academic Health Sciences Libraries, the Association of
Research Libraries, the Medical Library Association, and
the Special Libraries Association. Retrieved November
17, 2007, from http://www.arl.org/scomm/licensing/
principles.html
Association of Research Libraries (2002). Collections
and access for the 21st-century scholar: changing roles of
research libraries. ARL: A bimonthly report on research
library Issues and actions from ARL, CNI, and SPARC.
225. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://www.arl.
org/newsltr/225/index.html
Avram, H.D. (1968). MARC: The irst two years. Library
Resources & Technical Services, 12(3), 245-250.
Awasthi, S., Beardmore, J., Clark, J., Hadridge, P.,
Madani, H., & Marusic, A., et al. (2005). Five futures for
academic medicine. PLoS Medicine, 2(7), e207 OP.
Bader, S. A., & Thompson, L. L. (1989). Analyzing inhouse journal utilization: An added dimension in decision
making. Bulletin of the Medical Library Association,
77(2), 216-218.
Baker, G., & Blocker, L. (2005). Electronic resource
management systems (ERMS). PowerPoint presentation.
Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://www.lib.utk.
edu/~elecser/ts-erms.ppt
Balas, J. L. (2005). Blogging is so last year-now podcasting is hot. Computers in Libraries, 25(10), 29.
Balas, J. L. (2006). The “magic” of wireless access in
the library. Computers in Libraries, 26(3), 32.
Balas, J. L. (2006). What’s in their pockets? Mobile
electronics. Computers in Libraries, 26(4), 32.
Beck, M. (1995). CONSER cataloging manual: Module
31, Remote access computer ile serials. Washington,
D.C.: Library of Congress.
Bednarek-Michalska, B. (2002). Creating a job description for an electronic resources librarian. Library Management, 23(8/9), 378-383.
Compilation of References
Beile, P. M., & Adams, M. M. (2000). Other duties as
assigned: Emerging trends in the academic library job
market. College & Research Libraries, 61(4), 336-347.
Beit-Arie, & Oren, Caplan, Priscilla, et al. (2001). Linking
to the appropriate copy: Report of a DOI-based prototype
[Electronic version]. D-Lib Magazine, 7(9).
Bellsouth Advertising & Publishing Corp. vs. Donnelley
Information Publishing, Inc. 999 F.2d 1436 (11th Cir.).
(1993). Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://www.
coolcopyright.com/cases/chp4/bellsouthdonnelley.htm
Bergman, B. (2005). Looking at electronic resources
librarians: Is there gender equity within this emerging
specialty? New Library World, 106(1210/1211), 116127.
Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law
School. (2003, January 15). Openlaw site: Eldred v.
Ashcroft. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://cyber.
law.harvard.edu/eldredvreno/
Ber ners-Lee, T. (1996). The world wide web:
Past, present and future. Retrieved November
17, 2 0 0 7, f r o m h t t p: // w w w.w3.o r g / Pe o pl e /
Berners-Lee/1996/ppf.html
Bertot, J. C., McClure, C. R., & Ryan, J. (2000). Developing national public library statistics and performance
measures for the networked environment: inal report
(ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED447803).
Washington, D.C.: Institute of Museum and Library
Services.
library, research, and teaching professions. New York:
Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc.
Bjorner, S., & Ardito, S.C. (2003). Online before the
Internet: Early pioneers tell their stories [Electronic
version]. Searcher, 11(6), 36-46.
Black, S. (2006). Bibliographic control of serials. Serials
in libraries: Issues and practices (pp. 83-102). Westport,
CT: Libraries Unlimited.
Blackwell-Synergy (2006). Terms and conditions. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from http://www.blackwellsynergy.com/help?context=terms_and_conditions
Bluh, P. M. (2001). Managing electronic serials: Essays
based on the ALCTS electronic serials institutes, 19971999. Chicago: American Library Association.
Bordeaux, A., Kraemer, A. B., & Sullenger, P. (2005).
Making the most of your usage statistics. The Serials
Librarian, 48(3/4), 295-299.
Boss, R.W. (1989). Current uses of automated systems: A
review and status report. In A.P. Trezza (Ed.) Changing
technology: Opportunity and challenge (pp. 99-102).
Boston: G.K. Hall & Co.
Boss, R.W., & Marcum, D.B. (1980, September-October).
The library catalog: COM and on-line options. Library
Technology Reports, 16, 443-527.
Boss, S. C., & Nelson, M. L. (2005). Federated SearchTools: The next step in the quest for one-stop-shopping.
The Reference Librarian, (91/92), 139-160.
Bevis, M. D., & Graham, J. B. (2003). The evolution of
an integrated electronic journals collection. Journal of
Academic Librarianship, 24(2), 115-119.
Boston College Libraries (n.d.). ERM database documentation. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://www.
bc.edu/bc_org/avp_ulib/staff/erm/erm-db
Bevis, M. D., & McAbee, S. L. (1994). NOTIS as an
impetus for change in technical services departmental
stafing. Technical Services Quarterly, 12(2), 29-43.
Bothmann, R.L., & Holmberg, M. (2006). Electronic
resources planning and management. Unpublished
electronic survey conducted on ERIL from 27 November
to 1 December 2006.
Bhatt, J. (2005). Blogging as a tool: Innovative approaches
to information access. Library Hi Tech News Incorporating Online and CD Notes, 22(9), 28(5).
Bieleield, A., & Cheeseman, L. (1999). Interpreting and
negotiating licensing agreements: A guidebook for the
Bourne, C. P., & Bellardo Hahn, T. (2003). A history of
online information services, 1963-1976. Boston: MIT
Press.
385
Compilation of References
Bracke, P. J. (2001). Access to remote electronic resources
at the University of Arizona. Science & Technology
Libraries, 20(2/3), 5-14.
Breeding, M. (2004). The many facets of managing
electronic resources. Computers in libraries. Retrieved
November 14, 2007, from http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/jan04/breeding.shtml
Breeding, M. (2006). Musings on the state of the ILS in
2006. Computers in Libraries, 26(3), 26-28.
Breeding, M. (July, 2006). Strategic development: SirsiDynix and Serials Solutions. Smart Libraries Newsletter,
Library Technology Guides. Retrieved November 22,
2007, from http://www.librarytechnology.org/ltg-displaytext.pl?RC=12102
Brewer, K., Rozum, B., & Shrode, F. (2004). Developing
a database for e-journals that improves both access and
management. In D. C. Fowler (Ed.), E-serials collection
management: Transitions, trends, and technicalities
(pp. 253-264). Binghamton, NY: Haworth Information
Press.
Burrows, S. (2006). A review of electronic journal
acquisition, management, and use in health sciences
libraries. Journal of the Medical Library Association,
24(1), 67-74.
Calhoun, K. (2006). The changing nature of the catalog
and its integration with other discovery tools. Retrieved
November 21, 2007, from http://www.loc.gov/catdir/calhoun-report-inal.pdf
California Digital Library (2005). Assessment. Retrieved
November 18, 2007, from the California Digital Library
Web site: http://www.cdlib.org/inside/assess/
California Digital Library (2005). CDL resource liaison
charge. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from the California
Digital Library Web site: http://www.cdlib.org/inside/
groups/Resource liaison/charge.html
California Digital Library (2006). CDL resource liaison meetings. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from the
California Digital Library Web site: http://www.cdlib.
org/inside/groups/rl/meetings.html
Briscoe, G., Selden, K., & Nyberg, C. R. (2003). The
catalog vs. the home page? Best practices in connecting to
online resources. Law Library Journal, 95(2), 151-174.
California Digital Library (2006). Information About
CDL-Licensed Resources. Retrieved November 18, 2007,
from the California Digital Library Web site: http://www.
cdlib.org/inside/resources/licensed/index.html
Brisson, R. (1999). Online documentation in library
technical services. Technical Services Quarterly, 16(3),
1-19.
California Digital Library (2006). Instructional materials.
Retrieved November 18, 2007, from the California Digital
Library Web site: http://www.cdlib.org/inside/instruct/
Brown, J. F., Nelson, J. L., & Wineburgh-Freed, M.
(2005). Customized electronic resources management
system. Serials Librarian, 47(4), 89-102.
California Digital Library (2006). Metadata requirements
for OpenURLs. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from the
California Digital Library Web site: http://www.cdlib.
org/vendors/Metadata_requirements.pdf
Brown, J.F., Nelson, J.L., & Wineburgh-Freed, M. (2005.)
Customized electronic resources management system
for a multi-library university: Viewpoint from one library. In G. Ives (Ed.), Electronic journal management
systems: Experiences from the ield (pp. 89-102). New
York: Haworth Information Press.
Brown, M. E. (1995). By any other name: Accounting for
failure in the naming of subject categories. Library and
Information Science Research, 17(4), 347-385.
386
California Digital Library (2006). Resource selection criteria. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from the California
Digital Library Web site: http://www.cdlib.org/inside/resources/licensed/resource_selection_criteria.rtf
California Digital Library (2006). Vendors and content
providers. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from the
California Digital Library Web site: http://www.cdlib.
org/vendors/
Compilation of References
California Digital Library (2006, April). California
digital library technical requirements for database vendors. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from the California
Digital Library Web site: http://www.cdlib.org/vendors/
CDL_ejournal_Vendor_Req.rtf
California Digital Library (2006, April). California
digital library technical requirements for e-journal vendors. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from the California
Digital Library Web site: http://www.cdlib.org/vendors/
CDL_DB_Vendor_Req.rtf
California Digital Library (n.d.). Checklist of points to
be addressed in a CDL License Agreement. Retrieved
November 17, 2007, from http://www.cdlib.org/vendors/
checklist.html
California Digital Library. (2003, June). User Interface
Principles. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from the
California Digital Library Web site: http://www.cdlib.
org/vendors/Interface_Principles.rtf
Chandler, A. (2002, May 20). Notes, NISO/Digital
Library Federation workshop, May 10, 2002. Retrieved
November 22, 2007, from http://www.library.cornell.
edu/elicensestudy/nisodlf/home.htm
Chandler, A. (2002, June 14). ALCTS-sponsored meeting
on e-resource management metadata at ALA, June 14,
2002. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://www.
library.cornell.edu/elicensestudy/alaannual2002/home.
htm
Chandler, A. (2004). Electronic resource management.
Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://metadatawg.mannlib.cornell.edu/forum/index.php?date=200409-24
Chandler, A., & Jewell, T. (2006). Standards – libraries, data providers, and SUSHI: The Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative. Against the Grain,
18(2), 1-2.
California School Library Association. (2006). Legislation and advocacy. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from
http://www.schoolibrary.org/leg/
Chandler, A., & Jewell, T. D. (2005). A web hub for
developing administrative metadata for electronic resource management. Retrieved November 23, 2007, from
http://www.library.cornell.edu/cts/elicensestudy/
Cambridge Journals Online (2006). Online terms of
use. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://journals.
cambridge.org/action/terms
Chang, S. (2003). The DLF electronic resource management initiative. OCLC Systems & Services, 19(2),
45-47.
Carstens, T., & Buchanan, H. (2004). The future of the
catalog: A user-friendly academic search engine. Technical Services Quarterly, 22(2), 37-47.
Chapman, L. (2004). Managing acquisitions in library
and information services (Rev. ed.). London: Facet.
Champy, J. (2006). People and process. Queue, 4(2), 3438. Retrieved November 14, 2007, from http://doi.acm.
org/10.1145/1122674.1122687
Chandler, A. (2000). An application proile and prototype
metatdata management system for licensed electronic
resources. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://
www.library.cornell.edu/cts/elicensestudy/ApplicationProile.htm
Chandler, A. (2002, January 30). ALA midwinter 2002
meeting. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://www.
library.cornell.edu/elicensestudy/alamidwinter2002.
htm
Chen, C. C. (1972). The use patterns of physics journals in
a large academic research library. Journal of the American
Society for Information Science, 23(4), 254-265.
Chen, X., Colgan, L., Greene, C., Lowe, E., & Winke,
C. (2004). E-resource cataloging practices: A survey
of academic libraries and consortia. Serials Librarian,
47(1/2), 153-179.
Christian, R. (1978). The electronic library: Bibliographic
data bases, 1978-1979. White Plains, NY: Knowledge
Industry Publications, Inc.
Chrzastojwski, T. E. (1999). E-journal access: The online
catalog (856 ield), web lists, and “the principle of least
effort”. Library Computing, 18(4), 317-322.
387
Compilation of References
Chudnov, D. et al. (2000). Jake: Overview and status
report [Jointly administered knowledge environment,
Electronic journal database at Yale University]. Serials
Review, 26(4), 12-17.
Chudnov, D., Cameron, R., Frumkin, J., Singer, R., &
Yee, R. (2005, May 24). Opening up OpenURLs with
autodiscovery. Ariadne (43). Retrieved November 18,
2007, from http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue43/chudnov/
Cochenour, D. (2000). Taming the octopus: Getting a
grip on electronic resources. Serials Librarian, 38(3/4),
363-368.
the right choice for your library. Serials Review, 31,
124-140.
Collins, M. (2005). The effects of e-journal management
tools and services on serials cataloging. Serials Review,
31(4), 291-297.
Conger, J. E. (2004). Collaborative electronic resource
management. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.
Conger, J. E. (2004). Collaborative electronic resource
management: From acquisitions to assessment. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited.
Cohen, B. (2006). E-reserve use of e-journal content.
Email on SERIALST listserv. Retrieved November 17,
2007.
Congleton, R. (2002). Re-evaluating technical services
worklow for integrated library systems. Library Collections, Acquisitions, & Technical Services, 26(4),
337-341.
Cohen, L. B. (2005). Finding scholarly content on the web:
From google scholar to RSS feeds. CHOICE: Current
Reviews for Academic Libraries, 42(SPECIAL), 7-17.
Conhaim, W. W. (2006). Blogging: A modern tool for an
age-old quest. Information Today, 23(2), 27-29.
Cole, J. (2003). Impacts of the abandonment of catalog
records for electronic serials. The Serials Librarian,
45(1), 27-33.
Cole, Jim E. & Williams, J. W. (1992). Serials cataloging:
Modern perspectives and international developments.
New York: Haworth Press.
CONSER (2006). CONSER cataloging manual: Module
31, Remote access electronic serials (online serials).
Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress. Retrieved
November 21, 2007, from http://www.loc.gov/acq/conser/module31.html
Cole, L. (2004). Back to basics: What is the e-journal?
The Serials Librarian, 47(1/2), 77-87.
CONTU (National Commission on New Technological
Uses of Copyright Works) (1979). Final report of the national commission on new technological uses of copyright
works. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress.
Coleridge, S. T. (1798). The rime of the ancient mariner. Retrieved November 12, 2007, from LitFINDER
database.
Convey, J. (1992). Online information retrieval: An introductory manual to principles and practice (4th ed.).
London: Library Association Publishing.
Collantes, L. (1995). Degree of agreement in naming
objects and concepts for information retrieval. Journal
of the American Society for Information Science, 46(2),
116-132.
Cooper, M. D., & McGregor, G. F. (1994). Using article
photocopy data in bibliographic models for journal collection management. Library Quarterly, 64(4), 386-413.
Collins, M. (2005). Electronic resource management
systems: Understanding the players and how to make
the right choice for your library. Serials Review, 31,
125-140.
Collins, M. (2005). Electronic resource management
systems: Understanding the players and how to make
388
Cooper, P. S., & Lester, D. (2005). One-stop serials
management with TDNet. The Serials Librarian, 47(4),
27-34.
Copeland, A. W. (1997). The demand for serials catalogers: An analysis of job advertisements, 1980-1995. The
Serials Librarian, 32(1/2), 27-37.
Compilation of References
Copeland, A. W. (2002). E-serials cataloging in the
1990s: A review of the literature. The Serials Librarian,
41(3/4), 7-29.
Creative Commons (2007). About us. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from http://creativecommons.org/
about/history
Corbett, L. (2006). Serials: Review of the literature
2000-2003. Library Resources & Technical Services,
50(1), 16-30.
Creative Commons (2007). Creative commons licenses.
Retrieved November 18, 2007, from http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/meet-the-licenses
Corbin, J. (1993). Competencies for electronic information
services. Public-Access Computer Systems Review, 4(6),
5-22. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://epress.
lib.uh.edu/pr/v4/n6/corbin.4n6
Creative Commons. (2006). License your work.
Ret r ieved November 17, 20 07, f rom ht t p://
creativecommons.org/license/
Cornell University Libraries (2000). Cornell University
Library digital futures plan: July 2000 to June 2002.
Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://www.library.
cornell.edu/staffweb/CULDigitalFuturesPlan.html
Cornell University. (2006, September 19). Cornell University and publishers announce new copyright guidelines
governing use of digital course materials. Retrieved
November 17, 2007, from http://www.news.cornell.
edu/pressofice/Sept06/AAPCopyright.shtml
COUNTER (2005, April). Release 2 of the COUNTER
code of practice for journals and databases. Retrieved
November 18, 2007, from the Project COUNTER Web
site: http://www.projectcounter.org/code_practice.html
COUNTER (n.d.). About. Retrieved November 18, 2007
from the Project COUNTER Web site: http://www.projectcounter.org/about.html
COUNTER: Counting Online Usage of NeTworked
Electronic Resources (n.d.). Retrieved November 11,
2007, from http://www.projectcounter.org
Cox, J. (2000). Model generic licenses: Cooperation and
competition. Serials Review, 26(1), 3-9.
Cox, J., & Cox, L. (2003). Scholarly publishing practice:
The ALPSP report on academic journal publishers’
policies and practices in online publishing. Rookwood,
UK: John Cox Associates.
CQ Press. (2006). Terms of service for the online services
at cqpress.com. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from
http://www.cqpress.com/TermsOfUse/general.htm
Creative Commons. (2007). Main page. Retrieved
November 17, 2007, from http://creativecommons.
org/license
Croneis, K. S. & Henderson, P. (2002). Electronic
and digital librarian positions: A content analysis of
announcements from 1990 through 2000. Journal of
Academic Librarianship, 28(4), 232-237.
Curtis, A. (2005). Why federated search? Knowledge
Quest, 33(3), 35-37.
Curtis, D. (2005). E-journals: A how-to-do-it manual for
building, managing, and supporting electronic journal
collections. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers.
Curtis, D., Scheschy, V.M., & Tarango, A.R. (2000).
Developing and managing electronic journal collections: A how-to-do-it manual for librarians. New York:
Neal-Schuman Publishers.
Cyzyk, M., & Robertson, N. (2003). HERMES: The
Hopkins Electronic Resource Management System.
Information Technology and Libraries, 22(1), 12-17.
Data Farm University of Pennsylvania Library (n.d.).
Retrieved November 11, 2007, from http://metrics.library.
upenn.edu/prototype/about/indexHTML
Davis, P. M. (2002). Patterns in electronic journal usage:
Challenging the composition of geographic consortia. College and Research Libraries, 63(6), 484-497.
http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crljournal/backissues2002b/november02/davisPDF
Davis, P. M., & Price, J. S. (2006). eJournal interface
can inluence usage statistics: Implications for librar-
389
Compilation of References
ies, publishers, and Project COUNTER. Journal of the
American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57(9), 1243-1248.
Davis, P. M., & Solla, L. R. (2003). An IP-level analysis
of usage statistics for electronic journals in chemistry:
Making inferences about user behavior. Journal of the
American Society for Information Science and Technology, 54(11), 1062-1068.
De Jong, P. (2006). Going with the low. Queue, 4(2),
24-32, Retrieved November 14, 2007, from http://doi.
acm.org/10.1145/1122674.1122686
De Rosa, C., Dempsey, L., & Wilson, A. (2004). The
2003 OCLC environmental scan: Pattern recognition:
A report to the OCLC membership. Dublin, OH: OCLC
Online Computer Library Center. Retrieved November
18, 2007, from http://www.oclc.org/reports/escan/
Deeken, J., & Thomas, D. (2006). Technical services job
ads: Changes since 1995. College & Research Libraries,
67(2), 136-145.
Deming, W. E. (1986). Out of the crisis. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for Advanced
Engineering Study.
Dempsey, L. (2006). Libraries and the long tail: Some
thoughts about libraries in a network age. D-Lib Magazine,12(4). Retrieved November 18, 2007, from http://
www.dlib.org/dlib/april06/dempsey/04dempsey.html
Dempsey, L. (2007). Lorcan Dempsey’s weblog. Retrieved November 23, 2007, from orweblog.oclc.org/archives/001250.html
Dewey, B. I., DeBlois, P. B., & the 2006 EDUCAUSE
Current Issues Committee (2006). Top-ten IT issues,
2006. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from the EDUCAUSE Web site: http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/
pdf/ERM0633.pdf
Dialog invented online information services. (2006).
Retrieved November 10, 2007, from http://www.dialog.
com/about/
Digital Library Federation (2004). DLF electronic resources management initiative. Retrieved November 14,
390
2007, from http://www.diglib.org/standards/dlf-erm02.
htm
Digital Library Federation (2004). Electronic resource
management: Final report of the DLF initiative. Retrieved November 23, 2007, from www.library.cornell.
edu/elicensestudy/dlfdeliverables/DLF-ERMI-FinalReport.pdf
Digital Library Federation (2005). DLF electronic
resource management initiative, Phase II. Retrieved
November 22, 2007, from http://www.diglib.org/standards/dlf-erm05.htm
Digital Library Federation (2006). DLF electronic resource management initiative. Retrieved November 21,
2007, from http://www.diglib.org/standards/dlf-erm02.
htm
Digital Library Federation. (2006). DLF electronic
resource management initiative. Retrieved November
23, 2007, from http://www.diglib.org/standards/dlferm02.htm
DLF Electronic Resource Management Initiative, Phase
II, Acquisitions Interoperability Subcommittee (2007).
White paper on interoperability between acquisitions
modules of integrated library systems and electronic
resource management systems: A draft for comment. Retrieved November 23, 2007, from http://www.haverford.
edu/library/DLF_ERMI2/ACQ_ERMS_white_paper.
pdf
Dole, W. V., Hurych, J. M., & Liebst, A. (2005). Assessment: A core competency for library leaders. Library
Administration & Management, 19(3), 125-132.
Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (2006). DCMI metadata
terms. Retrieved November 23, 2007, from http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/
Dupuis, J. & Ryan, P. (2002). Bridging the two cultures: A
collaborative approach to managing electronic resources.
Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, 34.
Retrieved November 12, 2007, from http://www.istl.
org/02-spring/article1.html
Compilation of References
Duranceau, E. F. (1998). Beyond print: Revisioning serials
acquisitions for the digital age. The Serials Librarian,
33(1/2), 83-106.
November 18, 2007, from the EDUCAUSE Web site:
http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/CSD4387.pdf
Duranceau, E. F. (2000). License tracking. Serials Review, 26(3), 69-73.
Eduserv Technologies Limited (n.d.). Eduserv athens.
Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://www.athensams.net/
Duranceau, E. F. (2002). Stafing for electronic resource
management: The results of a survey. Serials Review,
28(4), 316-320.
Elkin-Koren, N. (2005). What contracts cannot do: The
limits of private ordering in facilitating a creative commons. Fordham Law Review, 74(2), 375-422.
Duranceau, E. F. (2004). Electronic resource management systems from ILS vendors. Against the Grain,
16(4), 91-94.
Emery, J. (2005). Beginning to see the light: Developing
a discourse for electronic resource management. Serials
Librarian, 47(4), 137-147.
Duranceau, E. F. (2005). Electronic resource management
systems, part II: Offerings from serial vendors and serial
data vendors. Against the Grain, 17(3), 59-60.
Engineering Libraries Division, American Society for
Engineering Education (2005, May). Punch list of best
practices for electronic resources. Retrieved November
18, 2007, from the Engineering Libraries Division of
American Society for Engineering Education Web site:
http://eld.lib.ucdavis.edu/punchlist/PunchlistRevision2005.pdf
Duranceau, E. F., & Hepfer, C. (2002) Stafing for electronic resource management: The results of a survey.
Serials Review, 28, 316-320.
Dureanceau, E. F., & Hepfer, C. (2002). Electronic
journal forum: Stafing for electronic resource management: The results of a survey (Column). Serials Review,
28(4), 316-320.
Dusollier, S. (2006). The master’s tools v. the master’s
house: Creative commons v. copyright. Columbia Journal
of Law & the Arts, 29(3), 271-293.
Duy, J., & Vaughan, L. (2006). Can electronic journal
usage data replace citation data as a measure of journal
use? An empirical examination. The Journal of Academic
Librarianship, 32(5), 512-517.
Eaton, N.L., MacDonald, L.B., & Saule, M.R. (1989). CDROM and other optical information systems: Implementation issues for libraries. Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press.
EContent (2003, Feb 18). TDNet takes over JournalWebCite customer base. EContent: Digital content strategies & resources. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from
http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/ArticleReader.
aspx?ArticleID=4057
EDUCAUSE, The New Media Consortium (NMC)
(2006). The horizon report, 2006 edition. Retrieved
European Commission. (2006). About this site. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://ec.europa.
eu/about_en.htm
ExLibris (2006). Users Guide.
Farb, S. (2006). Libraries, licensing and the challenge of
stewardship. First Monday, 11(7). Retrieved November
14, 2007, from http://www.irstmonday.org/
Farb, S. E., & Riggio, A. (2002). UCLA electronic resources database project overview. PowerPoint, ALA
Midwinter Meeting, 2002. Retrieved November 22,
2007, from http://www.library.cornell.edu/cts/elicensestudy/ucla/ALAMidwinter2002.ppt
Farnsworth, E. A. (1999). United States contract law
(Rev. ed.). Huntington, NY: Juris Publishing.
Feist Publications, Inc. vs. Rural Telephone Service Co.,
499 U.S. 340. (1991). Retrieved November 17, 2007, from
http://www.coolcopyright.com/cases/chp2/feistrural.
htm
Felt, E. C. (1999). Holland library’s electronic resource
librarians: A proile of these positions. The Reference
Librarian, 64, 75-113.
391
Compilation of References
Felts, J. W., Jr. (2001). Now you can get there from here:
Creating an interactive web application for accessing
full-text journal articles from any location. Library
Collections, Acquisitions, & Technical Services, 25(3),
281-290.
Ferguson, C. L., Collins, M. D. D., & Grogg, J. E. (2006).
Finding the perfect e-journal access solution... the hard
way. Technical Services Quarterly, 23(4), 27-50.
Fons, T. & Grover, D. (2004). The innovative electronic
resource management system: A development partnership. Serials Review, 30(2), 110-116.
Fons, T. & Jewell, T. D. (in press). Envisioning the future of ERM systems—NASIG 2006 Proceedings. The
Serials Librarian.
Fescemyer, K. (2005). Serials clutter in online catalogs.
Serials Review, 31(1), 14-19.
Fons, T. (2006). Future of ERM systems (PowerPoint
Presentation) California Digital Library Institute. Electronic Resource Management, presenter, November 10,
2006. Representative of Innovative Interfaces.
Ficher, K., & Barton, H. (2005). The landscape of Ejournal management. Journal of Electronic Resources
in Medical Libraries, 2(3), 57.
Fons, T., & Jewell, T. (2006, May). Envisioning the future of ERM systems. Paper presented at the 21st Annual
NASIG Conference, Denver, Colorado.
Fichter, D. (2005). Intranet librarian - intranets, wikis,
blikis, and collaborative working. Online, 29(5), 47.
Foote, M. (1997). The systems librarian in U.S. academic
libraries: A survey of announcements from College &
Research Libraries News, 1990-1994. College & Research
Libraries, 58, 517-26.
Fichter, D. (2006). Doing the monster mashup. Online,
30(4), 48.
FindLaw for Legal Professionals. (2001, June 25). New
York Times Co., Inc. et al. v. Tasini et al. Retrieved
November 17, 2007, from http://caselaw.lp.indlaw.com/
scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=000&invol=00-201
First Options of Chicago, Inc. v. Kaplan, 514 U.S. 938
(1995).
Fischer, K.S., & Barton, H. (2005). The landscape of ejournal management. Journal of Electronic Resources
in Medical Libraries, 2(3), 57-63.
Fisher, W. (2001). Core competencies for the acquisitions
librarian: Analysis of position announcements. Library
Collections, Acquisitions, & Technical Services, 25(2),
179- 190.
Fisher, W. (2003). The electronic resources librarian position: A public services phenomenon? Library Collections,
Acquisitions, & Technical Services, 27, (1), 3-17.
Flanders, B.L. (1990). Spinning the hits: CD-ROM
networks in libraries [Electronic version]. American
Libraries, 21(11), 1032-1033.
Flint, E. (2000). Introducing the Baen Free Library.
Retrieved November 11, 2007, from http://www.baen.
com/library/home.htm
392
Foudy, G., & McManus, A. (2005). Using a decision
grid process to build consensus in electronic resources
cancellation decisions. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 31(6), 533-538.
Fowler, D.C. (Ed.). (2004). E-serials collection management: Transitions, trends, and technicalities. New York:
Haworth Information Press.
Frazier, K. (2001). The librarians’ dilemma: Contemplating the costs of the “big deal”. D-Lib Magazine, 7(3).
Retrieved November 18, 2007, from http://www.dlib.
org/dlib/march01/frazier/03frazier.html
Freedom of Information Act (Michigan), Mich. Comp.
Laws Ann. § 15.231 et seq. (West 2004 & Supp. 2006).
Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552 (2001 &
Supp. 2005).
Frick, R., Duncan, C. J., & Walsh, W. D. (2005). Nuts and
bolts of linking: Understanding context sensitive linking
services and implementation. The Serials Librarian,
48(3/4), 257-264.
Friedlander, A. (2002). Dimensions and use of the scholarly information environment: Introduction to a data
Compilation of References
set assembled by the Digital Library Federation and
Outsell, Inc. Washington, D.C.: Digital Library Federation and Council on Library and Information Resources.
Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://www.clir.
org/pubs/reports/pub110/contents.html
Gall, J.E. (2005). Dispelling ive myths about e-books
[Electronic version]. Information Technology and Libraries, 24(1), 25-31.
Gardner, S. (2001). The impact of electronic journals on
library staff at ARL member institutions: A survey and
a critique of the survey methodology. Serials Review,
27(3-4), 17-32.
Gargano, J., Glenn A., Graham, R., Gurnani, S., Houser,
L., Millman, D., et al. (2000). A digital library authentication and authorization architecture. Retrieved November
21, 2007, from http://www.cdlib.org/inside/groups/stas/
links.html
General overview. (n.d.). Retrieved November 11, 2007,
from, http://muse.jhu.edu/about/muse/overview.html
Gerald, N. (2000). Collection development and organization of electronic resources. Collection Management,
25(1/2), 97-113.
Gerhand, K. (1998). Coordination and collaboration: A
model for electronic resources management. The Serials
Librarian, 33(3/4), 279-286.
Ghaphery, J., Kesselman, M., & Watstein, S. B. (2001).
Personalized information clients: Short answers to simple
questions about “my library” services. Reference Services
Review, 29(4), 276.
Giles, V. (2003). Single or multiple records for print and
electronic serials titles: When less is more (more or less).
The Serials Librarian, 45(1), 35-45.
Ginanni, K. (2006). Talk about: E-resources librarian to
the rescue? Creating the über librarian: Turning model
job descriptions into practical positions. The Serials
Librarian, 50(1/2), 173-177.
GNU. (2006, August 3). What is copyleft? Retrieved
November 17, 2007, from http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/
copyleft.html
Gold Rush (2006). Welcome to Gold Rush. Retrieved
November 23, 2007, from http://grweb.coalliance.org/
Google milestones. (2006). Retrieved November 11,
2007, from http://www.google.com/corporate/history.
html#2005
Gorman, G. E., & Miller, R. H. (Eds.). (1997). Collection management for the 21st century: A handbook for
librarians. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Grahame, V., McAdam, T., & Association of Research
Libraries. Ofice of Leadership and Management Services. (2004). Managing electronic resources. Washington, D.C.: Association of Research Libraries, Ofice of
Leadership and Management Services.
Graves, T., & Arthur, M. A. (2006). Developing a crystal
clear future for the serials unit in an electronic environment: Results of a worklow analysis. Serials Review,
32(4), 238-246.
Graves, T., & Arthur, M.A. (2006). Developing a crystal
clear future for the serials unit in an electronic environment: Results of a worklow analysis. Serials Review,
32(4), 238-246.
Gregory, V. L., & Hanson, A. (2006). Selecting and
managing electronic resources: A how-to-do-it manual
for librarians (Rev. ed.). New York: Neal-Schuman
Publishers.
Grogg, J. E. (2004). Linking in the traditional online
world. Searcher, 12(6), 34.
Grogg, J. E. (2005). Land of linking. The Serials Librarian, 49(3), 177.
Grogg, J. E. (2006). Innovative uses of the openURL.
Library Technology Reports, 42(1), 35.
Grogg, J. E. (2006). Other linking issues. Library Technology Reports, 42(1), 38.
Grogg, J. E. (2006). The development of context-sensitive
linking. Library Technology Reports, 42(1), 14.
Grogg, J. E., & Tenopir, C. (2000, Nov/Dec). Linking to
full text in scholarly journals: Here a link, there a link,
everywhere a link. Searcher, 8(10),
393
Compilation of References
Grover, D., & Fons, T. (2004). The innovative electronic
resource management system: A development partnership. Serials Review, 30(2), 110-116.
Hawthorne, D. (2003/0). Administrative metadata to
support the acquisition of continuing e-resources. Serials
Review, 29(4), 276-281.
Guenther, K. (2005). Socializing your web site with wikis,
twikis, and blogs. (web site management methods using
webcasting). Online, 29(6), 51(3).
Hayes, A., & Lerner, S. (2004). Tracking electronic
resources at the Library of Congress (PowerPoint presentation). Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://www.
loc.gov/catdir/TrackERALA2004.ppt
Guidelines for classroom copying of books and periodicals. (2001, August 9). Retrieved November 17, 2007,
from http://www.utsystem.edu/OGC/INTELLECTUALPROPERTY/clasguid.htm
Hayes, J., & Sullivan, M. (2003). Mapping the process:
Engaging staff in work redesign. Library Administration
& Management, 17(2), 87-93.
Hahn, K. L., & Faulkner, L. A. (2002). Evaluative usage-based metrics for the selection of e-journals. College
and Research Libraries, 63(3), 215-227.
Hellman, E. (2005). OpenURL COinS: A convention
to embed bibliographic metadata in HTML. Retrieved
November 18, 2007, from http://ocoins.info/
Hammer, M., & Champy, J. (1993). Reengineering the
corporation: A manifesto for business revolution. New
York: HarperBusiness.
Hennig, N. (2002). Improving access to e-journals and
databases at the MIT libraries: Building a databasebacked web site called “VERA”. In J. Cole, & W. Jones
(Eds.), E-serials cataloging: Access to continuing and
integrating resources via the catalog and the web (pp.
227-254). Binghamton, NY: Haworth.
Harrassowitz (2006). Electronic journal services, HERMIS 3.0. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://www.
harrassowitz.de/periodicals_e-journals.html
Harris, L. E. (2002). Licensing digital content: A practical guide for librarians. Chicago: American Library
Association.
Hart, M. (1992). Gutenberg: The history and philosophy of
Project Gutenberg by Michael Hart. Retrieved November
11, 2007, from http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:The_History_and_Philosophy_of_Project_Gutenberg_by_Michael_Hart
Harvell, T. (2005). Electronic resources management
systems: The experience of beta testing and implementation. Serials Librarian, 47(4).
Harvell, T.A. (2005). Electronic resources management
systems: The experience of beta testing and implementation. In G. Ives (Ed.), Electronic journal management
systems: Experiences from the ield (pp. 125-136). New
York: Haworth Information Press.
Haworth Press (2006). The Haworth Press multi-site
online terms. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from http://
www.haworthpress.com/pdfs/Multi-SiteLicense.pdf
394
Hennig, N. (2002). Improving access to e-journals and
databases at the MIT libraries: Building a databasebacked web site called “Vera.” The Serials Librarian,
41(3-4), 227-254.
High Speed Providers by Zip Code (2004). Retrieved
November 23, 2007, from www.cable-modem.net/images/coverage_map.gif
Ho, J. (2005). Enhancing access to resources through the
online catalog and the library website: A collaboration
between public and technical services at Texas A&M
University Libraries. Technical Services Quarterly,
22(4), 19-37.
Holleman, C. (2000). Electronic resources: Are basic
criteria for the selection of materials changing? Library
Trends, 48(4), 694.
Holman, J. (2005). Can SFX replace your homegrown periodical holdings list? Serials Librarian, 47(4), 79-88.
Hood, A., & Howard, M. (2006). Adding value to the
catalog in an open access world. The Serials Librarian,
50(3/4), 249-252.
Compilation of References
Horny, K.L. (1982). Online catalogs: Coping with the
choices. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 8(1),
14-19.
Iannella, R. (2002). Open digital rights language (ODRL)
version 1.1. Retrieved November 23, 2007, from http://
www.w3.org/TR/odrl/
ICOLC (2006, October). Revised guidelines for statistical
measures of usage of web-based information resources.
Retrieved November 18, 2007, from the ICOLC Web site:
http://www.library.yale.edu/consortia/webstats06.htm
ICOLC guidelines and preferred practices for selection
and purchase of electronic resources (2001). Online
Libraries & Microcomputers, 19(12), 1.
Innovative Interfaces (2006). Electronic Resource Management. [brochure]
Innovative, Inc. (2006). Digital collections. Electronic
resource management. Retrieved November 21, 2007,
from http://www.iii.com/mill/digital.shtml#erm
International Coalition of Library Consortia (1997).
Statement of current perspective and preferred practices
for the selection and purchase of electronic information.
Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://www.library.
yale.edu/consortia/statement.html
International Coalition of Library Consortia (1998).
Statement of current perspective and preferred practices
for the selection and purchase of electronic information.
Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://www.library.
yale.edu/consortia/statement.html
International Coalition of Library Consortia (2002).
Privacy guidelines for electronic resources vendors.
Retrieved November 21, 2007 from http://www.library.
yale.edu/consortia/2002privacyguidelines.html
International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC)
(1998, November). Guidelines for statistical measures of
usage of web-based indexed, abstracted, and full text resources. Retrieved November 11 2007, from http://www.
library.yale.edu/consortia/webstatsHTML
International Federation of Library Association Committee on Copyright and Other Legal Matters (2001).
Licensing principles. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from
http://www.ila.org/V/ebpb/copy.htm
International Federation of Library Associations and
Institutions (2001). Licensing principles. Retrieved
November 21, 2007, from http://www.ila.org/V/ebpb/
copy.htm
Internet2 (n.d.). Shibboleth - Internet2 middleware.
Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://shibboleth.
internet2.edu/
Irlam, G. (1995). Naming. Retrieved November 21, 2007,
from http://www.gordoni.com/web/naming.html
Islam, M.S., & Chowdhury, M.A.K. (2006). Organisation and management issues for electronic journals: A
Bangladesh perspective. Malaysian Journal of Library
& Information Science, 11(1), 61-74.
Ives, G. (2005). Transition to e-journals at Texas A&M
University, 1995-2004. Serials Librarian, 47(4), 71-78.
Jaguszewski, J. M., & Probst, L. K. (2000). The impact
of electronic resources on serial cancellations and remote
storage decisions in academic research libraries. Library
Trends, 48(4), 799.
Jasco, P. (2003). Peter’s picks and pans. Online, 27(2),
72-74.
Jasper, R. P. (2002). Collaborative roles in managing
electronic publications. Library Collections, Acquisitions, & Technical Services, 26, 355-361.
Jasper, R.P., & Sheble, L. (2005). Evolutionary approach
to managing e-resources. In G. Ives (Ed.), Electronic
journal management systems: Experiences from the ield
(pp. 55-70). New York: Haworth Information Press.
Java Architectures Special Interest Group (n.d.). CAS
overview. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://
www.ja-sig.org/products/cas/overview/index.html
Jewell, T. (2006). Electronic resource management systems: What should they do? In P. M. Bluh & C. Hepfer
(Eds.), Managing electronic resources: Contemporary
problems and emerging issues (pp. 9-34). Chicago: Association for Library Collections & Technical Services.
395
Compilation of References
Jewell, T. D. (2001). Appendix B: Functions and data
elements for managing electronic resources. Retrieved
November 22, 2007, from http://www.library.cornell.
edu/elicensestudy/u-washington/FinalAppendixB.xls
Johnson, K., & Manoff, M. (2003). Report of the death
of the catalog is greatly exaggerated: The E-journal access journey at the University of Tennessee. The Serials
Librarian, 44(3/4), 285-292.
Jewell, T. D. (2001). Selection and presentation of commercially available electronic resources: Issues and
practices. Washington, DC.: Council on Library and
Information Resources.
Johnson, P. (2004). Fundamentals of collection development & management. Chicago: American Library
Association.
Jewell, T. D. (2005). E-resource management systems:
Past, present, and future. Retrieved November 23, 2007,
from http://www.sirsidynixinstitute.com/Resources/Attachments/Slides/jewell_20051207.pdf
Jewell, T. D. et al. (2004). Electronic resource management: Report of the DLF electronic resource management
initiative. Retrieved November 23, 2007, from http://
www.diglib.org/pubs/dlf102/ERMFINAL.pdf
Jewell, T. D., & Mitchell, A. (2005). Electronic resource
management: The quest for systems and standards. Serials Librarian, 48(1/2), 137-163.
Jewell, T. D., et al. (2004). Electronic resource management: Report of the DLF electronic resource management initiative. Washington, D.C.: Digital Library
Federation.
Jewell, T., Anderson, I., Chandler, A., Farb, S. E., Parker,
K., Riggio, A., et al. (2004). Electronic resource management. Report of the DLF ERM Initiative. Washington,
DC. Digital Library Federation. Retrieved November 14,
2007, from http://www.diglib.org/pubs/dlf102/
JISC (n.d.). Usage statistics working group. About
usage statistics working group. Retrieved November
11, 2007, from http://www.jisc.ac.uk/aboutus/committees/working_groups/working_groups_disbanded/usage_stats_group.aspx
JISC infoNet. infoKits (n.d.). Process mapping. Retrieved
November 14, 2007, from http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/
InfoKits/process-review/process-review-9.4
Johns Hopkins University. (2004). HERMES. Retrieved
November 23, 2007, from http://hermes.mse.jhu.
edu:8008/hermesdocs/
396
Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR (1999).
Revising AACR2 to accommodate seriality. Ottawa:
Library and Archives Canada. Retrieved November 21,
2007, from http://www.collectionscanada.ca/jsc/serrep6.html
Jones, E. (2002). The exchange of serials subscription
information. Bethesda, MD: National Information Standards Organization.
Jones, P. (2006). California Digital Library Institute:
Electronic Resource Management, presenter, November
10, 2006. Representative of Endeavor Meridian.
Jones, W. (2003). A personal mini-history of e-serials
cataloging. The Serials Librarian, 43(3), 21-24.
JSTOR (2006). Terms and conditions of use. Retrieved
November 18, 2007, from http://www.jstor.org/about/
terms.html
JSTOR Web Statistics Task Force (1998, April). Guidelines for statistical measures of usage of web-based resources. Retrieved November 11, 2007, from http://www.
library.yale.edu/~kparker/WebStatsHTML
Katz, Z. (2006). Pitfalls of open licensing: An analysis of
creative commons licensing. IDEA, 46(3), 391-413.
Kennedy, M. R. (2004). Dreams of perfect programs:
Managing the acquisition of electronic resources. Library Collections, Acquisitions, and Technical Services,
28(4), 449-458.
Kennedy, M. R., Crump, M. J., & Kiker, D. (2004). Paper
to PDF: Making license agreements accessible through
the OPAC. Library Resources & Technical Services,
48(1), 20.
Compilation of References
Kent, S. T., & Millett L. I. (Eds.) (2003). Who goes there?:
Authentication through the lens of privacy. Washington,
D.C.: National Academy Press.
Kutten, L. J. (2003-2006). Computer software: Protection/liability/law/forms (2003 Recompiled ed.). St. Paul,
MN: Thomson/West.
Kichuk, D. (2000). Library space study. Unpublished
internal report, University of Saskatchewan Library,
Saskatoon.
Kyrillidou, M., & Young, M. (2006). ARL library trends
2003-04. Retrieved November 23, 2007, from www.arl.
org/stats/arlstat/04pub/04intro.html
Kidd, K. (2004). Local e-resource management systems:
Boston college libraries. Retrieved November 22, 2007,
from http://www.library.cornell.edu/cts/elicensestudy/
webhubarchive.html
Kyrillidou, M., & Young, M. (2006). ARL statistics
2004-05: A compilation of the statistics from the one
hundred and twenty-three members of the Association
of Research Libraries. Retrieved November 21, 2007,
from http://www.arl.org/stats/annualsurveys/arlstats/
index.shtml
King, D. W., Tenopir, C., Montgomery, C. H., & Aerni,
S. E., (2003). Patterns of journal use by faculty at three
diverse universities. D-Lib Magazine, 9(10).
Klughist, A. C. (2000). LIBER licensing principles for
electronic information. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 26(3), 199-201.
Kohl, D. F., & Sanville, T. (2006). More bang for the
buck: Increasing the effectiveness of library expenditures
through cooperation. Library Trends, 54(3), 394-410.
Konopasek, K., & O’Brien, N. P. (1982). A survey of journal use within the undergraduate library at the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. ED 225601.
Koppel, T. (2006). An Introduction to the rapidly changing world of ERM standards. Ex Libris White Paper.
Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://www.exlibrisgroup.com/resources/various/Koppel_ERM_Standards.
doc
Koppel, T. (2006). California Digital Library Institute:
Electronic Resource Management, presenter, November
10, 2006. Representative of ExLibris.
Koppel, T. (2006). Visions of ERM. Presentation at NISO
Managing Electronic collections, Strategies from Content
to User, Denver, Colorado, September 28-20, 2006.
Kovacs, D. (2000). Building electronic library collections:
The essential guide to selection criteria and core subject
collections. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers.
Krug, S. (2006). Don’t make me think: A common sense
approach to web usability (2nd ed.). Berkeley, CA: New
Riders.
Kyrillidou, M., & Young, M. (Eds.) (2005). ARL statistics, 2003-2004. Washington, D.C.: Association of
Research Libraries.
Lagace, N. (2003). The OpenURL and SFX linking.
Serials Librarian, 44 (1/2), 77-89.
Larkin, M. R. T. (2006). AACR3 is coming―what is it?
[Report on a presentation by P. J. Weiss] Serials Librarian, 50(3/4), 285-294.
Leiner, B. M. et al. (2005, October 31). A brief history
of the internet. Reston, VA: Internet Society. Retrieved
November 17, 2007, from http://www.isoc.org/internet/
history/brief.shtml
Lerner, R. M. (2006). At the forge: Extending web services
using other web services. Linux Journal, 2006(144), 9.
LexisNexis (1996). Terms & conditions of use for the
LexisNexis services. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from
http://www.lexisnexis.com/terms/general/
Librarian…educator…historian…entrepreneur. (2006).
NextSpace, 3, 2-7.
Library of Congress. (2006). The section 108 study
group. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://www.
loc.gov/section108/
Library Technology Reports (2006). The ERMI and
its offspring (Chapter 2). Library Technology Reports,
42(2), 14-21.
397
Compilation of References
LibSGR (n.d.) LibSGR: Library statistics gathering and
reporting (tool Web site). Retrieved November 22, 2007,
from http://libofice.villanova.edu/libsgr/index.php
Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche
(1998). Licensing principles. Retrieved November 17,
2007, from http://www.kb.dk/liber/currentinitiatives/
licensing.htm
Lingle, V. (2005). Implementing EBSCO’s A-to-Z…
Serials Librarian, 47(4), 43-54.
Loghry, P. A., & Shannon, A. W. (2000). Managing selection and implementation of electronic products: One tiny
step in organization, one giant step for the University of
Nevada, Reno. Serials Review, 26(3), 32-44.
Lugg, R., & Fischer, R. (2005). Acquisitions’ next step.
Library Journal, 130(12), 30-32.
Luther, J. (2000). White paper on electronic journal
usage statistics. Washington, D.C.: Council on Library
and Information Resources. http://www.clir.org/PUBS/
reports/pub94/contentsHTML
Lynch, B., & Smith, K. R. (2001). The changing nature
of work in academic libraries. College & Research Libraries, 62(5), 407-420.
Lynch, C. (1998). A white paper on authentication and
access management issues in cross-organizational use of
networked information resources. Retrieved November
21, 2007, from http://www.cni.org/projects/authentication/authentication-wp.html
Lynch, C.A., & Preston, C.M. (1990). Internet access to
information resources. In M.E. Williams (Ed.), Annual
review of information science and technology (Vol. 25,
pp. 263-312). Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Publishing
B.V.
Ma, W., & Cole, T. W. (2000). Genesis of an electronic
database expert system. Reference Services Review,
28(3), 207.
Machovec, G. S. (2002). Gold rush: Electronic resource
discovery and management system. The Charleston Advisor, 4(1). Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://www.
charlestonco.com/features.cfm?id=98&type=np
398
Maharana, B., & Chandra Panda, K. (2001). Planning
business process reengineering (BPR) in academic libraries. Malaysian Journal of Library and Information
Science, 6(1), 105-111.
Managing electronic resources at Yale University library
(2006). Retrieved November 12, 2007, from http://www.
library.yale.edu/ecollections/eresmanage.html
Manoff, M. (2000). Hybridity, mutability, multiplicity:
Theorizing electronic library collections. Library Trends,
49(1), 857-876.
Marshall, S., & Kawasaki, J. L. (2005). The master serial
list at Montana State University: A simple, easy to use
approach. The Serials Librarian, 47(4), 3-15.
Marshall, S.P., & Kawasaki, J.L. (2005). The master
serial list at Montana State University: A simple, easy
to use approach. In G. Ives (Ed.), Electronic journal
management systems: Experiences from the ield (pp.
3-15). New York: Haworth Information Press.
Martin, C. K., & Hoffman, P. S. (2002). Do we catalog
or not? How research libraries provide bibliographic
access to electronic journals in aggregated databases.
The Serials Librarian, 43(1), 61-77.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries. (2006).
VERA: Virtual electronic resource access. Retrieved
November 23, 2007, from http://libraries.mit.edu/vera
McCain, K. W., & Bobick, J. E. (1981). Patterns of journal use in a departmental library: A citation analysis.
Journal of the American Society for Information Science,
32(4), 257-267.
McCaslin, S. (Recorder) (2003). Alan, R., & Hsiung, L.Y.,
presenters. Web-based tracking systems for electronic
resources management. The Serials Librarian, 44(3/4),
293-297.
McCracken, P. (2003). Beyond title lists: Incorporating
ejournals into the OPAC. The Serials Librarian, 45(3),
101-108.
McCracken, P. (2004). The OPAC reborn. Library Journal
NetConnect, 129, 32.
Compilation of References
McElfresh, L. K. (2005). Accessing E-journals through
link resolvers. Technicalities, 25(6), 3.
McGinnis, S. D. (2000). Electronic collection management. Binghamton, NY: Haworth Information Press.
McGinnis, S., & Kemp, J. H. (1998/0). The electronic resources group: Using the cross-functional team approach
to the challenge of acquiring electronic resources. Library
Acquisitions: Practice & Theory, 22(3), 295-301.
Mercer, L. S. (2000). Measuring the use and value of
electronic journals and books. Issues in Science and
Technology Librarianship, 25. http://www.istl.org/00winter/article1HTML
Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law (1996). Springield, MA: Merriam-Webster.
Metz, P. (2000). Principles of selection for electronic
resources. Library Trends, 48(4), 711.
McMullen, K., & Wilmott, D. (2005). Taming the e-journal jungle: The University of South Carolina’s experience
with TDNet. Serials Librarian, 47(4), 35-42.
Meyer, S. (2005). Helping you buy: Electronic resource
management systems. Computers in Libraries, 25(10),
19-24.
McNeil, B. (Comp). (2002). SPEC kit #270: Core competencies. Washington, D.C.: Association of Research
Libraries.
Mi, J., & Sullenger, P. (2006). Examining worklows and
redeining roles: Auburn University and the College of
New Jersey. The Serials Librarian, 50(3/4), 279-283.
Medeiros, N. (2005). Electronic resources management:
An update. OCLC Systems & Services, 21(2), 92-94.
Miles-Board, T., Carr, L., & Hall, W. (2002). Looking for
linking: Associative links on the web. In Proceedings
of the Thirteenth ACM Conference on Hypertext and
Hypermedia, College Park, Maryland (pp. 76-77).
Medeiros, N. (2006). House of horrors: Exorcising
electronic resources. In P. M. Bluh, & C. Hepfer (Eds.),
Managing electronic resources: Contemporary problems
and emerging issues (pp. 56-66). Chicago: Association
for Library Collections & Technical Services.
Medeiros, N., & Pascale, C. (2003). The tri-college
consortium’s electronic resource tracking system (ERTS).
Retrieved November 23, 2007, from http://www.haverford.edu/library/erts/
Medeiros, N., et al. (2003). Managing administrative
metadata: The tri-college consortium’s electronic resources tracking system (ERTS). Library and Technical
Services, 47(1), 28-25.
Medeiros, N., Miller, L., Adam, C., et al. (2007). White
paper on interoperability between acquisitions modules
of integrated library systems and electronic resource
management systems: A draft for comment. Retrieved
November 21, 2007, from www.haverford.edu/library/
DLF_ERMI2/ACQ_ERMS_white_paper.pdf
Mencik, S. (2001). How single sign-on work. Retrieved
November 21, 2007, from shttp://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/ateQuestionNResponse/0,289625,sid14_
cid391596_tax285453,00.html
Miller, R. G. (2002). Shaping digital library content.
Journal of Academic Librarianship, 28(3), 97.
Miller, R. H. (2000). Electronic resources and academic
libraries, 1980-2000: A historical perspective. Library
Trends, 48(4), 645.
Mitchell, A. M., & Surratt, B. E. (2005). Cataloging and
organizing digital resources : A how-to-do-it manual for
librarians. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers.
Montgomery, C. H., & Sparks, J. L. (2000). The transition to an electronic journal collection: Managing the
organizational changes. Serials Review, 26(3), 4-18.
Montgomery, C.H. (2000). “Fast track” transition to an
electronic collection: A case study. New Library World,
101(1159), 294-302.
Moore, C.W. (1981). User reactions to online catalogs:
An exploratory study. College & Research Libraries,
12(4), 295-302.
Mullin, C. (2002). A funny thing happened on the way
to the e-book [Electronic version]. PNLA Quarterly,
67(1), 20-27.
399
Compilation of References
Munson, K. I., & Frisque, M. (2004). How we treated our
clients’ need for remote access through a single interface.
Computers In Libraries, 24(9), 10-15.
Murphy, M. (1991). Preface. Future Competencies of the
Information Professional (pp. v-vi). Washington, D.C.:
Special Libraries Association.
Murray, J. E., Jr. (2001). Murray on contracts (4th ed.)
New York: LexisNexis.
Netscape (1996). Navigator proxy auto-conig ile format.
Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://wp.netscape.
com/eng/mozilla/2.0/relnotes/demo/proxy-live.html
Newman, G. (2000). Collection development and organization of electronic resources. Collection Management,
25(1/2), 97-113.
Nicholas, D., Huntington, P., & Watkinson, A. (2003).
Digital journals, big deals and online searching behaviour:
A pilot study. ASLIB Proceedings, 55(1/2), 84-109.
Nicholson, S. (2005). Bibliomining: Data mining for
libraries. Retrieved November 11, 2007, from http://www.
bibliomining.com/
Nicholson, S. (2006, May 15). Balancing evidence-based
librarianship and protecting patron privacy through the
bibliomining process. Paper presented at the Eastern
New York ACRL Chapter 2006 Spring Conference.
Retrieved November 11, 2007, from http://www.enyacrl.
org/acrlkeynote.ppt
Nicklen, J. E. (2003). Serials cataloguing and harmonisation. A brieing session paper. UKSG Conference, April
7-9, 2003, Edinburgh. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from
http://www.uksg.org.uk/presentations3/nicklen.pdf
NISO (2006). NISO standardized usage statistics harvesting initiative. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from
the NISO Web site: http://www.niso.org/committees/
SUSHI/SUSHI_comm.html
NISO (n.d.). FAQ for the standardized usage statistics
harvesting initiative (SUSHI) (Draft). Retrieved November 11, 2007, from http://docs.google.com/View.
aspx?docid=d2dhjwd_63tkkwf
400
NISO (n.d.). NISO RP-2006-02, NISO Metasearch XML
Gateway implementers guide. Retrieved November 18,
2007, from http://www.niso.org/standards/resources/RP2006-02.pdf
NISO (n.d.). NISO standardized usage statistics harvesting initiative (SUSHI). National Information Standards
Organization. Retrieved November 11, 2007, from
http://www.niso.org/committees/SUSHI/SUSHI_comm.
html
NISO (n.d.). NISO Z39.92-200X. Information retrieval
service description speciication DRAFT STANDARD
FOR TRIAL USE. Period: November 1, 2005 – October
31, 2006
NISO MetaSearch initiative (2005). Retrieved November
18, 2007, from http://www.niso.org/committees/MS_initiative.html
NISO Metasearch Initiative Task Group 1 (2005). Ranking of authentication and access methods available to the
metasearch environment. Retrieved November 21, 2007,
from http://www.niso.org/standards/resources/MI-Access_Management.pdf
NISO, License Expression Working Group (n.d.).
Retrieved November 23, 2007, from http://www.niso.
org/committees/License_Expression/LicenseEx_comm.
html
Nissley, M. (1990). CD-ROMs, licenses and librarians.
In M. Nissley & N.M. Nelson (Eds.), CD-ROM licensing
and copyright issues for libraries (pp. 1-17). Westport,
CT: Meckler Corporation.
Nofsinger, M. M. (1999). Training and retraining reference
professionals: Core competencies for the 21st century.
The Reference Librarian, 64, 9-19.
Norden, D.J., & Lawrence, G.H. (1981). Public terminal
use in an online catalog: Some preliminary results. College & Research Libraries, 12(4), 308-316.
North American Free Trade Agreement. (1992). Ofice of
NAFTA and inter-American affairs: Intellectual property
rights. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://www.
sice.oas.org/TRADE/NAFTA/naftatce.asp
Compilation of References
NorthEast Research Libraries (n.d.). Licensing guidelines. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://www.
library.yale.edu/NERLpublic/licensingprinciples.html
Notess, G. R. (2000, Oct/Nov). PubList and jake: Free
periodical reference sources [review of two databases].
Econtent, 23:5, 64-66.
Notess, G. R. (2005). Casting the net: Podcasting and
screencasting. Online, 29(6), 43-45.
Notess, G. R. (2006). On the net - the terrible twos: Web
2.0, library 2.0, and more. Online, 30(3), 40.
Novotny, E. (2004). I don’t think I click: A protocol analysis study of use of a library online catalog in the internet
age. College & Research Libraries, 65(6), 525-537.
O’Neill, J. M. (2006, November 20). Professors get
“F” in copyright protection knowledge. Seattle PostIntelligencer. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient
&ie=UTF-8&rls=RNWE,RNWE:2004-50,RNWE:
en&q=professors+get+f
OCLC Inc. (2005). Perceptions of libraries and information resources: A report to the OCLC membership.
Retrieved November 23, 2007, from www.oclc.org/reports/pdfs/Percept_all.pdf
OCLC OpenURL resolver registry (2006). Retrieved
November 18, 2007, from http://www.oclc.org/productworks/urlresolver.htm
Ofice of Descriptive Cataloging Policy, Library of Congress (1989). Library of Congress rule interpretations.
Washington, D.C.: Cataloging Distribution Service,
Library of Congress.
Ojala, M. (1993). Core competencies for special library
managers of the future. Special Libraries, 84, 230234.
Okerson, A. (1996). What academic libraries need in
electronic content licenses. Retrieved November 18, 2007,
from http://www.library.yale.edu/~okerson/stm.html
Okerson, A. (1997). Copyright or contract? Library
Journal, 122(14), 136-139.
Okerson, A. S., Stenlake, R. & Harper, G. (2006).
LIBLICENSE: Authorized use of license materials.
Retrieved November 18, 2007, from http://www.library.
yale.edu/~llicense/usecls.shtml
Okerson, A. S., Stenlake, R., & Harper, G. (2006). LIBLICENSE: Amendment. Retrieved November 18, 2007,
from http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/amendgen.
shtml
Okerson, A. S., Stenlake, R., & Harper, G. (2006).
LIBLICENSE: Conidentiality. Retrieved November
18, 2007, from http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/
confgen.shtml
Okerson, A. S., Stenlake, R., & Harper, G. (2006). LIBLICENSE: Fees. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from
http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/paygen.shtml
Okerson, A. S., Stenlake, R., & Harper, G. (2006).
LIBLICENSE: Governing law; Dispute resolution.
Retrieved November 18, 2007, from http://www.library.
yale.edu/~llicense/remgen.shtml
Okerson, A. S., Stenlake, R., & Harper, G. (2006). LIBLICENSE: Warranties; Indemnities; Limitations on warranties. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://www.
library.yale.edu/~llicense/warrgen.shtml
OpenURL referrer (2006). Dublin, OH: OCLC Openly
Informatics. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from http://
www.openly.com/openurlref/
Osmus, L. L. (1996). The transformation of serials
cataloging 1965-1990. Technical services management,
1965-1990. (pp. 171-190). Haworth Press.
Osorio, N. L. (1999). An analysis of science-engineering
academic library positions in the last three decades. Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship. Retrieved
November 17, 2007, from http://www.istl.org/99-fall/article2.html
Pace, A. K. (2003). The ultimate digital library: Where
the new information players meet. Chicago: American
Library Association.
Pace, A. K. (2004). Disintegrated library systems and
electronic resource management: Dismantling library
401
Compilation of References
systems. Presentation at ALA, 2004. Retrieved November
22, 2007, from http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/presentations/
2004ala/IRRT_pace.ppt
35 of the CONSER cataloging manual. Washington,
D.C.: PCC/BIBCO. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from
http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/bibco/irman.pdf
Pace, A. K. (2006). E-matrix: Electronic resource management at NCSU. PowerPoint presented to Amigos, May
11, 2006. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://www.
lib.ncsu.edu/presentations/2006Amigos/ematrix.ppt
Public Knowledge. (2006, September 11). H.R. 6052:
Copyright modernization act of 2006. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://www.publicknowledge.
org/node/621
Parker, K., Anderson, I., Chandler, A., Farb, S. E., Jewell,
T., Riggio, A., & Robertson, N. D. M. (2004). Electronic
resource management: Report of the DLF ERM Initiative,
Appendix E: Electronic resource management system
data structure. Washington, D.C.: Digital Library Federation. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://www.
diglib.org/pubs/dlf102/
PubList (1998-2001). About PubList.com. Retrieved
November 22, 2007, from http://www.publist.com/about.
html
Pattie, L. W., & Cox, B. J. (1996). Electronic resources:
Selection and bibliographic control. Binghamton, NY:
Haworth Press.
Pennsylvania State University Libraries. (2006). Serials and acquisitions services tactical plan 05/06-07/08.
Retrieved November 23, 2007, from http://www.libraries.psu.edu/admin/adup/tactical/serials_acq _ plan_
rev072006.pdf
Pesch, O. (2004). Usage statistics: Taking e-metrics to the
next level. The Serials Librarian, 46(1/2), 143-154.
Plum, T., & Bleiler, R. (2001). User authentication. SPEC
Kit. 267. Washington, D.C.: Association of Research
Libraries.
Pooley, C. G. (1990). CD-ROM licensing issues. In M.
Nissley & N.M. Nelson (Eds.), CD-ROM licensing and
copyright issues for libraries (pp. 31-43). Westport, CT:
Meckler Corporation.
Primich, T., & Richardson, C. (2006). The integrated
library system: From innovation to relegation to innovation again. In A. Fenner (Ed.), Integrating print and
digital resources in library collections (pp. 119-133).
New York: Haworth Press.
Program for Cooperative Cataloging / BIBCO (Revision)
(2005). Integrating resources: A cataloging manual. Appendix A to the BIBCO participants’ manual and Module
402
Quint, B. (2004, December 20). Google and research
libraries launch massive digitization project. Information
Today. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://www.
infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb041220-2.shtml
Ragouzis, N., Hughes, J., Philpott, R., & Maler,E. (Eds.)
(2006). Security assertion markup language (SAML)
V2.0 technical overview. Working Draft 10. Retrieved
November 21, 2007, from http://www.oasis-open.org/
committees/security/docs/draft-sstc-saml-01.pdf
Ranganathan, S.R. (1963). The ive laws of library science. Bombay, India: Asia Publishing House.
Reagan, B. (2006, December). The digital ice age
[Electronic version]. Popular Mechanics, 183(12), 9794, 139.
Reference and User Services Association (RUSA),
American Library Association (2003). Professional
competencies for reference and user services librarians.
Retrieved November 17, 2007 from, http://www.ala.org/
ala/rusa/rusaprotools/referenceguide/professional.htm
Reidy, K. (2004). Succesful messaging services: SMS
[& MMS] 4 biz 2day. EContent, 27(9), 30.
Reser. D. W., & Schuneman, A. P. (1992). The academic
library job market: A content analysis comparing public
and technical services. College & Research Libraries,
53, 49-59.
Rice, B. A. (1979). Science periodicals use study. Serials
Librarian, 4(1) 35-47.
Compilation of References
Rice, D. A. (2002). Legal-technological regulation of
information access. In T. A. Lipinski (Ed.), Libraries,
museums, and archives: Legal issues and ethical challenges in the new information era (pp. 275-294). Lanham,
MD: Scarecrow Press.
Richards, R. (2001). Licensing agreements: Contracts,
the eclipse of copyright, and the promise of cooperation.
Acquisitions Librarian, 13(26), 89-107.
Riemer, J. J., (in press). Restrategizing bibliographic
services and the one good record. LRTS.
Riemer, J., Declerck, L., Kautzman, A., Martin, P., &
Ryan, T. (2005, December). Bibliographic services task
force inal report. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from the
University of California Libraries Web site: http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/sopag/BSTF/Final.pdf
Riggio, A. et al. (n.d.). Report of the DLF electronic
resource management initiative, Appendix D: Data element dictionary. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from
http://www.library.cornell.edu/cts/elicensestudy/dlfdeliverables/DLF-ERMI-AppendixD.pdf
Robbins, S., & Smith, M. (2004). Managing e-resources:
A database-driven approach. In D.C. Fowler (Ed.), Eserials collection management: Transitions, trends, and
technicalities (pp. 239-251). Binghamton, NY: Haworth
Information Press.
Roose, T. (1988, October 15). Computerized reference
tools of the next decade: Taking the plunge with CDROM. Library Journal, 113, 56-61.
Sadeh, T. & Ellingsen, M. (2005). Electronic resource
management systems: The need and the realization. New
Library World, 106(1212/1213), 208-218.
Schiff, S. (2006, July 31). Know it all. The New Yorker,
82, 36-43.
Schmidt, A. (2005). The young & the wireless. School
Library Journal, 51(10), 44.
Schneider, K. G. (2006). How OPACs suck, Part 1: Relevance rank (or the lack of it). Retrieved November 18,
2007, from http://www.techsource.ala.org/blog/2006/03/
how-opacs-suck-part-1-relevance-rank-or-the-lack-ofit.html
Schneider, K. G. (2006). How OPACs suck, Part 2:
The checklist of shame. Retrieved November 18, 2007,
from http://www.techsource.ala.org/blog/2006/04/howopacs-suck-part-2-the-checklist-of-shame.html
Schneider, K. G. (2006). How OPACs suck, Part 3: The
big picture. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from http://
www.techsource.ala.org/blog/2006/05/how-opacs-suckpart-3-the-big-picture.html
Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition.
(2006). About SPARC. Retrieved November 17, 2007,
from http://www.arl.org/sparc/about/index.html
Schottlaender, B. (1998). The development of national
principles to guide librarians in licensing electronic
resources. Library Acquisitions: Practice and Theory,
22(1), 49-54.
Schulz, N. (2001). E-journal databases: A long-term solution? Library Collections, Acquisitions, and Technical
Services, 25, 449-459.
Scigliano, M. (2002). Consortium purchases: Case study
for a cost-beneit analysis. The Journal of Academic
Librarianship, 28(6), 393-399.
Seelye, K. Q. (2005). Snared in the web of a wikipedia
liar. (Week in review desk)(rewriting history). The New
York Times, WK1(L).
Sennema, G. (2004). Our e-journal journey: Where to
next? Serials Librarian, 47(3), 35-43.
Serials Solutions (2006, December 12). Products – Access
and management suite. Retrieved November 12, 2007,
from http://serialssolutions.com/ams.asp
Serials Solutions (n.d.). ERMS electronic management
system. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://www.
serialsolutions.com/promotion/ERMS/images/ErMS.
pdf
Shadle, S. (2006). FRBR and serials: An overview and
analysis. The Serials Librarian, 50(1/2), 83-103.
Shepherd, P. T. (2004). COUNTER: Towards reliable
vendor usage statistics. VINE, 34(4), 184-189.
403
Compilation of References
SHERPA (2006). SHERPA RoMEO publisher copyright
policies and self-archiving. Retrieved November 18,
2007, from the SHERPA Web site: http://www.sherpa.
ac.uk/romeo.php
Shim, W., McClure, C. R., Fraser, B. T., Bertot, J. C.,
Dagli, A., & Leahy, E. H. (2001). Measures and statistics
for research library networked services: Procedures and
issues. ARL E-metrics phase II report. Washington, D.C.:
Association of Research Libraries. Retrieved November
11, 2007, from http://www.arl.org/stats/newmeas/emetrics/phasetwopreface.pdf
Shorten, J. (2006). What do libraries really do with
electronic resources? The practice in 2003. In A. Fenner
(Ed.), Integrating print and digital resources in library
collections (pp. 55-73). New York: Haworth Information Press.
SirsiDynix (2006). Horizon information management
system. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://www.
dynix.com/products/erm/ .
Sitko, M. et al. (2002). E-journal management systems:
Trends, trials, and trade-offs. Serials Review, 28(3),
176-194.
Skaggs, B., Poe, J. W., & Stevens, K. W. (2006). One-stop
shopping: A perspective on the evolution of electronic
resources management. OCLC Systems and Services:
International Digital Library Perspective, 22(3), 192206.
Smulewitz, G. (recorder). (2005). Minutes of december 14, 2005 meeting. Rutgers University Libraries’
Electronic Resource Access and Integration Task
Force. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://www.
libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/staff/groups/eratf/minutes/eratf_05_12_14.shmtl
Snavely, L., & Clark, K. (1996). What users really think:
How they see and ind serials in the arts and sciences.
Library Resources & Technical Services 40, 49-51.
Special Libraries Association (2003). Competencies for
information professionals of the 21st century. Retrieved
November 17, 2007 from, http://www.sla.org/content/
learn/comp2003/index.cfm
404
Sproles, C., & Ratledge, D. (2004). An analysis of entry-level librarian ads published in American Libraries,
1982-2002. Electronic Journal of Academic and Special
Librarianship, 5 (2-3). Retrieved November 17, 2007,
from http://southernlibrarianship.icaap.org/content/
v05n02/sprolesc01.htm
Srivastava, S., & Taglienti, P. (2005). E-journal management: An online survey evaluation. Serials Review,
31(1), 28-38.
Stange, K. (2006). Caught between print and electronic.
IFLA Journal, 32(3), 237-239.
Stefancu, M., Bloss, A., & Lambrecht, J. (2004). All
about DOLLeR: Managing electronic resources at the
UCI library. Preprint of Serials Review, 30(3), 194-205.
Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://www.library.
cornell.edu/cts/elicensestudy/uic/AllAboutDOLLeR_
web.html
Stockton, M., & Machovec, G. (2001). Gold Rush: A
digital registry of electronic journals. Technical Services
Quarterly, 19(3), 51-59.
Subcommittee on the Source of Title Note for Internet
Resources, Cataloging Policy Committee (CAPC)
(2005). Source of title note for internet resources (3rd
ed). Online Audiovisual Catalogers, Inc. (OLAC). Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://ublib.buffalo.
edu/libraries/units/cts/olac/capc/stnir.html
SUSHI for librarians and content providers. Recording
of Webinar presented May 17, 2006. Retrived November
11, 2007, from https://niso.webex.com/niso/onstage/tool/
record/viewrecording1.php?EventID=277481065
Sutherland, N. R., & Adams, V. P. (2004). Territorial
invasion or symbiotic relationship? Technical services
and reference cooperation. College & Research Libraries
News, 65(1), 12-15.
Swank Motion Pictures, Inc. (2006). Home page. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://www.swank.
com
Swets Information Services (2004). Retrieved November
22, 2007, from http://informationservices.swets.com
Compilation of References
Szczyrbak, G., & Pierce, L. (2003). E-journal subscription
management systems and beyond. The Serials Librarian,
44(3/4), 57-162.
Tashbook, L. (2004). Survey on licensing. Buffalo, NY:
Williams S. Hein & Co., Inc.
Taylor & Francis (2003). Terms and conditions of access.
Retrieved November 18, 2007, from http://public.metapress.com/download/proiles/taylorandfrancis/termsand-conditions-of-access.pdf
Taylor & Francis Group Journals. (2006, January). Terms
and conditions of access. Retrieved November 17, 2007,
from http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/pdf/terms.pdf
Taylor, A. G. (2004). Wynar’s introduction to cataloging and classiication. Englewood, CO: Libraries
Unlimited.
Teets, M., & Murray, P. (n.d.). Metasearch authentication
and access management. D-Lib Magazine. Retrieved
November 21, 2007, from http://www.dlib.org/dlib/
june06/teets/06teets.html
Tennant, R. (2005). Lipstick on a pig. Library Journal,
130(7), 34.
Tenopir, C. (1986, March 1). Databases on CD-ROM.
Library Journal, 111, 68-69.
Tenopir, C., & King, D. W. (2000). Towards electronic
journals: Realities for scientists, librarians, and publishers. Washington, D.C.: SLA Publishing.
The Charleston Advisor (2007). TCA review scorecard.
Retrieved November 18, 2007, from the Charleston
Advisor Web site: http://www.charlestonco.com/scorecard.cfm
The EJournal Project (2001). (Tool Web site). Retrieved
November 22, 2007, from http://www.lib.ksu.edu/databases/ejournal/search.jsp?searchletter=A
TLC (2005). Gold rush: A discovery and management tool
for electronic Resources. Retrieved November 22, 2007,
from http://www.tlcdelivers.com/tlb/pdf/goldrush.pdf
Tobia, R. C. (2001). Electronic journals: Experiences
of an academic health sciences library. Serials Review,
27(1), 3-17.
Tonkery, D. (2006, May 8). Best of show—what’s a serial
when you are running on internet time. Liveserials [blog].
Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://liveserials.
blogspot.com/2006/05/best-of-show-whats-serial-whenyou-are.html
Torkington, R.B. (1974). MARC and its application to
library automation. In M.J. Voigt (Vol. Ed.), Advances
in librarianship (Vol. 4, pp. 1-23). New York: Academic
Press Inc.
Traill, S., & Huismann, M. (2004, September). Beyond
books: Blogs at the University of Minnesota. Unpublished
work; poster presentation at the 2004 OLAC Conference,
Montréal, Canada.
Tri-College Consortium (2003). Electronic resources
tracking System (ERTS). Retrieved November 22, 2007,
from http://www.haverford.edu/library/erts
Tull, L., Crum J., Davis, T., & Strader, C. R. (2005). Integrating and streamlining electronic resources worklows
via innovative’s electronic resource management. Serials
Librarian, 47(4), 103-124.
Turoff, M., & Hiltz, S.R. (1982). The electronic journal: A progress report [Electronic version]. Journal of
the American Society for Information Science, 33(4),
195-202.
U.S. Copyright Act. 17 U.S.C. §101 et seq.
Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act
(2002-2006). Uniform laws annotated (Vol. 7, Part II).
Minneapolis, MN: Thomson/West.
United States Copyright Ofice. (1998). Circular 21:
Reproduction of copyrighted works by educators and
librarians. Washington, D.C: Library of Congress,
Copyright Ofice.
United States Copyright Ofice. (1998, December). The
digital millennium copyright act of 1998: A U.S. copyright
ofice summary. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from
http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf
United States Copyright Ofice. (2006, November 22).
Statement of the librarian of congress relating to section
1201 rulemaking. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from
405
Compilation of References
http://www.copyright.gov/1201/docs/2006_statement.
html
http://www.utsystem.edu/ogc/INTELLECTUALPROPERTY/confu.htm
United States. (1787, September 17). Constitution Article
1, Section 8. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://
www.law.emory.edu/cms/site/index.php?id=3080
University of Texas System. (2004, November 22).
Offsite: Fair use. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from
http://www.utsystem.edu/ogc/INTELLECTUALPROPERTY/offsite.htm#fair
University of California Libraries (n.d.). Principles for
acquiring and licensing information in digital formats.
Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://libraries.
universityofcalifornia.edu/cdc/principlesforacquiring.
html
University of California Los Angeles Library (2002).
SCAER vision of access to electronic resources. Retrieved November 23, 2007, from http://staff.library.ucla.
edu/groups/scaer/vision_rept.doc
University of California Los Angeles Library (2006).
Staff intranet: Steering committee on access to electronic
resources (SCAER). Retrieved November 23, 2007, from
http://staff.library.ucla.edu/groups/scaer/
University of California, Berkeley Library (2007). Proxy
server setup instructions. Retrieved November 21, 2007,
from http://proxy.lib.berkeley.edu/instructions.html
University of California, Los Angeles (2004). UC
electronic resources management planning meeting
campus/CDL survey: Electronic resources management
at UCLA, March 4, 2004. Retrieved November 22, 2007,
from http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/sopag/appen06surveyinalucal.doc
University of California, Los Angeles (2002). ERBd
examples of publisher, Issued by and access provider.
Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://www.library.
cornell.edu/elicensestudy/ucla/2003/Examples%20of%
20Publisher,%20Issued%20By%20&%20Access%20Pr
ovider%2012-19-02.doc
University of Chicago Press Journals Division (2006).
Electronic access to astronomy journals. Retrieved November 18, 2007, from http://www.journals.uchicago.
edu/sitedocs.pdf
University of Texas System. (1997). CONFU: The conference on fair use. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from
406
Van de Sompel, H., & Beit-Arie, O. (2001). Open linking in the scholarly information environment using the
OpenURL framework. D-Lib Magazine, 7(3). Retrieved
November 21, 2007, from http://www.dlib.org/dlib/
march01/vandesompel/03vandesompel.html
VTLS (2004.) Verify: Verify for yourself, e-resource
management can be easy! Retrieved November 22, 2007,
from http://www.vtls.com/Products/verify.shtml
VTLS (n.d.). Verify [brochure]. Retrieved November 22,
2007, from http://www.vtls.com/brochures/verify.pdf
Wakimoto, J. C., Walker, D. S., & Dabbour, K. S. (2006).
The myths and realities of SFX in academic libraries.
Journal of Academic Librarianship, 32(2), 27-136.
Wakimoto, J. C., Walker, D. S., & Dabbour, K. S. (2006).
The myths and realities of SFX in academic libraries.
Journal of Academic Librarianship, 32(2) 127-136.
Walter, P. L. (1996). A journal use study: Checkouts and
in-house use. Bulletin of the Medical Library Association, 84(4), 461-467.
Wang, H. (2006). From “user” to “customer”: TQM in
academic libraries? Library Management, 27(9)
Welch, J. M. (2002/0). Hey! what about us?! Changing
roles of subject specialists and reference librarians in
the age of electronic resources. Serials Review, 28(4),
283-286.
White, G. (1999). Academic subject specialist positions
in the United States: A content analysis of announcements from 1990 through 1998. The Journal of Academic
Librarianship, 25(5), 372-382.
White, G. (2000). Head of reference positions in academic
libraries: A survey of job announcements from 1990
Compilation of References
through 1999. Reference & User Services Quarterly,
39(3), 265-272.
White, H. (2005). Documentation in technical services.
The Serials Librarian, 49(3), 47-55.
White, J. (2005). Effecting change in periodicals service:
Management models and a process. Serials Review,
32(1), 22-25.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (2006, December 27).
Central Authentication Service. Retrieved November 21,
2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Authentication_Service
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (2007, January 18).
Shibboleth. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (2007, January 30).
Single sign-on. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_sign-on
Wikipedia. (2006). Five laws of library science. Retrieved
November 18, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Five_laws_of_library_science
Wikipedia. (2006, December 31). Retrieved November
17, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:
Copyrights
Wilkinson, F. C., & Lewis, L. K. (2003). The complete
guide to acquisitions management. London: Libraries
Unlimited.
Williams, J. W. (1997). Serials cataloging, 1991-1996: A
review. The Serials Librarian, 32(1-2), 3-26.
Wilson, H. W. (2006). Gold rush quick facts. Retrieved
November 22, 2007, from http://www.hwwilson.com/
documentation/WilsonWeb/goldrush-quickfacts.htm
Wolfe, R. H. W. (2005) Managing the metadata morass:
Applying cataloging skills beyond the traditional catalog:
Boston College Library Catalogers. Metametametadata.
Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://www.metametadata.net/mt/archives/2005_04.html
Wolverton, R. E. (2003). E-journal licensing and legal
issues: A panel report. The Serials Librarian, 45(2),
153-156.
World Intellectual Property Organization. (2006). Home
page. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from http://www.
wipo.int/portal/index.html.en
Wright, C. A. (1994). The law of federal courts (5th ed.).
St. Paul, MN: West.
Wusteman, J., & O’hlceadha, P. (2006). Using Ajax to
empower dynamic searching. Information Technology
and Libraries, 25(2), 57.
Xu, H. (1996). The impact of automation on job requirements and qualiications for catalogers and reference
librarians in academic libraries. Library Resources and
Technical Services, 40(1), 9-31.
Yale University Library (2001). CLIR/DLF model license.
Retrieved November 23, 2007, from http://www.library.
yale.edu/~llicense/modlic.shtml
Young, M., & Kyrillidou, M. (2004). ARL supplementary
statistics 2002-03. Retrieved November 23, 2007, from
http://www.arl.org/stats/pubpdf/sup03.pdf
Zagar, C. (2000, January 24). Proxy server vs. URL
rewriter for authentication. Message posted to Web4lib
listserv. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://lists.
webjunction.org/wjlists/web4lib/2000-January/030233.
html
Wisniewski, J. (2006, March/April). Getting a handle on
content. Online, 52-54.
Zagar, C. (2007). URL rewrting. Retrieved November
21, 2007, from http://www.usefulutilities.com/support/
rewrite.html
Wissman, M. et al. (2005). Taylor Periodical Administration System. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from
http://www2.taylor.edu/library/upland/sjo/tpas.html
Zeter, M. J., Thunell, A., & Maguire, J. (2003). Success
in searching for serials: What is the MAGIC solution?
Serials Librarian, 44(3/4), 201-207.
407
Compilation of References
Zhou, Y. (1996). Analysis of trends in demand for computer-related skills for academic librarians from 1974 to
1994. College & Research Libraries, 57, 259-272.
Zhu, Q. (2006). The nuts and bolts of delivering new
technical reports via database-generated RSS FEEDS.
Computers in Libraries, 26(2), 24.
Zuidema, K. (1999). Reengineering technical services
processes. Library Resources & Technical Services,
43(1), 37-52.
408
409
About the Contributors
Marianne Aii is the associate dean of the University Library at California State University, Northridge. She is responsible for access services, special collections, archives and emergency planning. She
also participates in strategic planning, decision-making and fundraising. In previous positions, she
managed electronic information resources and developed systems, digital library and online learning
objects. She has presented and published locally, nationally, and internationally. She serves on the board
of directors of ASIST and holds membership in ALA and ACM. She has an MBA from USC and MLS
in information systems design from UCLA.
Mary Bevis is the serials and acquisitions librarian for the Houston Cole Library at Jacksonville State
University. She holds the rank of full professor. Ms. Bevis received a Bachelor of science in business
administration from Jacksonville State University, a Master’s in instructional media from Jacksonville
State University, and an EdS in library and information sciences from the University of Alabama.
Vicki Bloom has been head of the Rivera Library Reference Services department at the University
of California Riverside Libraries since 1995. She is chair of the UC Reference Bibliographers group
and active in ALA RUSA CODES. She has a broad background in reference, instruction, management,
collection development, and online/print product review. Prior to her position at UCR, Vicki was the
associate director of the Green-Field National Alzheimer’s Library and Resource Center in Chicago
and search services coordinator/science Librarian at Loyola University Chicago. She has a MLS from
Wayne State University.
George Boston is the electronic resources and serials librarian at Western Michigan University,
holding several positions in the Acquisitions and Serials Department at Western Michigan University
since 1990. Prior to that, he held various positions at the Kalamazoo Public Library, Southwest Michigan
Library Cooperative, and Western Michigan University. He possesses an MA and a MLS from Western
Michigan University and a BS from Central Michigan University.
Robert L. Bothmann is electronic access/catalog librarian, associate professor at Minnesota State
University, Mankato (MSU) where he is a cataloger for electronic and print monographs and journals.
He serves on the editorial board of Cataloging & Classiication Quarterly, is the vice president/president elect (2007-2009) of the OnLine Audiovisual Catalogers, and the 2007 recipient of the Esther J.
Piercy award. He is active in leadership roles for the Consortium of MnPALS Libraries, a consortium
of Minnesota libraries using Aleph. He holds an MLIS from the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee
and an MS in geography and english technical communication from MSU.
Copyright © 2008, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
About the Contributors
Kincaid Brown is the american and electronic services librarian and Webmaster for the University
of Law Library. He received his BA in history from the University of Michigan in 1994; his JD from the
University of Michigan Law School in 1996; and, his MSI with a specialization in library and information services from the University of Michigan School of Information in 1998.
Heather Christenson has led the California Digital Library (CDL) Resource Liaison Program for the
past four years. In addition, she recently led CDL’s NSDL-grant funded project to develop an integrated
search service which incorporated metasearch, OpenURL linking, and OAI-harvested metadata. Heather
is a coauthor of CDL’s 2003 analysis of solutions for capture, curation, and preservation of government
information on the Web. She is currently CDL’s project manager for implementation of University of
California libraries’ system-wide electronic resources management system. Prior to joining CDL, Heather
worked on commercial Web search tools, and was a news librarian, law librarian, and cataloger. She
received her MLIS from the University of California, Berkeley.
Janet Crum received her MLS from the University of Washington in 1992 and is currently head of
library systems & cataloging at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, OR. In her current
position, she supports OHSU’s integrated library system and manages the library’s cataloging, computer
support, digital resources, electronic resources management, and Web development sections. She led
the teams that implemented OHSU’s link resolver and co-led the team that beta tested and implemented
the electronic resources management product from Innovative Interfaces, Inc.
Trisha L. Davis is an associate professor and head, Serials and Electronic Resources Department
at the Ohio State University Libraries. She also serves as an adjunct faculty member for the Kent State
University School of Library and Information Science, Columbus Program. Since 1997, Ms. Davis has
served as the visiting program oficer for licensing of electronic products at the Association of Research
Libraries. She is actively involved in committee work for the American Library Association.
Debra Engel holds an MLS from the University of Arizona. Since 2001, she has worked as the
director of Public Services for the University of Oklahoma Libraries. Prior to 2001, Ms. Engel worked
as the assistant director for the Pioneer Library System in Norman, Oklahoma. She is a member of the
Oklahoma Library Association, the American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries and the Library Administration and Management Association. To contact: dhengel@
ou.edu.
Celeste Feather is the electronic resources librarian at the Ohio State University Libraries. Prior to
accepting this position in 2005, she was the associate librarian at the University of Connecticut School
of Law Library and the access services librarian at the Georgetown University Law Library. She holds
a BA from Oberlin College, an MA from George Washington University, and an MLS from the University of Maryland, College Park.
Donna L. Ferullo is director of the Purdue University Copyright Ofice and associate professor of
library science. Ms. Ferullo holds a BA from Boston College, an MLS from the University of Maryland
and a JD from Suffolk University Law School. She is former chair of the ACRL Copyright Committee. Ms. Ferullo has published articles on copyright and its impact on higher education and libraries.
410
About the Contributors
She has also given presentations for the American Library Association; the Association of College and
Research Libraries; the Association of Research Libraries; and many other groups in higher education
and libraries.
Ted Fons is the senior product manager at Innovative Interfaces. He is responsible for the management of Innovative’s Electronic Resource Management, Acquisitions, Serials, WebBridge LR and
Pathinder Pro products. His most recent development project was to bring to general release the irst
Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) client in an electronic resource management
system. Theodore has been with Innovative since 1996. He has an MLS from Syracuse University and
has worked in acquisitions, cataloging and reference in academic libraries.
Randle Gedeon is the monographic acquisitions and gifts librarian at Western Michigan University,
holding several positions in the Acquisitions and Serials Department at Western Michigan University
since 2000. Prior to that, he held public service positions at Western Michigan, Northeastern State
University (Tahlequah, Oklahoma), and John Carroll University. He possesses an MLS from Kent
State University, a MAEd from Baldwin-Wallace College and a BA from Muskingum College. He has
published on topics related to library acquisitions and instruction.
John-Bauer Graham is the head of public Services for the Houston Cole Library at Jacksonville
State University. He holds the rank of Associate Professor. Mr. Graham received a BA in History from
Auburn University, a MA in History from JSU, a MLIS from the University of Alabama, and is currently
pursuing a Doctorate in higher education administration from the University of Alabama.
Dalene Hawthorne began working with electronic resources as an indexer at Information Access
Company, now part of the Gale Group, in 1989. Ms. Hawthorne became an editor of magazine index
in 1991 and manager of serials acquisitions in 1992. She became a customer sales consultant for Innovative Interfaces in 1998. Ms. Hawthorne worked for various special libraries from 1999 to 2002,
when she became serials librarian at Stanford University Libraries. She holds a MLIS from San Jose
State University. Ms. Hawthorne is currently head of systems and technical services at Emporia State
University.
Margaret Hogarth has been electronic resources coordinator for the University of California,
Riverside Libraries since 2004. Prior to this, she was interim library Web coordinator at California
State University, Fullerton and a pool librarian at Rio Hondo College and California State Polytechnic
University, Pomona. She has an MLIS from San Jose State University and a Master’s in environmental
studies from California State University, Fullerton.
Melissa Holmberg is the electronic resources librarian, associate professor at Minnesota State
University, Mankato (MSU), where she staffs the reference desk on a weekly rotation, conducts collection development activities and instruction sessions for the physical sciences, and manages electronic
resources, including federated search, OpenURL, and dynamic Web pages for accessing over 200 databases. She holds an MLS from the University of Missouri-Columbia and an MS in english technical
communication from MSU.
411
About the Contributors
Patricia Hults, a practicing librarian for over 20 years, currently serves as coordinator of technical services at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Prior to this she was digital resources librarian at the
same institution. In both positions she has been intimately involved in collecting and using electronic
statistics. She worked for ifteen years in the State University of New York system in serials, reference,
and public services. She earned an Associate degree in applied sciences, computer information systems
from SUNY Cobleskill, several years after her MLS from SUNY Albany.
Smita Joshipura is an acquisitions librarian at Fletcher Library, Arizona State University at the west
campus, Phoenix, AZ, where she is responsible for acquisitions of all the formats as well as oversees the
materials budget. She is currently a core member of Electronic Resources Management Implementation
group. Moreover, she is chairing Fletcher Library’s Diversity Initiative Team. She has an MLIS from
India as well as from University of Arizona, United States.
Marie Kennedy holds an MFA in photography from the University of Texas at Austin and an MSIS
from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the head, metadata & content management
at the Norris Medical Library of the University of Southern California. Her research interests include
the management of data, and the development of systems designed to assist in that endeavor.
Diana Kichuk is the electronic resources librarian at the University of Saskatchewan Library. She
has also worked in public services and technical services. Prior to that, she was the regional coordinator for library services for Agriculture Canada covering the four western provinces. She has published
articles on supplementary content in electronic journals and remediation in electronic resources.
Ted Koppel is Verde product marketing manager for Ex Libris, a position that builds on his signiicant product management and related experience in the library and information marketplace. Ted’s prior
experience includes working at the CARL Corporation, the UnCover Company, OCLC, and as senior
product manager for standards implementation at The Library Corporation (TLC). Ted has been an
active participant in standards committees throughout his career. Currently, he serves on four standards
committees in the ERM and resource sharing areas. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in languages from
Georgetown, with a minor in Arabic. He also has an MSLS from Case Western Reserve University,
Cleveland, Ohio.
Bethany Latham is the electronic resources/documents librarian for the Houston Cole Library at
Jacksonville State University. She holds a rank of assistant professor. Ms. Latham received a BA in
history from Jacksonville State University and a MLIS from the University of Alabama.
Jodi Poe is the distance education/electronic resources manager for the Houston Cole Library at
Jacksonville State University. She holds the rank of associate professor. Ms. Poe received a BS in accounting from Jacksonville State University and a MLIS from the University of Alabama.
Sarah Robbins holds an MLIS from the University of Oklahoma. She currently works as the Web
& digital initiatives coordinator for the University of Oklahoma Libraries. Ms. Robbins is actively involved in the Oklahoma Library Association and the Library and Information Technology Association
and serves on a number of professional committees. To contact: srobbins@ou.edu.
412
About the Contributors
Juan Carlos Rodriguez has a MLIS from UCLA with a specialization in information systems. He
is currently the director of Library Systems & Information Technology Services at California State
University, Sacramento (CSUS). Prior to joining CSUS, he held several positions at UC Riverside including science reference librarian and coordinator of information technology for the Science Library.
His research interests include emerging information technologies and their potential use in an academic
environment, information seeking behavior in an online environment and WSeb-based technologies
in libraries. He has presented nationally in the areas of information retrieval of Internet resources and
metadata.
Aline Soules is a library faculty member and professor at California State University, East Bay. She
holds a BA (Hons.) and MA from the University of Windsor, an MSLS from Wayne State University, and
an MFA from Antioch University, Los Angeles. Her current library responsibilities include instruction,
reference, and collections, and she has been active in legislative and copyright issues for some years. She
is a member of ACRL’s legislative network and was recently chosen as one of its legislative advocates.
She is also legislative liaison for CARL (California Academic and Research Libraries).
Kimberly W. Stevens is the senior catalog librarian for the Houston Cole Library at Jacksonville
State University. She holds the rank of associate professor. Ms. Stevens holds a BA in english from
Auburn University and the MSLS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Sherry Willhite is the convener of the California Digital Library (CDL) Resource Wranglers group,
and the coordinator of the CDL technical requirements documents. She has been CDL’s primary analyst
for abstracting & indexing databases since 1996. Until 2003 she was the CDL Resource Liaison Coordinator. Sherry is currently CDL’s project manager for the UC Request Service (Interlibrary loan and
Document Delivery services). Before joining UC’s Division of Library Automation (now the CDL) in
1993, she was the chemistry librarian at the University of California, San Diego, and a reference librarian at the Carlsbad City Library. Sherry has an MLIS from the University of California, Los Angeles
and a PharmD from the University of the Paciic.
Bin Zhang is currently the digital information services librarian at California State University, Sacramento. Before this position, he was the systems librarian at Kapi‘olani College Library, University of
Hawai‘i. His background and experiences in his library career include digital library project development,
electronic resources development and management, web project development and management, server
administration, etc. Mr. Zhang received his BS in agriculture from Xinjiang Agricultural University,
Urumqi, China, and MLIS from University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.
Yvonne W. Zhang In 1997 with eight years of background as a serials librarian at Northwestern
University Library, she moved to California and joined Cal Poly Pomona University in the capacity of
associate university librarian for technical services. Her expertise and interests lie with serials cataloging and electronic resource management, demonstrated by her professional involvement with NASIG,
SCCTP, and by my numerous publications over the years including “Measuring and assessment of
library electronic resources,” The Serials Librarian, 43(3), 2002; and “Serials cataloging at the turn of
the century (book review),” Serials Review, 24(3/4), 1998.
413
414
Index
Symbols
3 ERM. See III ERM
A
Ajax 241–242
American Association of Law Libraries
(AALL) 122–143
application programming interface (API) 254
ARL 251
Association of Research Libraries (ARL) 250
Athens 261–262
authentication systems 253–255
B
BEOnline 330
bibliographic control 81
bibliographic databases 5–6
bibliomining 43–44
Big Deal, the 214, 377
blog, see web log
business process reengineering (BPR) 92
C
California Digital Library (CDL) 193–211
cd-rom databases 7–8
Central Authentication Service (CAS) 260–261
COinS 223, 230
collection development policy 50
common gateway interface (CGI) 257
Context Objects in Spans (CoinS) 240
Cooperative Online Serials (CONSER) 276
CORC 324
core competencies 106–107
COUNTER 197
Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources (COUNTER) 32–
36, 140, 296
coursepacks 130–131
Creative Commons 155, 188
CrossRef 236–237, 307
D
Database of Library Licensed Electronic Resources (DOLLeR) 331
data mining 42–43
Dialog 5
Digital Library Federation Electronic Resource
Management Initiative (DLF-ERMI)
296, 305–306, 325–326, 332, 359
Digital Library Initiative (DLI) 275
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
149–150
digital object identiier (DOI) 235–236
distance education/electronic resources manager (DEERM) 77–79
DOI 307
Dublin Core 357–358
E
E-Matrix 331
EJournal Project, the 330
electronic books 10–13
electronic resource licenses 173–192
Electronic Resource Management Initiative
(ERMI) 34, 91
electronic resource management system
(ERMS) 83
electronic resource management systems
(ERMS), commercial 334–337
Copyright © 2008, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
Index
electronic resource management systems
(ERMS), integrated 334–336
electronic resource management systems
(ERMS), locally developed 322–
332, 351–361
electronic resource management systems
(ERMS), open source 334–336
Electronic Resource Management Worklow
Flowchart 97
electronic resources 48–70
electronic resources, authentication 249–273
electronic resources, copywriting 144–172
electronic resources, naming conventions
274–293
electronic resources, standards 294–304
Electronic Resources Database (ERD) 324
electronic resources librarian (ERL) 106–
120, 275, 282–283
Electronic Resources Licensing and Information Center (ERLIC) 324–325, 352–353
Electronic Resources Management™ 215, 228
electronic resources management system
(ERMS) 221–222
Electronic Resources Tracking System (ERTS)
354–355
end user license agreement (EULA) 175–176
ERDb 325–326, 353
ERMdb 331
I
III ERM 311–318
indemniication 131–133
integrated library system (ILS) 18, 255, 289,
306, 321, 343, 373
International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) 122–143
IP registration 365
J
Joint Working Party for the Exchange of Serials
Subscription Information 297
Journal Finder 330
journals, one-stop shopping 212–233
JSTOR 158–159, 182, 378
L
fair use 148
irst sale doctrine 174
freedom of information acts (FOIA) 183
full time equivalent (FTE) 185
Library 2.0 239–240
Library Online Resource Access (LORA)
330–331
license content 121–143
License Expression Working Group (LEWG)
301–302
license terms 187–188
lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP)
254
linking technologies 234–248
link resolver 306
locally developed ERMS. See electronic
resource management systems (ERMS),
locally developed
long tail, the 246
lots of copies keep stuff safe (LOCKSS) 378
G
M
F
Gold Rush 330, 353–354
Google Scholar 239–240
H
HERMIS 334
Hopkins Electronic Resource Management
System (HERMES) 325, 354
Houston Cole Library (HCL) 72–89
machine-readable cataloging (MARC) 2–
3, 82, 215, 219, 294
mashup 245
metadata 203–204
Metasearch 298–299
N
National Information Standards Organization
(NISO) 269, 306
415
Index
Networked Electronic Resources Discussion
Group (NERD) 74
NISO MetaSearch Initiative 229
NorthEast Research Libraries (NERL) 122–
143
O
Ohio College Library Center (OCLC) 3, 81
ONIX for Serials 297
online public access catalog (OPAC) 3–
4, 60, 202
open digital rights language 357
open source programs 337–339
openURL 235–236, 297–298
Oregon Health & Science University 227–228
orphan works 150
T
tag clouds 246
Taylor Periodical Administration System
(TPAS) 323–324
Technology, Education, and Copyright Harmonization (TEACH) Act 149
total quality management (TQM) 92
twikis 243
U
UCITA 182–183
V
VERA 324, 352
virtual private network (VPN) 266–267
P
W
Portico 378–379
process mapping 90–104
Project Gutenberg 10
Project MUSE 10
proxy servers 262–266
publication access management service
(PAMS) 214, 332
Public Library of Science, the 377
Publishers and Librarian Solutions (PALS) 32
web-based catalogs 4–5
web-based databases 8–9
web log 241–242
wikis 242–243
Windows Live Academic 239–240
R
Ranganathan's ive laws of library science
2, 216
Resource Liaison Program 194–211
Resource Wranglers Program 200–211
S
Serials Cybrarian 323
Serials Solutions (SS) 84–85, 312, 317, 334
SFX 306–311, 333
Shibboleth 261
short messaging service (SMS) 243–244
single sign-on (sso) 260–262
Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting
Initiative (SUSHI) 34–35, 197, 300–
301, 314, 369
416
Z
Z39.50 263
Z39.88 297
Z39.93 369