Electronic Resources Interest Group

What follows is Luiz Mendes' report on the ERIG meeting held at the ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim, California, in June 2008.

Elections were held for upcoming Vice-Chair/Chair. Amira Aaron, Brandeis University, was elected.

The program focused on issues related to the implementation of electronic resources management systems for a consortium from three perspectives: the librarian's, the vendor's, and the consortium's.

Abstract: Are there successful Electronic Resources Management systems (ERMs) implementation models for a consortium? What are vendors doing to improve their systems to be deployed at the consortium level? What works? What doesn't work? What needs to be done for libraries to explore this option to integrate and implement an ERM at a consortium level? What is the needed functionality? The program provides three perspectives on the topic: the vendor, the consortium, and the librarian.

Angela Riggio (Head, Digital Collection Management, UCLA) provided an introduction to the issues related to an ERM for a consortium level in her presentation "ERMing for a Consortium: Are We There Yet: Setting the Stage." She reviewed the challenges originally identified in the DLF ERMI Report (http://www.diglib.org/pubs/dlf102/), including the data elements, data structure needed for a consortial ERMs (e.g., multiple views, variety of search options, robust customer-defined reporting; cost share).

The vendors' perspectives were provided by Jeff Aipperspach (Product Manager, Serials Solutions) and Tom Jacobson (Director of Sales, Innovative Interfaces, Inc.).

In his presentation "ERM'ing for a Consortium: Are We There Yet?", Aipperspach presented results of surveys showing libraries expenditures on e-content licensed via consortia, underscoring the importance of consortia for libraries. He then demonstrated Serials Solutions 360 Resource Manager for a consortial ERM, including features that support consortia and multi‐tiered organizations (e.g., managing member libraries, sharing objects, and member libraries working with objects) as well as the benefits for consortia managers, member libraries and patrons.

In "New Directions in Consortial ERM," Jacobson discussed the current landscape of libraries with different systems and the challenges of implementing an ERM at the consortium level. He presented Innovative's ERM module and its technical features that support consortium features integrated through Millennium. He then focused on a demonstration of those features that must be provided by a consortial ERM: discovery, privacy, separate user statistics, and multiple coverage databases.

Tommy Keswick (Member Services Coordinator, Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC)) provided the consortium perspective based on the experiences at SCELC—one of the first consortia to implement an ERMs. In his presentation entitled "Consortial Uses of an ERMS," Keswick discussed the implementation of a consortial ERMs from a locally-created database (WISDOM) to the adoption of Serials Solutions ERMs (360 Resource Manager) for all 94 member libraries. His presentation provided the detailed features of WISDOM and Serials Solutions ERMs as well as future enhancements needed (e.g., integration with local database; migration of data from consortium ERMs to local ERMs) and benefits of a consortium ERMs.

The presentations engendered a great number of questions and discussion with participants during the Q&A session.