OTDCF_v21no2.doc
by Norm Medeiros
Coordinator for Bibliographic and Digital Services
Haverford College
Haverford, PA
Electronic Resources Management: An Update
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
{A published version of this article appears in the 21:2 (2005) issue of OCLC Systems & Services.}
“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you
to keep your mouth shut." – Ernest Hemingway
ABSTRACT
This article reviews the Digital Library Federation’s (DLF) Electronic Resource Management
Initiative (ERMI) guidelines, finalized in August 2004. The specifications are reviewed in
light of the electronic resource (e-resource) management needs of academic libraries. The
piece reflects on comments made by Tim Jewell and Adam Chandler in an earlier “On the
Dublin Core Front” column. A review of commercial e-resource management system
development is also included.
KEYWORDS
DLF ERMI; Digital Library Federation Electronic Resource Management Initiative; electronic
resource management; e -resource management; Tim Jewell; Adam Chandler
2004 was a year of achievements. Politics aside (after all, this is a bi -partisan column),
evidence of water was discovered on Mars, Google went public, Brittany Spears got married
– twice, and the 86-year Curse of the Bambino ended as the Boston Red Sox won the World
Series. While the Red Sox were turning around an otherwise unspectacular season during
the dog days of August (they went 21-7 that month), the ERMI Steering Committee, under
the auspices of the Digital Library Federation, was publishing their final report. Although
less titillating than the BoSox’s historic comeback against the Yankees in the American
League Championship Series, the ERMI report ranks to this librarian as one of the most
important accomplishments of the past year.
Readers of this column may recall an interview piece with Tim Jewell and Adam Chandler
that appeared in the 19:3 (2003) issue of OCLC Systems and Services. Jewell and Chandler
discussed the problems associated with e -resource management, and the ways they
envisioned the work of the ERMI Steering Group helping libraries. In August 2004, ERMI’s
final report was released, available on the DLF web site at
. The report and its six appendices represent
many years of intense efforts by Jewell, Chandler, and their Steering Group colleagues, Ivy
Anderson, Sharon Farb, Angela Riggio, Nathan Robertson, and Kimberly Parker. Not
surprisingly, this work has attracted the attention of leading library system vendors,
publishers, and standards organizations. By reviewing the work of a small number of
libraries that had developed early e -resource management systems, querying librarians
about the types of e-resources data they needed to store and disseminate, and by sharing
these findings in public venues such as the American Library Association Annual
Conference and Midwinter Meeting, DLF Forums, and the Charleston Conference, the ERMI
Steering Group developed functional requirements for an e -resource management system
that have become a development roadmap for commercial vendors. It is amazing to
consider how much this group of talented, dedicated librarians has accomplished in a
relatively short period of time.
MARKETPLACE UPDATE
In the interview piece alluded to above, Jewell noted that the primary outcome he hoped to
see as a result of ERMI was “rapid progress in developing systems to manage electronic
resources” (Medeiros, 2003). Not quite two years later, Jewell’s wish is a reality. The
leading library system providers all have e-resource management products either currently
available or in the works.
First out of the gate was Innovative Interfaces. Their product, ERM, has been in
commercial release for over a year. They have sold over 100 modules, many of these to
libraries whose library management system is not an Innovative product. Innovative
capitalized on early recognition of the e-resource needs of libraries, choosing a handful of
libraries, including the University of Washington and Ohio State University, to help develop
their product, which can integrate with an existing Innovative system or be used as a
standalone module. Additional information about ERM is available at
.
Ex Libris is working with MIT and Harvard to develop their e -resource management system,
Verde. At the 2005 American Library Association Midwinter Meeting held in Boston, Ellen
Duranceau from MIT and Ivy Anderson from Harvard gave a brief presentation on Ex Libris’
work-in-progress. Verde is designed to accommodate the DLF ERMI functional
specifications, and will interact with the SFX Knowledge Base. Verde is being built as a
standalone system, useful for libraries regardless of their library management system, and
is expected for commercial release sometime in 2005. Additional information about Verde is
available at .
VTLS is working with the Tri-College Consortium (Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore
Colleges) to develop their product, Verify. Verify is framed around the DLF ERMI functional
specifications, and seeks to provide an application extensible for use by both individual and
groups of libraries. Like ERM and Verde, Verify is being designed as a standalone system,
and is planned for commercial release by the end of 2005. Additional information about
Verify is available at .
Endeavor Information Systems is at work on its e -resource management product, Meridian.
Meridian is being developed with input from the international community. The system,
which can operate in tandem with Endeavor’s Voyageur library management system or as a
standalone application, should be in general release by June 2005. Additional information
about Meridian is available at .
Dynix is planning to build an e-resource system that will complement existing Horizon
systems. Additional information is available at .
In addition to these commercial products, a number of feature-rich library-developed
systems exist. These systems include Penn State’s ERLIC
,
Johns Hopkins University’s HERMIS ,
and Boston College’s ERMdb < http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/ulib/staff/erm/erm-db/>.
Some libraries, including MIT, Harvard, Ohio State, and the Tri-College Consortium, will
need to address the challenge of data migration from their homegrown e -resource
management systems to new commercial systems. It will be interesting to see how well
these commercial systems are able to map local data elements into the DLF construct.
For additional information about commercial e-resource management system development,
I suggest Ellen Duranceau’s “Electronic Resource Management Systems from ILS Vendors,”
which appears in the September 2004 issue of Against the Grain (Duranceau, 2004). The
timeliest information on this topic is available at the “Web Hub for Developing
Administrative Metadata for Electronic Resource Management”
maintained by Adam
Chandler at Cornell University.
WORKFLOW CONCERNS
Electronic resource management systems are just one step in helping libraries manage e -
resources. Effective e -resource management requires changes to the ways libraries do their
work. A colleague mentioned to me a few days ago that his library would soon be hiring an
“e-resources person” to assist with the burgeoning array of tasks affiliated with the access,
administration, and control of e-resources. Our conversation reminded me of a study
conducted by Cindy Hepfer and the much-referenced Ellen Duranceau that appeared in a
2002 issue of Serials Review (Duranceau, 2002). The article details data gathered by the
authors during the period 1997 to 2002. Although just a small sample (15 libraries
responded), a trend was clear: staffing for e-resource activities is being vastly outpaced by
the growth of e -resource collections in libraries.
A more recent and expansive survey of libraries on the topic of staffing is found in Managing
Electronic Resources (Grahame, 2004). This February 2004 study details results of 69 ARL
libraries that responded to questions about their ability to manage electronic resources.
Not surprisingly, the vast majority of respondents indicated they had made staffing or
organizational changes as a result of e-resource demands.
CONCLUSION
It’s the combination of e -resource systems, sufficient and proper allocation of staff, adoption
and standardization of the ERMI functional specifications, and an unreferenced but critical
issue, agreeable model licensing, that will help libraries overcome the challenge presented
by today’s digital information environment.
REFERENCES
Duranceau, E.F. & Hepfer, C. (2002). “Staffing for Electronic Resource Management: The
Results of a Survey,” Serials Review, vol. 28, no. 4: 316-320.
Duranceau, E.F. (2004). “Electronic Resource Management Systems From ILS Vendors,”
Against the Grain, vol. 16, no. 4: 91-94.
Grahame, V. & McAdam, T. (2004). Managing Electronic Resources. Washington, DC:
Association of Research Libraries.
Medeiros, N. (2003). “A Pioneering Spirit: Using Administrative Metadata to Manage
Electronic Resources,” OCLC Systems and Services, vol. 19, no. 3: 86-88.