Tracking electronic resources acquisitions: Using a helpdesk system to succeed where your ERMS failed Charleston Conference 2009 Xan Arch Electronic Resources and Technology Librarian Acquisitions Department Stanford University Libraries Jason Price, Ph.D. Science Librarian Head of Collections & Acquisitions Claremont Colleges' Library

The ERMS promise FLOWCHART

What was delivered “With [our ERMS] we have all the information in one place” Licenses Contacts Notes Status indicator Reminders Access info

Reality of Claremont’s e-resource acquisitions workflow

Some key advantages of using a ticketing system for ERA Designed to track ‘issues’ through stages to resolution Structures ‘metadata’ relating to an issue and shares it with others enabling coordination Flexible enough to allow a customized set of steps for each issue & distributed implementation Collects trail relating to each ‘issue’

Stanford’s solution Xan Arch Electronic Resources and Technology Librarian Stanford University Libraries

Selector License Negotiations Ordering Unit Payments Activation Cataloging What we had: Defining our process What we had: Defining our process Tracking our orders

What we needed: Defining our problems What we needed: Defining our problems

Enterprise-level bug tracking software from Atlassian Already in use in our Digital Library department Finding a solution Finding a solution

Each order goes through the same steps o In Progress – Licensing o In Progress – Ordering o In Progress – Electronic Resources o In Progress – Metadata JIRA notifies the department or individual by when they are required to act on an issue Standardized: Solution Standardized: Solution

Centralized: Solution Centralized: Solution The web form

Transparent: Solution Transparent: Solution Display in Wiki

JIRA Workflow - Acquisitions

Completely in place in Acquisitions department Less established in Collections, some selectors initiating orders through webform, others still sending Some types of purchases still ambiguous – major database renewals, new e-journals Recent developments have pushed adoption further along A work in progress A work in progress

The future The future Use of JIRA for other projects in Acquisitions Moving webform to Drupal forms

Questions ? Questions ?

Claremont’s solution: eRATS in Footprints by Numara Jason Price Claremont Colleges’ Library Claremont University Consortium

Claremont’s eRATS was designed to address specific problems: In order of importance: 1.Delays (or loss!) due to dropped communication 2.Incomplete listing/activation of resources 3.Standardization of required metadata 4.Lack of transparency as to resource progress

Tracking-system supported workflow

Stage 0: Resource request form

Stage 1: Under Review

Tracking-system supported workflow

Stage 2: In negotiation

Tracking-system supported workflow

Resource fully available 3 Resource fully implemented Acquisition staff implements 2 Collection librarians determine 1 Stage 3: Pending activation

Next steps Beta – then implementation Configure public display of progress Design Acq reports (delivered from Footprints) Output to ERM?

Summary / Overview “Smart” Checklist –Periodic required decisions as stage changes –Shared in real time Workflow-based –Each update noted in history entry & encourages indication of next step –Issues can be assigned to one or more people for the next action(s) Information repository –‘Issues’ (resource records) can send and receive –Stored as one text field—fully searchable –Appropriate metadata extracted into fixed fields as available