Consortial Uses of an ERMS Tommy Keswick SCELC ALCTS ERIG Meeting ALA 2008 Annual Conference Anaheim, California June 28, 2008

Outline How SCELC works –Our internal database Working with a consortial ERMS –Experiences so far Ideas and goals for the future –Improvements for all stakeholders

What is SCELC?  The Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium  Founded in 1986  Works with 94 private academic and research libraries throughout California to:  License electronic resources  Share information and expertise  Provide reciprocal borrowing and interlibrary loan cooperation among members  Licensing is SCELC’s principal activity  We make premium content affordable for smaller libraries  We finance our operation via surcharges to subscriptions

SCELC Internal Operations Database Developed a FileMaker Pro-based application for tracking called “WISDOM” WISDOM contains the following information –Member information –Vendor information –Databases (electronic resources) –Subscriptions –Contacts –Invoices –Reports & Order form generation –Third party billing

WISDOM Illustrated The following screenshots illustrate the various aspects of WISDOM as described in the previous slide

Institutional Savings Report Example

Why a consortial ERMS? To make visible and accessible our consortial contracts –Exposes data now contained in our WISDOM database  Vendor contacts, subscribers and product information License Terms –Meets vendor requirements for providing license terms and conditions to end users Encourages cooperative collection development –Can readily view which products are offered through SCELC –Shared library data on electronic resource holdings –Guides acquisition decisions for databases on multiple platforms, i.e. APA databases SCELC has purchased access to the consortial ERMS for all 94 members

Overview of ERMS Functionality Contact management License management Notes management for incident reports Alerts management Linkage to e-journal title management Overlap analysis between similar products

ERMS - Home Screen

Database Information Subscription status is indicated Publisher/vendor and number of titles held in the database is also indicated License terms and conditions available at the provider or publisher level

License Details In order to enter license information: –Must select authorized users (subscribers) to a provider’s products –Must select terms of licenses from drop- down menus –Must add any special notes about the license

License Details View - Authorized Users

License Details (2) The terms are labeled relative to the DLF ERMI (Digital Library Federation Electronic Resource Management Initiative) data elements for describing license terms SCELC works with about 60 vendors and licenses were entered for almost all of them

License Details View - Terms

License Details View - Terms (2)

E-Journal Portal Tied to Serials Solutions Knowledgebase Individual e-journal titles can be accessed by the public End users can view license terms and see which databases hold the titles in which they are interested

E-Journal Portal - Database Level View

E-Journal Title Level - Public View

Public View - License Terms

Information Management Framework SCELC’s information management framework is the combination of the WISDOM database for internal administration, and ERMS as a tool for the libraries WISDOM has been purchased by three other consortia –License terms encourage customization and sharing of improvements among consortia –SCELC wants to promote the enhancement of information management among consortia

ERMS and Cost Management SCELC manages costs within WISDOM, whose data is kept internally in the SCELC office ERMS now has this capability but it has not been deployed to the libraries due to “pricing confidentiality” concerns and to maintain good relationships with hesitant vendors This data is the consortium’s and can be shared among its members Vendors need to overcome concerns about pricing appearing in a consortial ERMS

ERMS - Future Improvements Our ERMS is Serials Solutions first attempt at a consortial ERMS SCELC is one of the first consortia to fully implement such a system Future improvements include –Integration with the local database to migrate data from one system to the other, reducing redundancy of data input –Make it easier for a library to migrate data from the consortial ERMS to their local ERMS, ultimately from Serials Solutions ERMS to any vendors’ system Much like the sharing of common bibliographic data

Future Improvements (2) ERMS usage statistics module will evolve Currently can link to a vendor’s statistics URL Looking forward to having analytical tools that gather usage statistics, analyze them, and provide a variety of reports –The SUSHI initiative will help with harvesting of statistics –Serials Solutions will have a separate module, “360 Counter,” that will integrate with the ERMS but will have to be purchased separately by each library

Future Improvements (3) License terms and conditions must be entered manually ONIX-PL initiative or other efforts may help streamline this process, making it possible for publishers to deliver license information in a standardized way via XML directly to an ERMS without requiring manual input

Future Improvements (4) SCELC has entered most of its licenses at the “provider” level as in most instances one license applies to multiple resources from one vendor This makes it difficult to view database- level subscription information for each member Will work with Serials Solutions to provide database-level information, perhaps through integration with data from the SCELC WISDOM database

Conclusion SCELC wants to promote ideas for consortial information management among all library consortia Providing a direct benefit to members, such as our ERMS, helps our libraries and provides a better sense of “belonging” to a common consortium, in spite of the diversity of the member institutions Greater inter-consortial networking and collaboration is a primary goal

Conclusion (2) Interoperability, re-use, and access to data must be a central goal of ERM systems Addressing user needs—that is, the needs of librarians and consortium administrators—must be the result of future collaborations We want to access our collective data in many different forms and use the information in many different systems

For Further Information To obtain a fully functional demonstration version of the SCELC WISDOM database, contact the SCELC office: –You will need to download a fully functioning 30-day trial of FileMaker Pro to use the demonstration version. This can be downloaded from

SCELC Contact Information Tommy Keswick, Member Services Coordinator, SCELC Rick Burke, Executive Director, SCELC Website : Thank You!