A Consortial Approach to Information Management

1. A Consortial Approach to Information Management Rick Burke SCELC IFLA Pre-Conference Electronic Resource Management Systems University of the Western Cape Cape Town, South Africa August 16, 2007

2. What is SCELC? • The Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium • Founded in 1986 • Works with over 95 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

3. 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

17. Institutional Savings Report Example

18. 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 96 members

19. 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 • The next slide displays the “home screen” that links to these functions

20. ERMS - Home Screen

21. Subscribed Databases • The next screen illustrates how the ERMS displays databases in alphabetical order • Subscription status is indicated • Publisher/vendor and number of titles held in the database is also indicated • Select a particular database to get to the license terms and conditions

22. Subscribed Databases

23. Individual License View • The next slide illustrates how one would view and access a single license • Note that this license is entered at the “provider” or publisher level

24. Individual License View - Provider Level

25. License Details • The next slide illustrates what you will seen once you select “Values” in the side panel of the license view • This screen displays the authorized users (subscribers) to this provider’s products

26. License Details View - Authorized Users

27. License Details (2) • The next two slides illustrate some of the license terms stored in the ERMS for each license • These terms are labeled relative to the DLF ERMI (Digital Library Federation Electronic Resource Management Initiative) standard for describing license terms

28. License Details View - Terms

29. License Details View - Terms (2)

30. Alerts • The next two slides illustrate the Alerts function • In the first slide one can see that the ERMS can be used to alert all SCELC members of a new database trial or an impending renewal • In the second slide, one can configure other types of alerts • SCELC has not yet utilized this feature

31. Alerts

32. Alert Configuration

33. Account Permissions • The next slide illustrates how you can control access to the various levels of ERMS functionality • For each user you can customize a particular set of permissions • For example, allowing someone to only view data in one instance, but edit data in another

34. Account Permissions

35. Knowledgebase • “Knowledgebase” refers to the information Serials Solutions has compiled on the universe of electronic resources • Their knowledgebase is one of the most complete and comprehensive available • Access to their knowledgebase saves the libraries much time and effort otherwise spent compiling their own knowledgebase of their subscribed resources • The following slides illustrate how the ERMS searches and displays information from the knowledgebase

36. Accessing the Knowledgebase

37. Knowledgebase - List of Titles

38. Results Screen - Specific Vendor

39. E-Journal Portal • The next three slides illustrate the database and title-level public view via the ERMS • 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

40. E-Journal Portal - Database Level View

41. E-Journal Title Level - Public View

42. Public View - License Terms

43. 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

44. 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

45. 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 WISDOM 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

46. ERMS - 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

47. ERMS - Future Improvements (3) • License terms and conditions must be entered manually • ONIX 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

48. ERMS - 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

49. 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 • SCELC is interested in making WISDOM available to international consortia as well

50. For Further Information • SCELC contact information: • Rick Burke, Executive Director, SCELC • rburke@scelc.org • http://scelc.org • To obtain a fully functional demonstration version of the SCELC WISDOM database, contact the SCELC office: • admin@scelc.org • You will need to download a fully functioning 30-day trial of Filemaker Pro to use the demonstration version. This can be downloaded from http://www.filemaker.com Thank you for your kind attention!