funds. Additional processes, like returning items, claimingunreceived materials, and cancelling orders, were covered inless detail. Finally, types of order statistics commonly kept byacquisitions departments were enumerated.

The third section focused on vendor selection and evaluation.Because the relationship between libraries and the vendors whosupply them with materials is so important, this section waslengthy and included citations to numerous articles to helpstudents understand the role of vendors in library acquisitions.First, the types of vendors, including jobbers, dealers, andpublishers, were examined. The importance of vendors inproviding economies of scale, discounts, and services to libraries,as well as mediating between publishers and libraries, was noted.Students learned about services that may be provided by vendors,including financial services such as discounts, invoicing, andcurrency conversion; automation services; and outsourcingopportunities. The considerations involved in choosing a vendorwere discussed, and the importance of the library's assessment ofits needs and goals was highlighted.

Students learned the basics of planning a RFP (request forproposal) process, including preparation of the document, defini-tion of minimum acceptable standards, and criteria for making thedecision. The course readings highlighted the importance ofassessing vendor performance. In addition to ensuring thatcontract terms are met, performance assessments provide data tosupport or contradict staff impressions of a vendor's service. Anumber of possible evaluation criteria were enumerated, andacquisitions librarianswere encouraged to contact the vendor afterperforming the assessment to follow up on any problemsidentified. Financial risks to vendors, including late payment fromlibraries or the cancellation of large subscriptions, were discussed.Finally, the importance of periodically assessing a vendor'sfinancial viability was emphasized. To alert librarians to signs offinancial trouble, a list of questions that librarians shouldperiodically ask about their vendors was included, to alertlibrarians to signs of financial trouble.

The fourth section was devoted to budgeting, financialmanagement, and accounting. This lengthy section included thebasics of budgeting and accounting that are central to running anacquisitions department, but which are often not taught in librarydegree programs. Students learned how budgets ensure fiscalresponsibility and control and how budgets provide the means tomonitor expenditures and plan for the future. The basics of fundaccounting were discussed, including procedures related to fiscalyear close. Various ways of constructing budgets were analyzed,such as breaking the budget into fixed and discretionarycategories, subject-based budgets, and budgets created for specificformats. Additional detail was provided about sources of fundingin the library budget, such as allocations, grants, and endowments.Other topics discussed in depth were invoices, credits, statements,prepayments, and deposit accounts.

The accounting section was introduced by a discussion ofGAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles). The focus ofthe rest of this section was on practices that would prepare theacquisitions department for an audit. The role of the auditorwas discussed, as well as the purpose of an audit and whatconstitutes an audit trail. Students learned the kind ofinformation that should be recorded for each item purchasedby the library. The importance of segregating functions, such aspreparing purchase orders and approving invoices, and oflimiting access to acquisitions data and software, was empha-sized. Finally, the role of external constituents in the library'sfinancial relationships was discussed, and students were

encouraged to establish friendly and respectful relationshipswith their accounts payable department, auditors, fundingagencies, and others involved in the library's budget.

The final section was devoted to ethics in acquisitions. Itfeatured guidelines for negotiations between libraries and ven-dors, including lists of topics that should be discussed and onesthat should be avoided. After reading an article that delved intomore detail on this topic, students were given a set of case studies,which they responded to in an online forum. Situations discussedincluded sharing a vendor's proposal with a competitor, andlibraries promising a certain mix of orders from a vendor and notdelivering on that agreement. The discussion forum for this topicwas lively, and students appreciated the opportunity to discusssome of the situations acquisitions librarians may face.

One of the most useful parts of the course was the detailedbibliographies included at the end of each section, so the topicscould be explored in more detail. The individual responses tostudent exercises by the instructors were also helpful and keptstudents engaged in the course by providing additional detailabout topics and questions discussed. Although there was a lotof content to read, working professionals should not beparticularly challenged to keep up with the pace of the course(two to five hours per week should be adequate). Serials topics,such as cancellation workflows and the kinds of servicesprovided by serials vendors, were covered, so the course isrelevant for serials professionals new to acquisitions. The coursealso balances the perspectives of librarians and vendors,encouraging both to be respectful and honest in their dealingswith one another. The online delivery, knowledgeable instruc-tors, and comprehensive look at the basics of acquisitions makethis course a good choice for librarians and library staff taking onnew duties in acquisitions, or individuals tasked with supervis-ing acquisitions staff.

doi:10.1016/j.serrev.2010.05.002

2010 Electronic Resources & Libraries Conference

Kelly A. Smith and Laura Edwards

The 2010 Electronic Resources & Libraries (ER&L) Conference,held in Austin, TX, in early February could easily have adoptedthe tagline “It's Magic! The e-resource librarian as the wizardbehind the curtain.” This idea struck a chord because so manyusers and library colleagues seem to have no idea exactly whate-resource librarians do. For them, e-resource librarians seemwizard-like because of the ability to effectively and creativelymanage the protean world of e-resources. In fact, this themecame up in so many presentations that, by the second day of theconference, when anything remotely “magical” was mentioned,audience members would yell out, “It's Magic!” followed bymuch laughter.

On amore serious note, therewere several major themes duringthis conference that reflected trends in libraries. The “thoughtcloud” on the ER&LWeb site gives an interesting snapshot of somecurrent trends that were discussed (Figure 1).1

In this conference report, the authors will focus on a few ofthese themes, including the following:

• Theme 1: The fundamental importance of the interoperability ofmetadata and its potential impact on discoverability;

• Theme 2: Changing workflows;

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• Theme 3: The need to improve library assessment tools andapproaches;

• Theme 4: The effect of the economic downturn on libraries; and• Theme 5: The changing role of libraries (and publishers) in thedigital era.

Theme 1: Data and Discoverability

Many presentations dealt with new ways to use, present, and/orenhance library data. Ya Wang (electronic collections coordinator,San Francisco State University) discussed the quest to improvediscoverability of library resources in her presentation “Images,Reviews, Tags and Recommendations: Do Enhanced Contents andUser Contributed Contents Improve Access to Library Resources inan Academic Library?” Libraries are starting to take note of thepopularity of services such as Amazon and Netflix, and vendorshave started to develop similar services that libraries canimplement in their catalogs and Web sites. Leonard Library hasimplemented library catalog add-ons Syndetic Solutions, Library-Thing for Libraries (LTFL), as well as the new article recommendertool from Ex Libris called bX. When a construction project at thelibrary meant that the stacks were closed to users, they decided toimplement Syndetic Solutions and LFTL to give their users the

ability to learn more about library materials without needing toaccess the physical items. Syndetic Solutions offers book coverimages, book reviews, summaries, and table of contents integratedinto the catalog record. Images, summaries, and tables of contentswere heavily used, while interest in book reviews was varied. LTFLoffers tag browsing and a book recommendation feature. Wangnoted the popularity of LTFL's similar books feature (“users wholike this book also liked…”) but was surprised at the low use of tagbrowsing, which was lower than subject heading searches. Whilethey marketed Syndetic Solutions and LTFL, they quietly imple-mented bX in September 2009 and watched the usage growwithout any promotion. Clearly their users like this service. ByDecember 2009, it ranked third in the total number of click-throughs. They noticed that click-through statistics for their ILLservice has dropped while usage of bX has risen. She speculatedthat since bX is presenting users with alternative articles that theycan use immediately, users are choosing these recommendedarticles instead of articles that they have to request through ILL.

In her presentation “Recommendations and the Library,” NettieLagace (bX product manager, Ex Libris) discussed the growingpopularity of recommender services and the implications forlibraries. Many consumer Web sites (such as Land's End, Amazon,and Netflix) now include recommendations for similar items

Figure 1. ER&L 2010 Thought Cloud.

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based on what the user is currently viewing. She noted that thepopularity of recommender services indicates that users arewilling to trust what others have said about something. Shepointed out that the Internet has led to an information overloadthat makes it difficult for users to determine what they need. Theywant tools that will assist them in sifting through the amount ofinformation available, and recommender services fill part of thisneed. In the world of scholarly communication, recommendationsshould be based on a “structured analysis of data” that takes usersto articles relevant to their research. She pointed to PubMed,which suggests articles based on keywords, and CiteULike, a socialnetworking and article sharing site targeted at scholarly research-ers. Ex Libris' bXmakes recommendations based on usage statisticscollected from libraries and research institutions from around theworld. The more bX is used, the smarter it will get at selectingarticles that closely match what researchers are looking for.

In “Transparent and Scalable OpenURL Quality Metrics,” AdamChandler (librarian, Cornell University Library) described a NISOproject that compares metadata quality across content providers.The reports can be used to inform acquisition decisions whenevaluating content providers that offer OpenURL linking from theirsites. It also highlights inherent problems with the OpenURLlinking model. The demonstration reporting system using datafrom five different sources can be found at NISO's OpenURL QualityMetrics Web site.2

Currently, efficiencies in the metasearch environment arehampered by the lack of widely adopted standards and bestpractices. In “Exposing Library Content with the NISO Meta-search XML Gateway Protocol,” Elizabeth German (vistinge-scholarship librarian, University of Illinois at Urbana-Cham-paign) and Joshua Bishoff (librarian, University of Illinois atUrbana-Champaign) shared their work in adapting EasySearch,their library's federated search tool, using the NISO MetasearchXML Gateway (MXG) protocol. The MXG protocol is a “low-barrier-to-entry method to expose content to metasearchservices and more effectively interoperate with metasearchingapplications.”3 MXG is intended to enable content providers toopen up their content without substantial additional effort andgive metasearch providers a reliable access protocol. Realizingthat libraries need to integrate their resources into the workflowof their users, they developed an API that allowed them toembed customized search interfaces into places like departmen-tal Web pages, courseware, and iGoogle. They also embeddedthese search interfaces into the library's databases so userssearching one database (not using EasySearch) will see a boxcontaining additional resources of interest, with links to resultsin Academic Search Premier, Scopus, Web of Science, the librarycatalog, and Google News.

During the closing panel “Where Are We Headed? Toolsand Technologies for the Future,” Ross Singer (interoperabilityand open standards champion, Talis) discussed the need forlibrary data (i.e., MARC data) to translate into moreinteroperable schemes, such as XML and RDF. Singer madea strong case that libraries have failed to use the valueexisting in MARC records to their full extent because they arenot linkable. He cited Tim Berners-Lee's four rules for linkeddata on the semantic Web:

1. Use URIs (uniform resource identifiers) as names for things;2. Use HTTP URIs so that people can look up those names;3. When someone looks up a URI, provide useful information,

using the standards (RDF, SPARQL); and4. Include links to other URIs so that they can discover more

things.4

According to Singer, libraries are really bad at this. Librarians usestrings to link and maintain their authorities internally. What isneeded are human readable, linked data based on commonstandards. Singer used the Web site “SameAs: Interlinking theWeb of Data” as an example of what can be donewith linked data.5

While not fully grasping the technical details nor the way topractically implement these ideas, many in the audience resonatedwith Singer's comments, as evidenced by the twitter posts duringthis session.6

Theme 2: Library Assessment

In “We've Got Data–Now What Do We Do with It? ApplyingQuality Standards to Assess Information Resources,” severallibrarians from the University of Arizona Libraries, includingMary Feeney (associate librarian), Jim Martin (associate librar-ian), and Ping Situ (associate librarian) reported on theirattempt to apply standard assessment measures to existinglibrary data. Gathering invoice and checkout data from theirintegrated library system, article download and session statisticsfrom their Scholarly Stats service, local document deliveryrequest data, Ulrich's serials overlap report analyses on currentsubscriptions, Serials Solutions full-text overlap analysis, World-Cat record comparison, and a local journal utilization report, thelibrary compiled the data in spreadsheets according to resourcesby type. They applied agreed-upon quality standards systemat-ically across all disciplines and posted potential cancellations forfeedback.

In “Beyond Log-ons and Downloads: Meaningful Measures ofE-Resource Use,” Rachel Fleming-May (assistant professor,University of Tennessee) began her engaging presentation byposing the following questions:What is use, really? Something thatcan be measured? With numbers? Why does it matter? Accordingto Fleming-May, use is frequentlymeasured to generate “objective”data for decision making and is often treated in the Library andInformation Science field as a “primitive concept” (an idea sofundamental to the theoretical framework as to be indefinable,even when presented as a phenomenon). In her opinion, librariansare still “stuck” in an input/output mode of assessment, whereasadministrators are moving toward assessment of outcomes.Furthermore, patrons are using the library in nontraditional venues(i.e., Google Scholar full-text results) inwhich the fact that they areusing library provided resources is not apparent to them. So askingthem about their use of library resources can lead to problematicresults.

Fleming-May maintained that use is not a primitive concept.Use can be understood in the following contexts:

1. Use as an abstraction (a general term for all types of library andinformation science use) and facilitator;

2. Use as a process (the application of library and informationresources, materials, and/or services; in this context, under-graduate students experience information use in a complex/multi-tiered way that needs to be addressed by highereducators when assessing value); and

3. Use as a transaction (this is what most library andinformation science research focuses on and is characterizedby isolated instances of library or information use that can berecorded and quantified; this methodology is removed fromthe user).

The transactional model of use analysis translates into over-reliance on statistical assessment of e-resource usage, such astransaction log analysis, including page-view-time measurement(are they really reading?), log-ons (what about database

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timeouts?), and connectedness of journals within sessions.Return-on-investment (ROI) studies have been focused on fundedresearch and scholars' use of the library. But that is still a relativelysmall subset of actual use. Fleming-May argues that librarians needto move away from just measuring isolated instances and insteadfocus on the user and information in the life of the user. In short,our research should expand to include observation, focus groups,interviews, surveys, interinstitutional information sharing, usabil-ity testing, triangulation, and related methods that are found inother social science fields.

Theme 3: Changing Workflows

In “The NISO ERM Data Standards and Best Practices Review,” TimJewell (information resources director, University of Washington)described the successes of the DLF ERMI initiative (the relation-ships among licenses, resources, packages, providers, and plat-forms that led to the development of ERM software). However,ERMI is not a standard, so there is fallout from that, including thefollowing: abandoned vendor development projects; slow, diffi-cult, partial, and/or failed implementations; and deferred pur-chase decisions. Jewell identified the paradox at the heart ofelectronic resource management as the “need for simplicity andflexibility” within a “massively dynamic and complex environ-ment.” He argued that rather than definitive comprehensivestandards we need a framework for relationships betweenevolving standards. He cited several resources for furtherinformation:

1. “Assessing the Business Case for Standards: An Introduction forStrategy Planning and Resourcing Committees” by AdamCooper and Wilber Kraan.7

2. “Best Practices and Standardization Initiatives for ManagingE-Resources” by Rafal Kasprowski.8

3. ERM gap analysis work on the NISO Web site.9

In “ERMS Success: Harvard's Experience Implementing andUsing an ERM System,” Abigail Bordeaux (systems librarian,Harvard University) discussed the implementation of the ExLibris (Verde) ERM at Harvard, a decentralized institution withno central library director. They had a local in-house ERM builtusing MySQL and PHP in place before implementing Verde. Thein-house system was developed for resources available to theentire institution and managed by the centralized systems office.It was considered a “stop-gap measure” and was “minimallydeveloped.” At the beginning of the Verde implementation, theyasked themselves what was really needed from an ERM. Forthem, the “acquisitions stuff” had to be fixed since it was “totallyinefficient.”

Having identified the key goal, Harvard embarked on aproject of data review and data cleanup which is essential forany ERM migration. The data was in a “variety of states” and in“varying quality.” It was not appropriate or viable to translateall variables to the new system. For example, EZproxyconfiguration files had been maintained within the in-houseERM, but it was unnecessary to track this in a separate system.Bordeaux recommended that the audience members shouldconsider interoperability and also identify the goal that is mostimportant to their libraries. As an example of interoperability,Harvard decided to create initial records in Verde and let thesystem automatically populate the order record as well asactivate the title in SFX.

In their presentation “Fostering Learning and TechnologyDevelopment in Technical Services,” University of Northern

Colorado representatives Jennifer Leffler (head of resourcemaintenance), Rick Kerns (library technician III) and CarolineNorton (head of technical services) discussed the reorganiza-tion of their technical services department and the launch of ahomegrown Microsoft Access application designed by Kernsthat allows them to proactively check their e-journals. Theirgoal was to have more than one staff member be conversantwith “mission-critical” tasks. As a result of cross-training, staffmembers have learned more about different platforms andserials, they now have the ability to track resources byprovider and staff member, and they check all electronic titlesonce per semester. Audience members questioned the useful-ness of proactively checking e-resource links, given thedynamic nature of such accesses (i.e., a link may work finewhen it is checked, and then not work at all the next day),and the presenters explained that they have been able toidentify several problems before they were noticed by endusers.

Theme 4: Economic Considerations

The economic downturn has, of course, affected both libraries andpublishers. Library budgets have been flat or declining. As a result,libraries are buying less, working on cancellation projects, andlooking at new acquisitions models. In particular, a shift fromlibrary-mediated selection to patron-driven and article-levelacquisition models seems to be gaining traction. There wereseveral presentations devoted to marketing strategies, as well aspresentations on ROI analyses.

Many presentations dealt with the rise in patron-drivencollections. In her buzz-worthy presentation “Adventures at theArticle Level,” Jamene Brooks-Kieffer (resource linking librarian,Kansas State University Libraries) pointed out that we need toreconsider how we get our users the articles they need. Howcost-effective is it for libraries to continue subscribing tojournals that may only contain one or two articles that usersare interested in? It may make more financial sense topurchase articles as users need them. Her prediction that serialacquisitions would soon focus on individual articles, rather thanthe journals that have been the standard in the serials worldfor so long, seemed to strike a particularly deep chord amongaudience members. Many questions were raised. Is article-levelperpetual access possible, or would it be easier just to purchaseaccess to an article multiple times? What does this mean forthe future of journals? Journals are still the foundation of thepromotion and tenure process, and they still offer value in theway they are carefully edited and put together. An audiencemember pointed out that they are essentially a kind ofrecommendation service: their articles usually share similarthemes and subjects.

Discussion during Brooks-Kieffer's presentation was lively andspilled over into a roundtable discussion later in the day asaudiencemembers (including publisher representatives) grappledwith the ramifications of this shift. Small publishers expressedtheir view that they are unsure how to make article-level buying aviable option. Of particular concern was the question of how to dorisk assessment. Without a subscription base, how would theypredict whether it would be sustainable? Also discussed was thevalue of the “journal as a container.” The journal provides thefollowing: an overarching theme that drives content; a way tocollect and classify similar content; and a “brand.” If we lose the“container,” will we need to seek other ways to achieve thesegoals, or will they fall by the wayside?

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Theme 5: The Changing Roles of the Library

Many facets of the changing role of libraries in the digital age wereexplored, including library as technology center, library aspublisher, and library as facilitator of scholarly communication.This trend is being facilitated by the implementation of institu-tional repositories (IRs).

In addition to addressing economic themes, Brooks-Kieffer's“Adventures at the Article Level” presentation also touched onthe “library as facilitator” theme. She maintained that thelibrarian's role as information shepherd has been rendered nearlyobsolete now that technologies such as OpenURL link resolvers,DOIs (digital object identifiers), and proxy authentication haveenabled users (in most cases) to quickly find, identify, and accessthe articles they need. Instead, the librarian has become the“wizard behind the green curtain,” invisible to the user but stillvaluable in the work she or he does to maintain the technologiesthat create a seamless experience for the user. She predicts afuture paradigm shift in which the librarian's role is no longer toserve as curator of information, but as facilitator of access toscholarly communication. Users are interested not only in findingthe articles they need but also in services that could allow themto store and discuss information with other researchers. Shebelieves that libraries will have the opportunity to facilitate thisprocess for their users.

In his presentation “The ThirdHeat: Faculty, Digital Repositories,and Unusual Bitstreams,” Charlie Bennett (Commons coordinator,Georgia Tech Library) introduced himself as a “library-as-placeinterloper.” He shared his thoughts about encouraging faculty toparticipate in SmartTech, Georgia Tech's IR. He noted that newfaculty tend to have “eccentric experimental teaching methods”and create “unusual bitstreams” in the course of their research—film, video, radio, installations, performances. How do theydocument this kind of work in a way that can support theirpromotion and tenure? The library can help with this process bycreating items from their “unusual bitstreams,” such as takingpictures of art installations or recording radio sessions anduploading these materials to their institutional repository. Forexample, at Georgia Tech, they recorded presentations from thesymposium held November 16, 2006, at the library, “The HauntingHistories of the Female Body:Gynecology, Obstetrics, andWomen'sHealth,” and uploaded these files to their IR. Both parties benefitfrom this type of collaboration—the faculty member's researchgains gravitas by being included in the institutional repository and,by promoting their work, the library gains an ally.

If attendees at the “Digging for Buried Treasure: Strategies forPromoting Institutional Repositories” presentation came awaywith just one thing, it would be the importance of marketing yourIR. Presenters included Julie Arendt (librarian), Jonathan Nabe(collection development librarian), and Andrea Imre (electronicresources librarian) from Southern Illinois University Carbondale(SIUC) and Tara Baillargeon (social sciences librarian) and BethTurtle (science librarian) from Kansas State University (K-State).They stressed that promotion and education are key factors in thesuccess of an IR.

The librarians from SIUC shared their marketing strategies.Noting the success of the marketing strategies of other universi-ties, they “borrowed shamelessly” while developing a snazzybrochure containing basic information about the IR and informa-tive handouts that outlined the simple steps to depositing papersin their IR. They spread the word through universityWeb sites, thecampus newspaper, and media outlets. They held meetings andforums where faculty members and other interested parties couldask questions. They trained their liaisons in outreach strategies and

made promotion of the IR part of the job requirements for newhires. They stressed that the IR is a university service, not a libraryservice, and pointed out the importance of having someone fromoutside the library involved in the process of developing andpromoting the IR.

The librarians from K-State stressed the importance of makingthe IR relevant to faculty and students and thinking outside thebox by expanding the focus of IRs beyond being a passive storagetool to being a service that facilitates scholarly communication. Byfocusing on the service aspect of IRs, the library addressed thedesires of faculty for increased visibility, prestige, and funding.Faculty members wanted publishing venues, digitization services,and data management services. In response to these desires,Kansas State created an open access publisher called New PrairiePress. They offer digitization services and collaborate with facultyon determining best practices for managing data sets in their IR.Liaison outreach activities were essential to the success of their IR.It was also important to target influential faculty because “buy-in”from these prominent faculty members “legitimized” the IR andcaught the attention of other faculty members.

With IRs ushering in our new role as de facto publishers, thenecessity for librarians to understand and follow copyright law hasexpanded considerably. In “Encourage or Inhibit? An Examination ofInstitutional Copyright Policies,” Sherri Michaels (intellectual prop-erty librarian, Indiana University) explored the thorny world ofcopyright in academia.When introducing thework-for-hire doctrine(does scholarly work belong to faculty or to the institution?), shequoted Mark Twain: “Only one thing is impossible for God: to findany sense in any copyright law on the planet.”10

Several cases have examined this issue: Weinstein v. U. ofIllinois (1987), Hays v. Sony Corporation of America (1988),CCNV v. Reid (1989), and, most recently and still undecided,Bosch v. Ball-Kell (2006), a case of faculty v. faculty. Todetermine whether something is a work for hire, the courtshave often turned to the university's institutional policies,including intellectual property policies, copyright policies, andemployment agreements. Michaels cited two examples: IndianaUniversity's Intellectual Property Policy11 and a list of links tofaculty ownership policies at various universities maintained bythe Center for Intellectual Property at the University of MarylandUniversity College.12 According to Michaels, the followingguidelines generally apply:

1. Anything that can be patented belongs to the university;2. Works of scholarship belong to the faculty member; and3. “University works” are considered work for hire.

When instituting an IR, the following scenarios will need to beexplored andpolicies for themcreated: deposit onlywithpermissionfrom authors; licensing by authors; permissions, versions, andorphan works; licensing by the institution; and plans for copyrighteducation. A new trend of IR rights language in licensing contracts isdeveloping, which may help clarify some situations (see Massachu-setts Institute of Technology, University of California, the Committeeon Institutional Cooperation, and Springer).

In another IR-related presentation, “Library as Publisher,”Wendy Robertson (digital resources librarian, University ofIowa) hypothesized that as libraries cut subscriptions, fundingfor small society publishers “will dry up,” and libraries can addressthat need. She outlined several steps to consider when implement-ing journal publishing in an IR:

1. Before starting, look to other sites for models;2. Clearly state what services the library staff will and will not

provide;

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3. Identify what types of publication—scholarly, nonscholarly,literary, student—will be supported;

4. Standardize policies and basic setup as much as possible, whileallowing journals to have their own look and feel;

5. Review copyright and permissions language carefully, having afew options for editors, including Creative Commons as well asother copyright options;

6. Secure approval of the campus legal department;7. Before meeting with editors, survey their Web sites and

journals and start gathering basic information. Include subjectlibrarians in the process; they will be familiar with publicationsin the field and will bring additional expertise; and

8. Gather as much information as possible from the editors,including the following: their intended audience, whetherthey have realistic goals, their design ideas, who has primaryresponsibility for the project, and their preferred citation style.Find out whether they are planning to offer subscriptionaccess (explain to them that subscriptions means licensingand standard expectations like perpetual access, usage stats,etc.). Decide whether digitization of back-issues will beconsidered.

For Robertson, the biggest challenges were getting everythingin order, getting the policies in place, and basic training for theeditors. She said it was a “big learning curve” for them.

The second presenter in this session had a slightly differenttake on “Library as Publisher.” Tim Strawn (head of catalogingand metadata services, University of Texas Libraries) discussedthe mission of the library and the future of librarianship giventhis trend. He proposed the idea that libraries are inherentlydifferent from for-profit publishers because they do not seekprofit for scholarly pursuits, but that like publishers, they “needto maintain standards.” Given that many institutions haveimmature or adolescent IRs, he wondered what effect this willhave on library services. He described seeing a larger role formeta-librarianship, which he defined as “those issues that resideoutside of typical library operations.” The University of Illinois atUrbana, perhaps in recognition of this need, offers a specializa-tion in data curation.

A tension in this new field comes from the resistance to changein academia—specifically, the pressure to publish for tenure inexisting for-profit publications is still very strong. However,academics are not our only clients. “Anyone with a connectedmachine” can be considered a library client. The online clientsexpect everything to be free and always available; therefore, theneed to host free content will continue to rise. As a result, day-to-day librarianship will increasingly involve “collecting fuel forscholarship,” hosting it, and preserving it. Libraries have grappledwith the preservation problem for centuries, but now it is morecomplicated. “As with print,” Strawn maintained, libraries are“hoping that there will someday be a dependable way to preservethese things.”

Other challenges he described include the need to involve allstaff in the IR endeavor. At Ohio State University, for example,check-in staff are now going out and looking at faculty CVs tolocate articles and other material to ingest in the IR. The need toramp up staffing and skills in this area even more will involverestructuring work units and convincing administrators that thesefunctions need more support.

Finally, the “abyss that lies ahead” is data curation. The needto focus on data set ingest, perpetual storage, and access is “themost profound challenge” faced by libraries. Preserving thenature of geospatial data in its native environment presents aspecial challenge. According to Strawn, metadata will make orbreak successful access to this material. Scholarly community

appraisal of that data, which is necessary for our stewardship,“will be the alpha omega of our collection developmentpolicies.”

Conclusion

This report represents a sample of the range of talks that wereavailable at the conference. There is additional information at thefollowing links:

1. The full program at the ER&L Wiki has most of the PowerPointpresentations and other speaker-provided material: http://www.electroniclibrarian.org/erlwiki/Program.

2. For an interesting “live” discussion of the sessions as theyprogressed, see the ERL10 Twitter feed: http://twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/erl10.

3. Blogger Anna Creech (“eclectic librarian”) summarizedmany ofthe sessions in succinct blog posts: http://eclecticlibrarian.net/blog/tag/erl2010/.

Notes1. “ER&L Thought Cloud: What Are You Thinking About This Year?” Electronic

Resources & Libraries, http://electroniclibrarian.org/erlwiki/Thought_cloud(accessed April 20, 2010).

2. OpenURL Quality Metrics, http://www.openurlquality.org/ (accessed April21, 2010).

3. StandardsCommittee BC., andNational Information StandardsOrganization (U.S.).NISO Metasearch Initiative: Metasearch XML Gateway Implementers Guide. (Balti-more: National Information Standards Organization, 2006), 1, http://www.niso.org/publications/rp/RP-2006-02.pdf (accessed April 22, 2010).

4. TimBerners-Lee, “LinkedData,”Design Issues: Architectural and Philosophical Points,http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html (accessed April 22, 2010).

5. SameAs: Interlinking the Web Of Data, http://sameas.org/ (accessed April 22,2010).

6. “Hashtag Notebook: #erl10,” Twapper Keeper, http://twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/erl10 (accessed April 22, 2010).

7. Adam Cooper and Wilbert Kraan, “Assessing the Business Case for Standards: anIntroduction for Strategy Planning and Resourcing Committees,” JISC, http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/briefingpapers/2009/bpbusinesscaseforstandards.aspx#downloads (accessed April 22, 2010).

8. Rafal Kasprowski, “Best Practices and Standardization Initiatives forManagingElectronic Resources,” Bulletin of the American Society for Information Scienceand Technology 35, no. 1 (2008), http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Oct-08/Bulletin_OctNov08_Final.pdf (accessed April 22, 2010).

9. “ERM Data Standards & Best Practices Review,” NISO, http://www.niso.org/workrooms/ermreview (accessed April 22, 2010).

10. Mark Twain, Mark Twain's Notebook, ed. Albert Paine (New York: Harper &Bros., 1935), 381.

11. Indiana University, Intellectual Property Policy, http://www.indiana.edu/∼vpfaa/download/IPPolicy_Adopted_050208.pdf (accessed April 22, 2010).

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doi:10.1016/j.serrev.2010.05.001

Sustainable Scholarship Forum

Andrée J. Rathemacher

On March 30, 2010, about sixty librarians and a handful ofpublisher representatives attended the “Sustainable Scholarship”forum in Boston, hosted by Ithaka S+R. Topics included JSTOR's

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Blythe / Serials Review 36 (2010) 181–198