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

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

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

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 96 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• The next slide displays the “home screen”

that links to these functions

ERMS - Home Screen

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

Subscribed Databases

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

Individual License View - Provider Level

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

License Details View - Authorized Users

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

License Details View - Terms

License Details View - Terms (2)

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

Alerts

Alert Configuration

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

Account Permissions

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

Accessing the Knowledgebase

Knowledgebase - List of Titles

Results Screen - Specific Vendor

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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!