eresources for ontario universities

eResources for Ontario Universities

Jacqueline Whyte ApplebyActing Assistant Director

Scholars Portal

is a service of

Is governed by21 Ontario university libraries

OCUL

• 1960s: inter-university borrowing system

• 1970s: development of CODOC, first consortial purchasing, cooperative cataloguing

• 1980s: shared multimedia catalogue, shared preservation planning

• 1990s: cosortial eresource purchasing, early electronic document delivery program

Scholars Portal

• 20-25 staff members depending on the project, hiring processes etc.

• 9 librarians• 10 programmers• 4 systems administrators• U of T iSchools students

Scholars Portal

• Started in 2002 to locally load eJournals and centrally manage interlibrary loan

• Host journals, books, microdata, geospatial data

• Manage interlibrary loan, chat reference, research data repository, open journal software, RefWorks (now done!)

*

Lifecycle of a consortially purchased eResource

Negotiate/Purchase

Load

Access

Preserve

Assess

Lifecycle of a consortially purchased eResource

Negotiate/Purchase

Load

Access

Preserve

Assess

Negotiate

• License defines who counts as a user, what qualifies as accessible material, what level of metadata must be provided

• Can we modify the license to include local loading and perpetual access requirements?

• If not, will we still purchase this content?

Negotiate

Negotiate

Purchase

• How long do we sign for?

• How many schools need to commit to get this price?

• Is the billing in Canadian dollars?

• How do we cancel?

Negotiate

NegotiateNegotiate

Lifecycle of a consortially purchased eResource

Negotiate/Purchase

Load

Access

Preserve

Assess

Load

Okay…so how do we actually get the content?

• Journals – JATS XML & PDFs

• Books – ??? PDFs, XML, hopefully MARCs…a bit of a mess

Load

Lifecycle of a consortially purchased eResource

Negotiate/Purchase

Load

Access

Preserve

Assess

Preserve

• Scholars Portal Journals was the first Trustworthy Digital Repository (TDR) in Canada (there are six in North America)

• TDR certification is done by the Centre for Research Libraries

• TDR is infrastructure, but also lots and lots of documentation

Preserve

Preserve

Lifecycle of a consortially purchased eResource

Negotiate/Purchase

Load

Access

Preserve

Assess

Access

How do we make sure users can get the materials?

• MARC record distribution

• OpenURL resolvers

• Open metadata standards

• QA!

Access

Access

How do users know what they can do with the materials?

• Historically, most schools have not made licenses publicly available

• The OCUL Usage Rights Database aims to translate licensing terms, telling users what they can and cannot do with the material at the point of access

(Improved) Access

Access

How do we improve what we’ve got?

• QA is done by student employees

• But improving reporting mechanisms has also made it much easier to get users to QA!

(Improved) Access

Lifecycle of a consortially purchased eResource

Negotiate/Purchase

Load

Access

Preserve

Assess

These share a number of titles, but also have a lot of unique content

We would only lose one unique title if we unsubscribed from the smaller package

Assess

Assess

Assess

eBooks: another kettle of fish

• Journals content is quite well standardized. Books content is still a bit of a wild west.

• Intent of the SP Books platform was to cultivate standardization. Has it worked? Sort of…

• How do we make them accessible?

• How do we count usage?

• How do we give them a uniform look?

eBooks

eBooks – accessibility

The Accessible Content ePortal (ACE) aims to make more of Ontario’s collections readily available to students with visual disabilities. It requires:

• Licensing• Format support• Delivery mechanism

• What does it mean to ‘read’ a book?

• What if you only read a chapter?

• What if you only read a page?

eBooks - usage

eBooks – look and feel

eBooks – look and feel

eBooks – look and feel

eBooks – look and feel

Exercise: please download and open one of the following titles:• Blackening Canada: Diaspora, Race, Multiculturalism (2015)• Governance and Public Policy in Canada: A View From the Provinces (2013)• Double-Takes: Intersections between Canadian Literature and Film (2013)• We Gambled Everything: The Life and Times of an Oil Man (2012)• Introduction aux études canadiennes: histoires, identités, cultures (2012)• Stories in a New Skin: Approaches to Inuit Literature (2012)

What’s Next?

• Redesigning the eBooks platform!

• Research data management

• Open access and the future of scholarly communication

jacqueline@scholarsportal.info@jwhyteappleby

Thanks!