Clarity in the Mist

The past decade has witnessed explosive growth in electronic resources. We have all seen our users, from the middle-schooler in California to the doctoral candidate in Florida, evolve into information junkies on a digital high. They want more, they want it fast, and they want it electronically.

The shift to e-resources has had enormous consequences for information management. The slide from copyright to contracts in governing use, the growth in the availability of use statistics, and the increase in the types of content available have made administering electronic resources infinitely more difficult. Intricate and ever-changing journal packages that tie electronic access to print subscription costs add to the complexity.

At the same time, librarians need to know more about their electronic resources. How many times did your users cite the Journal of Computational Mathematics last year? Is that title part of a publisher package of e-journals and does that license restrict cancellation options? Does it specify an inflation rate for the title for next year? Questions like these need quick and accurate answers.

To answer these questions requires sophisticated management systems. Libraries generally rely on traditional integrated library systems (ILS) to help manage electronic resources, but the ILS has not kept pace with the demand for electronic resource management (ERM). The MARC format's vaunted 856 field can only hold so much information.

With the ILS ill-equipped to handle continuing subscriptions of any kind, including e-resources, librarians have resorted to a loose conglomeration of spreadsheets, homegrown databases, and print files in an attempt to manage this information. While these make-do efforts have helped, in the late 1990s the more tech-savvy began seeking systematic solutions to this growing problem.

Our collective investment in electronic resources and journals is too large to be without an effective system to manage comprehensively descriptive, licensing, financial, access, and evaluative data. The challenge—and it's a huge one—is to create that system.

In their simplest form, ERM systems contain myriad data points, or pieces of data, grouped into functional sets, which come from multiple sources, including human keying. For example, an electronic journal license may include the number of journals per year a library can cancel. It may also define interlibrary loan rights as well as authorize users. Those are all data points that can be grouped into the licensing set and either entered into the ERM system from an existing licensing database or be manually entered. Those data points are then accessible via multiple interfaces that include a public display and discovery interface, an acquisitions and collections interface, and an advanced reporting module.

The reporting module allows users to connect to pieces of data from multiple sets (such as cancellation allowance from the licensing set, cost from the financial set, and number of full-text downloads from the evaluative set) and layer those pieces of data into a simple report. An effective ERM system incorporates data from existing authoritative sources—such as the ILS and other local tools like electronic journal finders—via data hooks. Data hooks such as ISSNs facilitate the movement of data into and out of the ERM system. For example, the ISSN would be the data hook for the ERM to go into the ILS and pull out holdings information, making it possible to leverage existing data stores and create interoperable solutions for a dis-integrated library system. A dis-integrated library system refers to libraries using multiple tools—such as database lists, electronic journal finders, and subject guides—in addition to the ILS to manage and present resources (see "Dis-integrated Library System," below).

Librarians agree on a basic set of definable data elements that form the foundation for any effective ERM system. With those basic definitions (see "Basic ERM Data Elements," p. 4), it should be easy to originate a system, right? The well-worn phrase that the devil is in the details certainly applies here, and with ERM the devil is busy. The goal—a tool that will allow libraries to leverage the authoritative ILS database with the other descriptive and administrative metadata for comprehensive display and management—can get lost in defining, describing, and modeling the necessary data elements.

The complexity of organizing and gathering the data, combined with the variety of opinions librarians have about the future of the ILS, the value of MARC, and the feasibility of managing all of these data elements, makes developing simple, standardized ERM solutions incredibly challenging.

It is not from lack of effort that librarians and vendors have been unable to advance sufficient ERM solutions. In the early 1990s, libraries nationwide formed groups to deal with managing electronic resources, i.e., databases. The concern was about acquisition, access, and content.

Enterprising librarians jumped into the fray with their own tracking systems. Johns Hopkins with HERMES, MIT with VERA, and Penn State with ERLIC (among many others) all began local development efforts. In 2001 a pioneering group presciently began a collaborative Digital Library Federation (DLF) initiative for ERM workflows, functional specifications, and data elements. The DLF effort aims to design a set of standards for vendors to use in ERM development.

While letting vendors tangle with this puzzle is tempting, it may not be the best long-term solution for libraries. Some vendors are anxious to take advantage of the growing market demand, and no doubt the first vendor to configure a complete ERM solution that can exist as a separate but interoperable piece of the ILS will find enthusiastic librarians with dollars ready.

Several vendors have produced systems that go a long way toward addressing the inability of the ILS to manage e-resources. But they lack the full suite of reporting and evaluative features that libraries so desperately need, as well as the essential tie to print serials (more on this later). Innovative Interfaces was the first to offer an ERM module, with EBSCO and the Colorado Alliance also offering ERM products. Their systems generally include capabilities for managing licensing and subscription details, display information, vendor contact information, and usage permissions such as interlibrary loan. The systems are designed as both integrated pieces of an existing ILS or as a standalone product.

Homegrown, consortial, and vendor-driven solutions have coalesced to place ERM at a crossroads of sorts. Locally grown solutions have hit a plateau, and the push for more standardized, interoperable, and robust ERM systems is in full gear. Librarians need either to invest in their own collaborative ERM systems or, as the DLF initiative would do, pass their requirements and needs on to vendors in the hopes that they can deliver workable solutions.

We have lived with the ILS for so long, it is easy to forget how groundbreaking it was to have all of these modules together. Materials could be tracked through the acquisitions process and then have their circulation managed. The potential for generating useful information from this type of system seemed beyond measure. However, with the acquisition of multiple e-texts, aggregated databases, and subscriptions to e-journals, the shortcomings of the classical ILS have never been more apparent.

As a result, there are many tools, including e-journal finders and database listings, that function outside the ILS and are needed to manage resources and patrons' access to them. Primarily web-based, they are like a throwback to the days when we had catalogs, serials lists, and other freestanding finding aids to help further describe our collections for the confused user. However, these tools fail to take advantage of the networking capability that the digital environment allows.

Why should libraries collaboratively establish the next generation of ERM rather than rely on vendors? The ILS is most adept at handling single items, single decisions, and single purchases—a description that fits few e-resources. The ILS does a poor job of managing print serials and an even worse job with electronic resources. We cannot continue to spend millions of dollars on electronic resources and related continuing print resources without making the corresponding investment to manage them effectively.

Admittedly there is comfort in working with vendors with whom we have established relationships. ILS vendors have basically met libraries' needs, outside of managing e-resources and certain aspects of print journals. It would seem logical to hope they can meet our needs for ERM systems as well.

But ERM is not traditional. It represents a fundamental shift in the expectations and needs of libraries. ERM has the potential to change description and display, internal management, and evaluation of continuing resources such as journals and databases. As vendors attempt to reinvent themselves and, along with libraries, dismantle the ILS into interoperable pieces, we can expect a wave of vendor-driven ERM solutions in the near future. It's likely these solutions will fall short of our needs for managing serials resources. To continue to plug the gaps with homegrown spreadsheets and databases is unsustainable and minimizes our management capabilities.

Unless the ILS is completely reconceived outside of the limitations of MARC and proprietary software, then libraries will be better off joining together in strategic partnerships to develop ERM systems. Existing library-driven solutions, such as MIT's VERA, have come a long way in addressing the problem. Librarians have advanced the functional requirements, diagrammed the workflow, and created data elements and definitions. Why not take the next step and develop the software?

That said, interoperability with existing integrated library systems is the near-term ideal for ERM. It is unlikely that the ILS will be destroyed or replaced anytime soon, so it may be in the best interests of libraries and vendors to find some common ground.

Whether we have to break the ILS open and migrate data in and out or build truly interoperable systems, ERM will have to leverage data and functionality from the ILS. Libraries must take the lead and realize systems that meet our needs, rather than waiting for vendors with mixed track records to deliver.

Key pieces of evaluative data are still on the fringes of the ERM discussion. Slow development and adoption of standards for electronic use statistics (see Oliver Pesch's "ERM & Standards: What's Next?" p. 6) as well as the labor involved in collecting evaluative data are partially to blame.

Another factor is that some of the evaluative data for electronic journals is tied to the print subscription, with fees for electronic access comprising a smaller percentage under many models. In fact, ERM is a bit of a misnomer as it becomes increasingly difficult to separate print and electronic journals.

With journal package subscription models constantly evolving, the need for ERM has altered into a need for resource management that includes both print and electronic. Of course, including journals at the title level and tying print to electronic complicates the data model quite a bit with, among other things, confusion over respective iterations of the "work." A journal title can exist as part of an aggregated package, an electronic version tied to a bundled package, and as a print subscription. We must address these complications as libraries focus on purchasing content and then decide on forms of access. ERM systems that leave out individual journals and/or print journal subscriptions miss a huge piece of the picture.

The inclusion of evaluative data in concert with individual journal subscriptions tied to electronic and print iterations has the potential to move ERM systems from tracking and display systems to truly powerful decision-making tools. That is where the future and true potential of ERM lies: to empower librarians to become more sophisticated consumers with access to complex and powerful sets of data; to enhance interactions with users; and to bolster negotiations with vendors and publishers.

We'll have the next generation of ERM systems in the near future. The demand is simply too great for the market—whether commercial or nonprofit—to ignore. The key questions are who develops them, how well they meet libraries' needs, and, most important, what they provide our users. The big promise that the ILS has kept is access to the book collection; a good turnkey system in the hands of a competent systems librarian can be an amazingly effective discovery tool.

The faceted, disintegrated system that promotes multiple points of entry and quick access to quality information is what users demand. By perfecting ERM systems into advanced evaluative tools that also improve resource presentation and discovery, we can move the disintegrated library system from patchwork quilt to a powerful information management and discovery tool.