Investing in Digital

As electronic spending rises, ERAMS, ERM, and URM systems step in to help with acquisitions and reporting

By Jill E. Grogg -- Library Journal, 5/15/2007

Librarians face two very pressing charges: make voluminous numbers of electronic resources as visible as possible in a landscape with multiple access points and simultaneously manage all the technology, tasks, and data necessary to facilitate such ubiquitous access. In the past ten years, solutions have emerged and become commonplace in many libraries: the electronic resource management system (ERMS), OpenURL resolver, metasearch tool, A-to-Z list, public catalog with faceted search, and so on. These take us one step closer to our goal.

The Library 2.0 movement, which aims to reenvision library services with the user's needs and expectations at the center of the vision, as well as mainstream acceptance of technologies such as OpenURL, which enable users to get to the appropriate copy of a title via their institutional license or other access, also may help to remove barriers to library collections and bring those collections to the surface on the open web. Whatever the combination of motivations, librarians remain committed to the notion of bringing collections to the forefront of the user experience.

How librarians manage and ultimately broadcast their collections varies as much as collections themselves. Traditional models of data management (integrated library systems, or ILS) that facilitate familiar discovery mechanisms (catalogs) work fairly well in a primarily print world. Yet, libraries no longer exist in a print-only environment. At lightning speed, access is becoming primarily online. Libraries will continue to see budgets devoted to print shrink and e-resources rise. Several new initiatives and partnerships point to librarian, publisher, and vendor solutions to the challenges of electronic resources.

The OCLC eSerials Holdings service, released in July 2006, joins a growing group of OCLC initiatives—including the public-facing WorldCat.org and search engine partner project Open WorldCat—that strive to direct users to the right resource at the right time. With the eSerials Holdings service, through any number of free and fee-based discovery mechanisms such as Google, WorldCat.org, or FirstSearch, searchers can find their local library's e-serials collection, thus enabling libraries to expose further expensive e-collections.

Linda Gabel, cataloging product management/eSerials Holdings product manager at OCLC, Inc., points out, “OCLC traditionally has been very strong in helping libraries identify and describe their physical collection. The new service enables libraries to present their entire serials collection to their patrons at the point of need via WorldCat in FirstSearch or on the public web through Open WorldCat.” Furthermore, this new service comes at the best price for libraries—free. OCLC promises that eSerials Holdings will create minimal extra work for librarians while simultaneously increasing the value of existing library investments in electronic serials management tools such as A-to-Z lists and OpenURL resolvers.

The eSerials Holdings service represents an intersection of the new and old: it exploits the best aspects of partnership while concurrently building on systems already in use like Connexion, OCLC FirstSearch, WorldCat Resource Sharing, WorldCat Collection Analysis, and other WorldCat-related programs. When companies like OCLC push the boundaries and seek alliances, librarians and users alike reap the benefits.

Current OCLC eSerials Holdings service provider partners include Serials Solutions, TDNet, and EBSCO. The service is available to any library that works with one of the three current partner serials management vendors, but libraries also can submit holdings data directly to OCLC. Once a library has signed up for the eSerials Holdings service, OCLC sets and updates holdings for ISSN-based e-serials in WorldCat automatically; OCLC also provides a monthly activity report to the participating library.

Currently, eSerials Holdings alone does not include detailed holdings. In other words, users can only see if a particular library has an electronic subscription; users cannot see which issues or years are included. Gabel said that in a future version of the service, OCLC will offer the option to add local holdings records to WorldCat for e-serials.

With the acquisition in January 2006 of Openly Informatics (one of the earliest link resolver and serials management vendors), OCLC gained access to a rich, 1.2 million–record database, or knowledgebase, of linking metadata for e-resources. Knowledgebases have become the cornerstone for accurate and reliable information about electronic serials, and the Openly Informatics acquisition further enables OCLC to develop projects like eSerials. [For more on the knowledgebase and ERMS, see “Findability Enabled,” LJ 8/06, p. 30–32.] Both that acquisition and partnerships with serials management vendors allow OCLC to leverage its vast storehouse of library holdings information further and make it available to the general public.

Ultimately, the benefits of strategic partnerships have great impact. For instance, through OCLC's partnership with Google (including Google Scholar and Google Books), users are led to library holdings via Open WorldCat. Partnerships between OCLC and web giants such as Microsoft and Yahoo! are well documented, too, as are other smaller partnerships including that with LibraryThing [see “Chief Thingamabrarian,” LJ 1/07, p. 40–41].

With the release of e-serials, users are not only led from the free web to local physical holdings but also to local e-subscriptions. And with the assistance of link resolvers, authenticated users can move seamlessly into article- and item-level material in electronic serials.

OCLC is not alone in its efforts to make library collections, specifically e-serials, more visible and easily accessible. A variety of stakeholders in the information industry collaborate to facilitate greater access to library holdings. Ingenta (recently purchased by Publishing Technology plc) made its library holdings data available to Google Scholar's Library Links program. Its institutions' users will be automatically recognized by their IP range and thus offered appropriate copy links to their institution's subscriptions on IngentaConnect. This resembles Google's successful collaboration with link resolver vendors to make library holdings more prominent via an institution's preferred OpenURL resolver.

Another, more grassroots effort to make library holdings more visible is COinS, which stands for ContextObjects in Spans [see “Coins for the Link Trail,” LJ netConnect, Summer 2006, p. 8–10]. Latent OpenURLs embedded in web pages are activated by a Firefox plugin or JavaScript bookmarklet that triggers the latent OpenURLs. The user is directed to the article (or other electronic item) to which his or her institution has subscribed. COinS is the result of several groups—librarians, vendors, and researchers—working together to create solutions.

Finally, CrossRef recently announced the availability of its Simple Text Query service, which allows anyone to enter basic bibliographic information and retrieve a corresponding Digital Object Identifier (DOI), if it exists. More important, publishers, particularly smaller ones, can enter entire article reference lists and extract corresponding DOIs; this service has the potential to increase the use of the DOI, allowing for greater cross-linking among a variety of different content providers.

Ingenta, COinS, and CrossRef are just three examples of many. OCLC Openly Informatics alone has several linking projects listed on its web site, such as the LinkBaton, described as “a link server that connects readers to bookstores.” These initiatives that strive to make e-resources more visible encourage librarians to become more active in serving their constituencies at the point of need.

The tools for making e-resources more visible are increasing in number and complexity. Thus, librarians try to determine which ERMS will function most efficiently with the library's current ILS and link resolver. Add a metasearch tool, any homegrown efforts to exploit other e-resource tools, and the newly unveiled WorldCat Institution Registry, and one's head begins to spin.

In an attempt to spark discussion about the increasing primacy of e-resources and their accompanying tools, Serials Solutions has introduced a new expression: ERAMS, or electronic resource access and management services. Jane Burke, VP, ProQuest CSA, and general manager of Serials Solutions, explains, “It's really all about recognizing that for our e-resources—not just serials but all of our e-resources—we need a cohesive set of management and access tools.”

The tools already in use, says Burke, such as link resolvers, metasearch tools, ERMS, and the like, as well as tools yet to be created, make up a product category. This category consists of an integrated set of services that allows librarians to manage and provide access to e-resources.

The jury is still out on whether having and naming a product category is necessary, but the discussion itself is useful. In essence, ERAMS is an attempt to name and encapsulate what libraries are already doing, which is managing and providing multiple points of access to their e-resources with a variety of tools.

It is tempting to draw analogies, relegating the ILS to managing print and making ERAMS (or whatever we choose to call it) the set of services for handling electronic, but this may not be wise, at least at present. Elizabeth Winter, e-resources coordinator, acquisitions, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, believes libraries continue to need acquisitions modules in the ILS because current ERMS do not fulfill every need. Maria Collins, serials librarian and interim assistant head of acquisitions, North Carolina State University (NCSU), Raleigh, says that the ILS still serves certain core functions such as handling the basic functionality of an order.

While reliance on the ILS for certain tasks remains, such reliance may quickly erode. Thomas C. Wilson, associate dean for library technology, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, explains, “I believe that we are seeing further examples of the disintegration of the integrated library system, i.e., the unpacking of a set of tasks and the recombining of them and others into new bundles reflecting changes in the nature of the work we must accomplish. From one perspective, we could see ARM's [acquisitions resource managers] or ERMS as the natural evolution of what we have called acquisitions/serials systems.”

In this attempt to define and name a business category, one must not forget that Serials Solutions is attempting to bundle its e-resource tools and sell them to libraries. Nevertheless, “I think [Serials Solutions] could be onto something,” Alabama's Wilson says, “but only to the degree that they play well with other tools, not requiring customers to use Serials Solutions solely. If they do not play well, we will have just another silo of tools, resources, and services.” Other options currently exist, including homegrown models such as E-Matrix at NCSU, in which multiple data feeds from varied sources populate a central repository that can then push data out to other predetermined sources.

Burke is quick to emphasize that Serials Solutions is not interested in owning “a product category.” At the February 2007 Electronic Resources & Libraries Conference (ER&L), the meeting's coordinator and planners met with Burke and others and decided to create a web space to continue discussion about ERAMS. In addition to conference coordinator Bonnie Tijerina of Georgia Tech, other librarians involved in the web site creation include Winter; Jill Emery of the University of Texas, Austin; and Dana Walker of the University of Georgia, Athens. This group has built a web space where librarians can inform and direct the discussion about ERAMS with each other and with vendors.

Lorcan Dempsey, OCLC VP and chief strategist, notes, “Serials Solutions has done us a favor by prompting a discussion. And this is whether or not ERAMS sticks as a name and whether or not one wants to circumscribe this particular set of activities in this way.”

Serials Solutions is not the only library vendor looking at the evolution of library and user needs for e-resource access and management and beyond. Swets has also introduced a new integrated portfolio of products, at the center of which is SwetsWise Subscriptions; SwetsWise Subscriptions Library Edition will replace Dataswets Connect in 2007.

In addition to Ex Libris's efforts to integrate further SFX, its link resolver, and Verde, its ERMS, Ex Libris also continues to explore the ramifications of libraries' transition from a primarily physical world into the electronic era. As noted earlier, in one sense, ERAMS simply names what libraries are currently doing—managing and providing access to their e-resources with a certain set of tools. So, if ERAMS names what we are currently doing, what is the next step on the evolutionary ladder?

Oren Beit-Arie, chief strategy officer at Ex Libris Group, notes that in the late 1990s vendors and libraries alike realized that something beyond the ILS and its resource discovery mechanisms (i.e., the OPAC) had to emerge to meet the needs of the blossoming electronic era. The tools encapsulated in ERAMS, such as link resolvers, metasearch tools, and ERMS, have emerged in the last ten years.

According to Beit-Arie, “It is a good idea to give it a name. [Ex Libris] calls it ERM, they can call it ERAM, to add the access component into it...but what is important...is that this describes the past and the present. It doesn't really reflect what we need to look at in terms of the present and the future.”

Beit-Arie says libraries have lived through an ILS-only world but currently exist in an ILS + ERM world and are now confronted with a very significant stage: decoupling user services from library management.

For example, the ILS contains both a cataloging module (back-end library management) with a catalog (front-end user services), and ERAMS contains both the knowledgebase (back-end library management) and an A-to-Z list (front-end user services). Beit-Arie emphasizes that separating user services from back-end services is critical for libraries and vendors to move into the next phase of library systems.

This next phase of library systems includes a new category of front-end services and applications, such as Ex Libris's Primo or NCSU's implementation of Endeca, as well as a new category of back-end services, which, according to Beit-Arie, will not be ILS or ERM but what Ex Libris is calling URM, or unified resource management, which will better allow libraries to manage their collections regardless of format. These developments will certainly be important to monitor.

ILS, ERAMS, ERM, URM—it can be daunting to keep up with the rapidly changing nature of library resource management and access. The shared desire is to make library resources more visible to the user at his or her point of need as well as to allow librarians to manage their increasingly complex collections better. Serials Solutions and Ex Libris in conjunction with innovative libraries and librarians are paving the road for the future.

While exciting and innovative, none of these efforts to enhance the visibility of library collections are perfect solutions. The OpenURL is only as good as the metadata it contains, and the old adage “garbage in, garbage out” rings true. Linking to nonjournal content can be a challenge, and when a link in the information chain breaks, it can be hard to troubleshoot.

We may inadvertently be muddying the water in the effort to present users with more links to library holdings, whether through the eSerials Holdings service, Google's various manifestations, or the DOI. Even within the Google environment, links to library holdings appear differently depending on the context.

Librarians once made clear distinctions between the free web and proprietary library e-subscriptions, but such distinctions fade in the face of programs and services that bring e-resources to the user at his or her point of need. With more and more of library materials budgets being spent on electronic resources, continued support demands enhanced visibility and usage of those e-resources.

Programs that bring more attention to a library's holdings can help local libraries garner that support. Moreover, continued exploration of the relationships among the tools librarians use to manage and provide access to complex collections—electronic and otherwise—only makes libraries more efficient and relevant, which ultimately better serves the end user.