At ERMS Length: Evaluating Electronic Resource Management Systems

At ERMS Length: Evaluating Electronic Resource Management Systems

Maria Collins, Associate Head of Acquisitions

North Carolina State University

919-515-3188

Jill E. Grogg, E-Resources Librarian

The University of Alabama Libraries

205-348-7994

published version abridged and edited by Library Journal:

Maria Collins & Jill E. Grogg. “Building a Better ERMS.” Library Journal 136, no. 4 (March 1, 2011): 22-28. Available at:

Introduction

Electronic resource management is chaotic. The processes involved in managing e-resources are non-linear and non-standardized; moreover, the complexity of e-resource management is often underestimated by those who are not deep in the trenches. Anyone involved in the routine selection, acquisition, and subsequent renewal, management, and access activation of e-resources can attest to all of these notions. A little less than a decade ago, in 2002, the Digital Library Federation (DLF) and the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) co-sponsored a workshop that eventually led to the Electronic Resource Management Initiative (ERMI). The landmark ERMI report published in 2004 ( articulated the challenges of e-resource management and offered a blueprint, of sorts, to companies and individuals engaged in building new or expanding current electronic resource management (ERM) systems. The original work of the ERMI evolved into ERMI, Phase II, which continued to explore the variegated issues associated with e-resource management, such as data standards and usage statistics (

Bob McQuillan noted in a January 12, 2011, presentation at a NISO webinar (The Three S’s of Electronic Resource Management: Systems, Standards, & Subscriptions, that the early challenges for librarians dealing with e-resource management were four-fold: e-resource data existed in many formats and locations, was not centralized, was often stored and accessed in a variety of silos, and was not integrated with the Integrated Library System (ILS). To what extent have we solved these challenges and what obstacles remain?

The ERM systems that have become available over the past decade have addressed some issues very well and have left others unresolved. Moreover, expectations about what an ERM system can and cannot accomplish have morphed, becoming at once more realistic and more ambitious. Harried librarians shuffling mountains of paper and sticky notes and juggling byzantine email folder structures naturally expected the ERM system to address issues of data centralization, workflow efficiency, and system interoperability. Yet what has materialized is less like a silver bullet and more akin to buckshot. The original ERM system as envisioned hit some targets dead center. If we consider that the first stage of ERM system development and implementation is the storage of e-resource data elements, success is at hand. It is in the second phase of development, the analysis and connection of relationships among e-resource data elements as well as the automation of workflow that accompanies the processes involved in ordering, renewing, and troubleshooting, that the ERM system has yet to fully realize. Indeed, to a greater and lesser degree depending on the ERM system, portions of data element relationships can be connected and portions of workflow can be automated to help the librarian smoothly guide the e-resource through its life cycle. What is critical to note here is that no one, single system currently available contains all of the necessary components involved in the second phase.

To be sure, with the cooperation of librarians, standards organizations, commercial vendors, subscription agents and publishers, standards have emerged in an effort to increase automation, improve interoperability, and streamline workflow. COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources) and SUSHI (Standardized Usage Harvesting Initiative) address usage statistic normalization and transfer. Exchanging title and holdings lists falls under the purview of the KBART (Knowledge Base and Related Tools) Working Group and the Onix for Serials, a “family of XML formats for communicating information about serial products and subscription information” ( ONIX for Publication Licenses (ONIX-PL) hopes to address the exchange of license information as CORE (Cost of Resource Exchange) attempts to solve the exchange of cost information. [1] Taken together, these standards represent a remarkable collaboration amongst the many players and interests in the information industry. Taken individually, they offer tales of success as well as stagnation and frustration.

Yet standards are not the only way in which librarians, publishers, subscription agents and vendors are trying to tackle the outstanding ERM issues. The original work of the ERMI, Phase I and II, continues under the auspices of the NISO ERM Data Standards and Best Practices Review, whose purpose is to define next steps for ERM.The group has held informal focus group conversations with relevant vendors, librarians and stakeholders, reviewed the ERMI data dictionary, worked on mapping data elements to appropriate standards, and studied the results of recent ERM-related surveys.Finally, the group hopes to highlight current work, identify gaps, and make recommendations for future work in a report now planned for release in Summer 2011 (

In an effort to map the current landscape of ERM and gauge the impact of the aforementioned initiatives and standards, the authors conducted two surveys (see appendix): one for librarians and one for ERM system vendors, both commercial and open source. What follows is an analysis of those surveys as well as an accompanying tables of commercially available and open source ERM systems. The responses draw a picture of a community in transition, a community trying to navigate the unprecedented paradigm shift from print to electronic publishing.

Top ERM Priorities from Librarian Surveys

In a November 2010 survey conducted across several library-related listservs including SERIALST (Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum), ERIL-L (Electronic Resources in Libraries), and LIB-LICENSE-L, librarians discussed their top ERM priorities.After almost a decade of talking about, developing or implementing an ERM system, the top level priorities reflect a need for systematic support for backend management of e-resources over a concern for public display.Librarian responses also indicate a continued need for storage and consolidation of ERM-related information that has no home in the ILS.With e-resource management data, therefore, straddling multiple systems, it is no wonder that librarians surveyed also prioritizedways to marry or integrate through system interoperabilityvaried ERM data to data traditionally found in the ILS, such as cost data and fund allocations.

Specifically, the top six priorities included workflow and communications management, license management, statistics management, storage of administrative information, aspects of acquisitions management and interoperability across systems (see Table 1 for list of top fifteen priorities).Over a third of the librarians surveyed prioritized some aspect of workflow or communications management.For the purposes of this article, workflow management is the process of moving and identifying work or notifying others concerning the work of managing electronic resources.In this regard, librarians want to work with systems that can drive and support the acquisition (licensing, payment, establishing and maintaining access, withdrawal) of an e-resource by routing the resources from one step to another and from one staff member to another as appropriate.Given the nonlinear nature of ERM, librarians also desire a system of reminders to assist with tracking stages of work, status changes and renewals.Sophisticated workflow management obviously hinges on a notification system that can recognize the role of staff members in the ERM process, allow for flexible email communication throughout the system and provide alerts of status changes to both external and internal users not only through email but through public display interfaces.

In the current ERM landscape, librarians still need one place to store information that they cannot house in their ILS.Survey responses identified key data sets librarians have prioritized for ERM systems; the top three including license details, usage stats and administrative usernames and passwords.Beyond storage and links to license contracts, many responses reflected a strong obligation to support compliance with license restrictions by making license details accessible to their ILL operations and to potential users of their resources.Comments about statistics management indicated a desire for auto harvesting of usage statistics using SUSHI as well as functionality to facilitate usage analysis.This functionality includes association of usage statistics at the title and package levels as well as association to itemized subscription costs by year for several years.Storage of administrative data in a consistent format was noted as advantageous for troubleshooting access problems.Comments indicated a need to store username/password information as well as other administrative data related to vendors and resources such as notes and URLs for accessing administrator web sites.

Other responses from librarians indicate that many ERMS users have come back full circle to a desire for a centralized system that can support the gamut of acquisitions functionality including fund management, support for budget projections, reporting of expenditures by categories and ready access to cost data at both the individual title and package levels.Also notedwas the need to track this kind of data over time.As librarians continue to be frustrated with attempts to integrate their ERM systems with their ILS, many ERMS users hope to support traditional acquisitions functionality directly within their ERMS environment rather than struggle with duplicate data entry and static data.Of course, in an ideal world of identifiers and standards, librarians would like to see systems talk to one another in order to automatically update metadata such as ISSNs and URLs, support easy data transfer, and allow the export of data for re-purposing in other applications.To support this kind of data exchange across systems, ERMS would need to be built upon an openframeworkand architecture.Librarians surveyed would like to see ERM systems interoperate with enterprise-wide financial systems, ILSs, and vendor systems (subscription agents and book jobbers).Table 1 below lists other top priorities in ranked order noted by the librarians surveyed.

Table 1: Top 15 ERM Priorities Based on Librarian Survey

Rank / Feature/Function / Description Summary Compiled from Responses
1 / Workflow management / Support across e-resource life cycle including resource tracking, reminders, status assignments, routing and redistribution of workflow and communication or notifications to stakeholders or patrons as necessary.
2 / License management / Manage license details, provide storage for agreements and display license terms for internal and external users
3 / Statistics management / Obtain, gather and organize usage statistics. Auto upload statistics utilizing SUSHI standard.Provide historical statistics.
4 / Administrative Information / Store and make accessible administrative information such as usernames and passwords.
5 / Acquisitions Functionality / Provide acquisitions support for budget management, fund management, financial reporting, repository of cost data and invoicing.
6 / Integration/interoperability with other systems / Interoperate across systems, including the ILS,to support auto feeds, data loads and auto updates.
7 / Subscription management / Manage and maintain library subscriptions to electronic content including life cycle changes (new, dropped, cancelled, transferred), vendor changes, maintenance of subscription history, and verification of continued access.
8 / Public display / Support a variety of public display options to the public including A-Z journal listing, database lists and article-level linking.
9 / Vendor contact information / Store and provide access to vendor information including contact data and account numbers.
10 / Support for collection evaluation / Align and report data as appropriate to support the evaluation of the collection and cost analysis.
11 / Consolidate ERM information / Store and provide access to ERM-related data in one place.
12 / Package management / Track titles within packages appropriate to institution including parent/child relationships, business terms, and association of titles with deals.
13 / Holdings Management / Identify and maintain appropriate coverage and URLs per title; support holdings display in the catalog.
14 / Reporting / Provide query-based reporting on desired characteristics.
15 / Usability / Provide clean, easy to use interface with consistent displays.

What’s Working in the Current ERMS Market?

As evidenced by the priorities outlined above, it is clear that librarians share definite and immediate needs for ERM systems. Survey respondents were asked to identify what part(s) of their current ERM systems have worked well as well as what problems their ERM systems have helped to resolve. Overwhelmingly, survey respondents indicated that ERM systems are helping to increase efficiency in license management. Respondents noted that they are now able to categorize licenses, link contracts, and display license terms to relevant constituencies. Librarians are linking amendments with parent agreements and thus are able to get a more complete picture of all documents signed over time. Respondents also value and utilize the ability to push license terms to relevant constituencies. For example, librarians can populate the ERM system with specific terms of use regarding interlibrary loan (ILL) rights and the system can push this information out through A-to-Z lists, the OPAC, or other mechanisms, which allows ILL staff across the library to make informed decisions.

However, the introduction of discovery layers as well as the non-interoperability of systems limits the ways in which librarians can push license terms to users. One Innovative customer noted that it is extremely helpful to populate the ERM system with license terms and have those terms automatically appear in the OPAC. Unfortunately, the OPAC is no longer the primary means of access to the catalog; the primary means of access is now a next generation discovery layer and those terms of use are not fed from the ERM system to the discovery layer. Nor are those terms pushed out through the link resolver or other access mechanisms, which limits librarians’ ability to inform users, both internal and external, of critical license terms to which the library has contractually agreed. This, of course, depends on the system. The ERM which is integrated with the ILS may or may not be able to push license terms to the A-to-Z list or to the link resolver, particularly if a library uses services from different vendors. Again, interoperability rears its ugly head.

While librarians have enjoyed success with license management, it is important to note that populating ERM systems with license terms can be an almost entirely manual process, and a laborious one at that. Some systems that are emerging, such as those from subscription agents, are able to achieve automated population of general terms, but a manual element remains for library-specific license terms. In an attempt to address this issue, the ONIX-PL was created; it is “part of a family of XML formats for the communication of licensing terms under the generic name ONIX for Licensing Terms” ( The potential for automating a tedious process is very real with ONIX-PL; unfortunately, ONIX-PL has yet to see widespread adoption.

Whereas license management was the number two priority identified by survey participants, the number one priority for ERM systems was workflow management. The ERM system has met this challenge at a relatively basic level. Across commercial, open source and locally developed solutions, workflow management was noted as a partial success; specifically mentioned were ticklers, status tracking, notifications, and alerts about downtime. Successes with workflow vary significantly from system to system. Survey respondents noted that particularly helpful are email “ticklers” which provide reminders of renewal and termination dates for e-resources. Workflow, however, is a complicated process that often requires the interoperability of several systems, and continued frustrations with workflow and ERM systems are discussed in more detail below.

A third area that emerged as functioning well within ERM systems was the storageand central accessibility of administrative information such as usernames and passwords as well as vendor contact information. One respondent noted that a central gathering place for all of this type of administrative metadata has improved some components of e-resource workflow. As mentioned in the introduction, the consolidation of ERM information, which is simply the general ability to store and retrieve ERM –related data in one place, falls under the first stage of ERM system development and implementation. Librarians attest that this part is functioning fairly well, but such functioning is not without caveats. One respondent noted that while the ERM system offers a one-stop place for various pieces of information (contacts, licenses, orders, past problems), the amount of work involved in gathering and entering all of this information has been formidable.

Other ERM system features that librarians reported as working include the general usability of systems, holdings and access management, public display of information, and statistics management. In terms of statistics management, it is critical to note that it is the storage and in some cases, the cost correlation that is working. Complicating factors surrounding statistics management, such as SUSHI, are discussed below.