Report of the CUNY Electronic Resource Management System Committee

January 2008

Summary of Findings

The Electronic Resource Management System Committee[i] selected 360 Resource Manager and Verde as two systems that merit serious consideration as potential systems for CUNY. Out of the dozen or so commercial ERMS products available in the market, the majority consist of add-on modules for existing Integrated Library Systems, ruling them out for consideration. The remaining options were subscription agent hosted solutions that has not gained traction in the library community as they have no integration with either the knowledge base or the ILS and require labor-intensive manual updates.

After a close examination of both of these products in line with CUNY-specific needs, Verde emerges as a better fit for CUNY libraries. The Serials Solutions Resource Manager presents an appealing option for current users of the AMS product because of their familiarity with the Serials Solutions interface as well as a favorable history with customer support. Currently, 18 of 22 CUNY libraries have AMS. Nevertheless, Resource Manager does not meet the key criterion of allowing a system-wide management of electronic resources. Without a consortial configuration, all of the CUNY colleges would have to rely solely on the Central Office for maintenance and upkeep of their resource records in the ERMS.

Some librarians on the ERMS committee expressed concerns about the track record of Aleph and the potential of committing to yet another Ex Libris product. The architecture of Verde is such that it lies upon the existing SFX knowledge base and can operate independently of Aleph. If CUNY were to migrate to another ILS, Verde would maintain most of its functionalities. There were also some concerns that there have been implementation issues with Verde that arose amongst the first adopters of the technology. Informal interviews with systems librarians running the consortial versions of Verde indicate that Ex Libris has since retrenched its goals and successfully focused on retooling the new version of Verde to deal with bugs.

Moreover, because of additional complexities in our workflows, integration with our existing ILS is crucial for a successful implementation of an ERMS. An integrated ERMS would allow for effective project management of complex e-resource workflows and reduce duplicated information. As the following features chart demonstrates, Verde has many more of the features deemed necessary for CUNY in an ERMS. Its adaptable architecture allows for customization if necessary to meet our specific needs. Finally, a purchase of Verde will include unique instances of SFX for each of the colleges, allowing for local control of the knowledge base as well as an opportunity for each college to brand the patron interaction with all link-resolved resources.

In discussions regarding the ERMS and the numerous areas this overlaps, a clear desire emerged for local control of resources and their management, and as the only viable system with a consortial configuration currently available, the Verde provides the strongest option in making this desire a realizable goal.

Background

Electronic Resource Management Systems (ERMS) have their roots in ad hoc systems built by libraries to juggle managing information about the vendors,technical specifications forthe product, statistics, license parameters and numerous other issues related to electronic resources. As few libraries could afford to build systems that could address the complexity of maintaining e-resources through their entire lifecycle, commercial vendors stepped to meet this growing need.

These vendors fall into two broad categories: 1) Integrated Library Systems (ILS) vendors who promote the ERMS as an additional module of the ILS to seamlessly communicate with existing bibliographic and order records; and Serial or Serial Data vendors such as EBSCO or Serials Solutions who maintain subscription or serials holdings data on behalf of the library and can build the ERMS on top of this knowledge base.

In both of these instances, the ERMS facilitates the process of selecting, trialing, purchasing and maintaining e-resources. An ERMS streamlines workflows by centralizing, recording and facilitating communication about the many financial, legal and access aspects of electronic resources. The diagram below addresses just some of the tasks required to maintain an electronic resource throughout the entirety of its life cycle.[ii]

ERMS Functions


Institutional Infrastructures

Adding to the complexities of electronic resource management for CUNY is need for both a local and a CUNY-wide perspective to every electronic resource. Managing the selection process is an extraordinarily complex endeavor requiringa configuration that allows each of the individual colleges to manage their own resources and see resources across the CUNY system, as well as see resources owned other colleges in order to share knowledge and pool resources for favorable negotiations with product vendors. Thus,the CUNY ERMSwould need to have a centralized list of resources available to all colleges at the top level, viewable by all and edited by the administrator. In the case of local ERMS’s, each individual instance will have holdings unique to a particular college viewable to all and administered by the appropriate staff member at each college. With this particular architecture, the goal is to empower the colleges to manage their local holdings by decentralizing management of all locally-purchased resources.

CUNY Resource Management Chart

Technical Infrastructures

Like most libraries, CUNY also has a patchwork of technologies that allow us to manage access to electronic resources to the end-user. The process includes:

  • User authentication based upon institutional affiliation (EZ Proxy)
  • Consulting the knowledge base to determine whether the patron can access content from a particular provider (SFX)
  • Generating a browseable A-Z list of journals
  • Tracking information about a resource bibliographically (Cataloging module); financially (Acquisitions module); and as a continuing resource (Serials module)
  • Providing an index of our available full-text content to other potential access points to our resources (Google Scholar, etc.).

The ERMS should build upon these existing investments in library technology through efficient sharing of data with link resolvers, authentication/access management systems, web portals, and potentially, federated searching tools and other technologies that will bridge the gaps between all of these disparate management systems. A key factor for CUNY is a seamless transmission of information between these systems:

  • order records should have relationships to resource records within the ERMS so that dollar amounts and fund budgets do not have to be tracked in multiple locations;
  • a bibliographic record should be linked to the record for the electronic resource so that updates to the resource URL will be reflected directly within the OPAC;
  • the knowledge base of item-level resources and access parameters such as date ranges currently residing on both Serials Solutions and SFX should interface with the new ERMS;
  • and a single-point information management should allow changes at multiple sites -- within the bibliographic record, the serials management software or within the ERMS – and update an authoritative file one single time.

Critical in looking at the technical infrastructure is to provide a single point of input for all data related to electronic resources that will be available to staff members who need access to the information; the data should not be reduplicated in multiple parallel systems.

Workflows and Knowledge Management

ERMS’s have evolved to fully integrate the workflow of the multiple departments that interact with an electronic resource through its entire lifecycle. By the time an electronic resource is fully deployed, it will often have required input from the collection development, serials, acquisitions, cataloging, public service and systems departments. In addition to the technical infrastructures, the ERMS has to facilitate all the flow of work and accompanying communication necessary to deploy an electronic resource.

The core of every ERMS should include information specific to each resource:

  • Authority-controlled resource names
  • URL’s and log-in information for resource administration
  • Contact information for sales and technical support
  • Selection and trial process tracking and documentation
  • Access parameters for each resource: access dates, limits on concurrent users if any, physical limitations on access (i.e. on-campus only)

The ERMS should allow reliably access of this information to all circulation and ILL staff who will deal with such issues as well as to the interested general public. In addition, the ERMS has become a repository for encoded information translating the legal clauses of a license agreement, clarifying everything from place of arbitration to more practical day-to-day terms such as conditions allowing:

  • Inter-library loan of journal articles
  • Physical and electronic reserves
  • Access to content for distance education
  • Content on course web sites
  • Course packs

Within the Acquisitions functionalities, ERMS functionalities should include:

  • Multiple funds and discretionary accounts
  • Shared cost allocations
  • Tracking of purchase orders
  • Renewal tracking including reminder emails or other alerts to staff to begin evaluation at an appropriate date and methods of recording decision process
  • Trial tracking reminder emails or other alerts to staff to begin evaluation at an appropriate date and methods of recording decision process
  • Tracking system for communications with vendors including sales staff, technical support staff and others
  • History of payments on a particular resource to chart price increases at the resource level as well as globally
  • User-friendly report generation capabilities to produce on-the-fly reports about the budget from the local college and global perspective

In addition to supporting the acquisitions functions related to electronic resources, the ERMS is also a repository and a management tool for the disparate statistics data about all of CUNY’s electronic resources.

  • COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources) compliant statistics management
  • Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) compliance: SUSHI takes COUNTER standardized statistics to another level and allows for machine harvesting of statistics data directly from content providers
  • Access to the underlying tables generating these statistics for customized queries
  • Built-in report generator that calculates statistics for reports on statistics including specific requisite reports such as the ACRL and the American Libraries Survey surveys (NCES)

While an ERMS provides a centralized, accessible repository for critical pieces of reduplicated information that currently lives in personal email folders, numerous Excel spreadsheets, physical file folders and simply residing in the heads of staff members, an important element in the success of an ERMS will be the labor-intensive transfer of all of this information to the system. As a part of the implementation process, new workflows will have to be developed to ensure uniform tracking of resources.

Beginning at an electronic resource lifecycle, the selection and activation process within an ERMS has to allow for:

  • Creating a record for a resource in the system
  • Separating it from others in its status as a trial
  • Notification to all required parties of access parameters and expiration date
  • Automated, pushed (e.g. email) reminders near close of trial
  • Pushed prompt for comments that are recorded in the system about a trial
  • Prompt for the next step in the workflow for purchasing decision, and
  • License review
  • Resource activation
  • Integration into all of the existing technologies (link resolver, OPAC, etc.)

Product Comparison: Ex Libris Verde vs. Serials Solutions 360 Resource Manager

The selection process began with a draft of functional requirements for the future ERMS that were discussed both in person and online via the ERMS committee wiki: The committee made additional comments and edits on the list, and then salespeople were invited to present their product addressing CUNY’s needs as outlined by the functional requirements document. At the end of the process, each of the vendors was invited to submit comments on their product within the context of the functional requirements, and the following matrix was produced to summarize the functionalities of each product.

CUNY ERMS Comparison Chart

ACQUISITIONS INFO / Resource Manager / Verde
Feature / Comments / Feature / Comments
Budget/discretionary accts / Y / Y
Shared cost allocations / P / Limited to four fund codes / Y
Purchase order tracking / Y / Y / Full integration with Acquisitions module
Renewals (renewal review date, workflows) / Y / Y
Renewal workflows / N / Y
Payment History / Y / Y
Contact Info/Vendorrelations (CRM type communication tracking?) / N / Users can manually generate notes to attach to resources. / Y
Invoices - Start/end date alerts / Y / Y
Acquisitions Status / Y / Y
Automated pushed workflow –automated emails to appropriate staff / N / Users can manually program reminder emails / Y
Trial trackingStart/end date alerts / Y / Y
Trial issue tracking / Y / Y
Reports (bar graphs, pie charts, xsl) / Y / Y
GROUP MANAGEMENT
Consortial view? / N / Y
Individual college view? / N / In planning / Y
Activating, tracking resources for group / Y / Y
Are subgroups possible? / N / Y
Consortial IP tracking - groups? / Y / Y
Interface searchability by various criteria (licenses, cost, vendor, etc.) / N / In planning / Y
KNOWLEDGE BASE
Is the KB up-to-date? / Excellent / Daily updates with customized entries turned around in 24 hrs / Good / Ex Libris slower than competitor in updating KB.
How easily can the KB be updated/customized? / Y / Y / Verde records customizable. Issues with SFX (see above).
Data interchange with A-Z list as well? / Y / Y
Data interchange with SFX possible? / P / P / Requires manual extraction and loading.
Data interchange with SS possible? / P / P / Requires manual extraction and loading.
USAGE STATISTICS / Resource Manager / Verde
Feature / Comments / Feature / Comments
SUSHI / N / In planning. / N / No issues as these can be managed via title.
ACRL stat calculations - can they be built in? / N / ACRL stat calculations – can they be built in? / Some / Others in planning. Underlying database can be queried.
ALS (NCES) stat calculations - can they be built in? / N / / Y
Other customized queries? / N / P / Underlying database can be queried.
What is the underlying architecture of the tables for statistics? Do we have access? / N / Y / Oracle
COUNTER compliance / Y / Y
LICENSE DATA
Ability to link to PDF/digitized version / Y / Y
ONIX license XML capable? / Y / Y
Granularity of ILL clauses within license / Basic / DLF ERMI compliant
Limited access to ILL staff? / Y / Y
TECHNICAL MAINTENANCE
Knowledge Base data - easily integrated into ERMS / Y / P / Back end work has to be done in-house.
Linking to catalog for link resolver/ link resolver maintenance / N / Y
Ease of product upkeep / Y / Y
Can EZ Proxy integrated into workflow? / N / Y
TROUBLESHOOTING RESOURCES
Problem log / N / Y
Pushed info - emails about unresolved e-resources to appropriate staff people / N / Y
User friendly interface for problem reporting / N / Y
User friendly interface for problem status view / N / Y
Multiple security levels / N / Y
Resource Manager / Verde
GENERAL / Features / Comments / Features / Comments
Alerts - overview reports for all staff / Y / Y
Routing/notifications / Y / Routing/notifications / Y
Customizability - flexibility in defining fields / Y / Limited to pull-down menus / Y / Controlled vocabulary possible.
E-books management? / P / P
Managing e-resources w/o ISSN's? / Y / The system manages serials without ISSN / Y
Search options / P / Limited / Y / Complex. back-end search possible.
DLF ERMI Compliance / P / Y
ADMIN INFO
Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI’s) / N / Y
User and Admin ID/Password / Y / Y
Overall info about resource (Holdings/coverage, URL) / Y / Y
Selection support/documentation / N / Y
Trial tracking (ticklers?) / N / Separate email alert has to be created / Y
Integration of trial into local website. Auto? / N / N
Possibility of hosted solution and other technical infrastructural support / Y / Y
Staff training and availability of other implementation services / Y / Y

Serials Solutions 360 Resource Manager

The Serials Solutions ERMS, Resource Manager, provides a hosted solution for electronic resource management. Since the Resource Manager is available via the same administrative module through which librarians and staff currently access the Serials Solutions AMS, the administrative module below should look familiar to those librarians and staff that maintain the AMS at 18 CUNY libraries.

Screenshot: Serials Solutions 360 Resource Manager

Resource Manager offers the basic services expected of most ERMS’s: collection management with hierarchical relations between individual journals/items and packages, contact management, license management and a single interface for alert creation and management.

Key Points:

  • Customer Service. Serials Solutions enjoys a solid reputation for customer support.
  • Look and Feel. Many of the ERMS Committee members expressed that they feel morecomfortable with Resource Manager’s user-friendly interface. For many, it presents an ideal situation of a functional third party solution for management electronic resource holdings which has a lower technical threshold.
  • Ease of Implementation. Currently 18 of the 22 libraries at CUNY have the AMS product. While libraries that do not have AMS (Law, Journalism, Hostos and Queensborough) would have to manually migrate their holdings records to the Resource Manager, Serials Solutions offers easy implementation for the remainder of colleges.
  • Integration with ILS. There is no integration available for the remainder of the workflow for serials and acquisitions work as shown in the chart, and information about purchase orders, funds and other information would have to be duplicated in the Acquisitions module.
  • Consortial Resource Management. Serials Solutions does not offer a consortial version of the Resource Manager, requiring central administration of all resources, both centrally purchased and local.
  • Access Level Controls. There is no means of creating levels of access for different accounts, which in combination with the lack of consortial management features, means a single master administrator input and maintain data for all of the colleges while all others would have Read-Only access.
  • Workflow Management. Aside from the generic alert mechanism which produces emails to designated recipients on an appointed date, Resource Manager has no product management capabilities and no ability to define roles and responsibilities or delegate tasks to other staff members.
  • Integration into Future Technologies. As Resource Manager is essentially a stand-alone product that works in tandem with AMS, it would be difficult to integrate workflows with a potential federated searching product or other technologies that would lay over existing technical infrastructures. For such searches, machine-to-machine communication is requisite, and Serials Solutions does not provide users real-time access to the underlying tables containing information about library holdings.
  • Product Maturity. Resource Manager is a relatively new product with many features yet to be developed. In particular, the additional statistics module which would have to be purchased for managing statistics had yet to be even ready for demonstration at the time of the meeting. Also, several key features are still in development.

Ex Libris Verde