ERMS Evaluation Project Team

Revised Charge, September 11, 2007

View the Original Charge (March 2007)

Project Team Membership:

Roberta Winjum (Interim Chair)

Mary Beth Blalock (until December 2007)

Ann Ercelawn

Bryan Kurowski

Julie Loder

Kitty Porter

Linda Tesar

Chris Waldrop

Mary Ellen Wilson

Additional Members:

E-Resources Librarian (Chair, TBA)

Management Library Representative (TBA)

Marshall Breeding

Bill Hook (from December 2007)

Technical Consultant:

Dale Poulter

Project Summary/Abstract:

Electronic resources constitute a growing proportion of the library’s collection. Our ILS is proving inadequate for managing information about these resources. Commercial Electronic Resource Management Systems have been developed to address the complications and special needs of this format.

Some vendors indicate that their ERMS’s interact (or will soon) with systems presently used by the Library. The ERMS Evaluation Project Team, consisting of staff with acquisitions, collection development, and technical expertise will evaluate the functionality of these ERMS’s and the degree to which they would assist with e-resource management in our environment. This work would consist of the following steps:

§ Articulate criteria for required and preferred functionality

§ Schedule on-site product demonstrations

§ Determine the products’ fit with our requirements

§ Report and recommend

• Determine the extent to which these products interoperate with existing systems and estimate resources required to implement
• Research and recommend methods for getting usable data into a new ERMS
• Describe how the recommended system would impact existing procedures and workflows

It is possible that none of the systems is sufficiently developed to meet our needs: the project team may recommend alternative actions or timeframes. Since acquisitions data has been identified as a priority, the team will explore enhancing our existing acquisitions records.

Timeline:

March 2007: Begin work

January 2008: Progress report and recommendations

Statement of need:

The Library has both lost access to services because of non-payment, and paid for resources we could not access (and in some cases, did not know we had). We are unable to generate needed reports, including lists of subscriptions by format, and cannot state how much we pay to some publishers (e.g., Elsevier). Day-to-day, many e-resource problems can be attributed to a lack of procedural consistency, systematic methods of communication, and accessible locations for information about resources.

ERM systems promise to facilitate the automation of workflows, provide a central storage location for data (including detailed information on packages and their constituents), and serve strategic goals of facilitating communication and reducing duplicated staff effort.

This project team allows staff with in-depth knowledge of acquisition and collection development procedures to articulate and compare needs and measure these requirements against the capabilities of commercial software packages.

Project champion/owner:

Strategy and Planning Council

Project leader/coordinator:

The Electronic Resources Librarian will serve as project leader.

Documentation and reporting:

By January 2008, the team will deliver to Strategy and Planning a report and recommendation of preferred directions for e-resource management. This will consist of the identification of a preferred vendor, or, if no product is satisfactory, will propose alternate mechanisms and timeframes.

Other personnel involved/required:

The team will consult widely with acquisitions and collection development staff. The participation of staff in the divisional libraries is highly desired.

Related projects:

Since the SFX Knowledgebase may be an important component of the ERMS, the SFX Management Group will have an interest.

Budget:

Although it is possible that the project team will recommend the purchase of an ERMS, the evaluation project does not require funding. The Library Budget Officer will advise on funding deadlines and procurement requirements.

Assessment:

The team will deliver a progress report and recommendations by January 2008. A statement of self-evaluation should be included in this report.

Active participation in project teams is critical to the success of the library’s strategic plan. All project team leaders will be asked to complete an assessment form for project team members at the completion of the project. This will be given to the project team members’ supervisor for use in annual performance evaluation. The form will rate several facets of team member participation in the project.