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Making Good on the Promise of ERM:
A Standards and Best Practices Discussion Paper
Prepared by the NISO ERM Data Standards and Best Practices Review Steering Committee:
Tim Jewell, University of Washington (chair)
Jeff Aipperspach, Avalara Corporation (and formerly Serials Solutions)
Ivy Anderson, California Digital Library
Deberah England, Wright State University
Rafal Kasprowski, Rice University
Bob McQuillan, Innovative Interfaces, Inc.
Tim McGeary, Lehigh University
Angela Riggio, UCLA
January 2012
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
About NISO White Papers
NISO White Papers are contributed or solicited papers that address an issue that has implications for
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Paper might define and explore some of the questions that come into play before formal
standardization work is started. Or, a NISO White Paper might identify areas that are opportunities for
standards development and suggest possible approaches. All White Papers are posted on the NISO
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ISBN: 978-1-9357522-00-1
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Making Good on the Promise of ERM
Contents
1. Executive Summary and Key Recommendations ..................................................................................... 1
2. Introduction and Background .................................................................................................................. 3
a. The DLF ERMI 1 & 2 Projects ............................................................................................................... 3
b. Progress and Pain Points: Market Developments and Results of Recent ERM Surveys ..................... 4
3. ERMS and the Current E-Resource Standards Landscape........................................................................ 7
a. The NISO ERM Data Standards and Best Practices Review ................................................................. 7
b. ERM-Related Standards, Best Practices, and Related Initiatives ........................................................ 9
c. Discussion and Mapping of Standards, Best Practices, and Related Initiatives ................................ 13
d. Summary of Mapping Conclusions and Recommendations by Category ......................................... 28
4. Unfinished Business: the Workflow Support Problem........................................................................... 32
5. References ............................................................................................................................................. 35
Appendix A: Summary of Mapping Review Findings and Recommendations ............................................ 39
Appendix B: Workflow Best Practices Bibliography.................................................................................... 41
Appendix C: Workflow Documents List ...................................................................................................... 51
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Making Good on the Promise of ERM
1. Executive Summary and Key Recommendations
The NISO ERM Data Standards and Best Practices Project is a successor to the Digital Library Federation’s
Electronic Resources Management Initiative (ERMI) whose data model and dictionary established
working standards for e-resource management, and “ERMI 2,” which provided training for license
analysis and helped to develop the SUSHI (Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative) protocol
and NISO CORE (Cost of Resources Exchange) best practice. The project’s primary goals were to perform
a “gap analysis” of standards and best practices and make recommendations on the future of the ERMI
Data Dictionary.
Following stakeholder focus group meetings in January 2009, a steering committee for the project was
formed that began reviewing recent surveys conducted on Electronic Resources Management (ERM)
topics, identifying existing standards and best practices, and collecting workflow-related documents.
The environmental scan of the ERM standards landscape focused on 5 categories suggested by
Kasprowski[21], and data elements and values from selected standards and best practices were mapped
to the ERMI Data Dictionary, with the following conclusions:
•
Link Resolvers and Knowledge Bases: KBART (Knowledge Bases and Related Tools) is beneficial
and some data elements are superior to comparable ERMI elements. IOTA (Improving OpenURL
Through Analytics) is also valuable but data element mapping is not appropriate.
•
The Work, Manifestations, and Access Points: MARC 21, the ONIX for Serials formats, and
Project TRANSFER all offer greater granularity in selected areas than ERMI.
•
Cost and Usage-Related Data: NISO CORE (Cost of Resource Exchange) is a valuable initiative
that should be adopted by system developers. COUNTER has become a mainstay building block
for ERM, and the continued refinement of SUSHI (Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting
Protocol) shows the potential for similar limited-scope protocol development.
•
License Terms: ONIX-PL has been better designed than the ERMI approach to license encoding
and expression but has not yet been widely implemented; neither it nor ERMI adequately
address library needs. NISO should facilitate discussions of a simpler but scalable “third way”
that can be built upon by supply chain community members.
•
Data Exchange Using Institutional Identifiers: Institutional identifiers hold substantial potential
and the NISO I2 (Institutional Identifiers) initiative is endorsed. OCLC’s WorldCat® registry is also
worthwhile if developed further, and vCard offers additional efficiency opportunities.
There continues to be value to updating and maintaining a data dictionary that encompasses ERM
functions and evolves with technologies and business models, but practical considerations override
them. It is recommended that NISO not pursue such a project, but continue to encourage narrower
initiatives targeting specific ERM functional needs while advocating for and pursuing alternate strategies
aimed at interoperability.
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Making Good on the Promise of ERM
The report concludes with a brief discussion of perceived shortcomings in workflow support within
current-generation Electronic Resources Management Systems (ERMS) and of related emerging work by
vendors and libraries, supplemented by a bibliography and list of illustrative workflow diagrams.
Workflow support in future ERMS should be more extensive and robust than at present, and NISO could
help mitigate system development risks by organizing a series of topical webinars complemented by
discussion and surveys to describe and establish greater consensus among libraries regarding e-resource
workflow support needs and priorities.
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Making Good on the Promise of ERM
2. Introduction and Background
a.
The DLF ERMI 1 & 2 Projects
Public discussion of standards related to Electronic Resource Management Systems (ERMS) can be
traced to a May 2002 “Pre-standardization” workshop held in Chicago and co-sponsored by NISO and
the Digital Library Federation[24]. That event led to creation in October 2002 of the DLF’s Electronic
Resource Management Initiative (ERMI), which resulted in the publication of what became known as the
“ERMI Report” in August 2004[19]. The Report asserted the need for “comprehensive electronic resource
management systems,” and, following a review of several locally-developed ERMS, identified the
following set of goals for the Initiative:
•
Develop common specifications and tools for managing the license agreements, related
administrative information, and internal processes associated with collections of licensed
electronic resources.
•
Describe architectures needed for electronic resource management.
•
Foster systems development.
•
Promote best practices and standards.
The ERMI steering group saw the challenge to be met as one of supporting the lifecycle of electronic
resources, including these functions:
•
Selection and acquisition
•
Access provision
•
Resource administration
•
User support and troubleshooting (staff and end-users)
•
Renewal and retention decisions
To help do so, the report provided a number of closely-related documents, including a data dictionary
that encompassed a wide range of data elements (license permissions and constraints, user IDs,
passwords, administrative info, contacts for support and troubleshooting, as well as cancellation
restrictions and price caps, etc.) The data dictionary was supported and further elaborated upon by a
“data structure” document and an entity relationship diagram (ERD). In addition, a full set of Functional
Requirements and a set of flowcharts to depict processes needing to be supported by an ERM—such as
mounting trials, routing licenses, placing orders, implementing access, and notifying relevant staff—
were provided.
Together, these documents constituted the “ERMI Spec,” which was credited by many with helping
launch a new application or set of services. For example, in an American Libraries article[28] that
appeared shortly after release of the Report, Andrew Pace said that “if last year’s hot product was
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Making Good on the Promise of ERM
federated searching, then 2004 belongs to electronic resources management (ERM)” and noted
approvingly that “in a nearly unprecedented move, nearly every large automation vendor has used the
specifications created by librarians.”
The Report also identified a number of outstanding issues, such as consortium support and functionality,
usage data handling and reporting, and data standards—including serials description and holdings,
standard identifiers, license term expression, and interoperability. These considerations led to the
launch of an “ERMI 2” [17] project, also under DLF auspices, which undertook several sub-projects. Two of
these developed into what are now the NISO SUSHI and CORE projects. In addition, training and
materials in support of “license mapping”—the practice of analyzing and encoding license terms for
incorporation into ERMS—were provided to participants in four workshops offered as part of the
project. An effort to review the ERMI Data Dictionary and data structure documents was also identified
as part of the initiative, but could not be pursued at the time due to competing commitments on the
part of those most able to undertake it.
b.
Progress and Pain Points: Market Developments and Results of Recent ERM Surveys
While the ERMI documents functioned effectively as a guide for systems developers, some of whom
referred to their products and services as “ERMI compliant,” they were never formally designated as a
standard, leaving the status of ERM standards an open question. And despite the first ERMI project’s
successes and favorable press notices, the specifications proved challenging to meet, as evidenced by
some vendors abandoning ERMS development projects that had been announced with some fanfare,
and by reports of slow, difficult, partial, and/or failed implementations by a number of libraries.
Concerns with ERMS began to surface in the form of conference programs with titles and themes like
“E-Resource Management: the Promise and Disappointment” at the ALA annual conference in 2009, and
more recently “Is the Bloom off the ERM Rose? Rethinking and Retooling Electronic Resource
Management Strategies” at the 2011 Electronic Resources & Libraries conference; the extent of some of
the more recent literature on this problem has been summarized by Gustafson-Sundell[15].
During the same period, economic pressures and funding problems led many libraries to refocus on
efficiency while at the same time denying some of the funds needed to acquire and implement ERMS.
That has arguably meant less money available to vendors to finance ERMS development and upgrades,
and led some libraries to develop what they need locally and share it with others on an open source
basis; examples include the CORAL project at the University of Notre Dame and ERMes at the University
of Wisconsin-LaCrosse. The more-encompassing Kuali Open Library Environment project, which will
incorporate ERM functionality, and an emerging focus by OCLC on “web-scale management services”
have also coincided with this reassessment of the ERMS—adding to further questions about the
appropriate role of what was known for years as the “Integrated Library Systems” or ILS, and to the role
of the ERMS within it.
As these developments have been taking place over the past few years, a number of ERM-related
surveys have also been conducted and reported in the literature, at conferences, or less formally.
Results of 12 of these surveys were reported widely enough to be of value to members of the Steering
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Making Good on the Promise of ERM
Committee and possibly others, and are listed in Table 1. While many were somewhat specialized
(focusing, for example, on a particular vendor’s product, a genre such as e-journals, or other special
topics), they provide valuable clues to ERM-related issues considered significant by members of the
community.
Table 1: ERM and related surveys (listed chronologically)
Authors
Survey topic
Conducted
Where Reported or
Published
Flowers (UNC-CH)
Impact of E-Resources on
Organizational Structure
January 2004
North Carolina Serials Conf.,
April 2004
Kriegel (SFPL)
E-journal workflow survey
July 2005
SerialST (July 8, 2005)
Collins (NC State)
ERM survey
May 2006
SerialST (May 24, 2006)
Eshelman (UConn)
Environmental scan of
commercial Electronic
Resource Management
(ERM)
July 2006
Provided to Steering
Committee
Hawthorne & Watson
(Emporia St)
Library Electronic Resource
Management Survey
June 2007
IFLA ERMS Satellite Meeting
(2007)
England & Langendorfer
(OhioLINK)
OhioLINK E-journal workflow
October 2008
ER&L Conference (2009)
Gelfand & Sibert
(UC Irvine)
Survey on Electronic
Resources Management
December 2008 to
January 2009
ER&L Conference (2009)
Aipperspach, Beckett,
Davis, England, Feick &
Steinle
E-journal issues survey
May 2009
Babbit (Montana State)
Electronic Resource
Communication
December 2009
ER&L Conference 2010
Downey
License Term Survey
January 2010
ER&L Conference 2010
Kluesendorf
ERM Systems Usage
Trends
February 2010
Against the Grain, April 2010
Collins & Grogg
ERM Systems
November 2010
Library Journal, March 2011
NASIG 2009 preconference
The recent surveys by Klusendorf[22] and Collins and Grogg[7][8] provide especially useful indications of
librarians’ assessments of ERM systems. On the plus side, and in contrast to some of the more negative
conclusions that might be reached based on some of the market developments noted above, Klusendorf
reported that 55% of the librarians surveyed were satisfied with their ERM systems, as compared to 24%
who were not[22]. ERM systems were generally found to be easy to use, help with collection
development decision-making, reduce duplication of effort, and facilitate workflows[22]. Management of
e-journal packages was the most important function identified, and the second-highest rated ERM
feature or function—indicating a close correspondence between need and functionality.
Yet there is ample evidence of concern. For instance, “94% of all librarians surveyed continue to use
spreadsheet applications…either as their primary e-resource management tool or to supplement their
ERM. [22].” Some librarians reported having let their ERM subscriptions lapse because they found them
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Making Good on the Promise of ERM
not helpful enough and/or too time-consuming to maintain. Particular concerns about ERM functionality
that relate directly to the work undertaken for this report had to do with the “ability to import data
from other systems (17%) and the ability to eliminate managing data in many systems (16%)[22].”
Tellingly, librarians rated the latter ability as second in importance overall (of 13 on the list), but second
to last in ERM performance. Somewhat surprising is the finding that workflow support was ranked only
9th of 13 in importance—the same place it held in the ERM system ratings.
Collins and Groggs’ more recent survey[7][8] had somewhat different aims and relied more heavily on
open-ended questions than did Klusendorf’s, and they reached both contrasting and complementary
conclusions. The sharpest contrast is in their finding that workflow management ranked at the top of
the 15 identified ERM priorities. This is consistent with their identification of workflow management as
the prime focus of development for both Notre Dame’s open source CORAL and ExLibris’ Alma systems,
and with workflow management and internal communication having become popular conference
presentation topics. Other top five priorities that they identified are: license management, statistics
management, administrative information storage, and acquisitions functionality. The sixth
(interoperability across systems), in their words, “may well affect them all.” We think it is highly
significant that so many of these concerns pertain in some way to standards.
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Making Good on the Promise of ERM
3. ERMS and the Current E-Resource Standards Landscape
a.
The NISO ERM Data Standards and Best Practices Review
These market developments, anecdotal evidence from colleagues, and in some cases personal
experience with ERM development and implementations prompted some ERMI 1 and 2 project
participants to begin discussing in 2008 a follow-up project to determine whether the ERMI Data
Dictionary and structure should become the bases for formal ERM data standards.
To assess the need for such a project, NISO organized and facilitated focus group meetings with a range
of stakeholders during the ALA Midwinter conference in January 2009. Many participants reported that
they continued to feel the ERMI data model was still important and the data dictionary plays an
important role in promoting interoperability. However, other topics began to surface. For instance,
some librarians found their ERMS to be under-developed, faulted them for the perceived limited
capacity to import and export data, and expressed concerns over the lack of support for everyday
business activities and functions. Others felt they needed help establishing and refining local workflows
and best practices. The challenge of making complex license documents comprehensible and actionable
for users and staff was another often-expressed concern.
These conversations led to the formation of a steering committee to design and conduct the ERM Data
Standards and Best Practices Review under NISO auspices. As described in the proposal[18] that was
accepted by the NISO Business Information Topic Committee, the group was charged to:
1) Perform a “gap analysis” regarding ERM-related data, standards, and best practices.
2) Begin the analysis with a review of the ERMI Data Dictionary, mapping elements to other
relevant standards projects.
3) Consult with vendors, libraries using ERM systems, and other stakeholders for additional
feedback on data requirements and ERM system implementation and management issues.
Project deliverables were to include:
1) Recommendations on the future of the ERMI Data Dictionary
2) Descriptions of typical challenges libraries face in using currently available ERM systems and
services
3) An inventory and description of gaps in interoperability and best practices
When the Steering Committee began to meet, members held discussions of the current “state of play”
in the ERMS environment and tried to identify lessons learned that would help give direction to its work.
For example, while the ERMI Report was influential and highly successful in many ways, it seemed clear
that vendors were having difficulty building systems to follow such a comprehensive blueprint. In
addition, the environment that ERMS were intended to help manage was obviously prone to rapid
change, an argument in favor of designing for flexibility and agility. And as the group was organizing, the
potent and highly relevant example of the SUSHI project was in many members’ minds. SUSHI showed
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Making Good on the Promise of ERM
that a carefully-delimited problem (streamlining and automating the intake of usage data) could be
quickly and successfully addressed through small-scale development if stakeholders could reach
consensus on a technically practical approach and share the work. Just as significantly, SUSHI
represented a significant advance in interoperability, relied heavily on the existing COUNTER standard,
and then became incorporated into it.
The group also discussed the overall value of standards, and found the excellent November 2009
briefing paper Assessing the Business Case for Standards[9] from the JISC Centre for Educational
Technology and Interoperability Standards (“CETIS”) to be invaluable. In answer to the question “Should
universities and colleges care about standards,” the paper identifies and discusses “seven key roles” for
information standards, including:
1) Reduction of re-keying
2) Reduced maintenance cost and disruption
3) Durability of data
4) Avoidance of supplier lock-in
5) Easier development paths
6) A platform for collaboration
7) Whole system economies
Many who deal with managing e-resources would concur with the paper’s observation that “…almost
no-one cares about how e-mail is exchanged but they do care about the services built on the
assumption of an infrastructure that uses standards,” and that “standards codify the boring, so that the
exciting can happen on top of them.”
As part of its efforts to define the scope of the project, the Steering Committee determined that it would
try to be inclusive in its definitions of standards and best practices. That is, both formally balloted and
accepted standards like MARC 21 and the ONIX for Serials formats and formally designated best or
recommended practices like NISO’s KBART and SERU would be reviewed, while leaving the door open
for identification of “local” best practices.
A starting inventory of the more formally designated standards and best practices, as well as a structure
for organizing and thinking about them, was provided by Steering Committee member Rafal
Kasprowski’s article on Best Practice and Standardization Initiatives for Managing Electronic
Resources[21]. In it he identifies five categories, which are listed below with the primary examples
covered by each:
1) Link Resolvers and Knowledge Bases. Includes Open URL and KBART.
2) The Work, Its Manifestations, and Access Points. Includes DOIs and CrossRef, ISBN-13,
ISSN-L (or linking ISSN), and ISTC (the International Standard Text Code).
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Making Good on the Promise of ERM
3) Integration of Usage and Cost-Related Data. Includes COUNTER and SUSHI, and CORE (the
Cost of Resource Exchange).
4) Coding License Terms and Defining Consensus. Includes ONIX-PL and SERU.
5) Data Exchange Using Institutional Identifiers. Includes I2 (Institutional Identifiers) and the
WorldCat Registry.
b.
ERM-Related Standards, Best Practices, and Related Initiatives
As the committee worked, additional relevant initiatives were identified and added to this list, with the
final inventory shown below as Table 2.
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Making Good on the Promise of ERM
Table 2: ERM-Related Standards, Best Practices, and Related Initiatives
Acronym
Name
Admin Body
Synopsis
Standard
Best
Practice
For More Information
1. Link Resolvers and Knowledge Bases
1.1 Open URL
Open Uniform Resource
Locator (URL)
OCLC
(under NISO)
A URL that includes a context-sensitive
description of a referenced resource and a
service request.
1.2 KBART
Knowledge Bases and
Related Tools
NISO/UKSG
Aimed at effecting smoother interaction
between members of the knowledge base
supply chain.
1.3 IOTA
Improving OpenURLs
Through Analytics
NISO
Initiative to investigate the feasibility of
creating industry-wide, transparent and
scalable metrics for evaluating and
comparing the quality of OpenURL
implementations across content providers.
x
http://www.oclc.org/research/activities/openurl
x
http://www.niso.org/workrooms/kbart
http://www.niso.org/workrooms/openurlquality
http://openurlquality.niso.org
2. The Work, Its Manifestations, and Access Points
2.1 DOI
®
Digital Object Identifier
System
Intl DOI
Foundation
System for persistent identification of content
on digital networks.
x
http://www.doi.org/
2.2 MARC 21
Machine Readable
Catalog
Library of
Congress
Standards for representation and
communication of bibliographic and related
information in machine-readable form.
x
http://www.loc.gov/marc/
2.3 ONIX for
Serials
ONline Information
eXchange for Serials
EDItEUR
A family of XML formats for communicating
information about serial products and
subscription information.
x
http://www.editeur.org/17/ONIX-for-Serials/
2.3.1 SOH
ONIX Serials Online
Holdings
EDItEUR
A format for communicating serials holdings
or coverage information.
x
http://www.editeur.org/120/SOH/
2.3.2 SPS
ONIX Serials Products
and Subscriptions
EDItEUR
A format for communicating information
about serial subscription products.
x
http://www.editeur.org/121/SPS/
2.3.3 SRN
ONIX Serials Release
Notification
EDItEUR
A format for communicating information
about the publication or availability of serials
releases.
x
http://www.editeur.org/122/SRN
2.4 ONIX for
Books
ONIX for Books
EDItEUR
An XML format for representing and
communicating book industry product
information in electronic form.
x
http://www.editeur.org/83/Overview/
2.5 PIE-J
Presentation and
Identification of E-journals
NISO
Guidance in the areas of e-journal title
presentation and bibliographic history,
accurate use of ISSN, and citation practice.
2.6 TRANSFER
Transfer Code of Practice
UKSG
Guidelines for transfer of journals from
publisher to publisher ensure that journal
content remains easily accessible.
10
Forthcoming
x
http://www.niso.org/workrooms/piej
http://www.uksg.org/transfer
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
Acronym
Name
Admin Body
Synopsis
Standard
Best
Practice
For More Information
2.7 ISTC
International Standard
Text Code
Intl ISTC
Agency
A numbering system to enable unique
identification of textual works.
x
http://www.istc-international.org
2.8 ISBN
International Standard
Book Number
Intl ISBN
Agency
Unique product identifier for ordering, listing,
sales records, and stock control of
monographic publications.
x
http://www.isbn-international.org/
2.9 ISSN-L
Linking ISSN
ISSN Int’l
Centre
An ISSN that groups different media versions
of a continuing resource.
x
http://www.issn.org/2-22637-What-is-an-ISSNL.php
3. Integration of Usage and Cost-Related Data
3.1 CORE
Cost of Resource
Exchange
3.2 COUNTER
Counting Online Usage of
Networked Electronic
Resources
3.3 SUSHI
Standardized Usage
Harvesting Initiative
NISO
Facilitates transfer of cost and related
financial information from an ILS to an
ERMS.
COUNTER
Online Metrics
Sets standards to facilitate consistent
recording and reporting of online usage
statistics.
x
http://www.projectcounter.org/
Defines an automated request and response
model for the harvesting of e-resource usage
statistics.
x
http://www.niso.org/workrooms/sushi
NISO
x
http://www.niso.org/workrooms/core
4. Coding License Terms and Defining Consensus
ONIX for Licensing Terms
EDItEUR
Family of messaging formats for
communication of rights information.
4.1.1 ONIXPL
ONIX for Publications
Licenses
EDItEUR
XML formats for communication of license
terms under which libraries and other
institutions use digital resources.
x
http://www.editeur.org/21/ONIX-PL/
4.1.2 ONIX
for
RROs
ONIX for Reproduction
Rights Organizations
EDItEUR
XML formats for facilitating communication
by collective management organizations and
the publishers and authors with whom they
work.
x
http://www.editeur.org/23/ONIX-for-RROs/
NISO
Set of statements of common
understandings for subscribing to Electronic
Resources.
4.1 OLT
4.2 SERU
Shared Electronic
Resource Understanding
11
http://www.editeur.org/85/Overview/
x
http://www.niso.org/workrooms/seru
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
Acronym
Name
Admin Body
Synopsis
Standard
Best
Practice
For More Information
5. Data Exchange Using Institutional Identifiers
2
5.1 I
Institutional Identifiers
NISO
Provides guidelines for using the
International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI)
as an institutional identifier for library and
publishing environments.
OCLC
Web-based directory for libraries and library
consortia to use as an authoritative single
source for information that defines
institutional identity, services, relationships,
contacts and other key data often shared
with third parties.
Forthcoming
http://www.niso.org/workrooms/i2
5.2 WorldCat
Registry
WorldCat Registry
5.3 Shibboleth
Shibboleth System
Internet2
Middleware
Initiative
A standards-based, open source software
package for web single sign-on across or
within organizational boundaries.
x
http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/
5.4 vCard
vCard
(originally Versit Card)
Internet Mail
Consortium
Schema for electronic business cards.
x
http://www.imc.org/pdi/vcardoverview.html
®
®
12
http://www.worldcat.org/registry/Institutions
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
c.
Discussion and Mapping of Standards, Best Practices, and Related Initiatives
As discussion progressed, some of the initiatives in Table 2 were set aside as too new or out of scope to
warrant intensive analysis, leaving the 18 listed in Appendix A for careful review. As indicated in the
appendix, data elements and values for 14 of these were “mapped” to the ERMI Data Dictionary by
Steering Committee members using this general strategy:
1) Work from related standards and best practices.
2) Determine data element correspondence and overlap.
3) Compare their meanings and typical uses.
4) Determine whether the ERMI Data Dictionary (or more generally, an expanded, “best of
breed” ERM data dictionary) should address the topic or area represented by the standard,
or if it (with possible revisions) is sufficient to address ERM needs.
Based on their interest in and familiarity with the different standards and best practices, Steering
Committee members were asked to analyze them as the limits of their knowledge and available time
permitted, compare them to the ERMI Data Dictionary, and answer the following questions:
1) Which elements in the standard correspond to elements in the ERMI Data Dictionary?
a)
Is the meaning of the element identical or partial? (“Partial” indicates differences in the
meaning of the data element that limit interoperability.)
b) If partial, how should the differences be resolved?
(i) Change definition of ERMI element.
(ii) Change definition of standard element.
(iii) Retain differences where meanings are similar but both are valid.
2) Which elements in the standard are not covered by the ERMI Data Dictionary and which
ERMI elements are not covered by the standard for the functional area in question?
a) For those elements, which should be incorporated in the other (i.e., in ERMI or in the
relevant standard, as appropriate)?
3) What gap areas exist, if any, in either ERMI or the relevant standard from the perspective of
e-resource management? That is, from your review, can you identify specific issues that
remain unaddressed?
4) Based on your analysis, is there a need for an ERMI Data Dictionary to address this area, or
is the relevant standard (including any suggestions for revision) sufficient to address library
e-resource management needs?
Steering Committee members made use of a common spreadsheet “template” to generate the resulting
mapping documents[25]. In the case of ONIX-PL, the mapping was based heavily on the extensive twoway (ONIX-PL to ERMI[12] and ERMI to ONIX-PL[13]) mapping work that had been conducted for EDItEUR
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Making Good on the Promise of ERM
in 2007; otherwise the analyses are the work of Steering Committee members. During the mapping
work, efforts were made to focus on improvements to ERMS functioning that changes to the ERMI Data
Dictionary might enable, and relevant comments are included in the “Findings” sections below,
following descriptions of each standard or best practice. Briefer comments on some of the initiatives not
chosen for full “mapping” analysis are provided later in the report.
1. Link resolvers and knowledge bases. In the article that set out the five categories used by the
Steering Committee as its framework for analysis, Kasprowski[21] notes that “access to content is central
to electronic resource management” and that link resolvers and knowledge bases serve distinct but
complementary functions in connecting users with the content via linking processes. In order to lead the
user from a citation source to the full text target, the link resolver relies on the accuracy of the data in
the library’s holdings knowledge base. The user end of this knowledge base is the library’s A-Z list or
e-journal portal. Two initiatives are currently underway to study problems with knowledge base
accuracy and OpenURL linking. KBART is investigating how exchanges of metadata between content
providers, knowledge base vendors, and libraries can be optimized to improve the accuracy of the
holdings in libraries’ knowledge bases. IOTA seeks to identify where OpenURL links break down in order
to enable content providers to improve the quality of their related metadata.
1.1 OpenURL. Formally known as ANSI/NISO Z39.88, The OpenURL Framework for ContextSensitive Services, this has been described as “one of the most heavily used NISO standards” by
Norman and Young[27], who went on to say that “OpenURL linking has become commonplace in
electronic information delivery.” As described on the NISO website, “the OpenURL Framework
Standard defines an architecture for creating OpenURL Framework Applications. An OpenURL
Framework Application is a networked service environment, in which packages of information are
transported over a network. These packages have a description of a referenced resource at their
core, and they are transported with the intent of obtaining context-sensitive services pertaining to
the referenced resource.” OCLC serves as the maintenance agency for this standard, which includes
maintenance of the OpenURL Registry. In the library environment, the OpenURL resolver, which
oversees the linking in the OpenURL service, checks the metadata of a citation from an abstracting
and indexing resource against the library’s knowledge base of holdings and based on these holdings
retrieves the appropriate copy for that citation from another resource that has the desired full text.
Findings. OpenURL has become so ubiquitous within the marketplace that it is
considered a “given,” with no further analysis or recommendations needed.
1.2 KBART. The Knowledge Bases and Related Tools (KBART) project published a best practice
(NISO RP-9-2010, KBART: Knowledge Bases and Related Tools) in January 2010, and Phase II is
currently underway to build on it. A joint initiative of UKSG and NISO, KBART explored data
problems within the OpenURL supply chain. When all is working well, link resolvers help library
users connect to electronic resources provided by their respective institutions. The data that drives
such a tool is stored in a knowledge base. The quality of a knowledge base depends heavily on data
that content providers (publishers, aggregators, etc.) send to the knowledge base developer, and
errors in this data often flow into the knowledge base. Because there is no standard format for
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Making Good on the Promise of ERM
such data, knowledge base developers must expend much effort converting title lists from different
providers to a single format, which may introduce additional errors or make error-checking
difficult. For ERM, KBART offers improvements in OpenURL linking and improvements in the
accuracy and timeliness of metadata in ERM systems.
Findings. With only 16 data elements identified, KBART had among the fewest elements
of the standards and best practices that were mapped. Eight (half) of the elements
mapped to an ERMI counterpart: two (print-identifier and online-identifier) mapped
identically, and six (title_url, first_author, title_id, embargo_info, coverage_depth, and
coverage_notes) mapped partially. Overall, there seems to be significant potential
benefit to adopting the KBART elements in preference to ERMI’s. For example, six of the
elements not available in ERMI (first and last date, first and last volume, and first and
last issue online) and two that mapped partially (embargo_info and coverage_depth)
would provide improved levels of granularity. Consequently the Steering Committee
fully endorses the KBART Recommended Best Practice, while noting that KBART’s
title_id element might differ from and need to be compared and reconciled with similar
elements elsewhere, such as the “Title identifier” included in Project TRANSFER
(discussed below).
1.3 IOTA. The IOTA (Improving OpenURLs Through Analytics) initiative builds on a 2009 Cornell
University project led by Adam Chandler, which investigated OpenURL link failures. IOTA was
formed by NISO in January 2010 to develop a community-recognized index for measuring the
quality of source OpenURL links generated by content providers. Too often OpenURL links do not
work as expected, and although the OpenURL standard was introduced a decade ago, no
systematic method has been implemented to benchmark these links.
The system proposed by IOTA would accept OpenURLs and return scores based on a set of
evaluation metrics. This would allow OpenURL providers to see precisely where their links are
weakest, letting them target metadata improvement efforts in the most cost-effective manner. As
an initial step towards this scoring system, IOTA makes use of log files from various institutions and
vendors to analyze element frequencies and patterns contained within OpenURL strings. The
reports created from the log file analysis inform OpenURL providers about where to make
improvements to their OpenURLs so that the maximum number of OpenURL requests resolve to a
correct record. IOTA is supported by the KBART initiative in its Phase I Recommended Practice
Report and both groups are investigating the possibility of a joint effort to study the causes of
failures in target OpenURLs, which couple link resolvers to content providers.
Findings. IOTA is a welcome effort that should significantly help users navigate to the
information resources they need with minimal delay and confusion. However, since its
contributions seem likely to occur outside the ERMS context (such as by improving the
user experience and saving staff time), no detailed analysis or mapping work was
undertaken.
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Making Good on the Promise of ERM
2. The work, manifestations, and access points. This category consists of standards and best practices
aimed at clearly and unambiguously identifying articles or other entities of interest. As will be clear from
some of the discussion below, there is significant overlap between some members of this group
(especially DOI) and the previous category (Link resolvers and knowledge bases), and clearer, less
ambiguous descriptive information and access points may offer improvements to linking.
2.1 Digital Object Identifier (DOI®) System. The DOI® System was developed and is overseen by
the International DOI Foundation (IDF). Its purpose is to persistently identify digital objects across
the Internet. NISO published the DOI syntax as a standard (ANSI/NISO Z39.84, Syntax for the Digital
Object Identifier) in 2000. The International Standards Organization approved the entire System as
a standard in 2010 and is in the process of formally publishing the standard (ISO 26324, Information
and documentation – Digital object identifier system). The System incorporates an identifier syntax,
a resolution component, appropriate metadata, and a formal structure to support the standard. Its
working principles, established in 2000, are contained in the DOI Handbook (currently undergoing a
revision), and the metadata principles underpinning it are contained in the indecs Data Dictionary
(iDD). Various registration agencies, such as CrossRef, work with publishers to provide services
based on the DOI System that include citation linking. These agencies work alongside, but
separately from, the IDF.
An unexpected discovery related to the System but with possibly broader implications came via an
e-mail message from Dr. Norman Paskin, the Managing Agent of the IDF, to Steering Committee
member Angela Riggio. In it he noted that all DOI terms formerly contained in the iDD have been
mapped “into the central registry of the Vocabulary Mapping Framework.” According to its
website[34], “VMF is a downloadable tool, originally developed with funding from the Joint
Information Services Committee (JISC) and currently administered by the International DOI
Foundation (IDF), to support interoperability across communities by providing extensive and
authoritative mapping of vocabularies from content metadata standards and proprietary schemes.”
In its alpha release, the VMF matrix has mapped terms from such vocabularies as MARC 21,
MPEG21, Dublin Core, ONIX, LOM (Learning Object Metadata), CDWA (Categories for the
Description of Works of Art), and RDA (Resource Description and Access). However, it is only
readable by machine or by using the Protégé ontology editor.
Findings. Since the indecs Data Dictionary has been incorporated into the VMF, which is
readable only via machine or the Protégé ontology editor, its terms were not mapped to
the ERMI Data Dictionary. However, the VMF may merit further investigation by some of
the oversight bodies of the vocabularies examined in this analysis.
2.2 MARC 21. MARC (MAchine Readable Cataloging) 21 standards provide the systematic
capability of reading and transmitting bibliographic data and serve as the foundation of the online
library catalog. The MARC standards for Bibliographic, Authority, and Holdings data are developed
and maintained by the Library of Congress and the Library and Archives Canada.
16
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
Findings. The DLF ERMI Steering Committee envisioned an interoperable ERM system: a
world in which pertinent descriptive metadata would be “inherited” from the catalog
record/catalog client, as would other data be inherited from relevant ILS modules.
Current ERMS rely on basic descriptive metadata to properly identify an electronic
resource and distinguish it from other electronic products. The MARC 21 Bibliographic
Standard supplies the structure for a robust description, defining hundreds of data fields
and subfields. The DLF ERMI dictionary maps identically with most key MARC 21
descriptive fields and/or subfields (i.e., title, system control number, main entry fields,
subjects, etc.).
Historically, tracking online journal content when a title changes publishers, providers or
platforms has proven challenging in the ERMS environment, although it should be noted
that the Transfer Code of Practice initiative, discussed below, is responding to this
challenge by encouraging consistency in communication and data sharing between
commercial publishing and library communities. Traditionally, MARC 21 has provided
fields which can capture journal title changes and changes in publishers. The
information, which perhaps exceeds the boundaries of the MARC format, are those
associated with the dropping and adding of resources from one online provider,
platform, or aggregator to another—in other words, tracking the life of a resource as it
moves from place to place.
Commercial ERM systems, driven by a knowledgebase that provides basic information
about the identity and location of an online resource, do not track the dropping and
adding of titles from one provider to another. Typically, essential information about the
history of a resource is deleted (along with the record of that resource), when the
knowledgebase provider is informed of a title being added or dropped from its
database. This information is subsequently lost unless the library keeps that information
in a different location (spreadsheet, database, etc.). In addition, ERMS do not track
related information regarding previous and subsequent titles—data which is effectively
tracked in MARC.
It is strongly recommended that ERMS should incorporate and make better use of
certain MARC-related information—especially Electronic Resource Title Continues
(MARC 780); Electronic Resource Title Continued By (MARC 785); Main Entry Uniform
Title (MARC 130); and Uniform Title (MARC 240)—in order to preserve essential
historical information about a resource, and to ensure that libraries who have carefully
negotiated with publishers and providers for perpetual access rights can actually
maintain access once a resource has moved to a new online location. Similarly, the
ERMS should maintain a record of the history of a resource within the knowledgebase,
and refrain from deleting that information when it is no longer current.
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Making Good on the Promise of ERM
2.3 ONIX for Serials. According to the EDItEUR website, “ONIX for Serials is a family of XML
formats for communicating information about serial products and subscription information, using
the design principles and many of the elements defined in ONIX for Books.” A joint undertaking of
EDItEUR and NISO, the three sets of application messages described and discussed below (Serials
Online Holdings, Serials Products and Subscriptions, and Serials Release Notification) “have been or
are being defined and piloted, each supported by an outline specification, XML schema, and full
HTML documentation.”
In reviewing these formats and comparing the relevant data elements to parallel ERMI data
elements, differences between the DLF ERMI elements and ONIX message formats and structure
(referred to as “ontological differences” in the mapping spreadsheets made available in connection
with this report) often made direct 1-to-1 mapping difficult or unclear. For example, where the
ERMI Data Dictionary may list a number of data elements and suggest appropriate values, similar
elements within the ONIX for Serials formats may appear grouped as possible values under moreencompassing data elements, such as Series Identifier, Title, or Work Identifier “type” codes. And
since the three ONIX for Serials formats share some elements, comments on their mapping
spreadsheets contain some unavoidable duplication.
2.3.1 SOH. The Serials Online Holdings messages are used for communicating information about
the holdings or coverage of online serial resources from a party that holds or supplies the resources
to a party that needs this information in its systems. The messages include details of serial versions,
formats available, hosted collections in which the serial versions are found, and coverage
information for each serial version. SOH coverage information includes the extent of coverage of
each resource (date ranges or volume/issue ranges or both) along with details of any applicable
embargo.
Findings. None of the 26 data elements identified in the SOH message format mapped
identically to elements defined in the DLF ERMI document, but fourteen (just over half)
mapped on a partial basis. In at least three of these cases (Epublication format code,
Publishing role code, and Embargo type/count back unit), the ONIX values provide
greater specificity and control. For example, ONIX supported values for the Epublication
format code include: HTML, PDF, XML, SGML, ASCII, LaTEX, and TEX, whereas the best
corollary ERMI element would simply be “format.” The ONIX Date format, which does
not map to an ERMI data element, supports a range of values and could prove useful.
2.3.2 SPS. The Serials Products and Subscriptions (SPS) format defines a family of messages used
for transmitting information about serial subscription products, with or without price information,
and with or without subscription information relating to a particular subscriber.
Findings. As is the case with SOH, none of the data elements in this format were
identical maps to an ERMI data element. Just over half (18) of the 33 data elements
mapped on a partial basis, with the remainder not mapping to any ERMI elements. Of
the elements mapping partially, those seeming to provide the most significant
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Making Good on the Promise of ERM
improvements over ERMI data elements are Product form code, Epublication format
code, Work identifier type code, Publishing role code, Embargo type/count back unit,
Price component type, Serial price qualifier type, and Serial price qualifier type. And as
noted in the above discussion of SOH data elements, the ONIX Date format, which does
not map to an ERMI data element, supports a range of values and could prove useful.
2.3.3 SRN. The Serials Release Notification (SRN) format defines a family of messages designed to
support information exchanges about the planned or confirmed publication or electronic
availability of one or more serial releases.
Findings. In this case, only 23 (just under half) of the 50 data elements identified in this
format mapped to elements defined in the DLF ERMI document; these again were
“partial” maps. In the majority of those cases, some of which were already identified in
the discussions of SOH and SPS, we believe there to be significant advantage in making
use of the ONIX elements and values, as well as in a few other cases where there was
not a match—including the afore-mentioned Embargo type/count back unit, as well as
Extent type code and Extent unit code. However, there are a number of other ONIX
elements for which an ERM function or application was not immediately apparent.
It was concluded that the ONIX for Serials message formats generally support much more granular
value definitions for specific elements, and that that greater granularity could prove useful in the
ERM environment. In some cases, the ONIX values could be expanded to include DLF ERMI defined
data elements to better support a wider range of values for the term, though in others the ONIX for
Serials elements and values did not map to ERMI elements or seem to offer value for ERM
applications. Nevertheless, the flexible structure of the ONIX for Serials formats seems better
designed to accommodate the need for new data elements and values over the long term, thus
providing a relatively stable and predictable basis for software development within a changing
market and technological environment.
2.6 TRANSFER. The Transfer Code of Practice responds to the expressed needs of the scholarly
journal community for consistent guidelines to help publishers ensure that journal content remains
easily accessible by librarians and users when there is a transfer between parties, and to ensure
that the transfer process occurs with minimum disruption. When journals change ownership, many
critical issues can arise, such as continuity of access during a transfer and whether perpetual
ongoing access to archives is retained in journal sale agreements. This has resulted in frustration
for end users and librarians as key e-journals became temporarily or even permanently unavailable
despite license terms. Publishers who have endorsed the Transfer Code of Practice agree to best
practice guidelines and responsibilities that ensure journal content remains easily accessible in the
event of a change of ownership. When a publisher endorses Transfer, libraries and end users
benefit with minimal disruption in service. For electronic resources management, tracking and
managing the movement of titles becomes less problematic.
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Making Good on the Promise of ERM
Findings. The majority (58%) of the 198 data elements identified in this message format
did not map to elements defined in the DLF ERMI document. Another 30% were partial
maps to ERMI. Partially mapped elements included address, which had a deeper
granularity in Transfer than in ERMI. Most of the non-corresponding elements involved
data of interest only to the parties (publishers) involved in the process of transferring
property (i.e. titles). These elements included payment information, revenue earning
method, sales territory, quantity of print copies and files remaining on the platform.
Transfer elements that either support a more granular definition of value or are nonexistent in ERMI, could be utilized in some form in ERMI included archiving arrangement
for back-file content, COUNTER compliancy, online subscription type, re-registration
activation code, URL for re-registration, and URL for back-file content archive. NISO ERM
fully endorses the Transfer Code of Practice.
3. Integration of usage and cost-related data. Librarians have a long-standing interest in having
comparable usage statistics, in facilitating or automating the process of obtaining them, and in
connecting this information with cost or expenditure information for assessment purposes. The
initiatives described below are all intended to address these issues in one way or another.
3.1 CORE (Cost Of Resource Exchange). The CORE recommended practice (NISO RP-10-2010, Cost
of Resource Exchange (CORE) Protocol) is designed to facilitate the transfer of cost and related
financial information from an Integrated Library System (ILS) Acquisitions module (the source) to an
Electronic Resource Management System (ERMS) (the requestor). The population of ERMS financial
data from the ILS Acquisitions system makes cost-per-click and other cost-related reports in the
ERMS all the more possible. Note that the CORE recommended practice should not be seen as
limited to ILS to ERMS data exchange; any two business applications could make use of this format
for simple and efficient data exchange.
Findings. Approximately half of the 37 data elements identified in this message format
did not map to ERMI elements. Additionally, NISO CORE relies on communication and
“agreements” between trading partners that could result in multiple definitions of a
single element when implemented between Party 1 and Party 2 versus Party 1 and Party
3. An example would be the NISO CORE element ProductID. This is an identifier unique
to each system between the parties. It could be a subscription agent identifier in the
agent’s back office system, which may or may not appear or be tracked in the ILS/LMS
or in a vendor ERM system. The general consensus was that NISO CORE does include
many valuable data elements that could be incorporated into DLF ERMI but the
definitions in NISO CORE and other NISO standards could benefit from a more
structured definition of common data elements across the NISO standards.
3.2 COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources). Beginning in March
2002, COUNTER set standards as an international initiative to serve library, publishers, and
intermediaries to efficiently record and report usage data of online electronic resources.
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Making Good on the Promise of ERM
Starting first with online journals and databases, COUNTER set up a method of compliance through
formatted reports of usage statistics. Beyond implementing the standards of usage reports,
COUNTER cooperates with a number of organizations in usage-related research and services. For
example, COUNTER worked with JISC (the UK Joint Information Systems Committee) in 2006 to
detail the effects of publisher platforms on usage and develop new metrics. COUNTER initially
published two different codes: one for journals and databases (release 3, August 2008) and one for
books and reference works (release 1, March 2006). In October 2011, COUNTER issued a draft
Release 4 Code of Practice that combined and updated the two separate standards.
Findings. Based on its internationalization and industry-wide commitment to format
statistics within COUNTER, it is appropriate for the ERMI data model to accept COUNTER
fully within its recommended best practices.
3.3 SUSHI. The Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) Protocol standard
(ANSI/NISO Z39.93) defines a request and response model for the automated harvesting of usage
statistics of electronic resources through a web services framework. Its intention is to replace
manual downloading and collecting of usage statistics by libraries. SUSHI compliance is required for
COUNTER-formatted usage statistics beginning with COUNTER Release 3. SUSHI can also be used to
transmit non-COUNTER reports that meet the specified retrieval requirements set by SUSHI.
Findings. Because it is a data transmission protocol, it is not necessary to map SUSHI to
an ERMI data model, as the protocol simply defines the requirements of system
request/response messages rather than the data transmitted. To sustain the operability
between SUSHI and COUNTER, NISO maintains the COUNTER XML report schema so
SUSHI and COUNTER schemas remain in sync.
4. Coding license terms and defining consensus. The two initiatives considered here are aimed at
helping to deal with the prevalence of licenses and licensing within the digital and ERM environments,
which grew out of perceived needs by information creators and providers for protections not offered
under the fair use provisions of copyright law. In Kasprowski’s words, “reviewing and negotiating
licensing terms is a time-consuming process…involving significant administrative costs for both content
providers and librarians[21].”
4.1. ONIX-PL. ONIX for Publications Licenses is a member of the ONIX for Licensing Terms family
developed and maintained by EDItEUR. As described on its website, ONIX for Licensing Terms (OLT)
is “the generic name for the most recent additions to the ONIX family. Built on a consistent
underlying model of rights and usages, OLT formats are specialized to the needs of different user
groups and applications.” As one of those formats, ONIX-PL is “specialized to handle the licenses
under which libraries and other institutions use digital resources, particularly but by no means
exclusively electronic journals.” It is further described there as “…an XML format for the
communication of license terms for digital publications in a structured and substantially encoded
form, designed to serve the interests of all parties in the licensing chain.” ONIX-PL development has
been ongoing for a number of years and has resulted in the publication of a number of documents,
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Making Good on the Promise of ERM
including the ONIX-PL format specification, version 1.0, published in November 2008, and the ONIXPL Dictionary, of which issue 3 was released in January 2011. In 2009, an ONIX-PL editor named
OPLE was made freely available for local installation and use.
While the bulk of the work to develop and refine ONIX-PL has been undertaken by or on behalf of
EDItEUR, as noted on the website there has been a long history of collaborative funding and other
support work by various other groups, including the Digital Library Federation and NISO in the U.S.
and the Publishers Licensing Society (PLS) and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in
the UK. Discussions of the relationships between ONIX-PL and the approach to license expression
taken by the DLF’s ERMI group date at least to October 2004, when a stakeholder meeting was held
in conjunction with the DLF Fall Forum.
In 2005, a License Expression Working Group with very wide representation was formed jointly by
EDItEUR, NISO, the DLF, and the Publishers Licensing Society. The group met primarily via
conference call, but in December 2006 co-chairs Nathan Robertson and Alicia Wise organized an
ERMI/ONIX “Mapping Meeting” that was followed the next day by a slightly larger ONIX-PL
Implementation Workshop. Among the outcomes from these meetings was consensus on the need
to create both “ERMI to ONIX-PL” and “ONIX-PL to ERMI” mappings. EDItEUR and the DLF agreed to
co-fund this work, and in July 2007 EDItEUR released draft 2 of the ONIX-PL ERMI Encoding
Format[13], which included a mapping of ERMI to ONIX-PL, followed in November by draft 2 of
Mapping ONIX-PL to ERMI[12]. Rather than recreate this extensive work, the Steering Committee
chose to rely on these documents for its review—but we also take note of a range of subsequent
developments, some of which are described below.
In June 2008 the License Expression Working Group was disbanded and replaced by the NISO- and
EDItEUR-sponsored ONIX-PL Working Group. That September, NISO sponsored a webinar titled
ONIX-PL: Simplifying License Expression[35] that featured discussions of a planned collaboration
between Serials Solutions and the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC) to
implement ONIX-PL as part of a consortial ERM. In December 2009, NISO offered ONIX for
Publication Licenses: Adding Structure to Legalese[4], for which SCELC’s Rick Burke and EDItEUR’s
Mark Bide were speakers. Adding to the favorable exposure for ONIX-PL was a 2010 ER&L
conference presentation by Castro and Chen[5] that highlighted some of its potential advantages
over ERMI. In June 2010, NISO disbanded the ONIX-PL Working Group because it had achieved its
goals.
Since then, ONIX-PL uptake in the U.S. seems to have stalled, and vendor development largely
ground to a halt. For example, Serials Solutions does not appear to be actively pursuing the
development project showcased in the September 2008 NISO webinar. Similarly, Steering
Committee members have not been able to identify active development plans by other vendors.
Interestingly, OCLC decided to use neither ONIX-PL nor ERMI data elements and values to harvest
information about member libraries’ ILL license terms for specific vendors as part of its recent
initial Web Scale Management service rollout. However, Andrew Pace suggested during Q & A
following a presentation on the topic at the ALCTS/LITA ERM Interest Group Meeting at ALA in June
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Making Good on the Promise of ERM
2011 that ONIX-PL may figure in its development plans for the service—which might prompt a
resurgence of interest.
The situation in the UK and Canada appears to be substantially different. For example, during
conversations with members of the Steering Group, EDItEUR’s Mark Bide pointed to high demand
for UKSG-sponsored workshops on ONIX-PL, and stressed his organization’s ongoing commitment
to its support and further development. In June 2009, the final report for the RELI project[30] at
Loughborough University described having made use of ONIX-PL in its successful demonstrator
system for associating license terms with specific e-resources using a license registry—though that
project is now considered complete and not being actively pursued further. The report also
encouraged “implementation and support of ONIX-PL by everyone in the supply chain,” and urged
that “librarians put pressure on publishers to provide their licences in ONIX-PL format as well as in
print.” More recently, Steering Committee members learned that JISC had completed a project to
encode some 80 of its licenses in ONIX-PL and had an operational system that enables side by side
comparison of licenses[20] and performs other functions. It was also learned that the Ontario
Council of University Libraries (OCUL) had encoded roughly 30 of its licenses using ONIX-PL.
Findings. It seems appropriate to begin with a brief comparison of the manner in which
the ERMI Report dealt with license expression and encoding, and how that is
accomplished in ONIX-PL. The ERMI data structure includes a Terms Defined entity that
includes a large number of elements, including indicators for presence or absence of
particular clauses or content, such as Fair Use or an Interlibrary Loan recordkeeping
requirement. Many of the terms judged likely to be of most use and value to libraries
were put together in a Terms of Use group, and a standard set of values was identified
for them, including Permitted (explicit), Permitted (interpreted), Prohibited (explicit),
Prohibited (interpreted), Silent (uninterpreted), and Not Applicable. In addition, a
number of free-form notes fields offering substantial flexibility are provided.
Partly because it seemed unlikely that many libraries would need or choose to track
their licenses as completely as they could using the ERMI framework, a “quick fix”
subset of the elements aimed at summarizing the essential points for library practice
was identified in Appendix F of the ERMI report. Even so, the extent to which libraries
using ERMI-based systems have analyzed and encoded their licenses either completely
or in a more limited manner is unknown, but participants in the ERMI 2 “License
Mapping” workshops found the process to be quite challenging even for relatively
simple licenses, and anecdotal evidence suggests that few libraries have undertaken
such a project.
ONIX-PL provides a similarly-encompassing framework based on a careful and detailed
analysis, with many similarities to the ontological structure using value “qualifiers” that
are evident in the ONIX for Serials formats. In addition, the “ONIX to ERMI” mapping
work mentioned earlier resulted in identification of 15 usage and 26 general terms
having no ERMI equivalent—thus suggesting to the Steering Committee that it offers a
23
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
more comprehensive framework. Based on conversations with Mark Bide and David
Martin, ONIX-PL “text” fields also offer some of the same flexibility offered by ERMI
notes fields. Based on its comprehensiveness and careful, extensible design, it seems to
offer a more robust basis for the long-term than does ERMI.
Nevertheless, as noted above, uptake and implementation of ONIX-PL has been fairly
limited due to what was accurately described in the RELI project final report as a
“chicken and egg” problem characterized by a lack of consensus among the key players
(libraries, publishers, and ILS and serials service vendors) that it truly represents the best
way forward, and willingness to invest the time and other resources needed to
overcome inertia.
One publisher’s perspective on this situation was provided by Springer’s Bob Boissy
during Q & A following a NASIG 2011 presentation on the status of the NISO ERM Data
Standards project by Steering Committee member Bob McQuillan. He acknowledged
that the ONIX-PL encoding process requires staff resources that many
publishers/aggregators do not currently have, and noted that using the current OPLE
editing tool can be complex. However, Swets’ Christine Stamison added that feedback
from their customer base does indicate there is interest among libraries in having access
to license expression data-related services.
Although, as noted earlier, some librarians have advocated for a move from the ERMI
framework to ONIX-PL, developers for recent library-based initiatives like CORAL and
Kuali OLE have found it lacking in various ways. In the case of CORAL, ONIX-PL was found
to be overwhelming in scope and complexity, and well beyond their needs. While in
general agreement, early Kuali OLE analysis indicated that, despite its complexity and
apparent comprehensiveness, it still did not address some license management and
encoding needs. Members of the Steering Committee generally concur with these
assessments and suggest that NISO organize focused stakeholder discussions on a
possible “third way” that draws on ONIX-PL work already done but more directly helps
libraries manage the most important information that their licenses contain.
4.2 SERU. Launched in 2007 and sponsored by NISO, SERU (NISO RP-7-2008, SERU: A Shared
Electronic Resource Understanding) is a statement that describes common understandings related
to e-resource subscriptions. SERU was and is meant to be widely applicable, though as this report
was being finalized, it was learned that the SERU Standing Committee is working on expanding
SERU’s scope to address issues of special relevance to e-books, such as perpetual access and
numbers of pages that can be downloaded or printed. Libraries and publishers that utilize SERU
elect to forego a license by referencing these understandings. For e-resource specialists, SERU
provides the promise of streamlining the acquisition and licensing of electronic resources, thereby
providing lower overhead and quicker access for the end user.
24
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
Findings. To some extent, SERU was a challenge to map because it is meant to be
somewhat ambiguous. As a consequence, some libraries making use of it may find it
necessary or advisable to decide how they will interpret it in practical terms, and how to
describe or encode that understanding—especially for staff. And unlike other standards
and best practices, SERU intentionally did not produce a list of data elements. Of the
four data elements identified in the SERU Recommended Practice document, only one
term (Subscriber) is clearly defined, while the three others are defined more loosely.
Two of these (Authorized User Population and Educational Institution) were partial maps
to ERMI while the final element (Public libraries and other cultural memory institutions)
did not correspond to an ERMI element. In an effort to identify possible additional data
elements, the SERU statement was examined and yielded an additional 33 elements. Of
these, ten mapped identically and fourteen partially. Three of these elements (Content
Additional to Subscription, Trusted Third Party, and Third Party Archive) could be
valuable additions to an expanded ERM data dictionary.
NISO ERM fully endorses the SERU Recommended Practice and encourages its wide
adoption, based on its considerable potential for simplifying the license negotiation
process for all parties, for which there is already substantial evidence. The extent to
which it can and will be used instead of formal agreements where large sums of money
and content are involved remains an open question; though its impact even in those
cases can be maximized by paying attention to and continuing to address issues specific
to emerging genres like e-books over time.
5. Data exchange using institutional identifiers. Another set of longstanding problems shared by
information providers and libraries within the ERM environment relates to readily identifying the parties
involved and associating contact, demographic, IP range, and other administrative information with
them.
5.1 I2 (Institutional Identifier). NISO’s Institutional Identifier (I2) project supports the exchange of
information within the information supply chain, which includes publishers, vendors, consortia, and
libraries. I2 was looking to develop a robust, scalable, and interoperable standard that uniquely
identifies institutions in the journal supply chain. Concurrent with their work, an ISO working group
completed development of the International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI) (ISO 27729;
publication pending). The working group realized that this standard could potentially satisfy the
requirements for an institutional identifier[26]. The I2 group has been working with the ISNI
International Agency to harmonize metadata they developed for institutional identification with
the metadata profile in the ISNI standard, and has made formal requests for changes to an ISNI
requirement concerning institutions. The I2 group is also continuing to identify organizations within
the information supply chain that would work with ISNI as Registration Agencies[10] and will be
issuing a final report, describing how the ISNI will be used for an institutional identifier.
Findings. Seven of the 19 data elements identified in this format did not map to
elements defined in the DLF ERMI document, with the remainder mapping either
25
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
partially or completely. In general, ERMI offered more granularity than I2. For example,
I2 identifies country, state, or region but stops at the city level—leaving it to subregistries to track address information. Since the I2 Institutional Identifier element would
be useful to ERMS, it could require some ERM vendors to enhance or re-purpose fields
to accommodate it. Once I2 completes their work on institutional relationships, there
may be additional elements of value that could apply to ERMS. NISO ERM fully endorses
the I2 work.
5.2 WorldCat® Registry. The WorldCat Registry is an online public repository of data on individual
libraries and consortia. Participating institutions receive an identifier, which vendors, content
providers, or other libraries can use to quickly gain access to such information as administrative
contacts and IP addresses. Links to the library’s OpenURL servers, the online catalog, and virtual
reference service can be used to make the library’s web services and its content easily accessible to
online users. The registry is maintained by OCLC, which distributes the data to open-source
services, including its own Worldcat.org, to maximize the participating institutions’ visibility.
Findings. The WorldCat Registry is worth following because it brings together key
electronic resource management data. It contains institutional information covering
multiple library services, such as acquisitions, online access, and reference that vendors
and other libraries can include in a database. It centralizes data storage and automates
data transfer through linking, which leads to improved data management efficiency. It
would be worthwhile to investigate which of its data elements could be mapped into an
ERM, although it does not appear to contain information about vendors and publishers
that would make it more useful to libraries.
5.3 Shibboleth®. Shibboleth is open source authentication software that provides single sign-on
capabilities across an institution’s web space. It uses SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language)
metadata in order to exchange information between an Identity Provider (IdP) and a Service
Provider (SP). When a user attempts to access a restricted online resource, the SP intercepts that
attempt and determines what kind of IdP is associated with the user. Then, depending on the
assigned profile, the user will be automatically logged in to the resource or denied access.
Shibboleth metadata is transferred in XML.
Findings. Although a rudimentary mapping can be made to a handful of DLF ERMI data
elements, the majority of SAML elements exist for a distinctly different purpose.
Shibboleth software holds certain metadata about a particular user and exchanges that
data with a service provider, while ERMI defines users in an effort to identify those who
should be allowed to access a licensed resource. In essence, Shibboleth authenticates
the user that could be associated with the ERMI definitions of user group and
authenticated users. There is no need for the ERMI Data Dictionary to expand into the
domain of Shibboleth metadata, but an effort to standardize the way institutional
software identifies “users” would be recommended.
26
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
We would also like to make note of NISO’s relevant ESPRESSO (NISO RP-11-2011,
Establishing Suggested Practices Regarding Single Sign-On) initiative, the results of
which were published in October 2011. As explained by working group members
Heather Ruland Staines, Harry Kaplanian, and Kristine Ferry “the ESPReSSO
Recommended Practice document recommend[s] practical solutions for improving the
success of SSO authentication technologies in providing a seamless experience for the
user...and has developed a set of best practice recommendations surrounding the use of
existing technologies...[and] presents a set of recommendations to both identity
provider (IdP) and service provider (SP) sites. The recommendations specifically address
typical browser flows, the sequence of pages presented to users, page layout, what
information to include in each of those pages, consistent GUI elements, and additional
features and functionality to provide users with added value[32].” Though not directly
relevant for ERM functions, we actively endorse ESPRESSO and the effort to improve
related facets of the user experience it represents.
5.4 vCard. The vCard specification was originally developed by an industry consortium called
“Versit” consisting of Apple, IBM, AT&T, and Siemens and is now a standard maintained by the
Internet Mail Consortium. According to the vCard article in Wikipedia[33], version 2.1 (dated
September 1996) is “widely supported by e-mail clients,” although a version 3.0 was released in
1998 (RFC 2425 and RFC 2426). There has also been more recent work on “vCard Extensions for
Instant Messaging (IM),” and a related Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) website shows
ongoing development work and discussions as of May 2011. While it is difficult to tell very
definitively, vCard seems to be in common use, and 2.1 is the most commonly-used and supported
version.
According to the introduction to the specification, “…vCard is intended to be used for exchanging
information about people and resources. In today’s business environment, this information is
typically exchanged on business cards. …this specification define[s] this information in terms of a
paradigm based on an electronic business card object.” According to one commentator, “Many
open source applications use vCard internally as data format and many E-mail programs have the
capability to attach business cards in vCard format.” A related specification called hCard is designed
to translate vCard information into (X)HTML for use in web applications. Although Microsoft was
not a member of the industry consortium that developed it, Outlook® does currently support
vCard.
Findings. Aligning the ERMI Data Dictionary with the vCard standard could be very
useful for capturing and storing contact information for sales reps, vendor executives,
and library or consortia representatives. While vCard appears to be designed for contact
information about individuals rather than organizations, it seems possible and practical
to use it for the latter. And since vCard supports structured data (e.g., for surname,
given name, etc.) and the typing of attributes (e.g., office vs. fax vs. mobile phone), it is
more flexible than the current ERMI design. Because the current ERMI Data Dictionary
27
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
provides for a more limited set of information about organizations than vCard, it is
desirable to investigate it further for possible adoption as an ERM standard.
d.
Summary of Mapping Conclusions and Recommendations by Category
Link Resolvers and Knowledge Bases
The Steering Committee began by noting that linking is critically important to the ERM environment and
that OpenURL has become a fundamental enabling technology and standard. The two efforts covered
during this review that are aimed at improving how it functions (KBART and IOTA) are both welcome
developments. The Steering Committee fully endorses KBART, but notes that it would be worthwhile to
compare KBART’s title_id element with similar elements in use elsewhere, such as the Project TRANSFER
Title identifier, and reconcile any differences. We also see IOTA as potentially offering significant
improvements to the user experience and saving staff troubleshooting and support time. However, since
it is a URL quality scoring system aimed at helping providers improve their services, there is little need to
consider incorporating any of its elements into an expanded ERM data dictionary.
The Work, its Manifestations, and Access Points
Five standards (the DOI System, MARC 21, and three members of the ONIX for Serials family: Serials
Online Holdings, Serials Products and Subscriptions, and Serials Release Notification) and one best
practice (TRANSFER) were analyzed for this segment of the review project. As described earlier, the DOI
System utilized the indecs Data Dictionary (iDD), which is now a part of the Vocabulary Mapping
Framework (VMF). This prevented our analysis of individual data elements contained in the iDD, but we
believe the VMF may present the standards community with partnership opportunities and may hold
promise for furthering interoperability.
The remaining standards in this group were crafted for specific purposes; therefore each offers
granularity in those defined areas that was not considered by the creators of the ERMI Data Dictionary.
For example, while it includes specific fields from the MARC 21 Bibliographic Standard to provide an
accurate identification of a resource, little attention was paid to defining the specifics of each electronic
manifestation, especially as they change over time. During the current review we noted that several
MARC 21-related fields could be of substantial value in tracking historical information about a resource
and associated perpetual access rights, and suggested that such historical information should be
maintained within libraries’ knowledge bases—even when no longer current.
We also found that the ONIX for Serials message formats generally provide greater granularity for some
elements than the ERMI Data Dictionary. For example, the ONIX for Serials suite describes in great detail
the manifestations of a work with regard to price, embargo period, availability, and coverage—and the
flexibility built into its structure is more likely to accommodate new data elements and values over the
long term. Similarly, we concluded that some TRANSFER data elements support greater granularity than
the ERMI Data Dictionary, including data that better accounts for access and metrics (e.g., COUNTER
compliance, perpetual access). This information is critical to maintain as a resource moves to different
providers or platforms.
28
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
In summary, the MARC 21, ONIX for Serials, and TRANSFER schemas all fill gaps in the ERMI Data
Dictionary, and selected metadata from them could improve the functioning of current ERM systems.
Integration of Usage and Cost-Related Data
In many respects, COUNTER occupies a similar “foundational” position within this category to the one
occupied by the OpenURL standard within the Link Resolvers and Knowledge Bases category, and we
believe it appropriate for ERMS and an expanded ERM Data Dictionary to fully support it as it evolves.
And as noted, while we view SUSHI as a very worthwhile development and value its close tie to
COUNTER, it is a data transmission protocol rather than a description or specification of data content
that would have relevance for the contents of a data dictionary.
We also view NISO CORE as a valuable development, but regret that it has not yet been adopted to any
significant degree. In addition to hoping that it winds up back in vendors’ development plans, we also
noted that it includes many valuable data elements that could be incorporated into an expanded data
dictionary. However, some of the data elements and definitions in NISO CORE and other NISO standards
could benefit from more structure and consistency.
Coding License Terms and Defining Consensus
From the perspectives of librarians responsible for managing the licensing of e-resources, the prospect
of reducing and normalizing a significant amount of that work through SERU is immensely appealing,
and we advocate its active promotion. That said, it seems quite likely that formal, negotiated licenses
will remain a fixture of the landscape for years to come. If so, libraries will still need to understand,
manage, and communicate their contents to staff and users, and a widely adopted encoding scheme
definitely seems to be needed.
Following frequent and extended discussions of the advantages and disadvantages of the ERMI- and
ONIX-PL-based approaches to encoding and communicating license terms during this project, we
concluded that neither quite offers what we believe libraries need. ERMI data elements and values have
provided a start for libraries able to invest the time and expertise needed to encode their licenses, but
there seems limited evidence to date that many libraries have actually done so. ONIX-PL, on the other
hand, resolves some problems with the ERMI approach that surfaced when the two sets of elements
and values were mapped, and offers an elegant and extensible design, but strikes most librarians with
experience in this area as “overkill.” We believe NISO could provide a very valuable service to the
community by facilitating fresh discussions among librarians, vendors, and publishers aimed at
developing what we have called a “third way” that overcomes some of these dilemmas. In our view, an
environment based on such a third way should be characterized by the following features:
•
A shared and extensible encoding scheme—probably based at least in part on ONIX-PL.
•
The ability for libraries to “scope” or select how much license information they encode,
manage, and present to users and staff—or that others in the supply chain do on their
behalf.
29
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
•
Clear paths to expand those encodings and staff and user displays as libraries’ needs and
priorities change.
•
Practical means for sharing “starter” or generic encoded licenses to save libraries the time
and effort required to “start from scratch” with licenses in hand.
•
Editing tools that are easy to implement and use.
•
Interoperability, or the ability to move and make use of this data as needed.
•
Active, long-term encouragement of publisher and database vendor participation.
Data Exchange Using Institutional Identifiers
Since management of administrative information continues to be a challenge, members of the Steering
Group see this category as one where developments could have significant positive impact for libraries
and other organizations within the supply chain, and the I2 initiative is particularly promising—though
not as granular as ERMI. As noted, its Institutional Identifier element would be useful to ERMS, and we
endorse it fully, even though it might require some ERM vendors to enhance or re-purpose fields to
accommodate it. We look forward to completion of I2 since there may be additional elements of value.
We also have identified the WorldCat Registry project as worth following; while currently limited to
information about libraries, it does seem to offer some data management efficiencies.
We also noted the potential value to users and libraries of Shibboleth as a viable alternative to reliance
on IP and other authentication schemes, and support NISO’s efforts to improve the user experience
through the ESPRESSO initiative. However, since they serve somewhat different purposes than ERMI, we
did not feel that an updated and expanded version of ERMI needs to incorporate either one. Lastly, we
investigated the vCard standard and determined that it could be very useful for capturing and storing
contact information, that it is more flexible than ERMI, and that only modest adjustments to the ERMI
Data Dictionary would be required to accommodate it. Further investigation of vCard as a possible ERM
standard is therefore recommended.
An Updated and Expanded ERM Data Dictionary?
Having reviewed the wide range of relevant standards and best practice initiatives that have been
developed over the last several years, we return to the question of whether the ERMI Data Element
Dictionary should be updated and maintained. This question extends to the related Entity Relationship
Diagram and Electronic Resources Management System Data Structure documents from the ERMI
report that together defined the “ERMI data model.”
As noted earlier in this paper, these documents and the Report itself were credited by many with
providing a valuable roadmap for development of ERM systems and services that formerly existed only
as locally-developed and maintained tools. In addition, many participants in the January 2009 focus
30
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
group sessions that helped validate the need for this review project felt they continue to be important
and help foster interoperability.
While Steering Committee members generally agree with these sentiments, our analysis and discussions
have consistently led us away from proposing that NISO or another agency take responsibility for
updating and maintaining the Data Dictionary and related documents. One major reason for this view is
that such an undertaking would be large, time-consuming, and potentially never-ending: as long-time
followers of ERMS development know, the ERMI Data Dictionary listed well over 300 data elements, and
the e-resources environment has not gotten any simpler since then. Another reason is that we do not
believe that the ERM community will or should embrace and continue to modify systems—many of
which have been in existence for several years at this point—based on the existence of such a standard,
however comprehensive and well-designed.
Just as importantly, initiatives like KBART, IOTA, SUSHI, and CORAL show how much energy,
commitment, and creativity can be brought to bear on practical projects of narrower scope. It seems
likely that investing time and resources in projects like these will have more positive impact than would
an expanded ERM Data Dictionary. Accordingly, we see more value in NISO serving as a catalyst,
incubator, and developer of projects and initiatives of carefully delimited scope but strong potential
impact. For example, NISO could more profitably help bring together and coordinate work on link
resolvers, knowledge bases, and serials holdings and description; re-start active discussion of license
description and encoding; and facilitate work on identifiers of various kinds.
However, we continue to have strong concerns about interoperability. For example, CORE was an
important and practical initiative that has sadly sat on the shelf, and many libraries continue to be
unable to have a link resolver from one vendor communicate successfully with another’s knowledge
base. We urge NISO to continue its work to overcome these problems, and we turn next to the
“workflow” problem, which seems ripe for further development and an area where interoperability
could prove both important and challenging to achieve.
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Making Good on the Promise of ERM
4. Unfinished Business: the Workflow Support Problem
While Steering Group members believe that attention to some or all of the standards issues just
summarized will help make ERM systems and services more robust and functional, we also think it is
important to try to take a broader view of functionality—especially managing the subset of tasks many
refer to as “workflow support.” Rather than proposing work toward an eventual standard, we encourage
NISO to foster discussion, identification, and promotion of best practices in this area.
In citing both “Progress and Pain Points” within the ERMS environment in this report’s introduction and
background section, we noted that while respondents to the survey reported on by Klusendorf[22] did
not identify workflow support as a major problem, many who responded to the more recent survey by
Collins and Grogg[7][8] did. We also noted that many respondents to the latter survey felt few existing
systems provide the workflow support they would like to see. Those conclusions aligned with steering
committee members’ assessments, as it began work in early 2009, of the ERM market and we now
believe more firmly that future ERMS and complementary supporting systems or services can and
should address workflow support far better than they currently do.
While we believe this to be the case, a key challenge to overcome is that the term “workflow” means
different things to different people—as suggested by the diversity and extent of literature related to
ERM workflow—and a shared understanding of scope would be helpful. A partial inventory of this
literature—which Steering Committee member Deberah England originally developed with a narrower
focus on e-journal workflow issues—is included as Appendix B and runs to well over 100 entries. This
bibliography includes articles and slide sets covering a wide array of topics, such as workflow analysis
and redesign, changing work roles, and core competencies for e-resource librarians. While many
describe local circumstances and work, others were intended to be more general or universal.
An early formulation of workflow support requirements that we believe continues to help “anchor” the
meaning of the term is available in Appendices A and B to the 2004 ERMI Report cited earlier[19]. These
documents respectively provided “a full numbered set of Functional Requirements and a set of
flowcharts to depict processes needing to be supported by an ERM, such as mounting trials, routing
licenses, placing orders, implementing access, and notifying relevant staff were provided.” The majority
of the top-level requirements fell under the “Staff Requirements” category, including at least a dozen
pertaining directly or indirectly to workflow support—many of which were elaborated upon in further
detail. We would like to draw special attention to requirement 30, which indicates that an ERM should
help to:
“Establish a site-defined routing workflow for resources that are approved for
purchase. For example, it should be possible to send notifications to designated
staff or departments or to place resources in a queue for further action by those
units to trigger actions such as the placing of an order, completion of cataloging,
and implementations of access management by designated staff.[19]”
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Making Good on the Promise of ERM
While these documents were meant to describe general ERM requirements, a number of libraries have
also worked to analyze and rationalize their local ER-related workflows, and we identified and reviewed
dozens of documents generated for such purposes by various libraries and related organizations. To
further discussion, we have listed and are making available several especially interesting and useful
workflow flowcharts. (See Appendix C for descriptions and access details.) To get a sense for
commonalities and differences, we decided to analyze them with respect to which of eight functional
areas they addressed: trial and selection, licensing, acquisition, cataloging, registration and activation,
access maintenance, troubleshooting, and evaluation. While we noted some variations in language and
approach, we also noted substantial consensus regarding the tasks and decisions needing to be
supported.
Despite that consensus, libraries do differ considerably in size, organization, and local priorities—making
it difficult to imagine solutions that will fit all situations reasonably well. Gustafsen-Sundell[15] has
recently argued that those local differences and needs should be kept firmly in mind when deciding
whether to acquire and implement an ERMS. In addition, R2 Consulting principals Ruth Fischer and Rick
Lugg have argued convincingly that many libraries have under-supported their ERM-related activities
and should shift resources to them from elsewhere in their organizations[14]. Not only are local needs
and priorities critical, but local ERM-related organizational arrangements in many libraries are likely to
be in substantial flux over time.
At several points during this project we also became aware of libraries investing time and effort in
solving locally-prioritized workflow support problems through the creative uses of various tools and
products that were not designed for ERM support. Recent experiments along these lines reported on
during the 2010 and 2011 ER&L conferences include Montana State University’s use of blogs for internal
communication about e-resource troubleshooting[3], Eastern Kentucky University’s use of DRUPAL to
record different workflow “states” for their e-resources[31], use of the JIRA “bug ticketing” system first at
Stanford and more recently Reed College[1], the Claremont University Consortium’s development of its
prototype “ERATS” system based on the Footprints helpdesk ticketing system[2], and work being
undertaken as part of the Kuali OLE project[11].
We have also noted that developers of several ERMS have been focusing on designing workflow support
into ERMS applications. For example, Notre Dame’s Ben Heet showed sample slides from the CORAL
workflow modules at the 2011 ER&L conference that illustrate that library’s pragmatic focus[16].
Workflow support has also been featured in recent ERMS webinar presentations about ExLibris’ Alma,
and OCLC’s and Serials Solutions’ “web scale management” products and services. We also learned from
Steering Committee member Tim McGeary, who is heavily involved in Kuali OLE development, that
workflow support has figured fairly prominently in that project’s scenario discussions and related “user
stories,” and that staff from the Kuali OLE partners contributed over 1200 user stories related to a
variety of library workflows. Inherent in its goal to produce a next-generation library management
environment is the focus of Kuali OLE to build workflows that encompass both print and electronic
resources to reduce parallel, and often competing, processes. Additionally, Kuali OLE and JISC are
33
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
exploring a joint project to leverage their respective partnerships and development to manage
electronic resources in a more open and collaborative environment.
We enthusiastically welcome and endorse all of these efforts, and note that since the functioning of
next-generation ERMS is still being determined to some degree, this is an opportune time to share
information about the most promising approaches and pursue greater clarity within the community
about needs and priorities.
We see improved workflow support as crucial to the success of the next-generation ERMS, but achieving
it poses significant risks to developers of investing heavily but “getting it wrong,” due to the scope,
complexity, and local variability issues cited above. In addition, the fluidity and rapid change
characteristic of the e-resources marketplace further suggest that libraries’ workflow needs and
priorities may shift rapidly. While marketplace competition generally provides a good and powerful
impetus, and we are sure that developers are making their best efforts to identify and address their
customers’ workflow support needs, we believe NISO can help mitigate some development risks and
steer development in the most useful and promising directions through some modest and timely
actions.
Specifically, we propose that NISO work to broaden the community knowledge base related to ERM
workflow support and help articulate system development and local implementation priorities by
organizing a series of webinars on ERM workflow support during the first half of 2012. Developers,
innovators, and other “thought leaders” could be invited to present their best thinking about such topics
as: approaches to and tools for organizational and task analysis; workflow analyses related to particular
e-resource functions or lifecycle stages, such as trial and selection, licensing, and troubleshooting;
alternative and emerging approaches to workflow support; and vendor/developer perspectives on
workflow support in the next-generation ERMS. Survey feedback to these presentations could be
gathered during these sessions, and survey results and highlights presented and discussed at upcoming
conferences, such as ER&L 2012, NASIG, or ALA Annual.
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Making Good on the Promise of ERM
5. References
[1]
Arch, Xan. Ticketing Systems for Tracking E-Resources Workflow. Presented at: Electronic
Resources & Libraries Annual Conference 2011, Austin, TX, February 28-March 2, 2011. Slides (1116) available at: http://www.slideshare.net/kellysmith72/erl-2011-innovative-eresourceworkflow-strategies-7274041
[2]
Arch, Xan, and Jason Price. Tracking Electronic Resource Acquisitions: using a helpdesk system to
succeed where your ERMS failed. In: Strauch, Katina, ed., et al. Charleston Conference Proceedings
2009. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, May 25, 2011. Slides available at:
http://www.slideshare.net/xanarch/2009chs-erm-sfailarchprice
[3]
Babbitt, Liz. Remember 3 Weeks Ago When… Presented at: Electronic Resources & Libraries
Annual Conference 2010, Austin, TX, February 1-3, 2010. Slides available at:
http://www.slideshare.net/EResourcesLibraries/remember-three-weeks-ago-when-you-couldntaccess-presented-by-liz-babbitt
[4]
Burke, Rick, Wilma Mossink, and Mark Bide. ONIX for Publication Licenses: Adding Structure to
Legalese. NISO Webinar, December 9, 2009. Slides available at:
http://www.niso.org/news/events/2009/onixpl09/onixpl09.pdf
[5]
Castro, Jeannie Downey, and Mingyu Chen. Study of license terms for ERM. Presented at:
Electronic Resources & Libraries Annual Conference 2010, Austin, TX, February 1-3, 2010. Slides
available at: http://www.slideshare.net/EResourcesLibraries/study-of-license-terms-survey-results
[6]
Collins, Maria. “Evolving Workflows: Knowing when to Hold’em, Knowing when to Fold’em.” The
Serials Librarian, September 2009, 57(3): 261-271.
[7]
Collins, Maria, and Jill Grogg. At ERMS Length: Evaluating Electronic Resource Management
Systems. [Unpublished, 25 pages, 2011].
[8]
Collins, Maria, and Jill Grogg. “Building a Better ERMS.” Library Journal, March 1, 2011, 136(4): 2228. Available at: http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/ljinprint/currentissue/889092403/building_a_better_erms.html.csp
[9]
Cooper, Adam, and Wilbert Kraan. Assessing the Business Case for Standards: An introduction for
strategy planning and resourcing committees. Bolton, UK: JISC Centre for Educational Technology
and Interoperability Standards, November 2009. Available at
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/briefingpaper/2009/bpbusinesscasestanda
rds.pdf
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Making Good on the Promise of ERM
[10] DeRidder, Jody. “I² and ISNI: Improving the Information Supply Chain with Standard Institutional
Identifiers.” Information Standards Quarterly, Summer2011, 23(3): 26-29.
doi:10.3789/isqv23n3.2011.07 Available at:
http://www.niso.org/publications/isq/2011/v23no3/deridder
[11] Duggan, Lori, and Robert M. McDonald. Enabling Flexible E-Resources Workflow with Kuali OLE.
Presented at: Electronic Resources & Libraries Annual Conference 2011, Austin, TX, February 28March 2, 2011. Slides (26-39) available at: http://www.slideshare.net/kellysmith72/erl-2011innovative-eresource-workflow-strategies-7274041
[12] EDItEUR. Mapping ONIX-PL to ERMI. Draft 2, November 19, 2007. Available at
http://www.niso.org/workrooms/lewg/071119ONIX_ERMImapping.pdf
[13] EDItEUR. ONIX-PL ERMI encoding format. Draft 2, July 29, 2007. Available at
http://www.niso.org/workrooms/lewg/071119ONIX_ERMIencodingformat.pdf
[14] Fischer, Ruth, and Rick Lugg. Workflow Analysis and Redesign. Presented at: ALCTS Pre-Conference
on Technical Services Management: Workflow Issues, June 27, 2007. Available at:
http://www.ebookmap.net/ppnts/ALCTS%20Pre-Conference.ppt
[15] Gustafson-Sundell, Nat. “Think Locally: A Prudent Approach to Electronic Resource Management
Systems.” Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship, 2011, 23 (2): 126-141.
doi: 10.1080/1941126X.2011.576955
[16] Heet, Ben. CORAL: An Open Source Solution for eResource Management. Electronic Resources and
Libraries Annual Conference 2011, Austin, TX, February 28-March 2, 2011. Slides (17-24) available
at: http://www.slideshare.net/kellysmith72/erl-2011-innovative-eresource-workflow-strategies7274041
[17] Jewell, Tim. DLF Electronic Resources Management Initiative, Phase II: Final Report. Washington,
D.C.: Digital Library Federation and Council on Library and Information Resources, 2008. Available
at: http://www.diglib.org/standards/ERMI2_Final_Report_20081230.pdf
[18] Jewell, Tim and Ivy Anderson. ERM Data Standards Review: A NISO New Work Item Proposal.
Available at:
http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/download.php/2162/NISOProposedWorkItem_ERMI26M
ay09.doc
[19] Jewell, Timothy D. et al. Electronic Resource Management: Report of the DLF ERMI Initiative.
Washington, D.C.: Digital Library Federation and Council on Library and Information Resources,
2004 (print edition published June 2005). Available at: http://www.diglib.org/pubs/dlf102/
[20] JISC Collections. Licence Comparison Tool [webpage]. Available at:
http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/News/licence-comparison-tool/
36
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
[21] Kasprowski, Rafal. “Best Practice & Standardization Initiatives for Managing Electronic Resources,”
Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, October/November
2008, 35(1): 13-19. Available at: http://www.asist.org/Bulletin/Oct-08/OctNov08_Kasprowski.html
[22] Klusendorf, Heather. “Measure for Measure: Librarians Want a More Effective ERM, Results from
ERM Systems Usage Trends Survey.” Against the Grain, April 2010, 22(2): 34, 36, 38, 40.
[23] Lamoureux, Selden Durgom, and James Stemper. “White Paper: Trends in Licensing.” Research
Library Issues, June 2011, no. 275: 19-24. Available at: http://publications.arl.org/1acglb.pdf
[24] NISO/DLF Workshop on Standards for Electronic Resource Management, Chicago, Illinois, May 10,
2002 [webpage and documents]. Available at: http://www.niso.org/news/events/niso/past/NISODLF-wkshp/
[25] NISO ERM Data Standards & Best Practices Review Steering Committee. Master Standards to ERMI
Mappings Spreadsheet. Available at:
http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/document.php?document_id=7539&wg_abbrev=ermrev
iew
[26] NISO I2 Working Group. Overview of potential of an I2 and ISNI collaboration: Improving the
Information Supply Chain with Standard Institutional Identifiers. April 18, 2011. Available at:
http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/document.php?document_id=6341&wg_abbrev=i2
[27] Norman, Phil, and Jeff Young. “Standard Spotlight: The OpenURL Maintenance Agency: Extending
and Promoting the Use of OpenURL.” Information Standards Quarterly, Winter2011, 23(1): 26-28.
doi: 10.3789/isqv23n1.2011.07 Available at:
http://www.niso.org/publications/isq/2011/v23no1/norman/
[28] Pace, Andrew. “Hot Conference, Cool Technology.” American Libraries, August 2004, 35(7): 68-69.
Available at: http://ala.org/ala/alonline/techspeaking/techspeak2004/Aug2004Conference.cfm
[29] Paskin, Norman. “Digital Object Identifier (DOI®) System.” In: Encyclopedia of Library and
Information Sciences, 3d ed. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, pp. 1586-1592.
doi: 10.1081/E-ELIS3-120044418
[30] RELI: a project to pilot the development of a licence registry: final report. JISC, n.d. Available at
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/sharedservices/reli_final_report.pdf
[31] Smith, Kelly and Laura Edwards. Managing eResource Workflow with Drupal. Presented at:
Electronic Resources and Libraries Annual Conference 2011, Austin, TX, February 28-March 2,
2011. Slides (3-10) available at: http://www.slideshare.net/kellysmith72/erl-2011-innovativeeresource-workflow-strategies-7274041
37
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
[32] Staines, Heather Ruland, Harry Kaplanian, and Kristine Ferry. “Establishing Suggested Practices
Regarding Single Sign On (ESPReSSO) Working Group.” Information Standards Quarterly, Winter
2011, 23(1): 34-37. doi: 10.3789/isqv23n1.2011.09 Available at:
http://www.niso.org/publications/isq/2011/v23no1/staines/
[33] vCard [webpage]. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Available at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vcard
[34] Vocabulary Mapping Framework [website]. Available at: http://www.doi.org/VMF/index.html
[35] Wise, Alicia, Rick Burke, and Jeff Aipperspach. ONIX‐PL: Simplifying License Expression. NISO
Webinar, September 10, 2008. Slides available at:
http://www.niso.org/news/events/2008/webinars/onixpl/onixplwebinar.pdf
38
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
Appendix A: Summary of Mapping Review Findings and Recommendations
(Detailed mappings available at: http://www.niso.org/workrooms/ermreview/mapping_spreadsheet)
Acronym
Name
Mapped?
Findings and Recommendations
1. Link Resolvers and Knowledge Bases
1.1 OpenURL
Open Uniform Resource Locator
(URL)
No
Ubiquitous, widely accepted tool within the electronic
environment; no further analysis done.
1.2 KBART
Knowledge Bases and Related
Tools
Yes
Fully endorse; substantial benefits to adopting selected
KBART elements in preference to ERMI’s.
1.3 IOTA
Improving OpenURLs Through
Analytics
No
Welcome effort with significant efforts likely, but not directly
relevant to ERMS context/functioning.
2. The Work, Its Manifestations, and Access Points
2.1 DOI
Digital Object Identifier System
No
Data dictionary not available; Vocabulary Mapping
Framework may be useful for relating data elements.
2.2 MARC 21
MAchine Readable Cataloging
Yes
Several fields helpful for tracking title changes and
preserving historical information about specific resources.
2.3 ONIX for
Serials
ONline Information eXchange
for Serials
[subsets]
Provides more flexible structure and granular information
than ERMI, but some ONIX values could be expanded to
accommodate ERMI data elements or values.
2.3.1 SOH
ONIX Serials Online Holdings
Yes
E-publication format codes and ONIX Date format likely to
be especially useful.
2.3.2 SPS
ONIX Serials Products and
Subscriptions
Yes
Several potentially useful elements (form and format codes,
work identifier code, embargo type, etc.).
2.3.3 SRN
ONIX Serials Release
Notification
Yes
Potentially useful elements/values are embargo type/count
back unit, extent type, and unit codes.
Transfer Code of Practice
Yes
Very helpful and fully endorsed; elements of special value
include back-file url and archiving arrangement, and
COUNTER compliance.
2.6 TRANSFER
3. Integration of Usage and Cost-Related Data
3.1 CORE
Cost of Resource Exchange
Yes
A worthwhile Best Practice that vendors should implement,
but some definitions could benefit from greater structure.
3.2 COUNTER
Counting Online Usage of
Networked Electronic
Resources
Yes
Widely accepted standard that ERMS should accommodate.
3.3 SUSHI
Standardized Usage Statistics
Harvesting Initiative
No
Mapping not needed because this is a data transmission
protocol rather than a data standard; view as valuable effort
and model for other potential applications.
4. Coding License Terms and Defining Consensus
4.1.1 ONIX-PL
ONIX for Publications Licenses
Yes
Neither ONIX-PL nor ERMI adequately address library
needs for license encoding and communication; suggest
NISO facilitate further discussions and a “third way.”
4.2 SERU
Shared Electronic Resource
Understanding
Yes
Fully endorse and urge wider adoption, but local
interpretation and encoding still needed.
39
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
Acronym
Name
Mapped?
Findings and Recommendations
Yes
Fully endorse; institutional identifier of wide potential benefit;
additional institutional relationship elements could be useful.
No
Worth following for potential ERM data management
efficiencies.
5. Data Exchange Using Institutional Identifiers
2
5.1 I
Institutional Identifiers
5.2 WorldCat
Registry
WorldCat Registry
5.3 Shibboleth
Shibboleth System
Yes
Efficient/effective single sign-on is important within the
electronic environment but mostly out of scope for ERM.
5.4 vCard
vCard
(originally Versit Card)
Yes
Could be useful for contact and organization information.
®
®
40
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
Appendix B: Workflow Best Practices Bibliography
(Note: This is an updated and expanded version of a bibliography by Deberah England titled Finding Our
Direction: Towards Establishing E-Journal Workflow Best Practices that she developed for the 2009
Electronic Resources & Libraries Conference. Used with permission.)
Essential Readings
Afifi, Marianne. “Process Mapping for Electronic Resources: A Lesson from Business Models.” Electronic
Resource Management in Libraries: Research and Practice. Eds. Holly Yu and Scott Breivold.
Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference, 2008: 90-104.
Anderson, Rick. “It’s Not about the Workflow: Patron-Centered Practices for 21st Century Serialists.” The
Serials Librarian 51.3/4 (2007): 189-199.
Anderson, Rick, and Steven D. Zink. “Implementing the Unthinkable: The Demise of Periodical Check-In
at the University of Nevada.” Library Collections, Acquisitions, and Technical Services 27.1 (2003):
61-71.
Blackburn, Jonathan, and Sylvia A. Lowden. “Not For The Faint Of Heart! A New Approach To Serials
Management.” Serials Librarian 60.1-4 (2011): 61-74. Web. 21 Oct. 2011.
Blake, Kristen, and Erin Stalberg. “Me and My Shadow: Observation, Documentation, and Analysis of
Serials and Electronic Resources Workflow.” Serials Review 35.4 (2009): 242-252.
Borchert, Carol Ann. “Coping with Hobgoblins: Rethinking Journals Processing in the E-Journals
Environment at the University of South Florida.” Serials Review 37.2 (2011): 71-79.
Bothmann, Robert L., and Melissa Holmberg. “Strategic Planning for Electronic Resource Management.”
Electronic Resource Management in Libraries: Research and Practice. Eds. Holly Yu and Scott
Breivold. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference, 2008: 16-28.
Cole, Louise. “A Journey into E-Resource Administration Hell.” The Serials Librarian 49.1/2 (2005): 141154.
Collins, Maria. “Evolving Workflows: Knowing when to Hold’em, Knowing when to Fold’em.” Serials
Librarian 57.3 (2009): 261-271.
Collins, Maria D. D., and Patrick L. Carr, eds. Managing the transition from print to electronic journals
and resources: a guide for library and information professionals. NewYork: Routledge. 2008.
Curtis, Donnelyn. “Shifting Library Resources.” E-Journals: a How-To-Do-It Manual for Building,
Managing, and Supporting Electronic Journal Collections. Donnelyn Curtis. New York: NealSchuman Publishers, 2005: 91-115.
Dollar, Daniel M., John Gallanger, Janis Glover, Regina Kenny Marone, and Cynthia Crooker. “Realizing
what’s essential: a case study on integrating electronic journal management into a print-centric
technical services department.” Journal of the Medical Library Association 95.2 (2007): 147-155.
41
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
Duranceau, Ellen Finnie. “Staffing for Electronic Resource Management: The Results of a Survey.” Serials
Review 28.4 (2002): 316-320.
Geller, Marilyn. “Managing Electronic Resources.” Library Technology Reports 42.2 (2006): 6-13.
Graves, Tonia, and Michael A. Arthur. “Developing a Crystal Clear Future for the Serials Unit in an
Electronic Environment: Results of a Workflow Analysis.” Serials Review 32.4 (2006): 238-246.
Johnson, Peggy. “Learning to Cha-Cha with Change.” Virtually Yours: Models for Managing Electronic
Resources and Services. Eds. Peggy Johnson and Bonnie MacEwan. Chicago: American Library
Association, 1999. 136-146.
Johnson, Richard K., and Judy Luther. “The E-only Tipping Point for Journals: What’s Ahead in the Printto-Electronic Transition Zone.” Association of Research Libraries. (2007).
<http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/Electronic_Transition.pdf>
Montgomery, Carol H., and JoAnne L. Sparks. “The Transition to an Electronic Journal Collection:
Managing the Organizational Changes.” Serials Review 26.3 (2000): 4-18.
Nagy, Kären N. “Managing New Initiatives.” Virtually Yours: Models for Managing Electronic Resources
and Services. Eds. Peggy Johnson and Bonnie MacEwan. Chicago: American Library Association,
1999: 129-135.
Ohler, Lila A. “The Keys to Successful Change Management for Serials.” The Serials Librarian 51.1 (2006):
37-72.
Pan, Denise, and Rick Lugg. “Scaling Organizational Capacity to Meet E-Resources Needs Centralize or
Decentralize?” Slideshare. February 2, 2010. Electronic Resources and Libraries. 22 November 2011
<http://www.slideshare.net/EResourcesLibraries/scaling-organizational-capacity-to-meeteresources-needs-centralize-or-decentralize-presented-by-denise-pan-and-rick-lugg>
Parker, Kimberly, and Nathan D. M. Robertson, Ivy Anderson, Adam Chandler, Sharon E. Farb, Timothy
Jewell, Angela Riggio. “DLF ERMI, Appendix B: Electronic Resource Management Workflow
Flowchart.” Digital Library Foundation. (2004).
<http://www.diglib.org/pubs/dlf102/dlfermi0408appb.pdf>
Schonfeld, Roger C. “Getting from Here to There, Safely: Library Strategic Planning for the Transition
Away from Print Journals.” The Serials Librarian 52.1/2 (2007): 183-189.
Schoofs, Bob. “Abolish the Periodicals Department.” College & Research Libraries News 68.1 (2007):
1-19.
Yue, Paoshan W., and Rick Anderson. “Capturing Electronic Journals Management in a Flowchart.” The
Serials Librarian 51.3/4 (2007): 101-118.
Zhang, Xiaoyin, and Michaelyn Haslam. “The Effect of the Consolidation of Acquisitions and
Serials/Periodicals Units on the Management of Electronic Resources.” Against the Grain 16.1
(2004): 60-62.
42
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
Recommended Readings and Presentations
Armstrong, Kim, and Bob Schatz. “E-Resource Workflow: Improving Communication between Librarians
and Vendors.” SMARTech. February 24, 2007. Electronic Resources and Libraries. 2 August 2008.
<http://smartech.gatech.edu/bitstream/1853/13649/1/236-sat-11_05.pdf>
Babbitt, Liz. “Remember 3 Weeks Ago When…” Slideshare. <February 2, 2010>. Electronic Resources &
Libraries. 22 November 2011. <http://www.slideshare.net/EResourcesLibraries/remember-threeweeks-ago-when-you-couldnt-access-presented-by-liz-babbitt>
Barnes, Matt. “The Invisible Mainstream: E-Resources in Workflows and Organizations.” R2 Consulting.
February 11, 2009. Electronic Resources and Libraries Conference. 26 October 2011.
<http://www.ebookmap.net/pdfs/The+Invisible+Mainstream+v2d.pdf>
“Biz Acq Workflows in Paradise: eBooks, Acquisitions, and Cataloging.” Against the Grain 22.4 (2010):
56-59.
Blake, Kristen, and Maria Collins. “Controlling Chaos: Management of Electronic Journal Holdings in an
Academic Library Environment.” Serials Review 36.4 (2010): 242-250.
Borchert, Carol Ann. “To Check In or Not to Check In? That Is the Question!” Serials Review 33.4 (2007):
238-243.
Boss, Stephen C., and Lawrence O. Schmidt. “Electronic Resources (ER) Management in the Academic
Library: Process vs. Function.” Collection Management 32.1/2 (2007): 117-140.
Brown, Ladd, and Molly Brennan Cox. “Before They Throw the Switch: Insights on E-Access from the
Back Room.” The Serials Librarian 40. 3/4 (2001): 361-368.
Canepi, Kitti. “Work Analysis in Library Technical Services.” Technical Services Quarterly 25.2 (2007):
19-30.
Chung, P., L. Cheung, J. Strader, P. Jarvis, J. Moore, and A. Macintosh. “Knowledge-based process
management—an approach to handling adaptive workflow.” Knowledge-based Systems 16.3
(2003): 149-160.
Clendening, Lynda Fuller. “Biz of Acq—Mainstreaming “E”: Integrating Print and Electronic Journal
Acquisition and Management.” Against the Grain 18.2 (2006): 66-68.
Clendenning, Lynda Fuller, Lori Duggan, and Kelly Smith. “Navigating a Course for Serials Staffing into the
New Millennium.” Serials Librarian 58.1-4 (2010): 224-231.
Curtis, Donnelyn. E-journals: a how-to-do-it manual for building, managing, and supporting electronic
journal collections. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, 2005.
Date, Dhanashree A. “Re-aligning Library Services With E-Resources.” Slideshare. January 2009.
University of Mubai Refresher Course. 12 November 2011.
<http://www.slideshare.net/Dhanashree/realigning-library-services-with-e-resources-ss>
Elles, Linda L. “For better or for worse: the joys and woes of e-journals.” Science and Technology
Libraries 25.1-2 (2004): 33-53.
43
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
Emery, Jill. “Beginning to See the Light: Developing a Discourse for Electronic Resource Management.”
The Serials Librarian 47.4 (2005): 137-147.
Emery, Jill. “I’m So Aggregated…And I Think I Like It: Taking Another Look At Electronic Journal
Aggregation.” Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship 20 (2008): 3-6.
Emery, Jill, and Graham Stone. TERMS: Techniques for ER Management. September 8, 2011.
<http://6terms.tumblr.com/>
Feather, Celeste. “Electronic Resources Communications Management: A Strategy for Success.” Library
Resources & Technical Services 51.3 (2007): 204-211.
Feijen, Martin. “Workflow for Electronic Publications in a National Library.” Library Acquisitions: Practice
& Theory 21.3 (1997): 327-336.
Fenner, Audrey, ed. Managing digital resources in libraries. Binghamton, NY: Haworth Information Press,
2005. Note: Co-published as: The Acquisitions Librarian, no. 33-34 (2005).
Fischer, Karen S., and Hope Barton. “The Landscape of E-Journal Management.” Journal of Electronic
Resources in Medical Libraries 2.3 (2005): 57-63.
Fischer, Ruth, and Rick Lugg. “Au Contraire, Robert!” R2 Consulting. (2005).
<http://r2consulting.org/pdfs/Au%20Contraire,%20Robert!.pdf>
Fischer, Ruth, and Rick Lugg. “Workflow Analysis and Redesign: ALCTS Pre-Conference on Technical
Services Management: Workflow Issues.” R2. June 22, 2007. American Library Association Annual
Conference. 2 August 2008. <http://www.ebookmap.net/ppnts/ALCTS%20Pre-Conference.ppt>
Fortini, Toni. “Going online: academic libraries and the move from print to electronic journals.” Library
Student Journal 2 (2007): n. p.
Fowler, David, ed. E-serials collection management: transitions, trends, and technicalities. New York:
Haworth Information Press, 2004.
Gardner, Susan. “The Impact of Electronic Journals on Library Staff at ARL Member Institutions: A Survey
and Critique of the Survey Methodology.” Serials Review 27.3-4 (2001): 17-32.
Geller, Marilyn. “Managing Electronic Resources.” Library Technology Reports 42.2 (2006): 6-13.
Glasser, Sarah, and Michael A. Arthur. “When Jobs Disappear: The Staffing Implications of the
Elimination of Print Serials Management Tasks.” Serials Librarian 60.1-4 (2011): 109-113.
Gomez, Joni. “Human Factors in Electronic Technical Services.” The Acquisitions Librarian 21, (1999):
105-114.
Graves, Tonia, and Michael A. Arthur. “Developing A Crystal Clear Future For The Serials Unit In An
Electronic Environment: Results Of A Workflow Analysis.” Serials Review 32.4 (2006): 238-246.
Gregory, Vicki L. Selecting and managing electronic resources: a how-to-do-it manual for Librarians. New
York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, 2006.
44
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
Han, Ning, and Rick Kerns. “Rethinking Electronic Resources Workflows.” Serials Librarian 61.2 (2011):
207-214.
Holley, Beth, et al. “Navigating Your Way through the E-journal Rapids.” Serials Librarian 58.1-4 (2010):
5-13.
Hulseberg, Anna, and Sarah Monson. “Strategic Planning for Electronic Resources Management: A Case
Study at Gustavus Adolphus College.” Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship 21.2 (2009):
163-171.
Hunter, Karen. “The End of Print Journals: (In) Frequently Asked Questions.” Journal of Library
Administration 46.2 (2007): 119-132.
Iverson, Sandy. “Opening Pandora’s Box: Understanding the E-Journal Conundrum.” Canadian Health
Libraries Association. May 14, 2006. Canadian Health Libraries Association Conference. 22 August
2008 <http://www.chla-absc.ca/2006/iverson_pandora-revised.ppt>
Ives, Gary, ed. Electronic journal management systems: experiences from the field. New York: Haworth
Information Press, 2005. Note: Co-published as: The Serials Librarian 47.4 (2005).
Jasper, Richard P. “Collaborative roles in managing electronic publications.” Library Collections,
Acquisitions & Technical Services 26 (2002): 355-361.
Jia, Mi, Paula Sullenger, and Pat Loghry. “Examining Workflows and Redefining Roles: Auburn University
and The College of New Jersey.” Serials Librarian 50.3/4 (2006): 279-283.
Jones, Wayne, ed. E-journals access and management. New York: Routledge, 2009.
Jordan, Mark, and Dave Kisly. “How Does Your Library Handle Electronic Serials? A General Survey.”
Serials 15 (2002): 41-46.
Kappmeyer, Lori Osmus. “Re-Thinking Staff Resources in the E-Serials Environment. A Report of the
ALCTS Continuing Resources Section, Education Committee Program, American Library Association
Annual Conference, Chicago, July 2009.” Technical Services Quarterly 27.4 (2010): 364-367.
Kinman, Virginia, and Louveller Luster. “Managing Electronic Serials.” Virginia R. Kinman. October21,
2005. Annual Meeting of the Virginia Library Association. 22 August 2008.
<http://www.longwood.edu/staff/kinmanvr/Managing Electronic Serials VLA 2005.pdf>
Lee, Sul H. ed. Print vs. Digital: The Future coexistence. New York: Haworth Information Press, 2007.
Note: Co-published as: Journal of Library Administration 46.2 (2007).
Leffler, Jennifer J., and Pamela Newberg. “Re-Visioning Technical Services: A Unique Opportunity to
Examine the Past, Access the Present, and Create a Better Future.” Cataloging & Classification
Quarterly 48.6/7 (2010): 561-571.
Lewis, Nicholas. “Redefining roles: developing an electronic journals collection at the University of East
Anglia.” Information Services & Use 21 (2001): 181-187.
Li, Xiaoli. “Cancellation of Print Journals In The Electronic Era: A Case Study.” Against the Grain 17.6
(2005/2006): 1-22.
45
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
Loghry, Pat. “Examining Workflows and Redefining Roles: Auburn University and The College of New
Jersey.” The Serials Librarian 50.3/4 (2006): 279-283.
Lugg, Rick, and Matt Barnes. “Creating the Capacity for Change: Transforming Library Workflows &
Organizations.” R2. September 28, 2007. Wisconsin Library Services. 26 October 2011
<http://www.wils.wisc.edu/events/09_28_07/r2_09_28_07.ppt>
Lugg, Rick, and Ruth Fischer. “Agents in Place: Intermediaries in E-Journal Management: A White Paper
Prepared with support from HARRASSOWITZ.” R2. October 2003.
<http://www.r2consulting.org/pdfs/AgentsInPlace.pdf>
Lugg, Rick, and Ruth Fischer. “I, User—Just Say No: Eliminating Low-Value Tasks.” Against the Grain 16.6
(2004): 84.
Marir, Farhi, and John Ndeta. “A new Framework for Designing eWorkflow Systems for eBusiness
Processes.” Proceedings of the European Conference on Knowledge Management (2010): 676-684.
Medeiros, Norm. “Managing Electronic Resources in the Tri-College Consortium.” Library Workflow
Design: Six Case Studies. Ed. Marilyn Mitchell. Washington, DC: Council on Library and Information
Resources, 2007: 60-72.
Langley-Walker and Jenny McNally, Regina Ferguson, Charlotte Murray. MERI: Managing Electronic
Resources Issues. University of Salford. July 1, 2010. <http://salfordmeri.blogspot.com/>
McDonald, John. “Tipping the Cow: Reorganizing Staff to Support Electronic Resources.” Slideshare.
March 1, 2011. Electronic Resources and Libraries Conference. 26 October 2011
<http://www.slideshare.net/john_mcdonald/tipping-the-cow-reorganizaning>
Miller, Jeannie P. ed. Emerging Issues in the Electronic Environment: Challenges for Librarians and
Researchers in the Sciences. New York: Haworth Information Press, 2004. Note: Co-published as:
Science & Technology Libraries 25.1-2 (2004).
Montgomery, Carol H. “Measuring the Impact of an Electronic Journal Collection on Library Costs.” D-Lib
Magazine 6.10 (2000): n. p. <http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october00/montgomery/10montgomery>
Montgomery, Carol H., and Donald W. King. “Comparing Library and User-Related Costs of Print and
Electronic Journal Collections: A First Step towards a Comprehensive Analysis.” D-Lib Magazine
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Muehlen, Michael Zur. “Organizational Management in Workflow Applications—Issues and
Perspectives.” Information Technology & Management 5.3/4 (2004): 271-291.
Pierce, LaDonna. “ALCTS e-Forum: Serials, Staffing, and Workflow.” Milton S. Eisenhower Library
Technical Services Wiki. July 27, 2011. Johns Hopkins University. 12 November 2011
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Platt, Nina. “Electronic Resources Management.” Integrated Library Systems Reports. Spring 2001.
5 September 2008 <http://www.ilsr.com/erm.htm>
Poe, Jodi, and Mary Bevis, John-Bauer Graham, Bethany Latham, Kimberly W. Stevens. “Sharing the
Albatross of E-Resources Management Workflow.” Electronic Resource Management in Libraries:
46
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
Research and Practice. Eds. Holly Yu and Scott Breivold. Hershey, PA: Information Science
Reference, 2008. 71-89.
Price, Jason S., and Xan Arch. “Tracking Electronic Resource Acquisitions: Using a Helpdesk System to
Succeed where your ERMS Failed.” Scholarship @ Claremont. November 1, 2009. Charleston
Conference. 30 October 2011. <http://scholarship.claremont.edu/library_staff/3/>
Profera, Elyse, and Christine M. Stamison. “An Agent’s Perspective on Issues and Best Practices When
Shifting from Print to Electronic Resources.” Serials Review 36.1 (2010): 3-9.
Ruth, Lisa Boxill. “License Mapping for ERM Systems: Existing Practices and Initiatives for Support.”
Serials Review 34.2 (2008): 137-143.
Schoenfeld, Roger C., and Donald W. King, Ann Okerson, Eileen Gifford Fenton. “The Nonsubscription
Side of Periodicals: changes in library operations and costs between print and electronic formats.”
Council on Library and Information Resources (2004).
<http://www.clir.org/PUBS/reports/pub127/pub127.pdf>
Shared ERM Requirements Project. JISC/Society of College, National and University Libraries. 2011.
<http://sconulerm.jiscinvolve.org/wp/>
Smith, Kelly. “Using Process Mapping to Assess and Improve eResources Workflow.” Slideshare.
November 3, 2010. Charleston Conference. 26 October 2011. <http://www.slideshare.net/
kellysmith72/using-process-mapping-to-assess-and-improve-eresource-workflow-5775809>
Smith, Kelly, and Laura Edwards. “Creative Solutions for Managing eResources Workflow.” Slideshare.
May 21, 2010. Ohio Valley Group of Technical Services Librarians. 26 October 2011
<http://www.slideshare.net/kellysmith72/creative-solutions-for-managing-e-resources-workflow>
Smith, Kelly, and Laura Edwards, Xan Arch, Ben Heet, Robert McDonald and Lori Duggan. “Innovative
eResource Workflow Strategies.” Slideshare. March 1, 2010. Electronic Resources and Libraries.
26 October 2011<http://www.slideshare.net/kellysmith72/erl-2011-innovative-eresourceworkflow-strategies-7274041>
Smith, Kelly, and Pat Thompson. “The Inexorable March to Online Only Journal Subscriptions: Varied
Criteria, Unexpected Ramifications, and Coping Strategies.” SMARTech. March 20, 2008. Electronic
Resources and Libraries. 1 May 2008
<http://smartech.gatech.edu/bitstream/1853/20778/1/Inexorable_March_to_Online_Only.Pdf>
Soules, Aline. “New e-sources, new models: reinventing library approaches to providing access.” Library
Hi Tech News 27.2 (2010): 10-14.
Stachokas, George. “Electronic Resources and Mission Creep: Reorganizing the Library for the TwentyFirst Century.” Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship 21.3/4 (2009): 206-212.
Strader, C. R., Alison Roth, Bob Boissy, and Wendy Robertson. “E-Journal Access: A Collaborative
Checklist for Libraries, Subscription Agents, and Publishers.” The Serials Librarian 55.1-2 (2008)
98-116.
Terrill, Lori J., et al. “Workflow Challenges: Does Technology Dictate Workflow?” Serials Librarian 56.1-4
(2009): 266-270.
47
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
Tonkery, Dan. “Publishers, Agents, Users, and Libraries: Coming of Age in the E-World.” Serials Librarian
57.3 (2009): 253-260.
Tonkery, Dan. “Print to Electronic: Managing Electronic Resources.” Against the Grain 19.3 (2007):
50-54.
Tonkery, Dan. “The Three A’s of E-Resource Management: Aggravation, Agitation, and Aggregation.”
Managing Electronic Resources: Contemporary Problems and Emerging Issues. Eds. Pamela Bluh
and Cindy Hepfer. Chicago: Association for Library Collections & Technical Services, 2006. 46-55.
Tumlin, Markel. “Is Check-In Checking Out?” Serials Review 29.3 (2003): 224-229.
Wiegand, Sue. “Incorporating electronic products into the acquisitions workflow in a small College
library.” Library Collections, Acquisitions, & Technical Services 26.4 (2002): 363-366.
Winter, Elizabeth. “Georgia Tech’s 2.0 Toolkit.” R2. July 2 2007. American Library Association.
1 May 2008 <http://www.r2consulting.org/ppnts/GTWikisEtc.ppt>
Yesilbas, Amanda. “Using Drupal to Track Licenses and Organize Database Information.” The Florida
Center for Library Automation. June 3, 2011. North American Serials Interest Group. 26 October
2011 <http://fclaweb.fcla.edu/content/using-drupal-track-licenses-and-organize-databaseinformation>
Yesilbas, Amanda, and Becky Schwartzkopf. “Old Is New Again: Using Established Workflows to Handle
Electronic Resources.” Serials Librarian 52.3/4 (2007): 277-280.
Yue, Paoshan W., and Lisa Kurt. “Nine Years after Implementing the Unthinkable: The Cessation of
Periodical Check-in at the University of Nevada, Reno.” Serials Librarian 61.2 (2011): 231-252.
Zappen, Susan H. “Managing Resources to Maximize Serials Access: The Case of the Small Liberal Arts
College Library.” Serials Librarian 59.3/4 (2010): 346-359.
Zhang, Xiaoyin, and Michaelyn Haslam. “Movement toward a predominately electronic journal
collection.” Library Hi Tech 23.1 (2005): 82-89.
Electronic Resources Librarians and Related Positions and their Core Competencies
Albitz, Rebecca S. “Electronic Resource Librarians in Academic Libraries: A Position Announcement
Analysis, 1996-2001.” portal: Libraries & the Academy 2.4 (2002): 589.
Albitz, Rebecca S., and Wendy Allen Shelburne. “Marian Through the Looking Glass: The Unique
Evolution of the Electronic Resources (ER) Librarian Position.” Collection Management 32.1/2
(2007): 15-30.
Bednarek-Michalska, Bozena. Creating a job description for an electronic resources librarian.” Library
Management 23.8-9 (2002): p.378-383.
Boss, Stephen C., and Glenn S. Cook. “The Electronic Resources (ER) Librarian and Special/Corporate
Libraries.” Collection Management 32.1/2 (2007): 99-116.
48
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
Clement, Susanne. “Skills For Effective Participation In Consortia: Preparing For Collaborating And
Collaboration.” Collection Management 32.1/2 (2007): 191-204.
Downes, Kathy A., and Pal V. Rao. “Preferred Political, Social, and Technological Characteristics of
Electronic Resources (ER) Librarians.” Collection Management 32.1/2 (2007): 3-14.
Engel, Debra, and Sarah Robbins. “Evolving Roles for Electronic Resource Librarians.” Electronic Resource
Management in Libraries: Research and Practice. Eds. Holly Yu and Scott Breivold. Hershey, PA:
Information Science Reference, 2008. 105-120.
Fisher, William. “Core competencies for the acquisitions librarian.” Library Collections, Acquisitions, &
Technical Services 25.2 (2001): 179-190.
Fisher, William. “The Electronic Resources Librarian position: a public services phenomenon?” Library
Collections, Acquisitions, & Technical Services 27.1 (2003): 3.
Fleming-May, Rachel A., and Jill E. Grogg. “Finding Their Way: Electronic Resources Librarians’ Education,
Training, and Community. Slideshare. February 1, 2010. Electronic Resources & Libraries. 22
November 2011 <http://www.slideshare.net/EResourcesLibraries/finding-their-way-electronicresources-librarians-education-training-and-community-presented-by>
Ginanni, Katy, Susan Davis, and Michael A. Arthur. “Talk About: E-Resources Librarian To The Rescue?
Creating The Über Librarian: Turning Model Job Descriptions Into Practical Positions.” Serials
Librarian 50.1/2 (2006): 173-177.
Goldenstein, Cheryl. “The Electronic Resources (ER) Librarian As Teacher: Bibliographic Instruction and
Information Literacy.” Collection Management 32.1/2 (2007): 71-82.
Henle, Alea. “Electronic Resources (ER) Librarians, Usage Data, and a Changing World.” Collection
Management 32.3/4 (2007): 277-288.
Lai-Ying, Hsiung. “Expanding the Role of the Electronic Resources (ER) Librarian in the Hybrid Library.”
Collection Management 32.1/2 (2007): 31-47.
Martin, Jim, and Raik Zaghloul. “Planning for the acquisition of information resources management core
competencies.” New Library World 112.7/8 (2011): 313-320.
Plumb, Tawnya K. “Challenges and Opportunities for Electronic Resources (ER) Librarians in Facing Down
the Digital Divide.” Collection Management 32.3/4 (2007): 327-349.
Pomerantz, Sarah B. “The Role of the Acquisitions Librarian in Electronic Resources Management.”
Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship 22.1/2 (2010): 40-48.
Resnick, Taryn. “Core Competencies for Electronic Resource Access Services.” Journal of Electronic
Resources in Medical Libraries 6.2 (2009): 101-122.
Resnick, Taryn, Ana Ugaz, and Nancy Burford. “E-resource helpdesk into virtual reference: identifying
core competencies.” Reference Services Review 38.3 (2010): 347-359.
Riley, Cheryl. “The Electronic Resources (ER) Librarian and Patrons with Disabilities.” Collection
Management 32.1/2 (2007): 83-98.
49
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
Simons, Marcy et al. “Education and Electronic Resources (ER) Librarianship: How Library School
Programs Are Meeting the Needs of the ER Librarian Position.” Collection Management 32.1/2
(2007): 49-69.
Simpson, Susan Nash, Jeffrey G. Coghill, and Patricia C. Greenstein. “Electronic Resources Librarian in the
Health Sciences Library: An Emerging Role.” Journal of Electronic Resources in Medical Libraries 2.1
(2005): 27-39.
Sutton, Sarah, and Susan Davis. “Core Competencies for Electronic Resources Librarians.” Serials
Librarian 60.1-4 (2011): 147-152.
50
Making Good on the Promise of ERM
Appendix C: Workflow Documents List
(Selected documents available at: http://www.niso.org/workrooms/ermreview/workflow_docs_list/)
Source
Document
Availability
Arizona State
University
Electronic Resource Management Module
ERM Task Group Report
http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/document.php?docume
nt_id=4145&wg_abbrev=ermreview
Deakin University
ERM Workflow : new resources //
Renewals
http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/document.php?docume
nt_id=4138&wg_abbrev=ermreview
Library of Congress
Database Trial
http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/document.php?docume
nt_id=7672&wg_abbrev=ermreview
Library of Congress
Electronic Exchange
http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/document.php?docume
nt_id=7673&wg_abbrev=ermreview
Library of Congress
ER Purchase
http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/document.php?docume
nt_id=7674&wg_abbrev=ermreview
Library of Congress
ER Renewals
http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/document.php?docume
nt_id=7675&wg_abbrev=ermreview
Library of Congress
Maintenance
http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/document.php?docume
nt_id=7676&wg_abbrev=ermreview
Library of Congress
Maintenance / Quality Control
http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/document.php?docume
nt_id=7677&wg_abbrev=ermreview
Library of Congress
Maintenance userid
http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/document.php?docume
nt_id=7678&wg_abbrev=ermreview
Library of Congress
OpenAccessAcq
http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/document.php?docume
nt_id=7679&wg_abbrev=ermreview
Library of Congress
PostAcqOpenAccess
http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/document.php?docume
nt_id=7680&wg_abbrev=ermreview
Library of Congress
PostAcquisition (Processing)
http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/document.php?docume
nt_id=7681&wg_abbrev=ermreview
North Carolina State
University Libraries
Continuing and Electronic Resources
Workflow
http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/document.php?docume
nt_id=7636&wg_abbrev=ermreview
Society of College,
National and University
Libraries
Electronic resource supply stage
http://sconulerm.jiscinvolve.org/wp/files/2011/05/SCONULProcess-map-110311.pdf
UCLA
ERM Workflow: General
http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/document.php?docume
nt_id=7528&wg_abbrev=ermreview
UCLA
ERM Workflow: Renewal
http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/document.php?docume
nt_id=7533&wg_abbrev=ermreview
UCLA
ERM Workflow: Maintenance
http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/document.php?docume
nt_id=7532&wg_abbrev=ermreview
UCLA
ERM Workflow: Acquisition
http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/document.php?docume
nt_id=7530&wg_abbrev=ermreview
UCLA
ERM Workflow: Cataloging
http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/document.php?docume
nt_id=7531&wg_abbrev=ermreview
UCLA
ERM Workflow: Trial
http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/document.php?docume
nt_id=7529&wg_abbrev=ermreview
Western Michigan
University
Electronic Resources and Serials Unit
Workflow - May 2010
http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/document.php?docume
nt_id=7632&wg_abbrev=ermreview
51