Disruptive Library Technology Jester » library consortia

ICOLC Issues Statement on the Global Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Consortial Licenses

Peter Murray — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 02:16:01 +0000

On Monday, January 19th, the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) issued a statement on the impact of the global economic crisis on libraries, with a particular focus on library consortia.

Written on behalf of the many library consortia across the world that participate in the ICOLC, this statement has two purposes. It is intended to help publishers and other content providers from whom we license electronic information resources (hereafter simply referred to as publishers) understand better how the current unique financial crisis affects the worldwide information community. Its second purpose is to suggest a range of approaches that we believe are in the mutual best interest of libraries and the providers of information services.

The statement goes on to outline the observed and expected impacts on libraries:

We expect significant and widespread cuts in budget levels for libraries and consortia
These cuts will be prolonged.
Exchange rate fluctuations are complicating and in some cases amplifying the impact.

The statement offers two principles that, from the perspective of the consortia and their member libraries, will be most effective in dealing with these impacts:

Flexible pricing that offers customers real options, including the ability to reduce expenditures without disproportionate loss of content, will be the most successful.
It is in the best interest of both publishers and consortia to seek creative solutions that allow licenses to remain as intact as possible, without major content or access reductions.

Lastly, the statement suggests approaches for content providers based on these principles:

Purchasers will trade features for price.
Putting price first will help all parties, because budget pressures will drive decisions in a way never seen before.
Tailoring content to need and pricing accordingly can be very helpful.
Multi-year contracts will be possible only with clear opt-out and/or reduction clauses.
While annual payments currently are the most prevalent payment schedule for group licenses, options will be needed for semi-annual or quarterly payment schedules, in combination with more flexible opt-out/reduction clauses and renewal cycles.

The statement itself goes into more details about each of these impacts, principles, and approaches. Wendy Stephens of Buckhorn High School (New Market, Alabama) has written a great analysis of this on the ALA AASL blog. Disclosure: my employer is a signatory to the statement.

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.aasl.ala.org/aaslblog/2009/01/29/in-a-tough-economy-databases-under-threat/ to http://www.aasl.ala.org/aaslblog/?p=354 on January 20th, 2011.

Automating Withdrawn Actions: Maximixing the Long Tail of Acquisitions

Peter Murray — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 14:49:22 +0000

Libraries place a good deal of emphasis on collection development policies — a written statement of a library’s intentions for building its collection. It describes the collection’s strengths and weaknesses and provides guidelines for the purchase (“acquisition”) and disposition (“weeding”) of content. This is an activity that sets libraries apart from other organizations.

A number of automated systems exist for the first half of this process: approval plans, book jobber firm order systems, etc. (See the Just In Time Acquisitions versus Just In Case Acquisitions article on DLTJ for another idea about the front end of the process.) Not may seem to exist, nor are they as widely used, at the end of the process — deciding when an item needs to drop off the shelf to make way for something new. The OCLC WorldCat Collection Analysis is one such tool; this posting describes another — a way a consortia can maximize the array of content held collectively by optimizing the deaccessioning of material.

Existing Practice

Cooperative collection development is nothing new to OhioLINK. Its Cooperative collection development document objectives and assumptions policy is a foundational document that describes the consortium’s intent to build a collection that is collectively stronger than the individual parts. More specifically, the CIRM Guidelines for Last Copy describes actions “the library should take in order to keep at least one copy [of a title] in Ohio.” To that end, a “discards” list is maintained where libraries can post information about titles being removed from a collection, with special emphasis on last-copy announcements.

The ‘discards’ list is a shot-gun approach to handling deaccessioned items — everyone on the list receives the same broad spectrum of announcements. If a subject specialist subscribed to the list, he or she would receive a lot of “noise” from announcements in unrelated subject areas. Conversely, an acquisitions coordinator may not appreciate the value of an item from a specialized field. Also, as the policy guidelines dictate, checking to see if special handling is needed on a title-by-title basis because it might be the last copy in Ohio adds a time consuming step to the discard process. This proposed “Automated Withdrawn Actions” system seeks to address the issues of targeted notification of deaccessioned items and streamlining the consortial aspects of collection weeding.

Overview of Proposed System

The Automated Withdrawn Actions (AWA) system starts with a web page where the local catalog’s bibliographic record number or item barcode is entered into a database at OhioLINK. Software at OhioLINK pulls the MARC record from the local system using on the bib record number or the barcode and reads the LC class and/or Dewey call number. A rough subject categorization is determined based on the LC class or Dewey call number. The software uses the subject categorization to send an announcement of the item (either via e-mail, RSS feed, or some other mechanism) to selectors across the state that have signed up to receive notifications for that subject area. If another library wants the item, the system will notify the holding library and a PCIRC transmittal slip is generated for the physical delivery of the item to the requesting library.

The AWA system can also look up the item in the OhioLINK central catalog to determine the number of libraries that hold the same title. If removing the copy in question would trigger a “last copy” situation, the software can send the same notification to the ‘discards’ mailing list with the “LAST COPY OFFER” notation. If seven days pass and no other library accepts the item, the system can generate a PCIRC transmittal slip to send the item to Ohio State University — Ohio’s academic library of last resort.

Technical Requirements

The Automated Withdrawn Actions software would run on OhioLINK’s servers on behalf of its members. Staff at member institutions would notify the system of items being withdrawn via a record-by-record web form or by uploading a file of records. Bibliographic item numbers are the unique key for titles both in the local system and in the central catalog. In order to use barcodes (or item record numbers), a member library would need to export a list of barcodes (and item record numbers) with matching bibliographic record numbers and upload that to the AWA software. Requesting libraries would use a URL embedded in the e-mail or RSS message to request the item for their library.

Possible Extensions

Once the basic AWA system is automated, one can envision several extensions that would streamline the process or provide additional avenues for withdrawn items.

Transfer of MARC Record

As long as the item is being transferred, the system could offer a file containing the MARC record from the withdrawing library that could be used as the basis of cataloging the item in the receiving library. Since the bibliographic record is a match for the item, little if any copy cataloging would be needed.

OCLC Holdings Update

If the MARC record is copied from the withdrawing library to the receiving library, there may be no corresponding OCLC copy cataloging activity to register the receipt of the new item. Additionally, removing the withdrawing library’s OCLC symbol from the Worldcat record is yet another task to be done by the withdrawing library. The AWA system could queue up the “withdrawn” and “attach” messages to Worldcat on behalf of the member libraries. (Assuming the original MARC record contained an OCLC record number.)

Offering Withdrawn Items to Libraries Outside Ohio

If an item is being withdrawn is not desired by another OhioLINK member and it is not the last copy in the state, the AWA system could be opened up to participation by other libraries. For the cost of shipping, another library may request an item withdrawn from the collection of a member library.

Other Automated Transfers of Deaccessed Items

In addition to other libraries, other transfer systems could be tied into AWA. For instance, there could be a function that would list the item for sale on e-bay, or offer it to Alibris or another used book seller.

Conclusion

Chris Anderson, Editor of Wired magazine and author of The Long Tail, describes a phenomenon where a large number of items each used a small number of times collectively make up a large body of usage, given an enabling framework. Amazon is one such framework where more books than could possibly be held at a physical bricks-and-mortar store are offered, and every title is purchased by at least some small number of individuals.

By automating the actions that occur when an item is withdrawn from a member library, the long tail of library item usage can be pulled out a little further. Once unused items can find a new home and a new stream of usage via the software and workflow described here.

A View of Regional Digitization Centers

Peter Murray — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 19:29:02 +0000

As a part of work for an OhioLINK strategic task force, I have been exploring the creation and operation of regional/collaborative/shared digitization centers. This is a report of findings to date after an open call for information. The report is structured with questions to be explored when considering a regional digitization center followed by narratives from conversations with the Collaborative Digitization Program (formerly the Colorado Digitization Program), the Mountain West Digital Library, and the Ohio Historical Society. My thanks go out to Leigh Grinstead, Liz Bishoff, Karen Estlund, Angela O’Neal, and Phil Sager for their assistance.

I am still interested in talking with collaboratives about similar programs, both “on the record” and in private conversations. Please get in touch with me if you would like to chat.

Questions for Exploration

Here are some items to be considered when forming a regional digitization center collaborative that came from the conversations supplemented with reading materials from various projects around the country.

Who does the digital conversion? Is it staff at the hosting institution (where the equipment is located), or does the institution contributing the materials perform the scanning operation at the host institution?
Where and when is the description done? Description of the digitized item was universally done by the contributing institution, but the location (at the scanning center or at the contributing institution) and timing (before conversion, during conversion, or after conversion) vary. Answers to the first question — whether contributing staff members are performing the conversion — affect this question.
Is contribution of materials to the Ohio Digital Resource Commons required? If the regional scanning center is used to digitize materials (or in the case where the consortium is subsidizing a scanning service to perform the digital conversion), what conditions are put in place for contributing those materials to the central repository.
What is the cost structure for use of the regional scanning center? Options range from complete subsidy by consortium (most notably when the CDP funded the equipment at their regional scanning centers) to contributing institutions being charged at cost recovery rates by hosting institutions. There can be various cost structures applied, such as a consortial subsidy for equipment and training with labor supplied by contributing institution or contracted from hosting institution.
What training is offered? Topics for training range from optimal use of digitization equipment to digitization project planning to metadata creation standards. The training can be based on group instruction, one-on-one consultation with contributing institutions, or a combination of both.
Who will fill the role of “metadata editor”? The need for a collective expert in metadata creation was found in many of the projects. This person is typically charged with training contributing staff on the appropriate use of local metadata conventions, coaching individual staff on particular projects, and reviewing records that will become part of a consortial database.

Report from the CDP

In 1998 the project began as the Colorado Digitization Project (CDP) and they started with a survey of institutional needs and institutional capacity. Within the first year found a need for scanners at many institutions public and academic libraries, as well as historical societies and, museums. Starting in 1999, the CDP established seven regional scan centers over five years, distributed throughout Colorado such that no institution was more than an hour and a half to two hours from a center. This narrative is derived from research and phone conversations with Leigh Grinstead and Liz Bishoff.

The original climate that generated the interest in scanners was one where institutions did not want to outsource digitization because they didn’t want the materials leaving their direct control. The CDP, on the other hand, did not want institutions to buy cheap scanners that would result in lower-quality scans. The CDP purchased the scanners ($2,500 each, in 1999 dollars) plus desktop workstations and created a training program for the use of the equipment. The center provided the location for the equipment and hands-on assistance with using the equipment; it was incumbent on the staff at the institution with materials to be digitized to perform the scanning themselves. Before using the equipment, those performing the scanning had to attend a CDP “Introduction to Digital Imaging” training session on the proper use and techniques for obtaining high-quality images. Scanning projects that received CDP funding had priority over other users of the equipment, but there was little contention for the equipment at the centers. Descriptive metadata could be keyed at the time of the scan; CDP provided a web-based template (called “DC builder”) or staff could use their own system (an ILS, ContentDM, etc.). Contribution of the associated metadata to the CDP union catalog of metadata — Heritage West — was required for CDP-funded grant projects. Images were locally hosted.

In 2003, the CDP conducted an evaluation of the scan centers in the form of focus groups. They found two different responses. First, institutions on the western slopes of Colorado made much heavier use of their scan centers. These institutions tended to be smaller and/or economically disadvantaged, and the availability of the hardware and software to conduct the scanning operations was more critical. In front range libraries, where institutions tend to be better-funded, the centers were not as heavily used for projects and tended to be used for training and demonstration sites; these participants felt that the greatest value in the CDP came from the professional networking and training opportunities the locations, the grants that the CDP provided and the creation of the best practices and website that brought all this together.

The regional scan centers are not used today. The primary reason is the diffusion of experience within the community that was spurred by the early success of the centers. As funding cycles continued, institutions purchased their own equipment (generally replicating the equipment at the centers) so as avoid the need to transport materials and staff to a regional center for larger projects. The focus of grant funding within CDP also shifted from image-based collections to EAD and sound collections. There is still an “Introduction to Digital Imaging” workshop, but the focus is now on requirements for in-house equipment and/or what to seek from a vendor in an RFP. The imaging workshop is typically taught as part of a three-day workshop series with an “Introduction to Digital Project Management” (storage, preservation, handling socially sensitive materials, how to display them) before and “Introduction to Metadata” (focused on Dublin Core) after. The biggest issue facing the consortium now is oversized scanning; only the very largest university library would have this kind of equipment.

The Colorado model of teaching staff at the institution on the use of the equipment along with the creation of regional scan centers was picked up by several states: North Carolina; Alabama; Kansas; Missouri; and Wyoming (except that regional centers were not practical due to the wide population dispersion). Tennessee is working under a current IMLS grant to build three regional center plus a suite of mobile equipment.

Liz suggests that we should look for ways to support collaborative efforts within the institution with museum and archives on the campus. The Florida Center for Library Automation (FCLA) has a program in place where the local university library is the contact in partnerships with public libraries and local museums.

Leigh noted that in recent years, CDP projects include a “metadata editor” that is hired to look at record quality and work with individual institutions to improve records. Having a metadata editor, someone familiar with the CDP guidelines and the field in general, look at four or five records at the very early stage of a project is critical to the success of the quality of the rest of the project. In a recent project, nearly half of the partners were going to export records out of a local collection management system. It was discovered that the records were not consistent; local implementation/practice of cataloging standards has a higher overall impact than community best practice. Having a local cataloger participate on the team migrating the records from a local system to a central system is key to success.

Mountain West Digital Library

The Mountain West Digital Library (MWDL) was established approximately six years ago. My contact was Karen Estlund at the University of Utah; although the University of Utah was the lead institution in the MWDL project, Karen has been with the project only since August 2006. The MWDL is made up of a federation of ContentDM installations at seven institutions in the region (five in Utah: Univ of Utah, Brigham Young Univ, Utah State Univ, Weber State Univ and Southern Utah Univ; and two in Nevada: Univ of Nevada Reno and Univ of Nevada Las Vegas; plus the Utah State Archives). Metadata is harvested from these ContentDM installations via OAI-PMH to a portal operating at the University of Utah. (Up until the recent past, MWDL used the ContentDM Multi-site server; they recently switched to using OAI harvesting.)

Content is ingested into the MWDL either through digital conversion centers at the regional institutions or through the efforts of the contributing institution. The regional institutions perform digital conversion for contributing institutions at cost-recovery rates. These regional centers use the equipment and staff at the hosting institution, and are very busy at times resulting in difficult choices to balance needs of the host institution with that of requests from other institutions.

The regional centers also conduct on-site training and technical education at contributing institutions about best practice for digital conversion. The on-site program includes a technical evaluation of the equipment to be used to ensure that it can produce conversions that meet the minimum requirements for the MWDL. In the course of this evaluation, staff at contributing institutions are taught some technical aspects of scanning such as the actual DPI scanning capabilities of the hardware versus interpolated resolutions (and why this is important). Staff also receive an introduction to Photoshop for de-skewing and other standard practices. They also are instructed in the Western Standard Metadata Best Practices. This hands-on approach — with the contributing institution’s people, equipment and materials — enables strong connections between the contributing institution and the hosting institution. It makes the contributing institution feel like a part of the larger program. Most contributing institutions with local digital conversion operations will FTP files to the ContentDM server at the regional institution; some institutions contribute materials through the transportation of a portable hard drive.

Each regional hosting center is responsible for the digital preservation of the material on their server. At this point there is no common agreement across the MWDL for standards on digital preservation; this is an area of work to be addressed in the near future by the cooperative.

The cooperative is starting work in several new areas. First is the digital conversion and posting of oral histories from contributing institutions. While it is anticipated that such resource will be highly valued, quick progress on this project is hampered by the same permission problems that face similar projects with relatively old audio. The cooperative also has a state LSTA grant for a Utah institutional repository with a portal connected to the MWDL. The state archives are also beginning a program to post state government documents, including items related to the Olympic Games held in Utah. The hands-on approach to training staff at contributing institutions is very labor-intensive and uneven across the project participants. MWDL is in the process of hiring a program director, and a component of that job description is to provide this kind of training across the project.

Ohio Memory Project (Ohio Historical Society)

The Ohio Historical Society (OHS) provided scanning support for the Ohio Memory Project (OMP). At the beginning of the project in 2000, institutions contributing to the OMP generally wanted to send materials to OHS to be digitized. By the end of the grant-funded phase of the project in 2003, most institutions shifted to using their own equipment. OHS will still digitized for some cultural heritage institutions on a contract basis, although the primary focus of late has been on oversized materials that must be digitized on specialized equipment.

OHS staff will work with contributing institutions on a one-on-one basis as well as conduct workshops on introduction to scanning. Many of the participants are from contributing institutions that have had staff changes and the new staff want to know how to use the equipment purchased during the grant-funded phase of the project. There is also a desire for more advanced training, such as Photoshop basics.

OHS staff recognize that a compromise is needed between institutional capabilities for scanning and the very best practices in the field. They have found it hard to establish and mandate an absolute standard for the parameters and quality of digital scans. Institutions that scan their own materials are responsible for their own storage and preservation.

Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries to build a consortial repository using FEDORA

Peter Murray — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 16:38:33 +0000

On Friday, the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries announced the creation of a consortium-wide digital repository project similar to that of the Ohio Digital Resource Commons.

Colorado Alliance Digital Repository Project Approved

The Board of Directors of the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries has approved initial funding for a consortium-wide digital repository project at its October 19, 2006 meeting.
The Board of Directors of the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries has approved initial funding for a consortium-wide digital repository project at its October 19, 2006 meeting. The project will use the Fedora open source software which was selected after a long evaluation process by the Institutional Repository Implementation Team, chaired by John Culshaw from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The Alliance Digital Repository (ADR) project allows the participating member libraries to develop a shared technical and development infrastructure to store, preserve and disseminate a whole variety of digital objects including images, text, audio, video, learning objects, data sets or any other kind of material. The project will make use of open source tools developed by others in order to fast track functionality. As new software is developed as part of the project it will also be made available to the open source community.
via Peter Suber’s Open Access News

Welcome to the party!

Seeking Documents on the Application of Service Oriented Architectures in Academic Libraries

Peter Murray — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 17:02:11 +0000

I’ve been tasked to write a whitepaper envisioning a Service Oriented Architecture for OhioLINK’s services and operations. I’ve found a bit of information through my own networking and searching, but in putting out this list and asking for additions I want to be sure that I’m not already missing the holy grail of documents that I could just rebrand as an OhioLINK document. (With appropriate permission, of course.) I’m looking for strategic/explanatory documents over technical documents, although the latter will undoubtedly be useful in later iterations and derivatives of the whitepaper.

CDL Common Framework

The CDL Common Framework is an open, services-oriented technical architecture that provides an integrating framework for services related to digital libraries. As a layered architecture it aims to separate front-end tools from back-end services from underlying data storage so that different components can be reused in multiple applications, reducing the time and money it takes to develop and maintain code. The Common Framework also supports easy integration of local and third party tools and services through a plug-in approach. It is available through both machine (i.e. web services) and human interfaces.

A ‘service oriented’ view of the JISC Information Environment

This document is intended to help clarify the relationship of the JISC IE architecture to ‘service oriented’ architectures such as those adopted by the DLF Abstract Services Taskforce and the e-Framework for Education and Research. It starts from the set of ‘service components’ shown in the JISC IE architecture diagram, extrapolating a list of the ‘abstract services’ that are expected to be offered and then listing a set of candidate ‘service bindings’ (that correspond with the protocols and standards listed in the JISC IE technical standards document. This document builds on an earlier attempt to develop a tentative ‘reference model‘ for the discovery to delivery space occupied by the JISC IE. The previous document took a functional approach, using UML use cases to document the anticipated behaviour of end-users of the JISC IE, then building up a set of ‘business processes’, ‘abstract services’ and ‘service bindings’. However, the list of abstract services provided in the older document is too simplistic and incomplete to be useful.

e-Framework for Education and Research

Resources on this site include: The eFramework for Education and Research; an overview briefing paper provides an overview of the e-Framework for Education and Research (the e-Framework), its strategic context, its aims and objectives, its overall approach, the stakeholders, the benefits and its expected outcomes and impact. Workflow and Webservices examines the topic of coordinating workflows of web services within an elearning context, and identifies the requirements, challenges, and technology choices involved. The JISC Information Environment (JISC IE) technical architecture specifies a set of standards and protocols that support the development and delivery of an integrated set of networked services that allow the end-user to discover, access, use and publish digital and physical resources as part of their learning and research activities. The E-Learning Framework (ELF)constitutes the e-learning domain within the e-Framework. The abstract service definitions and resources within the ELF will be merged with those of the JISC Information Environment, and the emerging domain factorisations for e-science and e-administration to form the e-Framework.

DLF Service Framework for Digital Libraries

A progress report for the DLF Steering Committee from 17 May 2005. Has headings of Context, Why is a Digital Library Service Framework needed?, Some benefits of a Service Framework for DLF and research libraries, What has the DLF Service Framework Group done so far?, Some open issues, and Recommendations moving forward.

ALA TechSource’s Web Services and the Service-Oriented Architecture

“In an era of computing dominated by the World Wide Web, technology referred to as Web services stands as a key one for allowing computers to communicate machine to machine, program to program….Web services make it easy to connect all types of computer applications to each other. As you will see throughout this report, Web services deliver a foundation of interoperability greatly needed in a world where computer services and digital information exist in many different forms and flavors,” says Breeding in his “Introduction” in the latest issue of Library Technology Reports, “Web Services and the Service-Oriented Architecture.”

The text was modified to remove a link to http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/common_framework/ on November 17th, 2010.

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.e-framework.org/resources/ to http://www.e-framework.org/Resources/tabid/609/Default.aspx on November 17th, 2010.

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.e-framework.org/resources/eframeworkrV1.pdf to http://www.e-framework.org/Portals/9/docs/papers/Briefing060802.pdf on November 17th, 2010.

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.e-framework.org/resources/SOAandWorkflow2.pdf to http://www.e-framework.org/Portals/9/Resources/SOAandWorkflow2.pdf on November 17th, 2010.

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.techsource.ala.org/ltr/web-services-and-the-service-oriented-architecture.html to http://www.alatechsource.org/ltr/web-services-and-the-service-oriented-architecture on November 17th, 2010.

Electronic Resource Management Systems in Consortial Environments

Peter Murray — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 18:49:02 +0000

This is a summary of the discussion of the LITA Library Consortia / Automated Systems Interest Group meeting on Monday morning of the ALA Annual Convention in New Orleans. The meeting consisted of a managed discussion of the use of Electronic Resource Management (ERM) systems in consortial environments. In some cases, comments from the two primary speakers and discussion among the commingled and unattributed. Inaccuracies and comments taken out of context are the responsibility of the author of this posting, and corrections or embellishments are welcome in the form of comments to this post or as private e-mail messages.

The first speaker was from Yale (unfortunately, I arrived late and didn’t get her name — a helpful hint in a comment to this posting would be appreciated). Yale purchased and “implemented” (actually getting any ERM system up and running is not a trivial task, so it is hard to say when “implemented” is) Verde about 14 months ago when it was in alpha development. Ex Libris delivered a production version to Yale in September 2005 and from them until two weeks ago Yale has been working through configuration and getting an the electronic journal coverage load into the ERM system to know what they have(“took quite a while to get there”). Next they will be migrating information about which databases and e-books they have, followed by data entry for subscription, license, and administrative information for all records in the system. They will probably set up these data entry projects with three different groups, one for each metadata type, operating concurrently.

Yale’s ILS is Endeavor Voyager. They looked at Endeavor’s Meridian and Innovative’s ERMS in addition to Verde. ERMS, although it was in production, was less attractive because it would add third vendor in their automation mix. A major part of their selection process came down to which of their existing systems needed to be more closely integrated with the ERM, and they decided it was more important to be more closely aligned with their existing SFX and Metalib implementations that with the ILS. Yale’s systems department thinks they will be able to pull read-only acquisitions information from the Voyager system via a custom ‘report’ function using the purchase order number as a key. Yale is not putting print serial information into Verde. (Verde has the capability to create a “print record” for a “work” (e.g. bibliographic record).) They have an automated lookup from SFX to their ILS that the user can use to find information about print subscriptions.

The second speaker was Diane Carol from the Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU). They have an Innovative Interfaces ILS and because of existing consortial arrangements, had no choice but to use ERMS from Innovative. Prior to implementing an ERM system, they used things like the 856 fields in the ILS to point to electronic journals plus an external SQL/ColdFusion database for public users and spreadsheets for administrative information, license information, and statistics. At one point they were trying to maintain holdings in five or six systems (above plus Ovid, PubMed, etc.) In 2003 they decided to integrate the information about electronic products into one place. This single source of data would be used to upload to other systems and OpenURL resolves, allow wider access to the license data, and centralize the collection development decisions.

Information from their old coverage database (ISSN, URLs, and Holdings) was loaded and attached to a resource records. ISSN connected it to the existing bibliographic record in the ILS. Also has a license record that is also attached to the resource record. Doing things this way created “skeletal records” for resource records — the minimal of what is needed to start loading the system. Because OHSU is part of a consortial union catalog, doing this added a lot of brief records in the union catalog; they are now looking at the process needed to clean this up. OHSU’s OpenURL resolver is Innovative’s WebBridge, and coverage data is automatically updated.

Helpful Hints

Both speakers echoed the need to involve disparate groups of people in the project. Yale commented that they faced a decision about whether to start with just a small group of people to do a deep load of just the licensing attributes or involve more people with a broad perspective of not just the back-end technical services changes but also the public A-Z list changes. Yale ended up going with the bigger scope and she was not sure they could have made any other choice.

Yale started by walking through the DLF ERMI data dictionary to determine what fields they wanted to use what values to put in those fields (e.g. establishing standard terminology), but found it very different when they started the data load and thinking about how they would use it. For instance, does one need to record in the ERM the state of where the license will be adjudicated? If it isn’t part of reporting needs or a public display, then don’t bother. (One can always look it up later out of the paper files.) In other words, don’t create a “high bar” for the initial implementation by thinking that you will fill every field of every record.

If you already have a link resolver and/or a metasearch engine from a vendor other than that of your ILS, decide whether you need tighter integration with the link resolver/metasearch engine or the ILS and have that weight your selection criteria. For instance, Yale reports that Verde can eliminate some duplicative data entry — information entered into Verde can be pushed into SFX. SFX can also be configured to look up permissions, license rights, and technical information in Verde (an “i” information button in SFX). However, from the same vendor, Metalib is not talking to Verde in any way; it is a concern of Yale for when they start to record database information into Verde. Yale is seeking from Ex Libris a best practice for data entry now to be prepared for the day when the integration is done. The general observation of the group was that institutions tend to go with their link resolver product vendor versus their ILS vendor.

To pay attention

Know whether you getting a “Knowledge Base” with your product? If not, that will add on to the ultimate cost. (Meridian, for instance, doesn’t come with a knowledge base.)

Implementation is done for Verde 2.0, documentation done on July 1, early adopters are using the software, public demonstration sites are ready, general release date announcement coming soon. Verde 2.0 has some new features for consortia. Although it not available yet, it is still useful to have their 1.1 implementation to start addressing how the consortium will deal with the definition of fields and how they will be used across the consortium.