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1 April 2008
Electronic Resources & Libraries Conference, Atlanta. March 2008.
Posted by Sarah Bartlett at April 1, 2008 10:57 AM
This year’s ER&L conference confirmed that usage statistics is THE topic du jour in electronic resources management. Virginia Kinman from Longwood University underlined the importance of this area by reporting that in the culture of assessment, 93.5% of research institution directors use usage statistics for subscription decisions. Susan Golden from Serials Solutions another speaker able to see the big picture, pointed out that the fundamental problem with usage statistics in their current form is that so much has to be done manually with usage statistics before you can even start to analyze them.
Susan was demonstrating the 360 COUNTER product, launched last year. One of the most interesting features she demonstrated enables users to upload reports from the publisher website into the 360 archive. Impressively, if the publisher subsequently amends the statistics, then Serials Solutions will automatically update the uploaded version. Serials Solutions also have an eye on Web 2.0 and hope to be making a wiki available for their customers in the near future.
My own presentation was on the first day. Entitled “Opportunities for collaboration in ERM using new web technologies”, it was gratifying to see that its central themes – collaboration, openness and sharing were reflected in abundance across the conference programme. My session, which focused on the application of Web 2.0 and semantic web technologies to back office e-resource operations was very well received, but I take my hat off to Jonathan Blackburn and Mason Hall from Florida State University for making the subject of community-centred knowledgebases more entertaining than a stand-up comic at the top of his game. How on earth did they manage to do that and at the same time deliver a deadly serious call to action around opening up data, uncoupling data and services, and supporting Open Source initiatives? See www.libraryokra.com for further details.
Along similar lines, Karen Coyle’s Opening Keynote speech was a clarion call for open data. She urged libraries to let their users freely re-use bibliographic data, even if we don’t like what they actually do with it. She argued cogently that with the semantic web, the library could be the killer app, as we have the best data.
In sessions that focused closely on ERM systems, there was a great deal of curiosity about those libraries who have just implemented Ex Libris’ Verde product. Over and above general problems implementing what is clearly a highly complex application, there was concern expressed about insufficient space for storing licensing data. Ex Libris promised to address this problem.
Deberah England from Wright State University is an Innovative customer, and she described how she’s adapted eTracker, a tracking system, which was being used by their IT department for troubleshooting, to her ERM work, to supplement and integrate with Innovative’s ERM system. She made the point that none of the ERMSs on the market address tracking problems well. That is certainly a shortcoming that Talis is seeking to address with our Xedio project. Kristen Blake and Jacquie Samples, meanwhile, reported on their project at North Carolina’s State University to develop an organization name authority tool, a relatively new concept in ERM, to rationalize data such as “Elsevier Science Inc”, “Elsevier Science Ltd” and so forth.
For my money, one of the most interesting session was delivered by Dave Stout from Bepress Services and yet another hot topic - the institutional repository. Well there was no elephant in this room. Straight away, Dave exposed the failure of libraries engage successfully with faculties to maximize take-up of institutional repositories, because the library vision has not extended beyond digital preservation, an issue which faculties have very little understanding or appreciation of. So the session focused instead on the interesting uses to which a small number of US colleges are putting their IRs. It was fascinating to see examples of faculties actually publishing eJournals on their IR. These tend to be titles unsuited to mainstream publishing – such as regional titles (“California Agriculture”) or niche titles (McMaster’s “Bertrand Russell” journal). But the story doesn’t stop with journal publishing. Faculties are also organizing conferences and workshops within the repository, by using it to call for papers, and manage the submission and review of conference papers, as well as reviewing and tracking grant proposals, and other interesting activities. Apparently, size and resources are no longer barriers, with small colleges and even groups of students doing impressive things. It’s low cost, and best of all, it enables academics to engage on their own terms with IRs, which as a result are becoming highly creative and collaborative spaces.
So all in all, there may have been more sessions on usage statistics than on any other subject at Atlanta, but collaboration and openness were threads that ran through the entire conference.
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