Selection and Presentation of Commercially Available Electronic Resources

Selection and Presentation of Commercially Available Electronic Resources Timothy D Jewell University of Washington Libraries Table of Contents Introduction Selection Policies, Guidelines, and Plans Organization and Roles [section to be added] Purchasing Strategies, Consortia, and Publishing Initiatives Licensing Practices Web Presentation Strategies User Support Evaluation and Usage Information [section to be added] Procedure Streamlining and Support Systems 10 Summary and Conclusions [section to be edited and expanded] 11 References 12 Appendices A Commercial E-Resource Good Practice Candidates and Web Sites B Consortial Purchasing of Major Databases and E-Journal Packages C Functions and Data Elements for Managing Electronic Resources reb1666069759.doc; 10/18/22; 12:33 PM Page Introduction As is true of the other two essays in this series, the goal of this one is to review and discuss practices that various libraries have put in place for developing their digital collections – and especially those practices that stand out in some way as “good or best.” Here the focus is on selection and implementation of “third party” electronic resources that libraries spend their resource dollars to acquire This category of resources is very broad – perhaps impossibly so – since even the crudest inventory would have to include such tools as indexing and abstracting databases, electronic journals, hybrid “aggregator” databases that combine features of both, full-text encyclopedias and similar products, historical full-text collections, and now electronic books Most ARL libraries now have well-established websites, on which are typically to be found extensive lists of widely accessible electronic resources From the imagined perspective of a hypothetical library user of ten years ago the extent, richness, and variety of these offerings must be striking (and a little bit daunting), since it is common to find hundreds of databases, and literally thousands of electronic journals, on the larger ARL member library web sites It is hardly surprising that spending on electronic resources has been gradually rising for over a decade Among ARL libraries, expenditures for these products and services has increased from 3.6 % of resources budgets in 1992-1993 (or about $172,000) to over 10% (an average of about $742,000) in 1998-1999 Preliminary data for 1999-2000 indicate that the long-term growth trend in spending is continuing, and many suspect that it will increase more rapidly over the next few years as more and more material becomes available on the web, established companies modify their offerings to emphasize electronic access, and new companies begin to offer a range of electronic resources directly to users – thus possibly becoming serious competitors to libraries, or at least occupying a “new competitive space.” (Hughes 2000) The rapid development of the Internet, followed by the dramatic emergence of the Web, has clearly been among the more obvious drivers of recent growth in these expenditures Although reliance on “linear models” of change may be risky (Brown and Duguid 2000) it does seem quite safe to assume that in another ten years the typical ARL library will be spending considerably more for electronic resources and access than they now, and will have plunged much further ahead into an “electronic future” -though it may hard to guess at more than the contours of that future It may seem surprising that the subset of ARL libraries that also belong to the Digital Library Federation – which have typically taken strong leadership positions in developing digitized collections and thus might be expected to have made more radical moves in acquiring access to fee-based electronic resources – appear to spend roughly the same proportion of their materials budgets on electronic resources as other ARL libraries For example, Table shows that while the median percentage spent by ARL libraries on electronic resources was 10.18%, the corresponding percentage for reporting DLF member libraries was actually a little less than that: 9.65% Interestingly, in 1998-1999 several non-DLF ARL libraries spent more as a percentage of their materials budgets than did the DLF libraries at the high end of either measure Nevertheless, Table also shows that reporting DLF member libraries, as a group, invested significantly more money on average in electronic resources (about $1.1 million) than did the typical ARL library reb1666069759.doc; 10/18/22; 12:33 PM Page Table DLF Member Libraries’ Expenditures for Electronic Resources (As reported to ARL for 1998-1999) Reporting DLF Institutions E-resource Expenditures California, Berkeley Columbia Cornell Emory Harvard Illinois, Urbana Indiana Library of Congress Michigan Minnesota New York Public Library North Carolina State Penn State Pennsylvania Princeton Southern California Tennessee Texas Virginia Yale Total $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ 305,351 1,105,102 1,178,866 1,034,488 2,524,677 874,660 667,316 493,625 1,941,139 1,242,732 741,819 1,309,592 1,502,722 1,295,109 973,829 847,916 460,314 1,795,329 658,635 997,000 21,950,221 Average ARL Average $ $ 1,097,511 742,598 Median ARL Median $ $ 1,015,744 645,495 Percent of resources 2.37% 9.23% 10.61% 11.94% 11.89% 9.26% 7.28% 5.67% 12.32% 12.50% 6.75% 17.08% 11.76% 13.33% 9.15% 10.04% 8.10% 17.66% 8.19% 5.65% 9.65% 10.18% If DLF libraries are not spending a larger portion of their resources budgets for electronic resources, the fact that they are spending larger amounts of money does suggest that they share problems of operational scale Perspectives and Definitions Most readers of this essay will be well acquainted with developments in electronic resources and – given the levels of expenditures just sketched will appreciate the breadth of the topic in the DLF context, the great diversity among electronic resources currently offered for sale or subscription and of interest to its members, and the amazing rapidity with which relevant developments continue to take place Such readers may well wonder whether it is possible to identify “best practices” in this area, or to much more than offer a “time slice” that will quickly be outdated Perhaps above all, they may wonder what level of treatment “granularity” for such a broad topic might be both achievable and useful? reb1666069759.doc; 10/18/22; 12:33 PM Page The research that I have done for this project has led me to conclude that – whether or not examples of “best practices” are readily identifiable there are plenty of good, interesting, and even inspiring practices and documents that can be adapted by other libraries to their local situations Since locating them wasn’t always easy, I suspect they may have had little impact beyond their local settings With this in mind, I have tried to select and organize pointers to documents and websites that strike me (as a fellow “practitioner) as especially useful, interesting, or illustrative of one thing or another In line with the goals of the DLF initiative, I have tried to pay particular attention to practices that I feel help foster “sustainability and scalability” – though the idea of “sustainability” merits some discussion in the context of commercially available electronic resources The first meaning that many librarians will now associate with the word relates to the economics of the “system” of scholarly communication or publishing For example, the “Tempe Principles” adopted in May 2000 by a group librarians, university administrators, and others states that the “ current system of scholarly publishing has become too costly for the academic community to sustain.” This may well be the single most important “sustainability” question, and a variety of approaches and strategies (such as consortial buying arrangements and such initiatives as SPARC ) have recently been introduced and will be discussed These appear to merit “global” treatment as “best practices” – but they are fairly few in number, and their long-term effects are unknown As important as such initiatives are to the marketplace within which purchase or subscription decisions are made, there is a very wide array of operational activity that goes into selection, presentation, and support of electronic resources Well-organized and effective practices can contribute to sustainability by minimizing the amount of time and effort that must be expended by users and staff Aims, Methodology and Organization The idea of putting together useful practices and internal documents is, of course, hardly new ARL SPEC Kits perform a similar function and are highly valued by those interested in the topics they cover This essay and its supporting documents depart in several ways from the SPEC Kit model, however For instance, because of time constraints and the broad scope of possible topics, I did not attempt to write a questionnaire that I thought would cover all or most relevant points As a result, this report is probably somewhat more impressionistic and less representative of the state of the art than it could be However, I have tried to provide somewhat more context and discussion than might typically be found in a SPEC Kit In addition, I have tried to present an idealized model or list of practices that, taken together, depict my own view of “how things should work” in this area – not with a view to establishing a set of standards, but to assist with local decision-making Lastly, a summary table is presented (see Appendix A) which includes document links and descriptions that could be posted with little modification to the DLF website for the use of the membership and other interested parties My approach to the research I conducted for this article involved a variety of things First, I found the recent ARL SPEC kits on Managing the Licensing of Electronic Products (number 248) and on Networked Information Resources (number 253) to be especially helpful Although the documents reproduced in both were interesting and useful in themselves, they also often provided jumping off points for web searching for similar documents, other documents from the reb1666069759.doc; 10/18/22; 12:33 PM Page same institutions, or names of people for me to contact with exploratory questions I also spent substantial time simply looking at the websites of DLF members and of other ARL libraries with similar levels of investment in electronic resources The opportunities that I have had over the last few years to attend meetings of the International Coalition of Library Consortia have also been extremely helpful, and led to further questions and contacts The remainder of this essay has been organized into several rough topical categories:         Selection Policies, Guidelines, and Plans Organization and Roles Purchasing Strategies, Consortia, and Publishing Initiatives Licensing Practices Web Presentation Strategies User Support Evaluation and Usage Information Procedure Streamlining and Support Systems Few of these topics can really be treated in isolation from the others, and any given document or practice could conceivably fall into multiple categories I hope that by organizing them in this way and making them more visible and “findable,” this review will lead to wider discussion and improved and innovative practice Selection Policies, Guidelines, and Plans Most libraries have decided that the selection and implementation of commercially available electronic resources is different enough from selection of non-electronic (sometimes now called “traditional”) resources to warrant trying to arrive at a commonly understood frame of reference through formalized policy documents Nevertheless, a common observation made by librarians about decision-making with respect to electronic resources at their own institutions is that it tends to be “ad hoc” or “opportunistic,” which suggests some understandable ongoing tensions between formal policy and actual practice Perhaps the single most common thread running through the selection policy documents sampled for this project is that although electronic resources raise some new and different questions, the value system brought to bear on selecting other resources is still valid and is to be applied For instance, Penn State’s document on Evaluating Electronic Resources begins by stating that “the guidelines for evaluating print publications can also be applied to electronic resources,” and the California Digital Library’s “Collection Framework” document that “conventional collection development criteria should be paramount and should be applied consistently across formats, including digital resources.” The Library of Congress’ “Collections Policy Statement for Electronic Resources” notes that “the criteria used to evaluate electronic resources not differ greatly from those used for books or materials in other formats Following a similar statement, USC’s “Collection Policy Statement for Information in Electronic Formats” states somewhat more specifically that these general criteria are: reb1666069759.doc; 10/18/22; 12:33 PM Page a The resource contributes to the University Library’s mission of providing support for instruction and research b There is a demonstrated curricular or informational need or an identifiable potential audience for the resource Lastly, the University of Texas’ “General Libraries Digital Collection Development Framework” notes that “As with all formats, digital material should meet the same subject, chronological, geographical, language and other guidelines as outlined in the library’s subject collection policies; and possess the same standards of excellence, comprehensiveness, and authority that the library expects from all of its acquisitions.” Though attempting to anchor decision-making in broader and older understandings, selection guideline documents also typically list and discuss factors that are unique to electronic resources, and which need to be considered although in some cases these are presented in checklist form These questions are often grouped together in internal documens, although different institutions have done so in slightly different ways Yale’s “Examining Networked Resources” checklists, are unusually thorough extending to 13 pages – but have much in common with those in use elsewhere Several of the following topical categories are drawn from that list:  Content Comparisons to printed versions in terms of completeness/selectivity, backfile coverage, update frequency, etc  Added Value Wider access, searchability, potentially greater currency, etc  Presentation or Functionality Usability, searching and limit functions, linking, etc (The Yale checklist and a similar one in use by the California Digital Library have especially useful lists of these considerations The CDL list differentiates between those that are seen as “critical” and others, and assigns them a higher score for evaluation purposes.)  Technical Considerations Typically includes standard or preferred vendor/interface, hardware and software requirements, including storage space, web browser compatibility, plug-in requirements, authentication, etc  Licensing and Business Arrangements Problematic license restrictions, ongoing access rights, costs, etc  Service Impact Documentation, publicity, staff training needs, etc Other interesting considerations mentioned in some of the documents include the perceived need to maintain a balance among disciplines or subject areas, or with traditional formats, when choosing electronic resources The Texas “Framework” document also contains a useful section of “Observations and Qualifications” on different categories of resources, such as electronic journals, indexing and abstracting databases, etc – describing the context for each, along with an attempt to delineate goals reb1666069759.doc; 10/18/22; 12:33 PM Page This feature of the Texas framework makes it both a policy and a planning document Several other DLF member libraries, including Carnegie-Mellon, Cornell, Illinois, and Virginia have recently emphasized this future orientation by developing strategic plans for electronic resources – each with its own emphases and approaches For example, the time span covered by Cornell’s “Digital Futures Plan” is the current two years, Virginia’s “Library of Tomorrow” plan is for five years, Carnegie-Mellon’s “Digital Library Plan” is for seven, and the Illinois “Electronic Collections Strategic Plan” is open-ended The projected future states articulated by these plans and the issues identified in them are somewhat different, but as with the selection policy documents there are a number of common themes:  Value context Decision-making needs to be done with reference to the kinds of traditional values articulated by the policy documents mentioned earlier in this section  Funding issues The digital future will be more expensive, additional internal funds will be reallocated to fund electronic resources, and consortial arrangements will be pursued to conserve funds but existing funds are inadequate and new sources of funds will need to be found Carnegie-Mellon’s plan interestingly poses three different financial “levels of commitment” to its digital future: “steady state,” “higher profile,” and “leading digital library.”  Scholarly Publishing It is important to be proactive and help develop alternative services and publications that libraries and their institutions will be able to afford over time  Licensing and Fair Use The emerging reliance on licensing as the basis for access rights poses threats that must be understood and actively resisted The Illinois plan mentions the challenge licensing poses to its traditional role as a resource for other libraries in the state – which is probably of particular concern to many DLF and ARL libraries  Evaluation and usage information Vendors have generally not supplied the kinds of quantitative information that libraries need to evaluate the resources they have licensed, and efforts across libraries are needed to motivate vendors to correct the situation  Archiving This is a serious unsolved problem that may require maintaining both local print and electronic subscriptions while working toward better long-term solutions This could be considered a “core set” of concerns that could serve as useful starting points for other libraries interested in forming their own strategic plans for electronic resources, and several will be touched upon later in this essay reb1666069759.doc; 10/18/22; 12:33 PM Page Organization and Roles Committee Structures – widely recognized need to pull a variety of players into decision-making process Examples CDL And other consortial groups – how interplay with institutional decisionmaking? Cornell Harvard Michigan MIT Stanford Yale Questions: How these work in practice? Do committees sometimes slow down/impede decision-making? Selection roles E-resource coordinators Harvard MIT Stanford Yale Resource-specific coordination/stewardship (key to scalability – recognition that a single resource coordinator can’t deal with everything) CDL – Resource Liaisons Harvard – Resource Stewardship Program MIT – Product sponsor Yale – contact info reb1666069759.doc; 10/18/22; 12:33 PM Page Collaborative Purchasing Strategies and Publishing Initiatives As discussed in the Introduction, DLF member libraries spend considerable amounts of money acquiring electronic resources or access to them, but as noted in the segment on selection policies and strategic planning, it is widely felt that costs and finances are a major problem Not only are costs considered to be high, but fee structures are also extremely variable from one vendor to another and can be quite complex Terms of license may undermine well-established cooperative relationships among libraries, require ongoing commitments that may be difficult to evaluate or have other consequences that may be hard to foresee Above all, there is a common perception that individual libraries are at a decided disadvantage when acting alone in this environment – especially when they negotiate with large corporate entities and that collaborative efforts are necessary The rapid growth of consortial purchasing is one obvious response that has taken place within the last few years, and the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) has emerged as an active and influential umbrella organization through which consortia can work toward common interests There are a variety of types of consortia, including those that are academiconly or multi-type, and state-oriented or regional Consortia also vary widely as to funding – with some receiving significant amounts of money from their state governments and others being largely or exclusively self-funded Some have broad mandates to foster resource sharing through online catalogs and to develop systems of shared databases, while others function primarily as opportunistic “buying clubs” that attempt to leverage available funds for the benefit of their members Pricing structures and issues have occupied a prominent position on the ICOLC agenda, although there is recognition within the group that a product or service must be profitable for it to be “sustainable” from a vendor’s perspective One reason why consortial arrangements “work” for vendors is that they help reduce the costs of marketing – thus contributing to profitability For libraries, better pricing must be weighed against the other costs of doing business consortially, which can include staff time and some potential losses in control and flexibility Price is not the only concern that libraries have, of course, and ICOLC has actively discussed and come forth with influential documents on a variety of other issues, such as technical requirements, licensing, and statistical reporting Not surprisingly, most DLF member libraries are members of at least one major consortium with an interest in cooperative database licensing, and the majority are members of more than one (see Table 2.) Many group buying arrangements seem to be ad hoc, however, and difficult to identify As a consequence, it seems likely that the typical ARL and DLF library will actually be involved in many different collaborative buying arrangements having varying degrees of formalization reb1666069759.doc; 10/18/22; 12:33 PM Page Table DLF Member Libraries’ Major Consortial Memberships, Fall 2000 Institution California, Berkeley Carnegie Mellon Chicago Columbia Cornell Emory Harvard Illinois, Urbana Regional Consortia CDL NERL (affiliate) CIC NERL NERL ASERL NERL CIC Indiana Library of Congress Michigan CIC Minnesota N.C State New York Public Library Penn State Pennsylvania Princeton Southern California Stanford Tennessee Texas Virginia Yale CIC ASERL CIC CIC NERL NERL Big 12 Plus ASERL Big 12 Plus ASERL NERL State Consortia PALCI; PALINET Galileo ILLINET; IDAL (Illinois Digital Academic Library) INCOLSA Michigan Library Consortium MINITEX NCLive, TRLN PALCI; PALINET PALCI TexShare VIVA ASERL = Association of Southeastern Research Libraries CDL = California Digital Library CIC = Center for Inter-institutional Cooperation NERL = Northeastern Research Libraries Assessing the role that consortial membership plays in the buying behavior of DLF members is difficult, as is evaluating the efforts of a given consortium (For example, although it is tempting to try to establish “cost savings” attributable to consortial buying, some consortia find that phrase misleading, and speak instead about “cost avoidance” when making the case for their effectiveness to funding agencies.) Nevertheless, as suggested by the two tables in Appendix B (Consortial Purchasing of Major Databases, and Consortial Purchasing of E-journal Packages), there is clearly significant impact – and that impact appears to be more important in some cases than others reb1666069759.doc; 10/18/22; 12:33 PM Page 10 Of the few “major databases,” selected for this review (principally aggregator services, plus a couple of expensive STM databases and full text services) the most widely held is Academic Universe As is well known, this service is only available via consortial arrangement through a “national deal,” with aggregated “FTE’s” dictating the price to all, and it is interesting to note that all of the academic DLF member libraries currently subscribe to it The situation with the competing full-text “aggregator” databases offered by EBSCO, Gale, Proquest/Bell&Howell and H.W Wilson Company is much less clear The Proquest ABI/INFORM and Research Library databases are the most commonly held of these services, but consortial arrangements seemed to be involved only a quarter (or less) of the time Gale’s Expanded Academic Index and Business databases are also relatively popular, but consortial buying appeared to be involved in only cases EBSCO’s general academic and business databases were somewhat less popular, but statewide contracts appeared to be the major factor where they were available And, lastly, H W Wilson's databases appear never to be available from DLF libraries as a result of consortial buying ISI’s Web of Science databases are very nearly as popular among DLF libraries as Academic Universe, with 21 of the 22 academics offering it The importance of consortial pricing is suggested by the fact that 80% of the subscribing libraries were purchasing it through consortia – most through either the CIC or NERL All eight of the nine DLF libraries having access to Scifinder Scholar purchased it through consortia: of those, six were buying through NERL Fourteen DLF member libraries have significant full text databases from Chadwyck-Healey, of which six were buying through NERL Of the seven libraries determined to be subscribers to Early English Books Online (EEBO) five are NERL members A somewhat more mixed picture emerges with respect to E-journal packages (somewhat crudely defined for purposes of this study to include both JSTOR’s archival offerings and the current journal coverage offered by other publishers.) The three most widely-owned packages are JSTOR and 2, and Project Muse (no differentiation between levels of Project Muse coverage was made) Consortial purchasing was involved only in a few cases – which is not surprising because JSTOR has rejected consortial pricing as a matter of policy, and consortial pricing for Project Muse is relatively new There are a number of other e-journal packages with somewhat lower but still significant levels of apparent adoption (i.e more than half the academic membership) by DLF libraries – including Academic Press Ideal, Elsevier’s Science Direct, ACM, American Chemical Society, Annual Reviews, IEEE, Springer, and Wiley Most of these had relatively low levels of consortial activity, but with several – including Academic Press (whose policy on consortia is opposite JSTOR’s, since they sell only to consortia), Science Direct, and Wiley, consortial purchases stood at 40% or more NERL played a role in a number of these arrangements The meaning of all this is a good deal less than clear, but it seems apparent that NERL has succeeded very well in offering attractive buying opportunities to its members, and it appears necessary for other consortial arrangements to be developed or become available for other DLF libraries to find some of these services affordable (What else to say here?) Another set of important cooperative initiatives has recently been organized by the Association of Research Libraries under the name SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Research Cooperative) As is well known in academic library and publishing circles, the Association for Research Libraries has actively tracked the rapidly increasing costs of scholarly journals, and shown convincingly that those costs – particularly those associated with a handful of important commercial publishers of scientific and medical journals have far outstripped the growth of ARL libraries budgets and such standard economic indicators as the Consumer Price Index The goal of SPARC is to help reb1666069759.doc; 10/18/22; 12:33 PM Page 11 control these costs by introducing electronically published publications that compete with highcost scientific journals As shown in Table 3, most DLF member libraries have supported SPARC by becoming founding members, and several (including Columbia, Cornell, and the California Digital Library) have initiated SPARC-affiliated projects Table DLF Member Library SPARC Membership and Related Initiatives Institution California Digital Library Carnegie Mellon Columbia Cornell Emory Harvard Indiana Library of Congress New York Public Library N.C State Penn State Princeton Stanford UC – Berkeley University of Chicago Univ of Illinois Univ of Michigan Univ of Minnesota Univ of Pennsylvania USC Univ of Tennessee Univ of Texas at Austin Univ of Virginia Yale SPARC Membership founding founding founding founding founding founding Scholarly Communication Initiatives e-scholarship CIAO; Columbia Earthscape Project Euclid founding founding founding Highwire Press founding founding founding founding founding founding founding founding founding PEAK; JSTOR; EEBO Other influential publishing initiatives by DLF member libraries have included Michigan’s PEAK experiment with Elsevier, its key role in the highly successful JSTOR program, and Stanford’s Highwire Press Another SPARC-related initiative (called “Create Change”) aimed at educating faculty members – particularly editors of high-priced journals and members of their editorial boards – about the economics of scholarly publishing has also gotten under way It is probably too early to assess the impact of SPARC, but there is some evidence that prices of specific journals have been held down in response to the availability of new alternatives Licensing Practices reb1666069759.doc; 10/18/22; 12:33 PM Page 12 As noted in the section on selection policies and strategic plans, there is increasing concern among libraries over licensing terms and practices because the majority of commercially available electronic resources are made available only through such formalized licensing arrangements The full impact of this development has yet to be realized, but reasons for concern are not difficult to find To cite one obvious example, these arrangements quite often define permitted uses much more narrowly than does current copyright law or the “Fair Use” doctrine that has become accepted over a period of years As larger and larger portions of library budgets are devoted to acquiring electronic resources, libraries’ ability to share resources through interlibrary loan becomes more and more constrained Noncompliance with such provisions by library staff or end-users may also raise a range of new risks for libraries and their parent institutions from simply losing access to having to pay legal costs of being sued in faraway venues – or even to being forced to pay damage claims These risks are widely recognized within the library community, as are a number of important initiatives to help counter them For example, ARL has developed and offered outstanding training materials and classes for libraries wishing to upgrade staff skills and institute organized local processes for dealing with licensing issues The development of the liblicense web site and listserv have also had considerable impact, as have efforts to work with publishers and libraries toward standardized license language acceptable to both Several libraries and consortia, including the California Digital Library, Harvard, and the CIC, have contributed to developments in this area and to the efficiency of their own operations by devising and making available their own sets of standardized license terms or requirements Specific license terms aside, there remains the very large problem of informing staff and users of what they are This might seem to just a reasonable precaution against having license terms violated and thus possibly prompting a vendor to cancel a contract and withdraw a product However, it is not at all uncommon for libraries to agree to license terms requiring that they make an effort to communicate license terms to users Unfortunately, there does not seem to be much consensus on what this might mean, and there are a number of reasons why it is difficult to Since license details vary significantly from one product or service to another, reliance on a generalized disclaimer for this purpose would seem to be inadequate Even if sufficient time to so was available during the typical classroom presentation or reference interaction, relying on “person to person” contact to convey license terms seems doomed to failure because of the sheer proliferation of licensed products within ARL libraries Although it seems possible to achieve a general level of awareness of licensing issues among staff with public contact, it would be nearly impossible for a single librarian to be familiar enough with those in force at a given institution – or even all of those in a given subject area at that institution to be able to inform users and staff adequately of what they may and may not Some licenses require that subscribing libraries route their users through a “click-through” page containing some standardized language informing them of use restrictions, and sometimes that they certify that they are eligible to use the product This approach is clearly not “scaleable,” since libraries might find themselves having to write and maintain such pages for a large number of products If vendors not address this issue directly themselves through their web sites and services, libraries must devise and implement their own, more scaleable ways of tracking license terms and making them available both to users and staff reb1666069759.doc; 10/18/22; 12:33 PM Page 13 The VERA system developed by the MIT Libraries presents one such interesting model First, a general awareness that usage is governed by license terms is achieved through by placing a general statement near the top of the lists of available databases: Use of many of these resources is governed by license agreements which restrict use to the MIT community and to individuals who use the MIT Libraries’ facilities It is the responsibility of each user to ensure that he or she uses these products only for individual, noncommercial use without systematically downloading, distributing, or retaining substantial portions of information Use of such a general “disclaimer” should be relatively easy for many libraries to achieve The VERA system also enables staff to excerpt and present key license terms in a fairly elegant way – which would be more difficult for others to emualte During the licensing process, special provisions are noted and entered into the system, and in those cases an unobtrusive “L” logo appears on the relevant resource lists in a column labelled “More.” Clicking on the logo takes the user to a summary of the special terms Such license terms are not yet made available through MIT’s online catalog, but this has been under discussion A more schematic approach to presenting license terms has been adopted at Yale, which provides “Yes/No” information for categories of use (including whether a resources can be used for Interlibrary Loan and Course Packs, or by “Walk-in Users”) through its lists of available resources The University of Texas also analyzes key license terms, enters them in a local, specialized tracking system, and then makes them available to staff ILL provisions alone are of sufficient interest for several libraries (including MIT, the California Digital Library, and VIVA consortium) to maintain lists of vendors that permit it However, ILL staff and students may or may not recognize a given title as being part of a specific package, which argues against the effectiveness of the “package” package A number of libraries provide staff, and sometimes users, with links to the full text of license agreements or to versions of them from which any confidential terms have been removed As interesting and promising as these various approaches are, there are some significant barriers to developing scaleable systems in this area A principal problem lies with the complexity and variability of the license agreements themselves, of course Those factors make it difficult, for example, for a single library to analyze or “catalog” a license in detail, and then share the results, as is so commonly done for cataloging books and serials However, it may be possible to work toward more standardized definitions of key provisions that may either lead in this direction or help streamline local analyses of them Web Presentation Strategies If commercially available electronic resources are viewed as distinct entities, their presentation does not necessarily require different approaches to presentation than those used for “free” web resources or locally digitized collections Most ARL libraries – and particularly DLF member libraries – have found effective and frequently elegant and visually appealing methods for presenting these resources This is often done via alphabetical or subject lists of databases or electronic journals, gateway search functions, and so on Just how effective some of these presentations may be, or may become as collections of such resources grow, is an important question reb1666069759.doc; 10/18/22; 12:33 PM Page 14 One interesting alternative approach to presentation is currently in use at the University of Pennsylvania – which organizes resources according to flexibly-defined communities of interest These resources are also identified by bibliographer/subjects specialists as being critical or less important to the particular user community This system also allows new resources to be highlighted – a useful service that has also been integrated into web pages elsewhere – including the University of Texas Other institutions (including N.C State, the University of Washington, and the California Digital Library) have also introduced fairly simple ways for users to “personalize” their views of available resources by identifying those that are of particular interest – which they then see as a “default” when they log in to the local system However effective the presentation of distinct databases may be, of course, what users may find more useful is effective integration of the contents of disparate resources As noted in the section on purchasing strategies, all of the academic libraries that belong to the DLF subscribe to Academic Universe and typically to at least two other “aggregator” (hybrid abstracting/indexing and full text) databases from EBSCO, Gale, or Bell & Howell’s Proquest These subscriptions typically cost in the tens of thousands of dollars and contain full text coverage for from several hundred to several thousand periodicals Nevertheless, most libraries have so far been unable to incorporate journal-title holdings information into their online catalogs, or to integrate articlelevel links with their other abstracting and indexing databases To some degree, this is due to marketing decisions by companies that sell aggregator and sometimes other databases, based on the perceptions that such integration is of sufficient value that libraries will be willing to pay for it (For example, Bell & Howell has recently announced availability of a subscription service through which MARC records containing urls for the periodicals in some of their databases, and both Bell & Howell and EBSCO offer versions of third party databases with article-level links to their licensed full text.) An interesting alternative or supplement to these vendor based offerings is embodied in Yale’s JAKE (for Jointly Administered Knowledge Environment) and the related jake2marc program JAKE currently incorporates periodical holdings or coverage information for nearly 200 databases, enabling users to determine which database or databases include a given title Institutions can customize it to reflect their own holdings, as well as use jake2marc to generate catalog records for local use Of considerable importance is the fact that these services are open to interested libraries, which has encouraged development and minimized usage costs Yet fuller levels of integration are the goals of vendor-based services like Silverplatter’s Silverlinker, ISI’s Web of Science linking feature, and similar offerings from Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, OVID, PubMed, and others These services allow subscribing institutions to enable catalog lookup functions and article-level links between index/abstract database citations and their licensed e-journal collections Among the significant and obvious drawbacks to these services is that they tend to provide links to somewhat different sets of e-journal content and require setup and ongoing maintenance Since larger libraries often have subscriptions to databases from more than one of these vendors, a fair amount of effort must be duplicated Crossref is another industry based initiative, but one of its primary goals is to enable article to article linkages across participating publishers It also has some drawbacks, including the fact that it does not allow libraries to control which links are enabled for users to follow A related and very promising development has been the appearance of SFX, which is based on an open linking standard In addition to local choice and control of links, SFX offers libraries the reb1666069759.doc; 10/18/22; 12:33 PM Page 15 ability to administer and maintain them for multiple vendor offerings without duplication of effort User Support In a real sense, as libraries invest more money in electronic resources, they begin to look and operate more and more like online services It seems apparent that most users of online services of whatever kind want them to be understandable and usable with a minimum of help or intervention from others Whether libraries have succeeded in creating such environments is something of an open question Evidence in favor of that idea includes the fact that licensed electronic resources appear to have gotten both more usable and more reliable However, libraries present their users with increasing numbers and variety of resources to choose from, and their interrelationships seem to be more complex than they have been Just what kinds of support may be needed is a continuing question, and libraries have developed a range of responses to it based on local perceptions, available resources and priorities – including extensive programs of instruction and faculty consultation which are beyond the scope of this article A couple of basic needs that users have, of course, are knowing what they are eligible to use and how they can connect to the available resources – both of which have been addressed by many libraries through the use of fairly simple web pages describing how that can be done, and by indicating on resource lists which are available only to affiliated users More elaborate approaches incorporate a basic “how to use” instructional element with information on making a connection Of course, any number of problems may arise for users while using locally licensed resources – especially when doing so remotely For example, service may suddenly become unavailable due to technical problems experienced by a vendor, web browser configuration or unrelated connectivity issues, or to invoicing and payment problems Users coming to a library’s gateway through a commercial Internet Service Provider may find services to be unavailable to them and not realize that this may be because they have not authenticated themselves through an available proxy service, or have done so incompletely or otherwise incorrectly One simple solution has been to post basic lists of known problems and solutions for users, and to provide information on how to contact staff for help Some libraries have tried to improve their ability to respond as quickly and effectively to these situations as many users now expect by providing additional troubleshooting details for staff, including “triage” paths for different situations and vendor contact information, which will be elaborated upon in the upcoming section on streamlining procedures and support systems reb1666069759.doc; 10/18/22; 12:33 PM Page 16 Evaluation and Usage Information This area also widely recognized as important, with major initiatives under way Planned/cyclic reviews prior to renewal To some extent, good local practice dependent on resolution of issues with vendors, etc Usage Information Reporting reb1666069759.doc; 10/18/22; 12:33 PM Page 17 Procedure Streamlining and Support Systems As suggested in several of the preceding sections of this essay, a library’s acquisition of a given electronic resource may be a complex process involving any number of people and groups in evaluating its content and features, as well as complex cost and budgeting, licensing, consortial, technical, and other considerations Many larger libraries have invested substantial time and effort in trying to understand, document, and streamline or rationalize their local processes The documentation of some of these local processes appears to be of potential value to other libraries trying to grapple with the same issues individually A useful graphical representation of some of these complexities is provided by MIT’s “Process Map” for acquiring electronic resources, which is further supplemented by a detailed workflow document Although the California Digital Library is both larger in size and more complex than most library systems at single institutions, the outline of “CDL Acquisitions Procedures” touches on many steps that single institutions would need to go through Other useful documents from single institutions include those from Minnesota, Penn State, and Yale Owing to the complexity and range of details that must be gathered in the acquisitions process, several of the larger libraries have developed standardized forms for selectors to use in requesting that a resource be purchased or considered for purchase or trial These forms may be used simply as templates for gathering the appropriate information, and then used in paper form or transferred more or less by hand to other systems or web pages For example, in large scale operations it may be a real challenge simply to track and effectively communicate what may be under consideration or “in process” at any given time to staff and users A number of the larger libraries, including Harvard, Yale, the CIC, and the California Digital Library maintain such “status” pages – often created and maintained “by hand.” Several institutions have also developed electronic systems intended to gather and use the necessary information efficiently, and sometimes to interact with and support online acquisitions, cataloging, and other systems for gateway page generation and to cut down on costly duplication of records and effort A number of systems for supporting the acquisition and management of electronic resources – both paper-based and electronic were identified during the course of this project and profiled in a rather rudimentary way in Appendix C The purpose in doing so was to identify and inventory their functions and data elements, with a view toward devising common specifications or data standards in the future (Staff at Cornell and the University of Washington are now actively pursuing this idea and hope to define and register metadata standards for electronic resource management data.) A quick review of the system profiles will reveal that despite some commonalities, the existing systems not share all of the same objectives, or degrees of complexity or development In addition, they all exist within somewhat different operating environments or run on different platforms, thus making comparisons more difficult Of the available systems, those that appear to be the most fully developed and interesting for this review are the VERA system that was already discussed in the section on licensing; Penn State’s ERLIC (Electronic Resources Licensing and Information Center) and the License Tracker system developed at the University of Texas at Austin Another system of interest which is currently at an earlier stages of development is Stanford’s (which employs Artesia Software’s TEAMS product) The column labeled Cornell on the appendix shows the fields that their staff identified as important to the management of reb1666069759.doc; 10/18/22; 12:33 PM Page 18 electronic resources, and numeric values indicate whether they were designated as required (1), optional (2) or additional/to be considered (3) As shown on the first two pages of the Appendix, several of these systems have been designed to generate and maintain lists of available databases, electronic journals, or both The VERA system, as noted earlier, integrates license terms with the other list elements, as Yale’s and Texas’ License Tracker systems Although Penn State’s system provides a link to scanned versions of the licenses, a more comprehensive and complementary approach to license term management and reporting is now in development Stanford’s current license focus is just on whether a given resource may be used for Interlibrary Loan purposes Interestingly, MIT’s, Penn State’s, Stanford’s and Texas’ systems are also designed to include and present availability or problem status information Other identified functions are related to the status of a given product within the acquisitions process (Penn State’s identifies those for which some follow-up attention is required), or to finances and expenditures It is in this last category that interaction with established online acquisitions systems become evident Other information is provided that some librarians feel is not always done adequately or conveniently by established acquisitions systems, includes renewal dates, location and IP restrictions, and vendor contact information Pages three and following of the Appendix show the large number and variety of data elements that these systems may use or require Bibliographic data elements are clearly important in several of the systems, although in some cases an existing library system is relied on, and linking fields used Despite the importance of trials to the typical evaluation process, few of these systems appear to include information about them reb1666069759.doc; 10/18/22; 12:33 PM Page 19 Summary and Conclusion A wide range of topics and a large number of practices have been touched upon in this essay Rather than review them again, I have tried in the following table to identify those practices that appear to be important elements of good programs of selection and implementation of commercially available electronic resources Some of these practices have been implemented in some significant way by several libraries, which reflects that good practice can be implemented locally in different ways reb1666069759.doc; 10/18/22; 12:33 PM Page 20 Table Idealized model of good/best practices Topical Area Selection Policies, Guidelines, and Strategic Plans Organization and Roles Suggested Practices     Purchasing Strategies, Consortia, and Publishing Initiatives Licensing Practices      Web Presentation Strategies   User Support   Evaluation and Usage Information Procedure Streamlining and Support Systems        reb1666069759.doc; 10/18/22; 12:33 PM Well-developed selection guidelines and policies Strategic approach/articulated goals for e-resource development Established committee structures and selection roles that provide for overall coordination and involvement of subject specialists Support responsibilities shared smoothly among central staff and resource “stewards” or coordinators Member of active, successful consortium Active support of SPARC initiatives Initiates and supports campus scholarly communication discussions and projects Smooth handling of licenses with clear policies and responsibilities General and specific licensing terms made systematically known to staff and users User-oriented, flexible and customizable presentation of licensed resources Effective integration and linking of full text and abstracting and indexing services Working system for providing users with basic information about connecting to and using electronic resources, and about common problems Established, understood and effective problem escalation/triage paths Planned/cyclic reviews prior to renewal Systematic reporting of usage to staff Work flows systematized and clear; appropriate forms are utilized to expedite handling Standardized information about library (FTE’s, IP ranges, site definition, licensing policies) readily available to vendors Clear system of conducting trials that includes clear communication of availability and process to staff (and users if appropriate) Order status of a given e-resource can be easily determined E-Resource support systems in place or in planning Page 21 References (needs additional work) Barber, David “Internet-accessible Full-text Electronic Journal & Periodical Collections for Libraries.” Library Technology Reports, Vol 36, no (September-October 2000) Chicago: ALA, 2000 Bleiler, Richard and Terry Plum Networked Information Resources SPEC Kit 253 (December 1999) Association of Research Libraries Duranceau, Ellen Finnie “License Compliance,” Serials Review, Vol 26, No (2000): pp 5358 Duranceau, Ellen Finnie “License Tracking,” Serials Review, Vol 26, No 3(2000): pp 69-73 Holleman, Curt “Electronic Resources: Are Basic Criteria for the Selection of Materials Changing?” Library Trends, Vol 48, No (Spring 2000): pp 694-710 Hughes, Carol Ann “Information Services for Higher Education: A New Competitive Space.” D-Lib Magazine, Vol 6, no 12 (December 2000) Loghry, Patricia A and Amy W Shannon “Managing Selection and Implementation of Electronic Products: One Tiny Step in Organization, One Giant Step for the University of Nevada, Reno.” Serials Review, Vol 26, No (2000): pp 32-44 Metz, Paul “Principles of Selection for Electronic Resources.” Library Trends, Vol 48, No (Spring 2000): pp 711-728 Montgomery, Carol Hansen and JoAnne L Sparks “The Transition to an Electronic Journal Collection: Managing the Organizational Changes.” Serials Review, Vol 26, No (October 2000): pp 4-18 Okerson, Ann “Are We There Yet? Online E-Resources Ten Years After.” Library Trends, Vol 48, No (Spring 2000): pp 671-693 Soete, George J and Trisha Davis Managing the Licensing of Electronic Products SPEC Kit 248 (August 1999) Association of Research Libraries reb1666069759.doc; 10/18/22; 12:33 PM Page 22 ... discussion and improved and innovative practice Selection Policies, Guidelines, and Plans Most libraries have decided that the selection and implementation of commercially available electronic resources. .. generation and to cut down on costly duplication of records and effort A number of systems for supporting the acquisition and management of electronic resources – both paper-based and electronic. .. practices that appear to be important elements of good programs of selection and implementation of commercially available electronic resources Some of these practices have been implemented in some