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NISO/Digital Library Federation Workshop,
May 10, 2002

Slightly modified DLF announcement for the workshop:

On May 10, 2002 NISO and the Digital Library Federation co-sponsored a half-day pre-standardization workshop to examine standards needed to facilitate the management of electronic resources. The workshop was held in Chicago at the Wyndham Hotel.

Why this Workshop? Libraries (particularly academic libraries) are investing major portions of their acquisitions dollars in electronic information resources. As these electronic collections grow they are becoming increasingly difficult to manage and few existing library management systems provide tools to address contract management, umbrella subscriptions, and license terms. For some libraries the solution is local development of new databases.

At this relatively early stage NISO and DLF want to begin the process of developing a standard set of data definitions and common XML schema, encompassing a standard set of data elements, names and definitions, and the semantic relationships for these elements.

Who attended: ILS vendor staff, staff involved in electronic resource management and collection development, serials vendors, and intermediaries.

Details on the Workshop, the agenda, and a registration form are on the NISO website:

http://www.niso.org/news/events_workshops/NISO-DLF-wkshp.html

Related to this Workshop event, NISO, with DLF support, is undertaking a study to evaluate the current use and potential of standards to facilitate the exchange of serials subscription information for both print and electronic resources. A questionnaire for libraries has been placed on the NISO web site: http://www.niso.org/survey/serials.cfm . The survey will close May 30. A final report on this survey and the Workshop, including recommendations, will be on the NISO website in June.

 

Notes

Compiled by Adam Chandler

The following are my notes from the NISO/DLF Workshop on E-License management, held on May 10, 2002.

Pat Harris: Welcome and Introductions

Pat Harris of NISO started the meeting. She emphasized the importance of collaboration for successful standards developent. She was encouraged by the diverse range of participant affiliations enrolled in the workshop. Pat asked the librarians in the group to consider joining the NISO Library Standards Alliance, and invited them to a standards discussion NISO is putting together at the ALA conference this summer, on Sunday, June 16, 2:00 - 6:00. Topics on the agenda include: Shibboleth, NCIP, METS, OpenURL, identifiers and more.

Tim Jewell: Overview, Examples of Needed Functions

Presentation [powerpoint, 107 kb] | element overview [powerpoint, 29 kb])

Digital Rights Management: Emerging Standards Open Rights Digital Language http://odrl.net/ eXtensible Rights Management Language http://www.xrml.com/

Tim emphasized that this initiative is a work in progress. Our primary goal is to get users where they want to go. The University of Washington (U-W) library currently spends 17-18% of its budget on electronic resources. That percentage is expected to increase to 25% next year. Licensing is replacing purchasing. (For an overview of the trends in this area, see Tim's DLF study, Selection and Presentation of Commercially Available Electronic Resources: Issues and Practices.) The U-W currently maintains some 200-300 different license agreements in paper files. Keeping track of them is difficult. The current paper-based system does not serve the needs, for example, of 24/7 reference, consortia, or support staff who are tasked with keeping the databases online.

During Tim's presentation Selden Deemer of Emory University Libraries spoke up and informed the audience that Emory recently posted an interesting Request for Proposal, relevant to this work on e-license management. It begins:

Nathan Robertson: Description

Presentation [powerpoint, 65 kb]

Agreeing on metadata of this type for e-license resources is easier than access or licensing, because librarians are more familiar with descriptive metadata.

Sharon Farb: Licensing

Presentation [powerpoint, 288 kb] | overview [word, 34 kb] |core elements [excel, 34 kb]

Sharon started the presentation with legal comments about UCITA and the Hollings bill. There is concern among librarians that our fair use rights are being chipped away as resources move to digital. UCLA maintains about 100 licenses, with another 100 coming through the California Digital Library. According to a 1999-2000 ARL study, libraries spend on average 13% of their budgets on electronic resources.

The mantra at UCLA for the development of their system is: "one database, many views." The goal is to eliminate duplication of effort.

Ivy Anderson: Access and Administration

Presentation [powerpoint, 186 kb] | elements [excel, 45 kb]

Ivy provided a functional overview of the activities and data requirements entailed in administering and supporting access to electronic resources and described some of the challenges for standards development in this area. Her presentation included screenshots from a locally developed system at Harvard that has been in use for several years.

Discussion

What about public libraries?

What about the abstracting and indexing community?

What about institutional software licensing?

What about maintanance of bibliographic records in the catalog?

What about consortia?