A Web Hub for Developing Administrative Metadata for
Electronic Resource Management

DLF Electronic Resource Management Initiative steering group: Ivy Anderson (Harvard), Adam Chandler (Cornell University), Sharon Farb (UCLA), Tim Jewell (University of Washington), Kimberly Parker (Yale); Angela Riggio (UCLA), Nathan Robertson (Johns Hopkins)

Tim Jewell
University of Washington
email: tjewell@u.washington.edu

• Tim Jewell, "Keeping eResources in line with ERM: What Was, What Is, and What's to Come," SirsiDynix Web Seminar Series, December 07, 2005 (8 a.m. to 9 a.m. Pacific ).
• DLF ERMI 2
  • Here is a link to the summary of our ERMI2 proposal that was presented at the DFL Fall Forum 2005 on November November 7. More detail to follow.
• ALA Annual, Chicago, IL, June, Friday, June 24, 7:30-9:30. E-resource Management open discussion meeting. Sheraton Ballroom I
• ALA Annual, Chicago, IL, June, Friday, June 24, 8:30 - noon. Reading and Mapping License Language for Electronic Resource Management: A Pilot ARL/DLF Workshop
• Charleston Conference, Charleston, SC, November 5, 2004. "Report on the Digital Library Federation Electronic Resource Management Initiative," delivered by Adam Chandler.
• DLF Fall Forum 2004, Baltimore, Maryland, Sunday, October 24. The intention of this one day invitational meeting is to disucss the results of the DLF ERMI and to outline possible next steps for stakeholders.
  • One of the documents (in addition to those in the August 2004 ERMI Report) that will be discussed is "An assessment of ERMI in the context of ONIX and requirements for recording and communicating license terms for electronic resources," authored by rightscom for EDItEUR.
• ALA 2004 Annual Conference, Orlando, Florida, Friday, June 25, 7:30 - 9:30, Renaissance Orlando Resort, Crystal Ballroom A/B. Powerpoint presentation. Agenda:

  1. DLF Electronic Resource Management Initiative project final report.

  The group is in the process of completing the proposed "Deliverables" and getting them ready for publication. As part of a quick summary of the project results, we will spend some time summarizing the XML investigation that was conducted over the last few months and reported on at the DLF Spring Forum.

  As in the past, the most current versions of the deliverables are posted to the "Web Hub for E-resource Metadata",and over the next few weeks the project's steering committee expects to post "final draft" versions of most of them there.

  2. Vendor announcements and updates (This section should include some interesting announcements.)

  3. Local development news

  4. Possible formation of ERM interest groups (through ALCTS and LITA) for ongoing discussions.

• DLF Spring Forum 2004, New Orleans, LA, Wednesday, April 2. Nathan Robertson and Tim Jewell delivered a presentation called "XML Schema for E-Resource Licenses."
• E-Resource Management Forum, UCLA,
  January 13, 2004. Members of the DLF ERMI Steering Committee gave a talk to staff in the UCLA library about the DLF ERMI initiative. The Powerpoint slides are available here.
• ALA Mid-Winter Conference 2004, San Diego, CA. Friday, January 9, 7:30-9:30, Westin Horton Plaza, California Ballroom C.
  • Agenda:

    1. DLF Electronic Resource Management Initiative project update.

    The DLF ERMI Steering Committee presented a project summary at the DLF Fall Forum in November (the PowerPoint slides from that presentation). The group is also in the process of completing the "Deliverables" proposed last year, and has posted "near-final" versions of most of them to the "Web Hub for E-resource Metadata".

    2. Vendor announcements and updates

    3. Local development news

    4. Open Discussion

• DLF Fall Forum 2003: Albuquerque, New Mexico, November 17 - 19.
  • Tuesday 18 November, 2:00-3:30: BREAKOUT SESSION 8: RESOURCE MANAGEMENT. Alvarado Room D.; The DLF E-Resource Management Initiative: Project Report. Tim Jewell, University of Washington; Ivy Anderson, Harvard; Adam Chandler, Cornell; Sharon Farb, UCLA; Kimberly Parker, Yale; Angela Riggio, UCLA; Nathan Robertson, Johns Hopkins.
  • View Presentation
• DLF Spring Forum, New York, May 2003
• ALA Annual Conference 2003, Friday, June 20th, 7:30-9:30; Location: Sutton Place Hotel, Wellesley Room (955 Bay St., Toronto)

  Agenda:
  1. Development updates and status reports
  - DLF ERMI status
  - Vendor announcements and updates
  - Local development news
  2. Discussion of Draft DLF documents.

• "Electronic Resource Management Systems: Developing Local Solutions to Common Problems." A panel discussion with Adam Chandler [powerpoint], Norm Medeiros [powerpoint] and Sue Woodson [powerpoint]. Association of College and Research Libraries Conference, Charlotte, NC. Friday, April 11, 2003; 2:00 - 3:30 pm, 203AB.
• DLF Fall Forum 2002, "Birds of a Feather" session, Tuesday, November 5, 4:00 p.m.
  
  
• ALA Mid-Winter 2003: (1) Friday, January 24th: ALCTS Symposium on Managing Electronic Resources; (2) Friday, January 24th: 7:30-9:30 p.m., Wyndham Franklin Plaza, Philadelphia Ballroom. The steering group will also hold an open information sharing meeting for librarians, vendors and publishers interested in these developments. An agenda will be set closer to the conference, but we will probably begin with a status report on the initiative from members of the steering committee and provide time for discussion of it and local developments. (This meeting will once again be sponsored by the ALCTS Technical Services Directors of Large Research Libraries -- whose support is again gratefully acknowledged!)
• ALA Annual Meeting, 2002
  • Date: 6/14 (Friday)
    Place: Georgia World Congress Center, room B304
    Time: 4:30-6:30.
• NISO/DLF Workshop on
  Standards for Electronic Resource Management
  
• Draft a conceptual Entity-Relationship model
• Begin identification of a starting set of common elements
• Create email list
• Create Web site
• Survey libraries
  • Tim Jewell's survey data, 2001-04-23

• Boston College Libraries

  • On October 6, 2004, Kevin M. Kidd, Senior Systems Librarian at Boston College Libraries sent us information about their very impressive "ERMdb". Kevin is happy to answer questions about the system and can be reached at kiddk @ bc.edu . Well done! He said:

  "Dear Adam and Tim,

  I wanted to let you two know about the ERM system (ERMdb) we developed here at Boston College. It is a web-based system written in Perl, using a MySQL database running on a Linux server. The system took about 6 months to develop and the design is based upon the DLF functional requirements and data structures posted on the Web Hub. We have two interfaces to the database: one which allows updating of the records and one which allows only searching and viewing of data. Also, we have developed a Crystal Reports interface which allows for viewing and exporting of reports in Excel, Word and PDF formats. The system integrates SFX and MetaLib data, as well as bibliographic and acquisitions data from our ILS (Ex Libris' Aleph system).

  We have just begun using the system in production, and we anticipate that it will be a huge help in automating many of our electronic resources management tasks. I have included a link to our ERM database documentation page in case you would like to post it on the Web Hub. We are still working on the documentation, but the page includes table definitions and several screen shots which may be of interest to the community."

• California Digital Library

  • Rosalie Lack provided us with the table structure behind the database CDL is using to manage their licensing information.
  • Also, this isn't an ERM system, but these CDL License Agreements are very useful as a reference.
• Cornell University
  • Calhoun, Karen, et al. "CORC at Cornell Project: Final Report: Appendix 1: Data Fields to Support Selection and Acquisitions Activities." 11 December 1999.
  • Chandler, Adam. "An Application Profile and Prototype Metadata Management System for Licensed Electronic Resources." Research proposal: Samuel Lazerow Fellowship, Association of College and Research Libraries, American Library Association. 1 December 2000.
  • Cornell ERM Implementation: Project Web Site
• Emory University
• Selden Deemer of Emory University Libraries posted an interesting Request for Proposal, relevant to this work on e-license management. It begins:

  "This document solicits proposals from qualified vendors to provide an electronic journals data file service to be used by Emory University Libraries for management purposes. Ideally, coverage includes all full text electronic journals to which members of the Emory University community have access as a result of subscription arrangements with individual publishers or through aggregators."

• Griffith University Library
  • Griffith University Library Electronic Resources Database (ERD) - The ERD has been designed in MS Access (with data stored in Oracle) and contains records for full-text ejournals. Ejournal data is extracted from enhanced catalog records (GEAC ADVANCE) and loaded into the ERD. In addition Excel file lists of ejournal data can be imported for new products that have not yet been cataloged. (See also: paper by Nathalie Schulz: "Ejournal databases : a long-term solution?" in Library Collections, Acquisitions, and Technical Services, Vol. 25, issue 4 (Winter 2001), pp. 449-459.)
• Johns Hopkins University Library
  • The Hopkins Electronic Resources ManagEment System includes a good deal of very interesting and valuable documentation, available on the HERMES Web site. (See also, Nathan Robertson's 2002 ALA Midwinter presentation and Sue Woodson's ACRL 2003 presentation.)
• Kansas State University
  • Char Simser writes: "K-State has developed a database for tracking these things, our intent being the ability for libraries in the Kansas Regents' group to share information. The database has several levels of access - you can see the 'public' view at http://proton.lib.ksu.edu/databases/ejournal/main.jsp (works best with IE). The staff and administrator views offer additional contract data concerning administrator user ID & pswds, contacts, membership numbers, running reports, adding new titles, etc. The school logo would be used to identify universities' 'holdings' - each school is able to modify as needed its contract details. We've introduced our database to the Regents' Libraries Database Consortium - they love the concept but haven't embraced it yet - mostly likely because of time and staffing issues."
• Library of Congress
  • Cataloging Directorate Strategic Plan: Goal IV, Initiatives 1 and 3, relating to Bibliographic Control of Digital Content. Work Group 4: Workflow Analysis. "The report herewith lays out basic workflows for the processing of remote-access monographic and integrating electronic resources (ERs), and makes recommendations for underlying automation and management support to ensure an efficient process." (Feb. 23, 2004; rev. Mar. 24, 2004)
• MIT
  • VERA- Virtual Electronic Resource Access. VERA is a FileMaker Pro based database that provides an easy interface with essential descriptive and user information readily available, a license tracking system, and ease of maintenance and other functionality. Provides clear, iconographic links to information for users. For a full discussion, see Nicole Hennig, "Improving Access to E-Journals and Databases at the MIT Libraries: Building a Database-Backed Web Site Caller 'Vera'".
• North Carolina State University Libraries
  • Andrew Pace, Head of Systems at NCSU, gave a presentation at the 2004 ALA Annual Conference called "Dis-integrated Library Systems and Electronic Resource Management" about how ERM concepts are driving their locally developed "E-matrix" system.
• Ohio State University and Oregon Health Sciences Library
  • Here is a preprint (of an article accepted for publication in The Serials Librarian, v. 47, no. 4.) that describes ERM work done at these two institutions using the III ERM product: "Integrating and streamlining electronic resources workflows via Innovative’s Electronic Resource Management," by Laura Tull, Janet Crum, Trisha Davis and C. Rockelle Strader
• Penn State University
  • ERLIC- (Electronic Resources Licensing and Information Center). Microsoft Access-based system that provides multiple tracking and management functions and meshes with Penn State's online catalog. A record for each resource links to information about the Order Status, Info/Access Status, Info/Usage Statistics, and Payment History. It also maintains licensing information and has report generating capabilities with the reports in a variety of formats. The ERLIC software is available (without technical support) on a shareware basis, along with a tour of functions. [Note: ERLIC is replaced by Lib-Lion.] Bob Alan, Head of Serials, has kindly shared his NASIG 2002 powerpoint presentation, "Keeping Track of Electronic Resources To Keep Track of Them."
• Taylor University (Upland, IN)
  • Steve Oberg, Electronic Resources Librarian & Assistant Professor, kindly created this page that describes their homegrown system called "Taylor Periodical Administration System" (TPAS). The system integrates their SFX data.
• The Tri-College Consortium (Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore colleges)
  • According to Norm Medeiros, Coordinator, Bibliographic and Digital Services at Haverford College, the Consortium has created an e-resources tracking system (ERTS) to help manage license details. Information regarding the work is available at: http://www.haverford.edu/library/erts/ . (See also: Norm's presentation at ACRL 2003.)
• Trinity College, Hartford CT
  • TCLinker is a locally developed OpenURL resolver, similar in scope and approach to the "Journal Finder" system from UNC-Greensboro. They use data from Serials Solutions to keep it updated. (Is a license module add-on in the works?)
• UCLA
  • UCLA is developing a Digital Acquisitions Database and has provided drafts of several helpful internal documents, including a Data Elements Spreadsheet, a graphic of their Conceptual Design, a Data Elements Dictionary, and a Policy Discussion Document that includes a set of working principles. Readers should be aware that these are very much works in progress, and are subject to change. See also, Sharon Farb's 2002 ALA midwinter presentation.
• University of Georgia
• Joan Conger of the University of Georgia Libraries is leading development of their Electronic Resources Management System. The purpose of the system is "to order, track, renew, and maintain electronic resources, collect use statistics and support access."
• University of Illinois at Chicago
  • Mircea Stefancu, Electronic Services Librarian at the University of Illinois at Chicago Library sent us a beautiful preprint version of the article he and his colleagues published in Serials Review, about their DOLLeR system (Database Of Library Licensed Electronic Resources). [received 8/17/05]
• University of Minnesota
• The Electronic Resources Steering Committee drafted "Inventory Database Specifications" as a guide to building a local system for managing electronic resources.
• University of North Carolina - Greensboro
  • I saw a very impressive demonstration of the Journal Finder OpenURL resolver during a poster session at the April 2003 ACRL conference in Charlotte. This package overlaps with products such as SFX. It appears to me that they could build in a licensing module add-on. Here is a nice list or presentations and articles about the system.
• University of Washington
  • Jewel, Tim. Draft Plan and Discussion Paper Terms and Definitions for Managing Electronic Resources and Terminology Grid. August 2001. [Word and Excel format]
  • Jewell, Tim. Elicense survey data: appendix from a forthcoming Digital Library Federation report. April 2001. [Excel format]
  • Jewell, Tim. Selection and Presentation of Commercially Available Electronic Resources: Issues and Practices. Council on Library and Information Resources, July 2001.
• Villanova University
  • Andrew Nagy kindly shared the link to the locally developed system they are using to crunch journal usage data, called LibSGR: Library Statistics Gathering and Reporting.
• Yale University
  • Thanks to Kimberly Parker for providing an ER diagram to their Online Journals and Databases system.

Related Initiatives

• "COUNTER is an international initiative designed to serve librarians, publishers and intermediaries by facilitating the recording and exchange of online usage statistics. The use of online information resources has been growing exponentially and it is widely agreed by producers and purchasers of information that the use of these resources should be measured in a more consistent way. Building on a number of important, existing initiatives, COUNTER has set out to achieve this."

• "The Creative Commons is devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others to build upon and share." Be sure to watch the wonderful 2 minute Flash movie, "Get Creative," which explains the mission of the Creative Commons. This is the first Flash application I've ever seen that was worth my time.

• "The Digital Rights Expression Languages (DREL) workgroup within the IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee is gathering requirements that a standardized DREL must meet to support learning, education, and training.

  DREL standardization efforts exist, are well advanced, and are supported by large industry groups (multimedia, consumer electronics, telecommunications, the IT industry, etc.) We assume that such languages will be incorporated into technology in this decade. Our goal is not to create another DREL standard but to ensure that existing standards can be effectively used by the educational community."

• "<indecs> recognised from the outset that metadata would be generated in diverse ways and by diverse players in the value chain. Could mechanisms be described that would allow metadata developed in different contexts to interoperate effectively to permit automated e-commerce in intellectual property in the network environment?" See also: DOI and data dictionaries

• "The Liblicense Standard Licensing Agreement is an attempt to reach consensus on the basic terms of contracts to license digital information between university libraries and academic publishers. Sponsored by the Council on Library and Information Resources, the Digital Library Federation and Yale University Library, it represents the contributions of numerous college and university librarians, lawyers and other university officials responsible for licensing, as well as significant input from representatives of the academic publishing community. "

• PRISM
• "The Publishing Requirements for Industry Standard Metadata (PRISM) specification defines an XML metadata vocabulary for managing, aggregating, post-processing, multi-purposing and aggregating magazine, news, catalog, book, and mainstream journal content. PRISM recommends the use of certain existing standards, such as XML, RDF, the Dublin Core, and various ISO specifications for locations, languages, and date/time formats. In addition PRISM provides a framework for the interchange and preservation of content and metadata, a collection of elements to describe that content, and a set of controlled vocabularies listing the values for those elements."