I’ve been waiting for this moment to happen for 3 years, since i first began working at this library. We’ve finally e-tipped. E-tipping is when a library has enough electronic resources in its collection that the distinction between print or electronic isn’t as important as the content the resource holds. The process of e-tipping is as elegant as it sounds, kind of like cow-tipping or knocking over a pitcher of milk; everything’s going along fine, then there’s a jolt, a slow-motion flail, then BAM.
I’m the first electronic resources librarian my library has ever had and some of the concepts I brought with me were obviously strange to the library. We’ve been doing some major thinking and talking about e-content since I arrived, getting our staff and librarians comfortable and familiar with using electronic resources. Obviously not all of our staff are newbies in this arena, but building confidence to a certain level has taken some doing. We’ve been working steadily at it as a team, committing to an ERM, and then implementing all the features.
How did I know we had e-tipped? For about a month I had been steadily adding usage rights/restrictions into the license portion of the ERM — the last feature of the ERM to be implemented — so that information about the ways patrons can use the material gets filtered down to the e-journal title level, the streaming video level, and the e-book level. One of our librarians didn’t like the way the information was displaying, and overnight it seemed that everyone in the library had Questions About E-resources. They were vocal that it was very important that we make access to our licensed resources as seamless as possible. In other words, after years of keeping e-resources separate (on a separate page on the website, even) they wanted the e-resources to look and act just like any other library resource.
As I answered the Questions I mentally cheered to myself, “We’re there! We should be celebrating!” It’s really hard to celebrate a cultural shift like this. It’s hard enough to even explain a cultural shift like this. I know it happened, though, and I guess this blog post is celebration enough.
I wonder if the readers of this blog have experienced something similar at your institutions? Have you e-tipped? Do write and let me know.
As a whole our library etipped but certain areas haven’t.
We etipped long ago with journal usage and access. We completely e-capsized this year when we went down to only 8 titles in paper form. The rest of our 800 journal subscription (not counting those we get through databases) are all online and we don’t get their paper form any more.
We haven’t etipped regarding books. It seems ebooks are a mess in the medical world. We have had ebooks through MDConsult, AccessMedicine, StatREF, etc. but those were only really accessible through a computer or laptop. Now everybody wants them downloadable but the vendors are not providing them so that they can be downloadable. It is a MAJOR shift in their distribution model and many of the license agreements forbid downloading. So until that happens and I can get Harrison’s Online from AccessMedicine downloaded on to an iPad (not viewed online on an iPad like it I would a laptop) our book collection will rock back and forth
but fail to etip.
A thread that I started on FriendFeed about this post generated a small batch of comments.