In November 2009 I put together a team at my library to choose an electronic resource management system. In May 2010 we purchased one, Innovative’s ERM. Over the next two years we developed the system and wrote new workflows. We established best practices and learned how to efficiently work in the system. In October of this year I finally released Team 3 (ERM Development Team) from their duties, with all of the necessary decisions about our ERM having been made.
I certainly didn’t anticipate the process of adding on a management system to take three full years to choose, install, and then develop, but along the way there was a lot of education, culture-change discussions, and inventive problem solving. All of that takes time, especially at an institution that didn’t have an e-resource management position before me.
We still have work to do in the system, like developing quality control mechanisms to check the work we’ve entered, to make sure the data is accurate and consistently applied, but moving forward we are definitely in production mode. It feels good to be at this place, to now have a system that is robust for our patrons.
Next up, the celebratory organization! I have three Teams worth of wiki documentation to begin archiving.
Here’s our final report:
Final report from Team 3: Development
Summary of TeamERMS
TeamERMS began in November 2009 with a discovery team (Team 1), charged with evaluating electronic resource management systems with a team approach. In March 2010 this team completed its work, suggesting the library pursue the purchase of Innovative’s ERM; Management Council supported the decision and the module was purchased. In May 2010 the implementation team (Team 2) convened to conduct the technical set-up of the module over a three-day training period. In June 2010 the development team (Team 3) convened to focus on the main patron-facing features of the ERM. This group has now completed its work, with those functions of the ERM having been addressed. This report acts as a final summary of the development team.
Members of Team 3: Marie Kennedy (lead), Charles Hillen, Ron Lewis, Meghan Weeks, Christina Hennessey, Ken Simon
Work plan
Team 3 met over the course of two years for the development of the patron-facing features of the newly acquired electronic resource management system, ERM. We used a series of brief meetings and a PBWorks wiki group to communicate, as well as e-mail for follow-up discussions. We had an agenda and took minutes for each meeting. The decisions of the group directed the technical development of the ERM completed by the electronic resources unit in the Acquisitions & Serials department.
Team 3 developed the following features of the ERM:
- Addressed resource record structure, content guidelines, and labels visible in the OPAC
- Created a list of Resource Types and Resource Formats appropriate for our collection
- Directed the design and functionality of the new Research Databases page
- Advised on the hierarchical subject tags assigned to resources
- Advised on the display labels and design of titles/holdings/link structure of electronic journals attached to a resource record (Titles Included In This Resource, Coverage, Full Text)
- Gave feedback on the fields of license records visible in the OPAC
Future development of ERM
Now that the patron-facing features of the ERM have been considered the electronic resources unit of the Acquisitions & Serials department will begin to focus exclusively on the back end of the system, adding and maintaining license agreement information, continuing to develop the infrastructure related to usage statistics gathering, and the documentation of all of those procedures.
Documentation of decisions and minutes/agendas from all three teams will be housed in a paper file in the Acquisitions & Serials department.
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(image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/vectorportal/6629690263/)
