ERMS Continues: More on Standards and Systems
Saturday, June 23, 2007, 10:30 AM-12:00 PM

After the enthusiasm of acquiring a new electronic resource management system (ERMS) subsides, libraries are often overwhelmed by the extent of infrastructure adjustments and sheer manual keying that accompany the care and feeding of an ERM system. This program addressed some emerging standards from ONIX for Serials, ONIX for Licensing Terms, and the NISO Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) that could expedite the assimilation of information from content providers (via aggregators and PAMS) into a library’s electronic resource management system.

The speakers for this excellent program were Kathy Klemperer (Library and Information Systems Consulting, Acton, MA) and Linda Miller (Library of Congress).

Linda Miller gave an interesting overview of LC’s implementation of Innovative Interfaces, Inc.’s ERM to work with their Ex Libris Voyager system, a decision LC made in order to help deal with the increasing challenges associated with electronic resource management:

  • moving windows and embargoes on coverage
  • package gymnastics (packaging and repackaging)
  • license negotiation and translation
  • password management
  • supporting and enhancing the discovery process
  • tracking performance issues

LC’s ERMS implementation team is made up of an “energetic and enthusiastic” group of catalogers and acquisitions specialists with an “impressive array of language skills.” As they were putting the ERMS in place, the team realized that new skills would be needed in order to make the best use of the system (a combining of acquisitions and cataloging to build a knowledge base). These skills include:

  • license interpretation
  • FTP and other file loading/processing techniques
  • hunting for good cataloging copy…sometimes in new places
  • reconciling internal cataloging policy
  • defining the “perfect” access level record
  • developing a more sophisticated knowledge of the e-resource marketplace

The III ERMS provides LC the ability to track:

  • license details (terms of usage, start and end dates)
  • cost data, renewal data, usage statistics
  • updated coverage/holdings; current URLs
  • trial management
  • performance monitoring (i.e., keeping track of problems with electronic access)
  • subscription management

The III ERMS structure includes resource records (e.g., ABI/INFORM), license records, contact records (e.g., the vendor ProQuest) and provides a mechanism for tracking specific journals titles in packages and their holdings.

Currently, LC is analyzing license data and manually keying it into the ERM client and end-users are able to view terms of usage in LC’s Electronic Resource Online Catalog (III’s Web OPAC).

Miller spoke about some of the challenges LC has encountered during the implementation process, specifically licensing and holdings data. LC has found that interpreting and converting licenses is the most labor-intensive activity (sometimes requiring 1-3 hours per license) related to implementing the EMRS because few licenses are written in “plain English” which necessitated LC’s editing the licenses in order to make them more readable. Holdings information has proved problematic because many electronic resources lack persistent identifiers (e.g., ISSNs), plus the discrepancy between how public access management services (PAMS) (e.g., Serials Solutions) record titles and how the titles are actually cataloged makes automatic loads of holdings data problematic (matching is difficult and loads are often aborted).

Another problem with holdings information results from the fact that some PAMS don’t provide serials enumeration (volume number, issue number, etc.). Often, the information from the PAMS will be in the form of month and year only which results in confusion from a user’s perspective (print holdings are much more specifically displayed in many cases as compared to PAMS-supplied holdings information). Miller noted that even when the holdings information IS present, many PAMS lack ISSNs or other proprietary numbers (which are needed for matching). According to Miller, in May, over 3,000 automatic record updates failed because of the lack of a unique identifier that could be used for matching.

Kathy Klemperer gave a wonderful presentation explaining data communications formats for ERMS. Communications standards are key in ensuring the success of exchanging data, despite the quality of that data.

There are three current areas in which communications standards are being developed that are relevant to ERMS:

  • online holdings (which journals and volumes)
  • license management (who can use them)
  • usage statistics (how much are they being used and is there a trend)

Online holdings relates to the transmission of library-specific holdings information and this information is used frequently to generate A-Z journal lists, for link resolution, access management, and check-in and claiming.

One standard for online holdings is ONIX for Serials. ONIX is a “family of XML formats for communicating information about serial products and subscription information.” The development of ONIX for Serials has been a joint project of EDItEUR and NISO.

One ONIX format is the Serials Online Holdings (SOH) format, which is used for communicating library-specific electronic serials holdings details from publication access management systems (PAMS) to libraries. This format has been implemented by a number of vendors, including Serials Solutions, EBSCO and TDNet as senders and Innovative Interfaces and OCLC as recipients. According to Klemperer, “the SOH message is of great benefit in the maintenance of library catalogs and other end-user applications such as link resolvers and A-to-Z lists, where up-to-date and accurate online holdings statements are needed.”

Another ONIX format is “the Serials Products and Subscriptions (SPS) format, which is used for communicating information about serial subscription products, optionally with prices and specific subscription information. The SPS format is of use in a number of situations, including the transmission of price catalogs from publishers to agents; the transmission of price quotes from publishers or agents to libraries; and the transmission of a library’s subscription list among publishers, agents and libraries.”

The third ONIX format for serials is the Serials Release Notification (SRN) format, which is used for communicating information about the print publication or electronic availability of one or more serial releases. Klemperer says that “content suppliers, content consumers and intermediaries will all find it advantageous to send and/or receive Serial Release Notifications. Such notifications will serve to advertise the availability of new content, will help in minimizing unnecessary claims, and will make possible the automatic maintenance of precise holdings in online catalogs and link resolvers.”

In terms of license management, Klemperer noted that the ideal would include the ability to:

  • transmit license terms between parties
  • load pre-parsed publisher licenses into an ERMS (no need to parse the license manually)
  • compare publisher licenses to the library’s model license and
  • share negotiated licenses among consortium members

According to EDItEUR, the ONIX Publisher License (ONIX-PL) format “is intended to support the communication of license terms for electronic resources from a publisher to a user institution (directly or through a subscription agent), to enable the license terms to be loaded into an electronic resources management system maintained by the receiving institution.” ONIX-PL

  • supports communication of license terms from one party to another
  • is suitable for loading into an ERMS
  • includes mapping to and from the ERMI list of licensing terms
  • uses open source editing tools: OPLE (”OPLE is The ONIX-PL editor. It is a web application for creating and editing ONIX-PL licence expressions. For those curious about the name, OPLE is also a homonym for opal, just as ONIX is a homonym for onyx.”–http://ople.sourceforge.net/)

Other license-related activities of note, according to Klemperer, include:

In terms of e-journal usage statistics, Klemperer listed several needs:

  • the ability to load usage statistics into the ERMS
  • the ability to consolidate and compare usage among journals, vendors and members of consortia
  • the ability to perform calculations based on other criteria such as subscription costs, number of FTE and user categories

One usage statistics initiative is the COUNTER code of practice, which includes guidelines on what to count and how to count it. This code has been widely adopted by publishers, but it is important to remember that it is not a communications format: by itself COUNTER does not allow the automatic downloading, consolidation or comparison of statistics.

NISO’s Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI), on the other hand, is a communications format that provides a mechanism for standardized delivery of COUNTER statistics. SUSHI is both a communication protocol and a data format. Klemperer explained that some of the benefits of using SUSHI include

  • automated downloads - no more manual retrieval of statistics from publisher sites
  • ability of the receiving system to consolidate and compare usage among jounrlas
  • ability of receiving system to perform calcluations base don other criteria such as subscription costs, number of FTE, and user categories

According to Klemperer, many publishers and providers are adopting SUSHI, in addition to many ERMS and some intermediaries such as database aggregators and subscription agents. Some new intermediaries like conversion and consolidation services are also adopting SUSHI.

So, what can we do in order to benefit from these standards?

Klemperer suggests that we

  • adopt e-resource management standards
  • pressure our vendors (publishers, aggregators, subscription agents) to adopt
  • include compliance in our RFPs