ER&L 2008: Transforming into Effective E-Resource Management

Tyler Walters
Jeff Carrico
Georgia Tech

"Transforming into Effective E-Resource Management"

(Tyler Walters)
Drivers behind "library change":
economics, Web technologies,

Trends in library resources:
Elsevier (2006) 40% of subscription revenues from e-only
DOAJ - # of OA journals more than doubled in 3 years
other stats as well

What are libraries doing?
Reframing problemspace, perspective, work interactions
Realigning human resources
Refocusing - not "acquiring collections" but collections "accessibility and discovery"

Components of response - Access & Use vs Management
Web design, Desktop/Collaboration services, Tech services melting pot, NextGen link resolvers and designer search tools, ebooks

Not a linear model any longer - no more assembly line - departments and department work come together in shifting groups.

Librarians in a new paradigm:
-Instructional partners
-anthropologists
-systems builders
-content producers, broadcasters, communicators
-organizational designers

Outcomes -
1) Systems design and user-centeredness: design user interaction environments to promote collections use by end users
2) Internal behavioral change - becoming user interaction specialists
3) Develop integrated systems and processes - can't continually retrain users to adapt to library's quirks

So how did these things manifest at Georgia Tech Libraries?
(Jeff Carrico)
Focus should be on access and usability, since have prettymuch hit the low-hanging fruit in terms of purchasing, what with staffing and budgetary restrictions. Access is now the major question that unites Cataloging and Acquisitions.

(To amuse yourself, go back to work and ask around - "How many ebooks do we have?" - watch the fun begin.)

Personnel experience has involved blurring of duties, doing more with fewer people, taking staff training much more seriously, finding good and bad aspects of new systems (great success with SFX; slow implementation with Verde, MetaLib; new promise with VuFind/MetaLib Xserver project; same old problems with Voyager).