ER&L 2009: Standards in the EResource World

Standards in the E-Resource World: COUNTER, CORE, and I2
John McDonald, Claremont University Consortium - COUNTER
Jeff Aippersback, Serials Solutions - CORE
Tina Feick, Harrassowitz - I2

COUNTER Code of Practice 3 - an update
Journal Report 1 is the same
Journal Report 1a - FT article requests from an archive - new in CoP3
Journal Report 2 is the same
Journal Report 5 - FT article requests by yyear of usage (very cool!) - new in CoP3
Also new consortial reports

Report delivery specs:
XLS, CSV, or XML (COUNTER has revised their XML schema)
Reports reside in separate pages of file
Available on a password controlled site
Consortium must be able to look at whole group and individual members from a single login
Email or other alert must be an option
SUSHI support is required for compliance (yay!)

Comparability and consistency of usage data can be impacted by handling of:
double clicks, return codes to count, fed. search engiines, bots, LOCKSS and similar
So group has refined definitions of how to count these events

Auditing in the CoP3:
Annual independent audits are required for compliance
New vendors have 6 months to pass the audit (new)
Audit status published on the COUNTER site

Future issues:
Further refine audit/compliance procedures
Address new media materials - ebooks, podcasts, etc
New communities like museums and art galleries
Develop more robust database standards
Focus on user-centered statistical standards - Focus on what the user has done with the content.
Develop measures/statistics or tests to help in evaluation

CORE (Cost of Resource Exchange)
Effort to move acquisitions data elements between an ILS and an ERM.
Medeiros white paper on this concept published in 2007, updated in 2008. Standard development has proceeded since Spring 2007.

Goals:
Not just ERM <--> ILS exchange, but broader applications for business systems, subscription agents, etc
Didn't want to duplicate work of existing standards
Keep it simple and generic
Define the data, not the application! (allow the players in the organization work with the data the way they want)

Transport mechanism
Initially thought to be SUSHI, but may not work with the size of files in real-time. CORE is designed to allow real-time updates, not just static querying for reports.

Draft report period expected to begin at end of February 09, hoping for final revision and vote from NISO members at end of 2009.

Benefits:
Cost data pulled in to ERM from other systems
End duplicate data entry in multiple systems
Institutional identifiers can help w/custom data xfer
Availability of cost + usage data assists COUNTER.

I2 (Institutional Identifiers)
Already many I2s, for location, finance, identity, membership, etc - group is discussing how I2 is supposed to be different/better/more universal than existing identifiers. Current problems include identifiers not being international, not defined for the e-world, hierarchies are not defined, cooperative agreements (links) aren't defined. The thing needs to be implemented (implementable) and not just for acquisitions.

http://www.niso.org/workrooms/I2

Goals:
ID a standard identifier for each institution
Use it across publishers and agents (they are also institutions)
Define hierarchies and combinations (consortia)
Define publishers, agents, online hosts, etc
Dream is that xfer of the identifier immediately moves the metadata attached to the identifier to the place it's needed.

Publisher, library, and COUNTER reports all need identifiers. Would love to use SUSHI to deliver COUNTER reports that include an I2 identifier and let it interact with CORE data.

Working toward a NISO ballot by end of 2010; a working draft released between Nov 2009 and March 2010.

Comments

[Abigail]

So glad you are blogging from ER&L - I was bummed that I did not get there this year.

[Jamene]

Welcome back to academia, Abigail! So glad to see you on the blog. We miss you at ER&L - hope to talk to you more soon!