Abstract
Several members of the e-journal supply chain came together to discuss their roles in managing electronic resources. The tasks of managing print subscriptions were compared and contrasted with the tasks now required to manage electronic subscriptions. The complex nature of managing electronic resources and the impact that it has had on the workflows of all parties involved were shared.
Six information specialists discussed the roles they each play in the world of electronic serials. Susan Davis, an acquisitions librarian, discussed the differences between managing print and electronic resources. Electronic Resources Librarian Deberah England gave an overview of the e-journal supply chain, including publishers, subscription agents, and aggregators, as well as software vendors. Next, Kim Steinle provided a publisher's perspective on electronic publishing and library relations, while Chris Beckett addressed the challenges to technology providers who create websites supporting online access to electronic resources. A subscription agent's point of view was shared by Tina Feick. She discussed their new and changing roles in the electronic environment. Jeff Aipperspach presented information on how software vendors can facilitate electronic resource access and management in libraries. Finally, England and Davis talked about workflow in libraries.
Susan Davis opened the preconference by comparing and contrasting print with electronic subscriptions. In the print world the three primary players were librarians, publishers, and subscription agents. The two basic pricing models were institutional and individual. A specific period or volume was purchased, although occasionally the publisher might include an extra volume to complicate matters. It usually took six to eight weeks to start the subscription, but basically one ordered, paid, claimed missing issues, and bound the issues to preserve the content. Along with the subscription agent or publisher, library students and staff easily managed these activities.
With the addition of online subscriptions, the serials world changed dramatically. More players, pricing models, deals, and problems quickly became the norm in managing online resources. Librarians soon realized that more people with different skill sets were needed to manage online subscriptions. Were the staff and students who handled the print media the right ones for processing the electronic? Should a separate unit be established for managing electronic media? At the very least current staff needed updated skills, and decisions needed to be made on whether it was appropriate for student workers to handle some of the tasks now required in the electronic world. These decisions were dependent on the type and size of the library, the number of staff members and their skill sets, and the future direction of the library.
Complexity has always been a part of the serials landscape. Even though many principles from print acquisitions still applied, new skills and tools were needed to cope with the acquisition of online resources. Now librarians needed to know how to work with A–Z lists, consortia, link resolvers, and electronic resource management (ERM) systems. They had to learn how to read and edit licenses, collect “better” usage data, and create spreadsheets. Receipt of journal issues changed from the standard print procedures to the electronic activation of the journal, from claiming to verifying access, and from binding to perpetual access. In the online world, researchers theoretically have 24/7 access to a vast amount of information through not only their own institution but consortium deals as well. With the amount of time saved in doing research and the amount of information accessible for research, the pace of activity in serials acquisitions increased dramatically to meet the new expectations of researchers in the electronic world.
Deberah England, Electronic Resources Librarian for Wright State University, described the e-journal supply chain as a complex chain of not only more and new players, but of players whose roles may be unclear and overlap with others. The marketplace has become volatile due to mergers, societies transferring titles to commercial publishers, open access, and new technologies. Why is the electronic world so confusing? Publishers and subscription agents have always been a part of the print world, but their roles have expanded and changed in the electronic environment. For example, EBSCO Industries plays several roles in the electronic environment. They are a subscription agent, a publisher, an aggregator (EBSCOhost databases), a third-party content host (MetaPress), an A–Z list service provider, and an OpenURL link resolver provider. They often play a series of roles at an institution, which can easily become confusing to staff in regards to “who does what when.”
In addition to subscription agents and publishers, new players in the electronic content world include aggregators, republication services, third-party platform hosts, brokers, A–Z list service providers, integrated library system (ILS) vendors, and ERM system vendors. Publishers create content and can vary in size from minor (less than five titles) to large (over two hundred titles). Types of publishers include STM (scientific, technical, and medical), educational, legal, trade, university presses, and vanity. Academic publishers can be commercial, societies, non-profit, or university. The majority of these still publish and maintain two formats. Content of commercial, society, university press, and non-profit publishers are usually hosted by a third party.
Publishers Elsevier, Wiley, Springer, and Taylor & Francis are known as “The Big Four.” They are publicly owned companies that answer to stockholders. They command over 50 percent of the market and are steadily taking over more journals. They are quick to invest in new technologies and develop “branded” interfaces. Their technologies have raised user expectations for all publishers.
Commercial publishers, such as M.E. Sharpe and Sage, are privately owned and not accountable to stockholders. They are small to medium in size and specialize in niche markets. Society publishers, such as IEEE or the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, are typically small to medium in size, but publish core quality titles with large readerships. University presses or non-profits are small to medium in size with their primary funding provided by the university or institution.
Aggregators, such as EBSCOhost or ProQuest, compile content from multiple sources to produce a collection of titles or database. Content may be in the original format or be repackaged. Access may link to content hosted on other sites. Republication services, such as BioOne or Project Muse, provide access to collections of resources published elsewhere. Access is typically provided by linking to content on an outside server. Third-party platform hosts, such as Highwire Press or MetaPress, provide content via server platforms and support services. They may provide fee-based service to content not subscribed to by the library and online access to usage statistics. When activating journal titles, there are no “best practices” for this procedure since requirements can vary from publisher to publisher.
Subscription agents, such as EBSCO, Swets, WT Cox, and Harrassowitz, serve as a purchasing and service intermediary between publishers and institutional subscribers. They process orders, including ones with service contracts, as they branch out and add other services. Brokers, such as OHIONET and Lyrasis, also serve as a purchasing and service intermediary between publishers and institutional subscribers, but service contracts may be between the brokers instead of the libraries. A–Z list service providers, such as EBSCO A-to-Z and Serials Solutions, provide discovery lists with links to resources to which a library subscribes regardless of how a resource is hosted or packaged. Knowledgebase tracking includes changes to titles, holdings, package components, and URLs. Services may include add-on MAchine-Readable Cataloging (MARC) record services, OpenURL support, data export, and overlap analysis. They rely on data provided by content providers to populate the knowledgebase.
Finally, ILS and ERM system vendors, with systems such as Voyager and 360 Resource Manager, install and maintain subscriber bibliographic information and purchasing systems. They assist in the management of electronic resources and provide potential opportunities for loading data from external sources. From these brief descriptions one can easily see the large variety of players now involved with the purchase and management of electronic resources. Although their roles are complex and sometimes overlap, each plays an important part in the electronic world.
Next, Kim Steinle and Chris Beckett shared their thoughts on the electronic revolution from the perspective of a publisher and platform provider, respectively. Steinle is the library relations manager for Duke University Press. Duke University Press is medium-sized and publishes content in the humanities and social sciences. They publish thirty-eight journals, approximately one hundred and twenty books per year, and offer five electronic research collections.
Before the electronic revolution, their personnel's main contact was with the subscription agent who passed them orders. They had very little direct contact with the customer. As institutions began to cancel print subscriptions, they quickly realized that they needed to be able to communicate with and understand the needs of libraries. Thus, the Library Relations Department was created to engage and learn from customers by attending conferences and finding out what the hot topics were and what technologies were being used by libraries. It also gave the publisher an opportunity to encourage participation in online initiatives and promote and develop new products.
As a publisher in the electronic age, Duke University Press faces many of the same challenges as libraries: rising costs, staffing issues, and sustainability. The Library Resource Center, like many other publisher websites, was created to provide essential information to the customer such as title lists, pricing information, site license information, access instructions, and URL information. Publishers must also adhere to standards and best practices developed by the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and other service organizations. The use of Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources (COUNTER), Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI), Transfer, Athens or Shibboleth, and Shared Electronic Resource Understanding (SERU) by publishers enhances access to their products, making them more attractive to customers.
Rising costs for printing, postage, and platform fees have pushed publishers to encourage libraries to make the transition from print to electronic subscriptions. Most publishers offer print, print plus online, and online-only access models. Steinle stated that 30 to 40 percent of their institutional customers have print subscriptions only. This could be due to the academic disciplines involved since humanities and social sciences titles do not move as fast as the STM titles. Transition to online only is encouraged by working with third-party platform providers to offer perpetual access and by offering pricing models that make online-only access more economical.
The question remains, “Is the subscription model obsolete?” Non-sustainability of price increases is a problem for both libraries and publishers. Publishers and librarians are being encouraged to collaborate on new ways to provide and disseminate content. Publishers are communicating directly with library customers, working with consortia and vendors, and striving to provide excellent customer service. Duke University Press and others are considering eliminating or consolidating site licenses and better ways to develop and enhance their products and services.
Chris Beckett from Atypon shared his thoughts as a technology provider. Their role in the electronic world is to help businesses grow by applying cutting-edge technology to their websites. Working with the company's designers, they build sites according to the company's specifications. Some websites that they have built include JSTOR, BioOne, and the new American Chemical Society site.
Beckett stated that when librarians organized the print world by subject everyone was happy. Collections were assessed on their quality, comprehensiveness, and relevance to the institution. In the electronic world publishers are organizing collections by imprint, which does not work well in libraries. Why don't all publisher websites look the same? Publishers are driven to compete in the electronic arena in order to better meet the needs of their clients who include librarians, researchers, professors, and undergraduates. This may lead to a proliferation of bells and whistles. The challenge for some publishers is to ensure that they focus on the needs of their users rather than on how their site compares with one of their direct competitors.
Beckett briefly described the taxonomy of the different types of aggregators. Aggregators that host content, such as Ingenta, provide full-text content from multiple publishers through a single interface with no embargo periods. They are paid by publishers to build and maintain their electronic presence. Licensing aggregators such as EBSCOhost and ProQuest offer a single interface to content from multiple publishers which can be embargoed. Subscription agent gateways provide full-text access through a single interface and there are no embargo periods. Abstracting and indexing gateways are aggregators of metadata such as PubMed and PsycINFO. Services are paid by the publisher and there are no embargo periods. Finally, there are publisher websites which are not really aggregators, but they do provide full-text access to the contents of one publisher without any embargoes.
Next, Tina Feick, Director of Sales and Marketing in North America for Otto Harrassowitz, shared perspectives from the subscription agent's point of view. The 1970s and 1980s were the “golden age” for subscription agents. Libraries had plenty of money and many were spending at a higher level in order to achieve Association of Research Libraries status. It was a simpler time when all information about a journal title was recorded on the Kardex card.
As the electronic revolution exploded into the serials world, subscription agents struggled with identifying their roles in the electronic environment. Suddenly, they were offering discovery tools for resource identification and evaluation, license management, activation of electronic resources, public resource discovery and access, technical access management, and usage tracking. New divisions were created and additional people hired to help provide all of the new services required for the management of e-journals and databases. No longer were they notifying the customer of just title changes and pricing information, but also changes in the publisher, package content, format options, and URL information.
In the electronic environment, list price and service charges no longer apply. Subscription agents must track thousands of prices for all formats (print, print plus online, online plus print, and online only) and types (e-journals, databases, and e-books) of electronic resources. Prices for subscriptions, backfiles, and packages vary between institutions depending on what consortium or package deal the institution negotiated with the publisher. For example, some STM publishers send out more than one thousand spreadsheets that an agent must track.
It is crucial for libraries to communicate more than just their title lists with subscription agents in the management of their electronic resources. Agents need to know contract terms (including the institutions involved if it is a consortial agreement), access-only titles, pricing formulas, and date coverage in order for libraries to take advantage of the many services that subscription agents now offer. Librarians need to realize that they have power when dealing with publishers. Also, they must learn to communicate better with each other within their own institutions and know their institutions philosophies on buying electronic resources. In turn, subscription agents actively belong to, participate in, and sponsor many resources that are essential in the smooth management of print and electronic serials. They are key players at the NASIG and United Kingdom Serials Group (UKSG) conferences, workshops, and working groups for standards and best practices.
The next speaker was Jeff Aipperspach, senior product manager with Serials Solutions. He commented on a variety of tools that can help manage electronic resources. There is no one system that can effectively manage electronic resources. Librarians need help in organizing and managing the electronic lifecycle. The knowledgebase of the ERM system is one such tool that allows librarians to organize the various pieces of information about electronic resources into internal silos that will help libraries eliminate redundancy and become more effective and productive. Building the knowledgebase by applying rules helps to manage information by correcting inconsistent information. In addition to organizing and managing the lifecycle of electronic resources, ERM systems can provide additional support in the electronic lifecycle for renewals, cancellations, and usage reporting.
Consortia also play an important role in the purchasing of electronic resources. On the average, a library participates in four consortia. It is the way by which libraries can maximize their purchasing power. They also need to communicate with their members and track essential information that ERM systems can help provide. Standards, institutional identifiers, and MARC records are other pieces of the puzzle that help to streamline processes. Management tools created by one vendor not only need to be able to talk to one another, but also to those created by other vendors to increase productivity and reduce duplicated efforts. Institutional identifiers could help vendors know their customers by a unique identifier instead of by a mixture of account information. MARC records that are bulk-imported can keep the contents of an institution's online catalog up-to-date.
OpenURL link resolvers and federated search engines are essential in the retrieval of information in the electronic world. Librarians should look closely at the knowledgebase underlining their features and functionalities. They should be customized to meet the needs of libraries and their patrons in information retrieval.
Electronic resource access and management services help libraries to efficiently and effectively manage electronic resources by collecting, correcting, connecting, and controlling the knowledgebase. This allows librarians to optimize the use of their collections, reduce workloads, make better decisions, and lower costs.
The transition from print to online presents many workflow issues, such as whether or not a separate unit needs to be created for handling the electronic format and what skill sets are needed by librarians and staff. England led a discussion on workflow based on a survey of Ohio academic libraries. The survey was conducted in the fall of 2008 and consisted of universities, regional campuses, community colleges, and private colleges. Each participant was interviewed separately, one-on-one. Ten questions were asked and then analyzed for commonalities to identify workflow processes:
| • | Do you have an established workflow for management of e-journals? If so, what is it? | ||||
| • | How many staff are involved in the e-journal workflow process? | ||||
| • | What are their roles and tasks? With which departments are they affiliated? (students included) | ||||
| • | Do you have different workflows for different e-journal purchasing models? If so, how do they differ? | ||||
| • | What tools do you use to assist you with e-journal workflow? | ||||
| • | Do you track the workflow process? If so, how? | ||||
| • | How was the workflow established? | ||||
| • | How is the workflow working for you? | ||||
| • | What part of the workflow is still a challenge or needs improvement? | ||||
| • | What needs to be done to accomplish the improvement or meet the challenge? | ||||
Major challenges identified were the lack of time to become familiar with the electronic process; volume of workload; staff changes; failed searches for an electronic resources librarian; lack of formal training; communication issues, internally and externally; and knowing whom to call for what since vendors now have multiple contacts for the same product. England advised that libraries develop a workflow for the mainstream and have checklists for all the parts. She concluded by stating that the optimal workflow is one that works best for your own institution.
Davis then shared some of her experiences with workflow issues at her institution. They started out by trying to incorporate electronic subscriptions into the print world, but it was hard to move their focus away from the print. As her library moved more and more into electronic-only subscriptions, such as Elsevier's ScienceDirect, changes needed to be made. Davis' section combined with some portions of the Technical Services Department of the Health Sciences Library to eliminate duplicated effort and to create an Electronic Periodicals Management Department. Print subscriptions were transferred to staff in the Acquisitions Department that dealt with continuations or standing orders. The new electronic-only department consisted of three librarians that dealt with acquisitions, cataloging, and license agreements and three highly skilled print paraprofessionals. New workflow procedures had to be established for the electronic subscription environment. Specific projects were used to train staff to work with the electronic versions. Written guidelines or checklists helped to document procedures that boosted the confidence of the staff. An electronic discussion list for electronic products was created for sharing information about databases and an e-journal problem form was created for reporting problems on a daily basis. Creating workflow procedures evolved over time as issues were identified and dealt with.
The preconference ended with more discussion on topics raised in the presentations and the survey that the presenters had sent shortly before the conference. Anecdotal experiences were shared for the following topics:
| • | Incentives to go electronic only, pros and cons of each, and some of the problems libraries encounter when subscriptions do not have a PDF view | ||||
| • | IP authentication versus username and password | ||||
| • | The amount of time and effort that it takes to order and process e-journals | ||||
| • | Publisher alerts and downtime | ||||
| • | Use of SERU versus license agreements | ||||
| • | Evaluating electronic resources | ||||
| • | Checklist for license agreements | ||||
| • | Problems with collecting usage statistics | ||||
| • | Branding of PDFs | ||||
| • | Cost usage statistics | ||||
Through the discussions offered by the presenters, each serving varying roles within the information supply chain, it is clear that all players experience complex challenges in dealing with electronic resource management. It is also clear that by better understanding each other's positions, the collaborative process involved in managing these resources can only be improved. At the very least, this presentation offered the sixteen participants the knowledge that they are not alone in their struggles to manage the rapidly growing and ever changing world of electronic resources.