Professional Development

On Wednesday, Sept. 23, I attended “E-book Demonstration Day,” an ASERL-sponsored web conference in which five different e-book vendors demonstrated their products and pricing models. ASERL is considering negotiating a deal (or deals) for members to get discounts for e-books, and held this Demonstration Day so that we could become more acquainted with the market.

The five vendors who presented were EBL (with whom ZSR already does business), Elsevier, Springer, Oxford Univ. Press, and ebrary. These could be divided into two basic business models. EBL and ebrary are intermediaries, and both provide a way for libraries to purchase individual e-book titles. Elsevier, Springer, and Oxford, on the other hand, are publishers selling their own products. They do not allow one-at-a-time purchases but instead sell collections of e-books (e.g., Oxford Scholarship Online, with access to 3000+ Oxford scholarly monographs, or subject-specific collections of e-books published in 2009 by Springer or Elsevier).

The differences between all the products are numerous, each with strengths and weaknesses, but I won’t bore you with the details. I came away with the feeling that going with EBL was a good choice. The big publishers’ online platforms seemed somewhat easier to use and had some nice features (e.g. linking out to other content), but I’m not impressed with their insistence on only selling large collections.

There wasn’t much discussion among Demo participants about the different products; I think our heads were all swimming in all the details by the end of the day. ASERL intends to send out a survey to assess further interest. It will be interesting to see what direction others want to go.

-Derrik

Tired of hearing from me yet?

I just attended an ASERL-sponsored Webcast about SCOAP3, a fairly new initiative to change the model of scholarly communication within the field of High-Energy Physics (HEP). The presenter was Salvatore Mele, Project Manager for SCOAP3 and Head of Open Access at CERN in Switzerland (think Large Hadron Collider and the end of the world). The basic idea of SCOAP3 is for libraries worldwide to pool the money they currently pay for HEP journals and pay centrally for peer review, with the stipulation that all publications become open access. Publications will be put up for bid by the SCOAP3 governing body, with publishers essentially becoming contractors. SCOAP3 is currently seeking pledges of support from libraries so that they can begin the bidding process.

According to Dr. Mele, very few HEP researchers actually read articles from HEP journals; they read pre-prints in open-access repositories. HEP journals exist for peer review and “officialdom.” I asked what the advantage to libraries would be, if we end up paying the same amount we already pay for subscriptions. Dr. Mele made a fairly convincing argument that under the SCOAP3 model, we would continue to support faculty by paying for the peer-review process. He also asserts that the bid process will link price to quality, as publishers compete for rights to publish. Another aspect is that the bids will be based on a per-article price (not per-journal), so journals could not decrease the amount of content and still raise prices at the same time.

OK, by now you’re probably getting tired or bored with NASIG, so for my last post I’ll try to give you the short version.

First, evidence that Chris and Steve really were there …

Saturday’s opening session was by Dr. Carol Tenopir of the Univ. of Tennessee School of Information Sciences, who discussed her research on calculating return on investment for library expenditures with respect to research/grant funding.Her research is based on surveys of university faculty, asking, for example, how important citations are to obtaining funding, and what percentage of their citations do they find via online library resources.It was an interesting methodology.

Next I went to a session where three librarians talked about their respective experiences with implementing various Pay-Per-View (PPV) products.This was a very interesting and helpful session.The only products that received favorable reviews from the panelists were Science Direct (at Trinity) and EBL (at U.Texas).Common problems with PPV products included the inability to block PPV access to content subscribed to elsewhere, cumbersome user registration, and a “shopping cart” interface that tended to scare away users.I was glad to hear the U.Texas librarian describe their EBL pilot launch as “extraordinarily successful.”

My final Saturday session was a panel discussion with 3 librarians and 2 publisher reps about the process of license negotiation-top concerns/risks, difficult points to negotiate, whether the licensing process is improving (all agreed it is not), and whether licenses are doing what they were intended to do.There was discussion about how to improve some of the inefficiencies in the process (including a new standard, ONIX-PL), and whether it might be feasible to abandon license agreements and rely instead on copyright law.Another very good discussion, and I’m glad I had the background of the preconference to give me some context.

The first two Sunday sessions were kind of disappointing; I won’t bore you with the details.The final plenary session was about identifying trustworthy content online.Geoffrey Bilder of CrossRef talked about how we judge credibility of print resources (title page, publisher blurb, cover art, trust of the library, etc.); think about how you can tell at a glance whether an article is from a popular magazine or a scholarly journal.He then pointed out that the relatively quick evaluation we can do with print resources doesn’t work well in the online world.He batted around some ideas for making it easier to judge the credibility of online resources, including CrossMark, which is being developed by CrossRef.Another one is Hon Code which, if I understood correctly, is a registry of websites, with a Firefox plugin that displays an icon when a user visits a registered site.

Overall an excellent conference.I’m afraid I’ve come away with more ideas than I know what to do with at this point.But that’s good, right?

It is now Saturday evening, the NASIG conference has finished its second full day, I have taken 12 full pages of handwritten notes, and I write small.I am struggling with how to condense all that into a blog post or two.I could just transcribe my notes straight across, but I doubt many of you would be that interested.If you are, we can talk next week.Anyway, here’s Friday … the short version.

Friday started with a “Vision” (=plenary) session, with speaker Peter Morville, author of the book Ambient Findability.His presentation dealt largely with website design and designingbetter search interfaces.It was a good presentation, and there are now a few books I want to look up (including Ambient Findability).In a world where the haystacks are becoming bigger and more numerous, he addressed some ways to create bigger needles.We need to figure out how to capture our “about-ness” and our uniqueness.He spoke some about faceted navigation as a promising trend, as well as the requisite sample websites doing cool things (e.g. Songza and Everyzing).

I attended a session where people from two different universities discussed their implementation of the CUFTS open-source electronic resource management system (ERMS).I was hoping to be impressed, but came away instead with the impression that this product isn’t quite ready for prime time.What the session did do was give me some food for thought about ERMS functionality.

Friday afternoon I went to a session about cost data for electronic resources.The presenter first spoke about a new NISO standard (currently in draft form) called CORE (= Cost of Resource Exchange), which seeks to standardize the elements and format of cost data in ILS and ERM systems and facilitate their communication between automation systems.She then explained the method she has used at her own library to extract cost data from their ILS and move it into their ERMS.

My final session Friday was presented by a librarian from U.Tennessee-Chattanooga and a representative of the non-profit organization that makes the Gold Rush suite of e-resource management tools (link resolver, A-Z list, etc.).They talked about the U.Tenn.-Chattanooga library’s recent migration from their previous vendor to Gold Rush.I took two pages of notes on this one.They talked about the selection and implementation process, and discussed lessons learned, like the importance of live product trials (not just demos), and making the vendor work for the sale.

Whew! Six pages down!In the evening was an optional event at the nearby Biltmore House.We were bussed over, had a nice dinner on site, then went on a tour of the house.Then to bed to rest up for another day of conferencing (stay tuned).

This post comes to you from Asheville, NC, where I am attending the 24th annual conference of the North American Serials Interest Group (NASIG).Steve and Chris are on the conference planning committee, but I came on the scene late enough that I get to attend the conference as a participant.The conference begins in earnest on Friday, but I attended two pre-conference workshops yesterday and today.

Wednesday’s pre-conference was called “Navigating your way through the E-journal rapids.”It was a workshop taught by a “panel of experts”:2 librarians, and representatives from a subscription agent, a university press, an e-journal platform provider, and SerialsSolutions.For those unfamiliar with NASIG, one of the organization’s hallmarks is that although the majority of members are librarians, representatives from other parts of the serials supply chain also participate as members on an equal footing.NASIG also has a non-commercial stance, so the presenters from commercial companies give their perspective without trying to sell their product.

I thought the presenters did a good job of talking about the aspects of journal management that are unique to the online environment.An initial overview talked about the new complexity-more players, more pricing models, new workflows.Also covered were the many different types of publishers and the new roles of subscription agents, platform hosting companies, etc.A couple of gems:I learned the phrase “There is no ‘one’ anything,” and the subscription agent pointed out that with all the new workflows and entities involved, it still often takes as long to start up an e-journal subscription as a print subscription.

Today’s preconference was a half-day workshop on licensing.The primary focus was on understanding license language, learning key terminology, and recognizing and mitigating potential problem elements.Again, the publisher perspective was valuable.For example, one publisher employee in the class pointed out that if they monitor excessive downloading from a specific IP address, they need to be able to shut it down immediately.I also learned that some publishers may want to prohibit electronic course packs, not because they want to limit access to their materials, but because they want users to link into the publisher’s web site; usage stats can be a major selling point for a publisher.

We were given a copy of an actual license agreement and asked to identify 16 key elements (site definition, perpetual access, indemnification clause, etc.).Later, we evaluated the license and identified some problem areas.Then we worked in groups to come up with alternate language to mitigate the problems.Participants also received a flash drive with some sample licenses, boilerplate language, and other resources.The plan is to create a wiki so that we can continue to share model license language.I was impressed with the practicality of this workshop, and am looking forward to the rest of the conference.

On Wed. May 13th and Thurs. May 14th, I was a “virtual” attendee at the meeting of the N.C. Independent Colleges & Universities (NCICU) Library Purchasing Committee.The meeting was held at N.C. Wesleyan College in Rocky Mount, and they used Elluminate web conferencing software so that people who couldn’t travel could participate online.Maybe I’m biased because of my experience as an online student, but I had fun being an online participant.The software was easy to use, it included audio and video feed, and the moderator kept a running commentary (e.g. transcribing comments/questions that were out of range of the microphone).

The first session was an update on Lyrasis (formerly SOLINET/PALINET).Nothing earth-shattering, but it was good for me (in the arena of consortial deals) to get an overview.The second session was an excellent presentation by Lisa Norberg (of UNC-CH) on strengthening the library’s website.I’m sure I’ll talk more about it with the Web Team.Her main idea was to focus not simply on usability, but on “Persuasive Design,” which is difficult to summarize here, but I think of it as the website being a part of the total “library” package.

Next was a group discussion on making library resources more accessible to users.The room was divided into 4 small groups; the online participants became group 5.Some of my favorite ideas presented were (1) making services more accessible by providing clear links and using natural-language terminology; (2) making books more accessible by explaining the classification system & subject browsing; and (3) making articles more accessible through document delivery and also by providing help with search terms (thesaurus-but call it something different).

Thursday’s presentations included updates from two book vendors, a discussion about streaming video of educational films, and an update on NC Live.The NC Live update, by Tim Rogers, was another good one for me, to help me understand more clearly how that arrangement works with regard to the online resources we get through them.He talked about some of the new resources they’re working on, as well as software they are working to develop (e.g. usage statistics, authentication).

Overall, I thought it was a good conference, and the online participation worked surprisingly well.

Cristina Yu made arrangements for Ellen Makaravage, Patty Strickland, and me to visit the Carpenter Library on Monday, March 23. The three of us had never been to Carpenter, so the purpose of the visit was to see the library and learn more about how they operate.

We entered the hospital at the door closest to the public parking garage, then began the long walk to the far corner of the hospital. When we finally made it there, we saw that the front door has been set up for card access-staff and students only. The public is allowed access, but only by prior appointment or by buzzing the front desk via intercom. We learned later that the library has had some problems with a few people essentially setting up camp in the library, so they instituted the security not to limit access to library materials, but to help with crowd control.

We started with a tour of the library’s public areas. Carpenter has a computer lab, open to all patrons (students and public alike). They have several study rooms, color-coded (so you can use the “blue study room” or the “yellow study room”). We saw the History of Medicine room, and got a peek at the 5 levels of stacks, mostly bound journals. Carpenter is also in the process of combining their reference and circulation desks into a single service point.

After touring the public areas, we went through the keypadded door into the staff offices. Then we (well, Cristina and Ellen mostly) had a conversation with Hilary Doane about Carpenter’s ILL operation. Carpenter is a net lender, and they often provide resources to community medical providers. For interlibrary borrowing, they charge their patrons a set fee (though I forget the amount). They also provide document delivery, including (for a fee) to outside users-community clinics, lawyers, businesses.

When we were finished, Patty impressed us all with her sense of direction as she led the way, without any hesitation, back to the parking lot!