Managing E-Resources seminar

27 July 2006

10:00 am - 1:00 pm
State Library SA Lecture Theatre

ARCom & Libraries Australia SA jointly held a 'Managing E-Resources' seminar on the 27 of July at State Library SA, Lecture Theatre, attracting over 60 participants.

The first guest speaker, Mr. Stephen Cramond from the Barr Smith Library of University of Adelaide brought up some interesting issues regarding Electronic Record Management (ERM). The highlighted issues included human resource staffing, ERM softwares, licence compliance, and consortium participation, among many others. He emphasised that, although electronic resources play a significant role in modern libraries, there are still many associated issues and problems with their introduction. As a result, it is difficult to analyse the long term impacts at this stage and a longer term and more detailed cost-benefit assessment would have to be carried out.

The second guest speaker Ms. Liz Byrne from the State library of South Australia, Public Library Service, firstly gave us an overview of ERM within the Public Library Service, which included a history of their usage of electronic resources, online resources, and ER book data. She then followed it up by introducing all participants to a new project called 'Online Tutoring', which is a 'real time' tutoring tool for school aged children. She then proceeded to highlight the various challenges encountered in trying to encourage individuals to adopt and use it.

After a morning tea break, the speakers were Ms. Carole Bloomer from Thomson Gale talking about publishing e-resources and also Ms. Amanda Healey from Proquest and Ms. Jenny Paradiso from Ex Libris introducing their ERM systems. Ms. Bloomer of Thomson Gale presented 'e-publishing', which she describes as a new exciting, comprehensive, accurate, and easy-to-use system. It is able to store E-books, text and images and has an easy to use licence management system. Ms. Healey of Proquest highlighted what makes 'Serials Solutions' unique and the importance of MARC records for the system. It was emphasised that their collection data was not only comprehensive and accurate but was also of the highest quality. Ms. Paradiso of Ex Libris talked about why e-resources systems are so important in this digital era. She introduced to seminar participants their 'Open URL Resolvers' and 'Electronic Resource Management Systems', which contain a powerful linking service and a reports & statistics service.

Our final guest speaker was Ms. Fran Wilson from National Library - Libraries Australia. She firstly talked about the existing E-resources in Libraries Australia, the importance of maintaining high standards, and the issues of accessibility rights. She then discussed the various issues encountered with E-resources, which include, but are not limited to: the need to increase contribution of bibliographic records and holdings to the Australian National Bibliographic Database (ANBD), the display of e-resources on ANBD, and document delivery rights in e-resource licences.

Participants acknowledged at the end of the seminar that not only was it successful in bringing a fair cross-section of relevant stakeholders together in a joint forum, it was also an important and comprehensive session as it highlighted the various significant challenges facing all libraries in this modern era of technology.

Sachi Nakamura
ARCoM Committee

A a