ER&L Conference Summary #erl13

I recently attended the 2013 Electronic Resources & Libraries (ER&L) conference in Austin, TX. As before, the conference reinforced and solidified ideas among my fellow electronic resources librarians (ERLs), re-energized my research agenda, and reminded me that I am not alone in making wider connections out from my work as an ERL.

In fact, the “we don’t usually have a theme” theme of the conference was bridging communities and cross pollinating ideas — which led me to ask myself, Self: How do I communicate and bridge ideas across the world of ERL and the larger library mission in practice? But another subtler theme that I picked up on throughout the conference turns out to be a very reality-based response to my own question.

The keynote opening and closing speakers, as well as many presenters throughout the conference, challenged all of us to move beyond research results or the identification of problems in our communities (content) and become involved in myriad ways with solving problems and building bridges (service). Even more than my little parenthetical emphasis on service over content — this was a call to individual action.

“What are you going to do with what you now know about Google Generation users?” asked Michael Eisenbert (session notes) — Opening keynote: Listening to Users: What the “Google Generation” Says About Using Library & Information Collections, Services, and Systems in the Digital Age

“You are the Digital Library Federation” chided Rachel Frick — Closing keynote: The Courage of our Connections: Thoughts on Professional Identities, Organizational Affiliations and Common Communities)

“Are you disgruntled? Support these start-ups, your fellow Disgrunterati who are making things happen!” coined Jason Price — Lightening Talks

I attended sessions mostly focused on my passion areas, the places where I am most action-oriented — workflow and communication. I felt particularly energized by presentations from early adopters of webscale systems like Intota (session notes) and Alma (session notes). Unlike years past when new ERM systems were adopted and met with fairly wide-scale disappointment, these adopters spoke specifically to how these new ILS systems are helping them manage the complex nature of our work across the library (e and p, content and service) And they seemed so happy! They clearly demonstrated how the ability of these systems to centralize and structure key data and to bridge that data across all library service workflows enabled them to more quickly take action to address internal and external users needs.

I was also very pleased with the Project Management in Libraries (session notes) post conference workshop led by the most excellent Jennifer Vinopal (NYU). To energize my research agenda there was a welcomed talk on the importance of both Internal and External Customer Service (session notes) , especially as it relates to various organizational restructuring. Timely! These sessions helped me see where I can act by both confirming current thinking and offering new ideas to help me move forward.

Some others included Jill Emery’s and Graham Stone’s TERMS (session notes) project. I would love to become involved in extending areas of TERMS that relate to communication and information mangement, as well as key troubleshooting best practices. Another was Extreme E-resources Endeavors…(seesion notes), which included a mix of things we have already acted on (PDA, E-reserves) and things we are hoping to (renewal calendars, POOF!). Feeding one of my passions (and past professions), Instructing Future ERLs (session notes) was another inspiring call to act, although maybe further down the road with this one.

Now, strangely, and despite all Dan Tonkery’s advice to the keep emotion out of it (Improving Communication & Relationships Between Librarians & Publishers session notes), my initial overall response to the conference (after a great closing keynote) was not resolve and energy, but reservedness, fear, frustration, and believe it or not – tears! I reasoned that it was frustration with wanting to act, but not being able to due to lack of resources or, possibly, as Frick suggests, the “courage of my connections”. But I also think changes going on back at my organization may have played some subconscious role in that perhaps too — the sense of uncertainty about where these idea and action bridges will be built.

You should also probably know that I was reading Susan Cain’s Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking during the trip. I claim to be an ambivert, but I was operating strongly with my “I” throughout the conference. I didn’t do a lot of networking, even though I had many opportunities, and it has taken me much longer to recover my energy post-conference (also classic introvert behavior). Thankfully, some of my first tasks back were sharing project management approaches, discussing ideas for development programs, and spending most of today cleaning up my notes and summarizing my experience.

And look what I found on facebook!

And look what I found on facebook!

Reflecting now upon these bold calls to action and individual responsibility, I’m reminded that I begin acting within my circle of concern. My strengths in learning, strategy, analysis, and taking action with others are what help me be effective in my circle. These same strengths also enable me to see and act beyond this area by sharing ideas and bridging communities. I have always thought of myself as a bridge-builder of both ideas and communities. This conference is always great reminder of how I do that as an ERL prepares me in all sorts of ways to be a greater and broader leader in librarianship as a whole.

2013
03/27
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Project Management in Libraries #erl13

First of all, I only realized when sitting down to this post-conference workshop that it was being led by Jennifer Tenopir of the wonderful article on project and portfolio management that I’d shared within my organization this past year.  So I was very energized, which was good since I was otherwise totally exhausted coming off the end of the conference as a whole.

Vinopal did not disappoint.  She is an excellent teacher and clearly knows her subject and how to present it to librarians. The context, outline, timing/pace, and the activities (a mix of alone work, pair and share, and open discussion) were very helpful for building a greater understanding of project management in libraries.

The session outline basically followed a “talk, do, discuss approach” around the following:

  1. project manag(er/ment) – what is it?
  2. project charter – documentation of the scope agreement (i.e. collaborative), which includes scope,goals,deliverables,
  3. project plan
  4. project execution
  5. [if time...portfolio management]

An important distinction about project management in libraries is to remember that library services are not the same as projects that never end. That is both an ill-defined project and an ill-defined understanding of service

Vinopal’s overview of the reasons projects fail (there were 8) is a good way to reveal why project management is valuable, and offers an approach for gaining organizational buy in.  She observed that, as librarians, we all likely got where we are because were good doers, who are able to plan quickly. Project management, however, requires slowing down and building consensus, which are two different skills. There is an emphasis on facilitating both the work  and workers involved in the project. This requires knowing your workers and what they need in all areas of project management, including (lightbulb moment for me) — communication.  Her advice: Don’t force tools that don’t work. Use communication and project tracking tools that will enable you workers to work.

One of the great skills Vinopal had in her presentation was helping to translate the project manag-ese into terms that would be meaningful for libraries.  We started by going around the room introducing ourselves and our planned project examples, which allowed us to identify commonalities and possible partners for our upcoming activities.  Some of the project examples included:

  • understanding the transition from project to process
  • e-books and various related implementation projects
  • a cancellation project
  • a communication audit (evaluation)
  • transitioning an ERMS
  • a digitization project

Then, we got started on creating the project charter, aka project one-pager, project home page.  Project charters need:

  • a name =this may not be as simple as it seems, esp when dealing with multiple products
  • description (goal)
  • success criteria (assessment)
  • the requirements (deliverables, optionals, and out of scope)
  • who is on the project team (including roles and contact info)*
  • milestones/schedule (high-level proposed dates)

*note especially the role difference b/w sponsor (finance, support, giving you authority) and stakeholder (advocate, ally)

After describing the requirements of the charter, Vinopal challenged us to think about where this information would come from.  Seems like a no-brainer, but this is often when people get stuck and activate their doer over their planner. Some information resources for the charter may include:

  • the sponsor and stakeholder (without promising at this stage)
  • past projects
  • surveys or environmental scans
  • any and all correspondence and documentation (email, grant documents)

As we worked through and discussed our activities,  I jotted down the some additional highlights (below).

ACTIVITY
Writing the charter. Consider the audience in the language of the charter. Your charter may include a communication plan, depending on the audience or project. Other considerations are a risk management plan which will vary as well depending on the audience

TIPS
“Running Meeting Notes” are an easy way to keep notes and action by build from the bottom up.  Create a home page linking to this additional documentation.

Communication plan can be an avoidance-of-risk plan and can be as simple as identifying how you communicate within the roles section of your charter.

TOOLS
All that matters is that you do and use what works for your organization.  Microsoft Project is often overkill both for you as the planner and the audience who must follow it.
SCHEDULE
Creating tasks and setting timelines always take longer than estimate. “Make your best estimate and adjust up”. You have to talk with others in this step to determine how long certain things take. Planning Poker can be a fun (facilitation technique) way of invovling your team in estimating time.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
Workflow design and redesign may be necessary within project planning.
Handoffs and triggers need to be part of the workflows. At the very least, add as a meeting agenda items to address handoffs and what’s in the pipeline.

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE QUESTIONS:
Responsibility without authority is ugly.  View project manager as facilitator vs. task master. Organizational buy-in needed especially to the language and approach.  It is helpful if someone can “be-knight you” as the project manager.

Project and Service portfolio management (PPM). Can be portfolios within organization as a whole or within just a small subset. Can be as basic as a list (inventory) of the project and services ongoing or on tap in the organization. PPM originated in business and IT; libraries may be doing it but they aren’t writing about it. Requires a good amount of buy in from the top and a governance structure for it beneath. Recommend having Project Portfolio Manager for the whole organization.

PPM can also track just who is doing things, rather than how long it is estimated to take.  This may be less scary for individuals but while still giving the manager the ability to see realities.

Vinopal emailed us her complete presentation with her notes and encouraged us to contribute our projects and ideas about project management to the Crowdsources PM Toolkit.

2013
03/20
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Unified Resource Management (Alma) #erl13

Jimmy Ghaphery of Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) shared the public side of the universal resource management system, Alma.  As an early adopter, VCU migrated to Alma b/w April to October 2012 from their existing array of systems: SFX, ARC, Aleph, and Verde.  January 2013 included further migration to Alma OpenURL and Alma CourseReserves.

Ghaphery emphasized the benefit of Alma as the back-end system upon which other layers can be added. Alma at VCU means no other catalog for users. Staff search as the public do and there has been no huge uproar. Although, browse functionality necessary and this functionality and need appears to be a bigger issue in humanities research.

Ghaphery noted the OpenURL interface as one of the most used by our public and found Alma provided a better visibility, especially of print holdings.  There is still a need for better support for custom parsers in order to include collections not indexed by PrimoCentral.

The details of the back-end system was presented by Erika Johnson (Boston College) who emphasized the dashboard and task list interface and the system requirement to set up workflows. Staff training in this was done in house, not ExLibris, and within a sandbox.  The benefit of the system, is that it knows the next step in a workflow, you don’t have to tell it or track and then manually push an event to its next step.  For example, if you created the order and then “sent to vendor” it automatically moves to the “activation” task list. Alma tasklist and workflow design and centralization structure simplifies the renewal process in one system.

Johnson also talked a bit about Alma Analytics which allows a number widgets to produce budget, task, and cost per use analysis reports.  In the April release, this cost per use tool will be visible from the search interface, and potentially coming into the Primo interface as well. Johnson noted their prior reorganization which created a continuing/e-resource and metadata unit, worked well for Alma implementation.

Susan Stearns (Ex Libris) finished up with additional Alma updates and summarized the four major areas of evaluation focus on which they have worked closely with partners.
1) Streamlining workflows
2) Increased visibility through Analytics
3) Creating an environment for collaboration (ARL community facilitation, OrbisCascade award, infrastructure to support sharing resources on both collection and technical services )
4) Becoming agile — agile development and a different (agile) mindset required for dashboard workflow interface

 

2013
03/20
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Instructing Future ERLs #erl13

Lori Duggan (Indiana University) gave an inspirational and well-structured overview of proposing, planning and teaching a course on ERM at Indiana University. Duggan was inspired herself by a 2010 ERL presentation by Grogg and Flemming, which pointed out the lack of courses and training in this area. Feedback from Indiana University staff supported the idea that training in this are is needed and wanted in the profession. Duggan created a program outline and proposed to program director.  Here are some of the details of her course development:

SCOPE — doesn’t cover collection development or ERL cataloging, as these are already covered in other core courses. So what makes ERM unique? Discover and user perspective, while important, not within Duggan’s domain. Workshop format, which was 18 hours of total class time.

AUDIENCE — not strictly for ERLs but for a variety of library professionals working in reference cataloging or collection development.

PREREQUISITES — none.

COURSE STRUCTURE — 90 minute Lecture Tuesday, Discussion Thursday. Also a lab portion with Serials Solutions offering a demo site option.

6 WEEK OUTLINE — Intro, Acquisitions/Vendor/Consortia, License/Negotiation, Access/Mgmt (Lab portion), Preservation/Archiving, Evaluation/Usage Data

TIME —  Decided Summer after FY rollover was best, although later she regretted losing her summertime.  She proposed the idea in the Fall, then had syllabus ready by Jan so it could be advertised to teach Summer.

SIZE OF CLASS – 9 students (1 audit).

ASSESSMENT — overall positive, was able to get students’ plus/delta reflections that went beyond standard student evaluation form. Current material relevant as was the fact that it was taught by librarian working in the field. Also like practical assignments. Actually wanted more group assignments.

Duggan observed that she had more content than expected and more questions from students than expected. Did take a lot of prep time to develop the course and for the teaching. She advises to explore a research leave option, if this is something that interests you.

 

2013
03/20
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Webscale Collection Analysis and Development (Intota) #erl13

Marist College is one of the development partners for Intota. Kathryn (Katie) Silberger gave an overview of assessment efforts at Marist and how webscale (360COUNTER, Google, Summon) has helped them.

Using 360COUNTER provides multi-year comparison, centralized gathering and storage, while still offering robust reports in Excel format. With cost data in the system, the renewal analysis and decision takes 10 minutes.  You even get stats for products that are not providing reports. For example, click-throughs for open access in order to raise faculty awareness; referrer reports — where are people starting; and a report of widget for usage in LibGuides (which LibGuides can’t provide).  Other types of assessment services they tried include using Google forms (DIY) for reference question analysis and a direct connection to collection decisions, and looking at discovery logs and posting the top 10 or more questions to your internal staff.

Like many, their assessment environment means dealing with data in multiple systems and a proliferation of spreadsheets.   Beside collecting these into one system, other reasons for going webscale were that e-stats and p-stats are different. Current p(hysical)-stats, like circulation statistics reports, don’t account for highly circulating items like laptops, study rooms. Also, when assessment it takes too much time and effort, you often can’t ask for things “out of curiosity”.  Webscale means less time manipulating data and more time for analysis.

Mark Tullos (ProQuest) discussed how to bring all of this together in one place with Intota Assessment.  Intota Asessment has been rolled out this year in advance of the entire Intota Webscale systems. The claim is that Intota offers “a total picture of holdings, usage and overlap across all formats.

This Spring they are beta testing with current partners (and possibly adding other partners). After this process they will be recommending best practices.

Question — How do you deal with the fact that ingesting data is problematic to 360COUNTER or homegrown solutions, and requires a lot of normalization.
Answer — 360′s Data Retrieval Service (DRS) has helped this by using authority control — much like the questioner suggested they were manually doing. Problem with normalization of COUNTER data is often with the header, so have replaced this. DRS doesn’t require SUSHI compliance.

Question — What about non COUNTER data?
Answer — For no stats, use the click-through, for the non-COUNTER, normalize them to make them COUNTER-ish and load them.

Question — How are you loading cost?
Answer — By hand. The form fas not been as easy as giving it out to clerical staff given that invoicing is so varied across product. Once you have it in,

Question — If Banner could interact with Serials Solution this seems it would make this process easier. Are you planning for this?
Answer — Serials Solutions in following this and other payment systems, anticipating something to assist when rolling out Intota Webscale.

2013
03/20
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Troubleshooting and Tracking #erl13

Nathan Hosburgh (Montana State University) and Katie Gohn (University of Tennessee) spoke to a packed crowd about troubleshooting and tracking e-resource access problems by reviewing the various approaches, tools, and information resources used.

Outlining approaches to troubleshooting through the lens of “psychology and philosophy” seemed to speak more to the fundamental skills and talents effective troubleshooters have — remain calm, high tech with a human touch, logical & analytical thinking, can-do attitude, and don’t assume operator error.

Knowing you users is foremost, and this includes both internal and external users. Your internal users (ILL, Reference, Collection development, systems) provide valuable feedback from varied points of access and patterns of use. Knowing specifics about your external users — who will have different enrollment statuses, needs, devices — will inform the approach for solving problems.

How problems are solved varies widely — email, link to problem report form, internal error log, ticket system, and AskaLibrarian. The lengths people go to solve problem ranges from simple to complex guides for users to more detailed internal documentation.

Question is, how are you evaluating the effectiveness of these methods?

Katie Gohn shared observations of the widely varying sources for reporting e-resource troubles — anywhere from water cooler talks to direct emails. But her portion of the presentation focused primarily on the e-resource tracking system Footprints. Her library had this system set up as an instance of the wider University IT’s version.

Their web-based “Report IT” form populates the system from a user-selected category assignment of the problem and a general comment box. On the back end, this form also gathers types of computer, IP, and referring URL.

What are the key features that a tracking systems provides that email or other existing methods don’t?
1) the ability to see status and who’s responsible
2) communicate centrally in a system that is easily searchable
3) ability to categorize which allow you to assess needs from vendors or identify internal training needs
4) Have numbers to know staffing needs in this area.

6 people assigned to these troubleshooting teams for a 12K FTE-sized organization. They are hoping to justify the hire of one more. Basic troubleshooting training is important and this tool will help shape that.

2013
03/19
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Improving communication and relationships b/w librarians & publishers #erl13

Elizabeth Winter (ER&L and Georgia Institute of Technology) hosted a Q&A with Dan Tonkery (Content Strategies) that focused on the relations between publishers and libraries with the goal of finding some common understandings that may improve communication.

Tonkery, in his 43rd year as a librarian, started with a survey of the room and finding more than half of the participants were under 43 years old. Early days stories help set the stage for a discussion of the roles of publisher and libraries and how these have both dramatically evolved and yet also remained largely the same. The questions (submitted in advance) were addressed by Tonkery from the perspective of both roles and were followed by Tonkery’s tips for both groups.

Why must I ask for an invoice at each renewal?
Most publisher use fullfilment centers, there is no system to track and generate this information cyclically. Even the major publisher do not have this technology in their systems. This was a complex undertaking in the print world, and in transition to e, those who had mastered the print worflow did not invest in e.

Why don’t publishers understand the importance of the entitlement list? Publishers don’t know what an entitlement list is. This is a library term. But again this has to do with publishers reliance on fullfillment center and hosting systems. The data or system with that would produce that data is not readily available on the publishers’ end. Publishers may know what you have access to (perhaps just as well as you do), but it is not in any report-generated form.

Why don’t publishers comply more readily with standards?
Because standards are library community generated, the zeal does reside in the publishing community (unless you are Bob Boissey). Most publishers do not produce the information that is sought to be standardized (it is outsourced to others). The reason COUNTER may be more widely adopted is likely tied to interest in pricing algorithms. But in truth, publishers are using their own data and spreadsheets for analysis.

How do publishers determine who to contact in the library? Why do libraries make it so hard? Why do publishers make it hard?
A good sales person will keep their own personal record of best contacts, and likely do not share this with their organization as a whole. It’s a hit or miss, trial and error process by publishers that boils down to revenue — thus, you have as many people as possible for working to gain the lion’s share of your budget. As long as the money is coming in, publishers are willing to deal with the ambiguity and confusion.

I’ve been contemplating (but no time to ask in this session) whether an organizational structure that distributes e-resource management across staff like an ad agency does — by account — would align better for communicating and managing inforamtion from publishers? If that was even true, would it remain feasible for internal library communication?

How does pricing determined and why are publishers more transparent in their pricing. They start with surplus projection based on last year, followed by goal setting for higher revenues in the coming year, then they use usage data to back into a scenario that determines what it will take in price increases to accomplish this.

How can we motivate publisher to keep track of perpetual access?
Again, this is a concept that libraries came up with, not publishers, who likely prefer to outsource this process. Very few publishers actually know the entitlement or rights data. Usually they know only a standard current holdings set or backfile, it is not common to have their systems manage a variety of holdings rights.

KEY TAKEAWAY discussed at this point — Library are record keepers, publishers are sales machines. What do you think?

What is preventing publishers from adopting key clauses needed by libraries?
Mixed messages from some libraries that sign and those that don’t based on certain clauses. Keep in mind this is not the responsibiltiy of the sales person to negotiate. (SEE TIPS) Recommend the notion that the queaky wheel always gets the grease. Or, just make your changes, sign it and send it in — more than half the time it will go through without notice.

How is decision making conducted in libraries?
Most libraries would like to know this as well. Becasue it is a collective decision, it is not straightforward or quick. The director is rarely invovled, nor is the digital or e-resources person, even though this is one of your key contact for the execution of the sale.

TIPS by Tonkery
Publishers should monitor listservs and librarians should do more proactive claiming directly to publishers.

Everything is negotiable.
Price. Terms. Everything.

Take emotion out of the process. It’s a business.

Take back your purchasing power.

Don’t be afraid to modify or add to contracts and reamin mindful of your purchasing power in negotiation as well.
Who owns your usage data? Publishers think they do.

Learn to go beyond the level of your sales rep for what you need.

Don’t be afraid to use group pressure.
Library consortia, lists, petitions, social media, but remain professional.

Yet, don’t assume consortia are getting the best deal for your library
Especially in negotiation. If you are not gettign something out of your consortia, try direct with same deal.

Libraries need a key-contact list on their websites.
Include office hours.

Additional Q&A from the floor

Observation by Jill Emery (Portland State) that Elsevier boycott was unsuccessful given revenue up 40% and submission rate up 12% But, says Tonkery, image effect was successful at getting Elsevier to pay attention. Don’t recommend this approach necessarily.

Can we improve communication by simplifying our roles — libraries as record keepers, publishers as sales? This remains to be seen.

2013
03/19
CATEGORY
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