“The legacy book publishing industry is fond of telling itself comforting myths. For example, one myth that just crossed my desk was the idea that younger readers preferred print books”
Source: Are You Ready For The Next eBook Boom? | The Digital Reader
The scholarly publisher has announced several new licensing agreements in both Europe and the US–but some major academic groups are still without contracts and access to journals.
How librarians, pirates, and funders are liberating the world’s academic research from paywalls.By Brian Resnick and Julia Belluz Updated Jul 10, 2019, 3:58pm EDT
I missed this year’s ER&L 2018 conference. It has always been one of my favourite conferences and it never fails to amaze me with an interesting line-up of insightful presentations and workshops. While checking out the tweets for this year’s conference, I came across this wonderful article by Claire O’Neill, Library Services, Wiley, on the top 10 trends@the conference.
Top 10 Trends at the 2018 Electronic Resources & Libraries (ER&L) Conference | Wiley
I love the following points brought up by the author:
4. Thinking outside of the box to identify student pain points
5. Getting creative with outreach
6. Librarians work hard – and deserve acknowledgement
9. Librarians share tips for improving user experience
10. Information is power
Point 4 stood out for me. Why? Working in the electronic resources management field, I have always received a number of fan-mails from our users on electronic resources issues. Their questions range from simple ones such as creating a personalized account in a particular electronic resources publisher website to more complex access issues such as accessing our subscribed e-resources off-campus. As I received more and more of such questions, several thoughts flashed across my mind:
So many things, so little time on top of the limited resources. What are the ones that should take priority over others? It reminded me of my first day in the office when I set out to become an E-Resources Librarian/Specialist (most of use are called Specialists over here). It dawned upon me that among my main focus would be the troubleshooting of electronic resources and managing our users’ expectations. Users always wanted information fast and within a few clicks. They can get pretty irate and frustrated whenever their search hits a brick wall. (paywall seems much appropriate 🙂 ) How can our ERM team ensure that this does not happen? How can we manage our users’ expectations with regards to the workings of our subscribed electronic resources.
One of the earliest method used by our team was implementing an access monitoring system via Excel Spreadsheet (we’ve now moved on to a more sophisticated ERMS system). Information regarding the access status were entered daily into this file. I remembered highlighting those that have issues in RED color. The other 2 colors were Green and Yellow. I guess you probably would know what Green stands for. (We had a file which uses the traffic lights color to alert us of any outstanding access issues).
Whevener a RED cell appears on the spreadsheet, the ERM team will alert our KAUST community as well as our internal library staff via email and other communication vehicle such as the library website. At the same time, the ERM team will liaise with the publishers to investigate the root case and remedy the issue. When the issue has been resolved, another alert will be sent to all stakeholders to inform them.
As much as possible the ERM team tried to be as proactive as possible. However, due to the dynamics of electronic resources, things can change within a split second. One moment things can be working, the next, it can go down.
The ERM team would conduct daily checks on all our electronic resources, manually. The main access points to these electronic resources were also checked and verified such as:
In addition to that, we’ve placed online forms/email addresses on strategic access points for our users to report any e-resources issues. This is an alternative form of obtaining feedback from our users. Information entered via this online form/email is chanelled into our online Reference Inquiry Tracking system (Sprinshare’s LibAnswers). These questions are then acted upon by the respective ERM staff.
It is also important to note the scheduled maintenance of the electronic resources. Publishers would inform their customers on any impending scheduled maintenance. In turn, we would publish this information on our library homepage as well as online guides. (not to mention emailing as well).
Some other methods that we deployed to assist our library users was the creation of guides and FAQs that covered the electronic resources topic. For example, I’ve created:
There are also other communication medium that can used to disemminate the information. These include the social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter.
Looking back, I felt that despite all these tools, the human touch is always important. How we communicate with our users, how we manage their expectations can create a positive user experience. How we handle and how we listen to their rantings while at the same time, keeping our sanity intact 🙂 3 words that always resonate with me:
In the pipeline: Our team is working on building a knowledge base to store the main e-resources issues and how we can overcome them. The target audience for this initiative is our internal library staff. We believe that by sharing valuable knowledge with internal library staff, we can increase our productivity and effienciency towards better service excellence.
From my comparative study on benchmarked library websites (2015) which was conducted together with my colleague, the Senior Subject Specialist, we noted that the top 5 services deployed the library websites were:
Top 3 Social Media tools deployed:
Digressing a bit: Social media is another avenue apart from the library websites where our users can also do stuff that is available on library websites. We have already had library alerts and news announced on Facebook and Twitter. We have seen library videos on how to borrow books in the library and so forth. LibAnswers (online reference services) can be activated in Facebook and Twitter as well. Users do not need to visit library websites anymore to get information. On top of that, I had listened to a talk by one of the library directors that mentioned the low rates of library website visitations.
These are just some of the questions swirling in my head …
Below is the list of benchmarked library web sites that we had used:
In my line of work, there are just too many things to keep track. Among them are meetings, project datelines, notes, troubleshooting issues, expiration dates of e-resources, renewal dates, license agreements, metadata issues, access questions, ebook/e-journal requests, … the list keeps going on.
How do I keep track of all these? One of the first methods that I used was noting down in a little notebook followed by pasting 3M post-its on my table, computer screens, coffee mugs … and anything else that I can use to stick those post-its. I would not say that writing down and post-its are not productive/efficient. They do. But as the list keeps growing at an alarming rate, I realized that I needed something more dynamic and robust to keep track the various projects, tasks routines as well as other miscellaneous stuff.
I tried to use different notebooks for various projects, daily routines and the like but it would be too troublesome and I could build a big library keeping all those notebooks. (I’d rather keep one journal to note down the daily happenings in my life). I needed something that could allow me to see everything on one page at a single glance. That’s when I discovered the following 3 cloud services while trawling the internet for answers.
What about you? What tool(s) work for you and what doesn’t?
I’ve just completed the slides for the Electronic Resources Management Systems ERMS project. Highlighted the library’s journey to the new ERMS – Proquest 360 Resource Manager. I recalled the 3 phases that the project went thru. Each of them posed challenges and issues that the project team had to face head on. Endured late but not sleepless nights. Discussions, disagreements, and compromise. Yes, it was hard work; at times it can be nerve-wracking but all in all, it was an enriching experience.
Lessons learned:
Looking for more adventures on this road …..
Just completed my first draft of my paper entitled: An Exploratory study on the use of LibAnswers to Resolve, Track and Monitor Electronic Resources Issues: The KAUST Library experience. Researched on the most common questions related to E-Resources as well as making recommendations for service improvement in this area.
What I found:
Drill Down on Access Issues:
Turnaround time to resolve the e-resource questions: Approx 12 hours
For further discussion(s)/suggestions:
The article can be found here.
Our library uses LibAnswers to track and monitor all our library inquiries. Inquiries received range from directional questions to complex ones such as access issues. Here are my findings on the most common questions received in the first quarter of 2017 (Jan – March 2017):
A quick breakdown of electronic resources issues:
On another note, circulation/access questions cover:
These questions bring up further discussions on
Stay tuned for more updates.
I decided to take a break from ERM for a few hours today. Something caught my eye: our Google Analytics statistics for the library’s website, our Summon (discovery service) usage reports, 360 statistics (AZ management system: EBooks and EJournals, Databases) and LibGuides / LibAnswers.
Some background:
Google Analytics gives us insight on how users are interacting with our website. We can get information such as:
Summon (Discovery layer) stats provide:
Taken from Summon Knowledge Center
360 Usage Statistics provide:
(Taken from 360 Core and Intota knowledge center)
LibGuides provide statistics on
(Taken from LibGuide Dashboard)
LibAnswers also provide statistics on
among others. (Taken from LibAnswers Dashboard).
From all those stats, I started to wonder:
There are more than just the ones listed above.
How can all these stats influence the way we provide services to our library users – whether it’s an online service or a physical service. After all, we are here to serve our users.
Rain D Librarian 