The Role of the Electronic Resources Librarian

By George Stachokas

The Role of the Electronic Resources Librarian focuses on longstanding hurdles to the transition of libraries from print collections, to online information services, all from an Electronic Resources Librarian (ERL) perspective. Problems covered include cost containment for electronic serials, web design, discovery, customer service, efficiency, and adapting organizations to the needs of contemporary users. The title considers the historical development of the ERL role, how the position emerged in North America in the 1990s, how it is represented within the organizational structure of academic libraries, and how the ERL role maps to technology, information services, and professional identity trends.

• Explores the changing role of the Electronic Resources Librarian (ERL)
• Identifies long-term trends in Electronic Resource Management
• Recommends best practices for the ERL role in modern libraries
• Contextualizes the current ERL role in historical and current developments
• Maps the ERL role to trends in technology, information services and the shifting professional identity of academic librarians

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Release date: Oct 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9780081029268

George Stachokas

George Stachokas is the Electronic Resources Librarian at Auburn University. Prior to this he served as Head of Resource Services and Special Assistant to the Dean for Project Management at Purdue University – West Lafayette, Electronic Resources Librarian at Indiana State University and Chair of the Resource Advisory Committee of the Academic Libraries of Indiana (ALI) consortium. His research interests include electronic resources management, organizational change in libraries, and collection development. George holds an MLIS degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, an MA in History from Indiana State University, and a BS in Economics from Purdue University – West Lafayette.

Book preview

The Role of the Electronic Resources Librarian

George Stachokas

Table of Contents

Cover image

Title page

Chandos Information Professional Series

Copyright

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1. Introduction

1.1. A case of institutional improvisation: the electronic resources librarian

Chapter 2. The academic library just before the World Wide Web

2.1. A brief history of the development of academic libraries in North America

2.2. Information science and computers in contemporary academia

2.3. The professional culture and organizational structure of academic libraries

2.4. Library automation in practice

Chapter 3. Digital dawn: Libraries experiment and adapt to new technology

3.1. The problem of new information resources: revisiting CD-ROM

3.2. The early transition from print to electronic journals

3.3. The development of an online presence for academic libraries

3.4. The first electronic resources librarians

Chapter 4. The transition to the hybrid library

4.1. Changes in traditional library services

4.2. Changes in the user population: the wider adoption of computers

4.3. Electronic resources management as a new specialization

4.4. Managing electronic resources from A to Z

4.5. Entering a brave new world: self-directed users, virtual information services, and nonlinear workflows

Chapter 5. Early trends and transformation: ERMI, ERMS, and separate development

5.1. The many faces of the electronic resources librarian in the early 21st century

5.2. First attempts at defining electronic resources management

5.3. Metadata for electronic resources

5.4. Building new organizational structures to manage online Information Services

5.5. Academic libraries in the information marketplace: from big deals to document delivery

Chapter 6. The Great Recession and its impact on academic libraries

6.1. The budgetary crisis and its impact on higher education and academic libraries

6.2. Reclassification, reorganization, and redundancy

6.3. Promotion and tenure for librarians during the Great Recession

6.4. The endurance of the book as brand: for good or evil

Chapter 7. Reimagining technical services

7.1. The growth of electronic resources from eBooks to streaming media

7.2. The impact of webscale discovery services and other changes in the online information environment

7.3. The expansion of discovery, interoperability, and system integration: from KBART, RDA to APIs

7.4. Changes in technical services

7.5. Changes in LIS education, professional development, and training

Chapter 8. At the crossroads: Ongoing efforts to transform libraries and librarians

8.1. The electronic resources librarian in technical services

8.2. The role of professional organizations

8.3. Measuring our success: electronic resources management and assessment of information services

8.4. Consideration of ongoing problems, opportunities, and future possibilities

Appendix A. Core competencies for electronic resources librarians

Appendix B

Appendix C

Index

Chandos Information Professional Series

Series Editor: Ruth Rikowski

(Email: [e-mail])

Chandos’ new series of books is aimed at the busy information professional. They have been specially commissioned to provide the reader with an authoritative view of current thinking. They are designed to provide easy-to-read and (most importantly) practical coverage of topics that are of interest to librarians and other information professionals. If you would like a full listing of current and forthcoming titles, please visit www.chandospublishing.com.

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Copyright

Chandos Publishing is an imprint of Elsevier

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Copyright © 2020 George Stachokas. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Notices

Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become necessary.

Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-08-102925-1

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Editorial Project Manager: Naomi Robertson

Production Project Manager: Joy Christel Neumarin Honest Thangiah

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Acknowledgments

Daniel Callison, Professor Emeritus, Indiana University, encouraged me to write this book after he read my article, The Electronic Resources Librarian: From Public Service Generalist to Technical Services Specialist, published in Technical Services Quarterly. I thank my colleagues at Auburn University Libraries, Nadine Ellero and Dana Caudle, for reviewing my original book proposal and making helpful suggestions. As always, I appreciate the leadership of Dr. Glyn Jones in ensuring that books about library and information science find their way to publication, as well as comments from peer reviewers of the book proposal. I am grateful for all of the support and efforts of Naomi Robertson, Editorial Project Manager, and Joy C. Neumarin, Project Manager, and all of the other staff involved in the development of this book at Chandos Publishing and Elsevier.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Abstract

Explanation of how studying the electronic resources librarian position in academic libraries offers insight into how well academic libraries have adapted to the new technologies, expectations, and best practices of the information age.

Keywords

Academic libraries; Electronic resource librarian; ERM

1.1. A case of institutional improvisation: the electronic resources librarian

Why write about the role the electronic resources librarian (ERL)? Why does it matter? This position came into existence as part of the broader and ongoing transition from physical information resources to digital information resources in academic libraries in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Studying how this position came into existence, what it does, and how it continues to change can help those interested in library and information science to understand how libraries have adapted to the ongoing digital revolution. Studying the ERL position might also help us to understand some of the additional work that might be required to adapt to the information needs of contemporary users.

This book draws upon previous research published in 2018 in Technical Services Quarterly by the author in the article, The Electronic Resources Librarian from Public Service Generalist to Technical Services Specialist, but expands the subject to encompass additional sources to address questions of greater significance. Some of these additional sources include a broad survey of literature reviews in acquisitions, cataloging, metadata, collection development, serials, and electronic resources management published in journals such as Library Resources and Technical Services (LRTS), The Serials Librarian, Collection Building, The Journal of Academic Librarianship, Collection Management, The Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship, and others during the past 30 years, statistics available from professional associations such as the American Library Association (ALA) and the Association of Research Libraries (ARLs), other relevant books, articles, and websites, as well as the professional experience of the author.

The first use of the title, electronic resources librarian, did not occur until 1992 (Fisher, 2003). The earliest version of the position was actually a public service specialist who managed CD-ROM collections, but by 2018, most ERLs at ARL institutions and other large academic libraries in North America were in technical services units. These ERLs had general responsibilities for licensing electronic resources, negotiating contracts with vendors, and varying levels of responsibility for managing online access, discovery, and metadata (Stachokas, 2018). In fact, by 2018, some of the largest academic libraries had more than one ERL who carried out various roles associated with different aspects of electronic resources management (Stachokas, 2018).

The very use of the term ERL is highly suggestive of how the digital transition in libraries began, at least in North America. Initially, rather than recognizing that the entire library had to change its organizational structure, skill sets, or technology in order to provide electronic resources, academic libraries treated electronic resources as a kind of add-on, an exploration of a new format that could be managed by one or a few specialized personnel. Initially, most libraries had only a few online journals and databases that began to replace CD-ROM materials in the early 1990s. Serious consideration and development of standards and best practices for electronic resources management did not begin until the 21st century with the development of the Electronic Resources Management Initiative (ERMI) standards and tools such as A-Z lists to manage online journals. It took libraries many years to develop more comprehensive websites, let alone the more sophisticated Webscale Discovery tools that are now ubiquitous. Formal competencies for the ERL position were only developed about 20 years after the position had been in existence by the former North American Serials Interest Group, now simply known as NASIG, in the 2010s (NASIG, 2013).

This improvisational, and in many cases incremental, development of the ERL position and the services it purports to provide has arguably created some negative consequences for academic libraries. One could argue that libraries have been slower to adopt efficient and user-friendly online information services that have resulted in declining support among some users and funding agencies for libraries in general. Academic libraries have sometimes not adapted well or at least not very quickly to changes in technology, new business models, or user expectations. Transitioning from analog to digital information is difficult for all institutions and organizations, but since librarians are quite literally in the information business, one could argue that librarians must learn to adapt even more quickly in order to remain relevant. Of course, this is a very controversial question: what is a librarian in the 21st century and what should a librarian be able to do? What is the appropriate role for a librarian in a self-service digital information world that requires constant innovation, creativity, nonlinear thinking, and the perpetual reorganization of routine work? Is there any tension between the rhetorical goals of some contemporary academic libraries and the real value that users place on different types of service? This book cannot address these questions completely, but by looking at changes in one important area of specialization, one hopes that we can further the existing dialogue.

Electronic resources management is inherently practical and focused on current needs, almost to the point that writing a book that attempts to look at past developments might seem less than timely or not particularly helpful, but that is not the case. Like many other aspects of contemporary human life, we are challenged to adapt rapidly and in real time to highly dynamic changes driven by the digital clock. However, we are still biological creatures whose presuppositions, misunderstandings, and outmoded ways of thinking can thwart our attempts to adapt to new circumstances when we fail to take the necessary time to reflect and understand what we really need to do. My hope with this book is to reveal more about how the ERL position and related functional areas in academic libraries have developed in the past few decades, what seems to be going right or wrong in the present, and to discuss, at least briefly, how libraries are beginning to address potential future needs.

Given that electronic resources management touches upon so many different aspects of librarianship, it will not be possible to examine every change or every area of specialization in that much depth. This book will briefly survey the impact of the earliest form of online databases before the Internet and World Wide Web, the deployment of CD-ROM which served as a transition phase from print to electronic formats for many types of information resources, and the complex transformation of the ERL from a public service generalist to a technical services specialist in the early 21st century. The overall focus is on the prehistory of electronic resources management in libraries, broadly defined, helps to show not only how libraries have adapted or transitioned as the larger society has changed. Depending on the library and specific strategy used, one can see signs of both positive adaptation but also attempts to contain or resist necessary innovation.

1.1.1. Synopsis of Chapters 2–8

Chapter 2: The Academic Library Just Before the World Wide Web will explore library automation, technology use, organizational structure, and the professional role of academic librarians in the late 1980s and partly phasing into the early 1990s. It is important to note that the professional position that is most closely aligned with databases, electronic journals and eBooks in contemporary academic libraries, the electronic resources librarian, was actually developed just before the World Wide Web became ubiquitous in the modern library. Less than 30 years ago, the academic library was an entirely different professional world in terms of technology, organizational structure, and user expectations. Many libraries had not yet discarded the card catalog in the 1990s. The integrated library system (ILS) was still cutting-edge technology for managing mostly print collections, and online public access catalogs (OPACs) were the limit of discovery. Many tasks in libraries were still driven by traditional technical services methods and this was reflected in contemporary organizational structures. Harvard University employed 363 professional staff in 1991–92, but 600 nonprofessional staff outnumbered them (Daval & Brennan, 1993). More recently, Harvard University reported 432 professional staff and 303 staff in 2015–16 (Morris & Roebuck, 2018). Metadata librarians, even the term metadata itself, were not yet found in libraries, let alone research data management, collections strategists, or specialists in emerging technology.

Chapter 3: Digital Dawn: Libraries Experiment and Adapt New will focus primarily on the development of CD-ROM databases and other related information systems as an important transitional stage between the traditional print library and the hybrid library of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. As the technology matured, CD-ROM provided unprecedented convenience in comparison to previous online databases such as Dialog and print information resources. Libraries used the technology to experiment with distance education and early efforts in digitization. This chapter will also look at the very first electronic resources librarians (ERLs) whose precise areas of specialization and responsibility had not yet been determined in their commonly understood form. As previously noted, these early specialists often worked in public services but soon had to adapt to a wide range of professional responsibilities that were then new to libraries: licensing, new business models such as big deal journal packages, and new technologies as not only journals, but databases, eBooks, and reference materials began to shift to online access.

Chapter 4: The Transition to the Hybrid Library will further analyze changes in the electronic resources librarian (ERL) position, different attempts to organize work and personnel, and the ongoing process of improvising electronic resources management in libraries that continued to advertise and identify with the book as their brand. This chapter will consider some of the consequences of developing tools to manage electronic resources separately from the integrated library system (ILS) such as knowledge bases, A-Z lists, link resolvers, as well as work new previously unknown in libraries such as troubleshooting access problems. Together, these changes constituted entry into a brave new world for libraries in which self-directed users discovered information resources on their own in a virtual environment that was supported by new nonlinear and multidirectional workflows in acquisitions, cataloging, and troubleshooting.

Chapter 5: Early Trends and Transformation: ERMI, ERMs, and Separate Development will discuss developing standards and tools used in electronic resources management, primarily in the first decade of the 21st century. This chapter will address why the electronic resources management system (ERMS) was developed separately from the integrated library system (ILS), how much electronic resources management work was still separate from the rest of the library, and how some libraries and librarians resisted change. Academic libraries in North America experimented with different organizational structures and competing models for what the ERL was and should do. The growing impact of emerging technologies such as Webscale Discovery Services, COUNTER usage statistics, and more complex metadata for electronic resources will also be discussed.

Chapter 6: The Great Recession and its Impact on Academic Libraries will review the positive and negative impact of financial problems for academic libraries. In terms of loss of access to expensive information resources, budget cuts that impacted highly used services, the period has had a lasting negative legacy, but in other ways, these financial problems actually forced some libraries to pursue much needed reorganization and reform. The impact on libraries in terms of assessment and attempts to measure return on investment also needs to be