This article is more than 5 years old.

For the third straight year, Derrik has facilitated group viewing of the online presentations of the Electronic Resources & Libraries conference. Read on for some gleanings I reaped from three of the sessions that I watched live and one that I’ve already seen as a recording. I will probably continue watching recorded sessions as I have time. Indeed, just a few weeks ago I was catching up with a few sessions I missed from 2014. ZSR folk can contact Derrik for the login information.

Come One, Come All: Building a Community for the Global Open Knowledgebase
Kristen Wilson, North Carolina State Univ.

Ms. Wilson outlined a project called GOKb, a new open-source knowledgebase. (Knowledgebase = the back-end data that supports services like Find a Journal and WFU Full Text Options.) If GOKb lives up to its potential, then a single library can fix a data error, and it would be fixed for everyone else regardless of what commercial product they may use.

Making Value Judgments: eBook pricing for Access and Ownership
Michael Levine-Clark, Assoc. Dean for Scholarly Communication & Collections Services, Univ. of Denver
Jason Price, Director of Licensing Operations, SCELC
Maria Savova, Claremont Colleges

The presenters outlined different ways to think about value when it comes to e-books and how different purchasing models perform better or worse depending on the value that you seek. For instance, to avoid DRM, buy directly from the publisher. However, cost-per-use is lower with DDA and subscription models. This presentation did not provide The Answer. Rather, there are multiple right answers depending on your most important values. I think a further bit of research could compare institutions of different sizes. Levine-Clark claimed that the subscription model was the most effective on cost-per-use. However, his institution is twice as large as WFU, implying twice the use. Some purchasing models scale down the price for smaller schools, and others do not. What difference would that make on cost-per-use?

Did We Forget Something? The Need to Improve Linking at the Core of the Library’s Discovery Strategy
Jesse Koennecke, Director of Acquisitions & E-Resource Licensing Services, Cornell Univ.
Eddie Neuwirth, Sr. Product Manager, ProQuest
Jacquie Samples, Head of Electronic Resources & Serials Cataloging Section, Duke Univ. Libraries

Over the years, I’ve seen many presentations complaining about the problems with OpenURL linking. Fortunately, this presentation focused on solutions. ProQuest is replacing the top “escape hatch” with a right sidebar. IMHO, the sidebar looks like such a great improvement that I think we should implement it mid-semester. (Roz agreed, so Kevin implemented it on Monday.) ProQuest has also implemented IEDL (Index-Enhanced Direct Linking) to take users directly from Summon to the content. IEDL was launched some months ago, and I hadn’t even noticed (which is good!). Ms. Samples talked about the errors that cause OpenURL to go wrong and stressed the importance of reporting the errors.

Is Open Access the Golden Ticket? The Real Cost of OA for the Library
Kim Armstrong, Deputy Director, Center for Library Initiatives, CIC
Jay Starratt, Dean of Libraries, Washington State Univ.

The presenters surveyed some large academic libraries. They concluded that so far Open Access actually results in increased costs because universities sometimes provide funding for APCs but OA hasn’t taken off enough to allow us to cancel subscriptions. As you might imagine, this presentation attracted a lot of discussion. One commenter speculated that the impact of OA might be in preventing the launch of new subscription journals or in holding down the rising costs of journals.