What I’ve been up to lately

I haven’t posted anything about my projects lately and thought I would talk a little bit about what I’ve been working on. Of late my time has been devoted to trying to balance our electronic resource budget for next year. Electronic Resources became a part of my job last summer and since that time I’ve been trying to learn as much as I can about evaluating, acquiring, and maintintain electronic resources. I’ve been responsible for the the technical aspects of electronic resource for some time and I’ve had a voice in the purchasing decisions. However, my added responsibilties seem somewhat enormous. One reason is that the library is struggling to be able to afford the e-resources it has and have those resources to meet the needs of our users.

As a result, I am extensively scrutinizing our current subscriptions (usage, cost, interface, vendor) and trying to find a way to do things more effectively. Today, I made a hugely frustrating discovery. We several databases that we get as pay per search database via FirstSearch and some of these we have paid an additional cost to get unlimited access to. This access comes via another account and the idea is that when you get subscription access to a database you turn off the pay per search access on your site. Unfortunately, at some point there was a miscommunication and we neglected to make this switch for one of our databases. The result is that we basically “paid twice” for one of our databases.

This scenario shows just how confusing electronics resources can be. Particularly if you have too many people responsible for different parts and communication doesn’t take place. Mistakes happen but the most important thing is that we learn from them. What I’ve learned from the experience is that electronic resources require a strict attention to detail, planning and constant evaluation. Hopefully by thorough analyzing our resources and keeping a stricter eye on them we will be able to plan more effectively and acquire resources to meet our needs.

Update:
Shortly after writing this post I was contacted by Tam Dalrymple, Product Manager, WorldCat Content Services, OCLC regarding our per-search problems and finding a way to remedy the situation. I want to say very explicitly that I did not mean the post as a criticism of OCLC in any way. My dealings with OCLC on a number of different issues from databases they provide to ILLiad support have been superb. I had not spoken to OCLC at all regarding the per-search mishap, feeling what done was done and the mistake was on our part. In my mind to do this would be like asking the dumpster company to repair my car after I rolled back into it when I was learning how to drive stick. I shared my experience as a “library life lesson” in the hopes of keeping another institution from making the same mistake we did. I was astounded (and thrilled) that OCLC would feel compelled to
respond to my experience and offer to help with the problem when the mistake was not their fault. Thus the best thanks I can give OCLC is to advertise how truly service-oriented and helpful they are!