Notes from our meeting on 17th Dec

1. SCONUL project

1.1 Regina is attending the workshop at Bournemouth Uni on Monday. 

1.2 Discussed which use cases Salford would like to provide - have suggested: 

• No. 7     Co-delivery of print and electronic
• No. 15   Move to e-only
• No. 6     Cancellation of e-journal title

1.3 Discussed who would attend other workshops/ meetings

2 Process maps

2.1 Looked at work on numbering workflows so far - need all processes to be numbered and also to identify inputs/ outputs, processes and descriptions 

3. ERM systems

3.1 Would like to mark systems we have seen against out requirements doc - Charlotte to see if possible to have access to demo sites for any of the systems.

This is an interim blog post, to refelct on the progress of the project so far, and discuss the exciting new developments for the project. Over the past 6 months, we have been looking at electronic resource management, and have had the opportunity to examine our workflows, and present these for the various scenarios that we currently operate. From the workflows, we have created a preliminary set of requirements for an ERM, which can be used by other institutions. We have applied the MoSCoW methodology to the requirements document, in order to prioritise our needs.

We are now in a position where the Salfmeri work is being further developed by the University in the SCONUL Shared Services strand of the JISC LMS programme, The current ERM Requirements and Workflow deliverables be will enhanced as part of that process. We aim to have 3 open source ERMs operational, in order for us to assess how easy they are to install, and also to walk through their functionality. We will continue to blog here, and also on the SCONUL project blog once it has been established.

Notes from our meeting on 26th November

1. Our current processes
1.1. Charlotte has added the Process Map to the blog.

2. Shared Services Project
2.1. Angela has received confirmation that we have definitely had funding approved to extend the project and work on the JISC/SCONUL Shared Services project. Angela will attend a meeting in early December to discuss further details
2.2. Angela has passed the details of some open source systems to Justin Wood, who will sort out hosting etc

3. Visit to Sheffield
3.1. Angela and Regina visited the University of Sheffield to discuss their use of Verde
3.2. They are implementing this system in stages, starting with licences, then moving on to trials

4. Requirements document
4.1. We did some more work on the requirements document, rating the ERMs using the ‘MOSCOW’ scoring system

5. Next meeting
5.1. Charlotte will arrange either an extended or additional meeting where we can work more on the requirements document and will email everyone with the details

Update on our requirements document

We didn't have a team meeting on Friday 19th, as about half the team weren't available. The remainder started to look at our requirements document and rated each criterion using the MoSCoW method:

Must have
Should have if possible
Could have if it does not affect anything else
Would like to have

More will follow on this after our meeting tomorrow (26th), where we will be looking at the document again, and preparing to mark each ERM based on this system.

Our current procedures - map

Here you can see the 'process map' showing all of our E-resources processes in one document:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0Bxug72ZifwRlODBlMmMzYTgtYWQ1Ni00MGFhLWE2ZDYtNTYxYTg4MjhlMjQ0&hl=en&authkey=CKf3hVQ

Just to clarify, 'Collections' on this document refers to JA & DL/AD (see previous post on people involved in the process), who look after our resources on SFX and Metalib, collect stats etc.

'Acquisitions' refers to ST & RF, who work more with the Talis records, financial information etc

Notes from our meeting on 12th November

1. Our current processes
1.1. The ‘process map’ document is in the MERI folder on the V drive. Please have a look and make any changes/additions, or pass suggestions to Charlotte who will update it
1.2. Angela will email David Kay with the updated workflows
1.3. Regina will organise a meeting with some representatives from Academic Support, Acquisitions team etc to review our processes and work out whether we are including tasks that aren’t necessary

2. Timing our processes
2.1. We will be looking at timing our current processes, as part of working out the cost benefits of an ERM. After the review we will time the ‘new’ processes and compare the two.

3. Feedback from ERM Demos
3.1. Charlotte reminded everyone to give some feedback on the ERM demos, and will contact Andy Callen for feedback on the Verde demo that he attended

4. Visit to Manchester
4.1. Angela, Regina and Jenny visited the University of Manchester to see their ERM system
4.2. Because the ERM market is in a state of flux, Manchester opted to produce their own in-house system. It is due for completion in February 2011, and they hope to use the system for the next 2-4 years. They have a software developer in their team, and received some funding in order to set up the system.
The system stores supplier info, stats, contact details etc – holdings information is acquired from suppliers and inputted, and checked against their holdings on SFX. Links to licence information are via Livelink (content management system)
They are still using Talis to store all the financial information, as they have integration with the finance system
They are also working on Journal Usage Statistics Portal (JUSP), a shared resource which will enable libraries to access statistics from one place (more info at http://www.jusp.mimas.ac.uk/)

5. Requirements document
5.1. We looked at Jenny’s tidied-up version of the Requirements list and clarified some ambiguous points. We will look at this further next week when we will concentrate on rating the ERMs using the ‘MOSCOW’ scoring system

6. Next meeting
6.1. 19th November 11.00am

People involved in the acquisition and maintenance of our E-resources

The flowcharts I added that depict our current processes are the instructions used by our staff. As such, they are very specific to Salford and there are quite a few inititals used to denote the people invovled, so below is a bit of an explanation of the various people and teams involved in the E-resources process:


Collections and Digital Developments Team:

Stella To (ST) - Acquisitions & Serials Officer: creates records on Talis, pays invoices, looks after renewals etc - has quite a lot of contact with vendors and keeps our information up to date on the E-resources spreadsheet as well as Talis

James Allen (JA) - Collections Officer and
David Lockley & Angela Dudley (DL/AD) - Collection Management Team Leader: maintain access to resources via SFX & Metalib - queries from the enquiry desk etc are passed on to the Collections Officer. Collect stats at renewal times; contact suppliers about problems, queries etc. Will speak to suppliers regarding trials and advertise these on the E-library blog

Regina Ferguson (RF) - Collections Manager: Checks & signs licences, manages funds so oversees the whole acquisition process
Licences also need to be read/signed by Sue Hodges (SH), Head of learning and research support; and Julie Berry (JB), our Acting Director


Academic Support Team

Academic Support Librarians (previously called Information Specialists and Liaison Officers) look after the resources for a particular school. They will often receive information from suppliers about new resources, trials etc. They are consulted when ordering, cancelling and renewing resources; they are in contact with acdamic staff so know which resources are most relelvant, on reading lists etc
They also provide training to students on using resources relevant to their subject


Customer Services Team

I spoke to some members of the Customer Services team regarding access issues. Although this team isn't directly involved with the acquisition and maintenance of resources, and not included on the flowcharts, they play a key role in making users aware of available resources, and are the first point of contact for any queries, access problems etc.

Enquiry desk staff (both on the physical desk and on the phone) answer queries from borrowers regarding electronic resources e.g. how to access resources, problems with access etc

Service Delivery Team Leader - currently working on a project to make more electronic resources accessible to external borrowers. Currently there are very few electronic resources made available on walk-in access PCs, but there are more resources that could be made available. Between the Collections and Customer Service teams, we are finding the licences that will allow some access to external users, and making those resources available.

We have been working on presenting our processes in a slightly diffrent format, which breaks down the individual tasks by team, hopefully making it clearer who is responsible for each stage.