Electronic Resources Management Task Group

Thursday, May 11, 2006
ITD Conference Room, 1-4 pm

Present: Betty Day (ITD), Laura Wrubel (ITD), Jan Siar (UMCP), Joyce Tenney (UMBC), Nathan Robertson (UMLL), Robin Klein (HS/HSL)

The meeting included an update by Betty on the status of Verde Version 2.0; review of the implementation strategy based on the expected delay of receipt of Version 2.0; review of remaining consortial licenses and continued refinement of the licensing portion of the Best Practices document.

Betty gave an update from Ex Libris on the status of Version 2.0 of Verde based on report from Maida Rubin of Ex Libris. Ex Libris has run into some programming issues that must be resolved for the success of the consortial implementation, and the company has recommended that USM further slow down implementation. We should look to adding additional instances over the next six months or so (on a timeline that will probably have V.2 server up in June) but that we should continue to plan and prepare to create those instances as is possible. Betty will be going over this with the CLD ExecutiveCommittee and will report back.

Ex Libris is advising USM to continue to develop only the MDL and Frostburg instances with data on V.1. Version 2 will be installed on a new server and Ex Libris will do a migration of the MDL and Frostburg data (by the end of June?). Betty will provide the Task Group with a timeline of Ex Libris' revised development and migration schedule.

ITD will be getting documentation on Version 2 from Ex Libris as it is available and there will be an effort to distribute more widely as soon as is possible.

Testing: Laura will prepare new usernames and passwords for each Task Group member for the consortial instance.

Vendor Coding: In the interest of planning ahead, Betty emphasized it will be important to work on best practices for vendor coding. Nathan said the DLF ERMI group well understood the need for uniformity in vendor coding, but it was not in scope for the DLF group to work on such a project. Two separate committees (?) are working on institutional registries and at some point there may exist standardized vendor codes. As USM does its work, this should be kept in mind, with the thought that in future our coding could/should easily migrate to an international standard.

Joyce reported that there was much emphasis at the recent NASIG meeting that it is important to refrain from using free text fields for encoding data within any of the ERM systems, if it can be avoided, as it is not possible to index such data.

Licenses completed: At today's meeting: Firstsearch and a review of Ebsco (re-analyzed based on clarification of the license as that for the 'host' like Firstsearch).

The consortial licenses whose terms have now been reviewed and encoded are: ABC-Clio, Berkeley Electronic Press, Chronicle of Higher Education, CSA, Ebsco, Facts on File, Firstsearch, Gale, Proquest.

Laura reviewed fields that are linked and displayable between SFX and Verde.

Next meeting: The Task Group will meet from 12-2 pm on May 24, 2006 at UMCP to complete any outstanding consortial licenses and do a final review of the Best Practices document for the licensing terms tab. The group will move on to the planning and best practices for the other tabs (Description, Notes). Nathan will email a new version of the document to the group based on the corrections and additions made at today's meeting.

Betty will talk with Ex Libris about inclusion in terms tab fields for indemnification by licensees (omitted by Ex Libris).

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