Tracking electronic resources acquisitions: Using a helpdesk system to succeed where your

ERMS failed

Charleston Conference 2009

Xan Arch Electronic Resources and Technology Librarian

Acquisitions DepartmentStanford University Libraries

Jason Price, Ph.D.Science Librarian

Head of Collections & AcquisitionsClaremont Colleges' Library

The ERMS promise - 2005

FLOWCHART

What was delivered

“With [our ERMS] we have all the information in one place”

http://www.weewonderfuls.com/2006/02/huh.html

Licenses

Contacts

Notes

Status indicator

Reminders

Access info

Reality of Claremont’s e-resource acquisitions workflow

Some key advantages of using a ticketing system for ERA

• Designed to track ‘issues’ through stages to resolution

• Structures ‘metadata’ relating to an issue and shares it with others enabling coordination

• Flexible enough to allow a customized set of steps for each issue & distributed implementation

• Collects email trail relating to each ‘issue’

Stanford’s solution

Xan ArchElectronic Resources and Technology Librarian

Stanford University Libraries

Selector

License Negotiations

Ordering Unit Payments

Activation

Cataloging

What we had: Defining our processWhat we had: Defining our process

Tracking our orders

What we needed: Defining our problemsWhat we needed: Defining our problems

Enterprise-level bug tracking software from Atlassian

Already in use in our Digital Library department

Finding a solutionFinding a solution

Each order goes through the same stepso In Progress – Licensingo In Progress – Ordering o In Progress – Electronic Resources o In Progress – Metadata

JIRA notifies the department or individual by email when they are required to act on an issue

Standardized: SolutionStandardized: Solution

Centralized: SolutionCentralized: Solution

The web form

Transparent: SolutionTransparent: Solution

Display in Wiki

JIRA Workflow - Acquisitions

Completely in place in Acquisitions department

Less established in Collections, some selectors initiating orders through webform, others still sending email

Some types of purchases still ambiguous – major database renewals, new e-journals

Recent developments have pushed adoption further along

A work in progressA work in progress

The futureThe future

Use of JIRA for other projects in Acquisitions

Moving webform to Drupal forms

Questions ?Questions ?

Claremont’s solution: eRATS in Footprints by Numara

Jason PriceClaremont Colleges’ Library

Claremont University Consortium

Claremont’s eRATS was designed to address specific

problems:

In order of importance:1.Delays (or loss!) due to dropped

communication2.Incomplete listing/activation of resources3.Standardization of required metadata4.Lack of transparency as to resource

progress

Tracking-system supported workflow

Stage 0: Resource request form

Stage 1: Under Review

Tracking-system supported workflow

Stage 2: In negotiation

Tracking-system supported workflow

Resource fully

available

3Resource fully

implemented

Acquisition staff

implements

2Collection librarians

determine

1

Stage 3: Pending activation

Next steps• Beta – then implementation• Configure public display of progress• Design Acq reports (delivered from

Footprints)• Output to ERM?

Summary / Overview• “Smart” Checklist

– Periodic required decisions as stage changes– Shared in real time

• Workflow-based– Each update noted in history entry & encourages indication

of next step– Issues can be assigned to one or more people for the next

action(s)• Information repository

– ‘Issues’ (resource records) can send and receive email– Stored as one text field—fully searchable– Appropriate metadata extracted into fixed fields as

available