From Surviving to Thriving:

Reimagining collaborative e-resource workflows

and metadata management for the next generation

Sunshine Carter & Stacie Traill

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

ER&L

University of Minnesota: Background

• 21 libraries on 5 campuses.

– Crookston, Duluth, Morris, Twin Cities, Rochester

– Share systems; but otherwise essentially autonomous

• Twin Cities reorganized Technical Services in 2012.

– Heavily impacted cataloging, acquisitions & e-resource management

• 2 year Alma migration preparation

– Go-live date Dec. 26, 2013.

– 60+ members across all 5 campuses

• Alma version: Multi-campus

Simultaneous PCI implementation

• We implemented web-scale discovery

service Primo Central at the same time as

the systems migration.

• Good for users, but difficult for e-resources

management staff.

• An additional poorly-understood “layer” on

top of Alma.

Post-Implementation Challenges

In the Beginning: Surviving

• Recalibration: Disoriented by fully migrated data and its new structure.

• Discussion: Electronic Resources Issues Group created to troubleshoot issues impacting daily work.

• Prioritizing: Cleanup projects needed but not critical.

• Ticketing System: Adopted ServiceNow to handle issues of all types (system, metadata, access, etc.).

• Ex Libris: 6-month post-implementation visit; 480 cases filed with EL in same period.

Agenda

• High Level Concepts

• Licensing and Acquisitions

• Activations and Access

• Metadata Management

• Primo Central Management and

Troubleshooting

• Cleanup Planning and Workflow

High Level Concepts

High Level Concepts

• Understanding e-resource management

concepts and architecture in Alma was a

huge barrier in the beginning.

• More difficult because of the amount of

duplication resulting from migration.

• Staff could not clearly conceptualize end-to-

end workflows.

Strategy: High-level workflow diagram

• Flowchart of end-to-end process: licensing,

ordering, activation, cataloging (and more).

• Tailored to our systems and processes rather

than “out-of-the-box” models.

• Shows relationship of each step to locally

customized Task List statuses.

Strategy: Define basic concepts

• Definitions and local guidelines for broad e-

resource hierarchical categories.

• Most helpful for staff with no previous

experience in SFX.

Strategy: Diagram e-book models

• E-book records migrated from Aleph had no

explicit hierarchical structure.

• E-books added in Alma treated differently

(better), but multiple models confused staff.

Licensing

Licensing Workflows

Opportunities

• Shared licensing area in a multi-campus environment.

• Terms and uploaded licenses viewable to all campuses.

• Ability to push license terms to Primo.

Challenges

• Whose license is whose?

• Which license terms to record?

• Which license terms to push to Primo?

• Some Verde license metadata migrated badly.

Strategy: Coding & naming

conventions

• Coding of license:

– Campus

– Vendor

– Product

– Year

• Defined summary elements to eliminate

confusion.

Strategy: Thoughtful decision

making

• Changes to licensing area impact all

campuses.

• Not our highest priority, to be honest.

• Electronic Resources Group will decide on:

– license terms to record

– which terms to push to discovery

– where to store licenses (in Alma or elsewhere?)

• On our “to do” list.

Acquisitions

Acquisitions Workflows

Opportunities

• One order for joint

purchases (Twin

Cities & Duluth).

• Manage orders &

access in one

system.

Challenges

• Confusion on how to order the most basic of eresources due to out-of-the-box workflow limitations.

• Getting staff up and running despite functionality hurdles and badly migrated metadata.

Strategy: Create basic

documentation*• We strived to limit the creation of custom documentation.

• Some, however, was necessary to ease anxiety, increase efficiency and note workarounds implemented.

• In a collaborative environment, documentation should address all staff and circumstances.

• Examples:

– Ordering E-Book Portfolios and Collections

– Insufficient Funds for PO Lines

– Additional one-on-one trainings for coordinate campus staff via hangout, phone calls and in-person meetings.

*as needed

Strategy: Create solution

documentation*

• Several issues created obstacles for a smooth start up in January 2014.

• Before orders could be placed, solutions to specific problems needed to be discussed, vetted, documented and distributed.

• Examples:– Electronic Title PO Line Migrated as Physical –

Subscription

– Updating PO Line and E-Inventory Record for E-Resource Title Licensed for Multiple Campuses

*as needed

Activations &

Access

Activations & Access

Opportunities

• Ability to streamline activation for jointly purchased and free collections available to all or some campuses.

• Opportunity to develop best practices across campuses.

Challenges

• Acquisitions and

activations.

• Multiple EZProxy.

• Complex Group

“Available For”

settings.

Strategy: Focus on the common

good

• While it would be ideal to have all campuses following the same practices, where it’s not critical create opt-out options.

• Whose “common good”?

• Discuss issues ad nauseam.

• “Setting Campus Availability for Free E-Resources”:– Called to activate free collections for ALL campuses

– Campuses wishing to opt-out were responsible for doing so themselves

Strategy: Start using new

functionality

• While some campuses have occasionally collaborated, Alma allowed us to make this a more habitual practice.

• Pilot project initiated to test the feasibility of the Twin Cities managing the acquisition, licensing, and access-management of select Duluth e-resources.

• “Setting Campus Availability for E-Resources Licensed for Multiple Campuses” used Alma functionality to fulfill a pilot goal.

Metadata

Management

Metadata Management

• Alma Community Zone metadata for e-

resources: both an opportunity and a

challenge.

• Record loading for e-books easy to manage,

but migrated data challenging to clean up.

• Needed new workflow for reporting metadata

problems with records not in local control

(including PCI records).

Strategy: New approaches to

metadata error correction

• Ongoing communication to public services

staff about metadata problems: what we can

fix vs. what we can report.

• E-resources and cataloging/metadata staff

shift from correcting errors directly to

analyzing and reporting problems to vendor.

Strategy: Cultivate understanding

of metadata sources and lifecycle

• Goal: help both public services staff and

technical staff understand how/when

metadata gets to the discovery layer.

• Quick win: most e-resources technical staff

can determine the source of a record --

important for initial problem triage.

Strategy: Document and share e-

book workflows

• Developed

consistent, well-

documented

processes so setup,

batch editing, and

import work could be

distributed.

• Expanded shared

tracking spreadsheet.

Primo CentralManagement & Troubleshooting

Primo Central Index (PCI)

Opportunities

• Millions of records

discoverable.

• Each campus has

own index and

can manage their

own activations.

Challenges

• What collections should be activated?

• Sharing activations with others was important.

• Do the records look and work properly?

• Troubleshooting multi-layer systems was complex and confusing to well-seasoned problem solvers.

Strategy: Activation workflow

• Eventual goal of increasing number of staff

activating PCI collections.

• Revised guidelines with new knowledge &

experience, providing general

recommendations by resource type and

delivery method.

• Workflow created to help with labyrinthine

decision making process for all campuses.

Strategy: Create collection list

• Liaisons and selectors needed to know what

resources are activated and searched in

discovery.

• Needed activated and unactivated

collections.

• Google Spreadsheet used is now a working

document useful for all staff.

Information included:

• Provider

• Resource Name

• SourceID

• Fixed Availability

• linktorsrc URL

• Requires subscription for

• Status

• As of

• Note

Strategy: Outline PCI testing

• Eventual goal of increasing number of staff checking PCI records.

• Recommended that most collections be activated in PCI Production without pre-testing.

• However, records should be spot tested once available in discovery.

• Created workflow to help in the testing and evaluation of PCI records.

Strategy: Untangle troubleshooting

• Troubleshooting -- one of our toughest challenges.

• Processes for resolving access issues remained the same; determining the underlying problem was new to most staff.

• Increased problem reporting due to increased exposure

• Initially, escalated issues handled by few individuals.

• Staff troubleshooting more issues independently.

• Goal: Have all staff with troubleshooting responsibilities have confidence to interpret and report most issues.

Cleanup Planning

Cleanup Planning

• An overwhelming amount of e-resources

cleanup needed because of duplication.

• Where to start? Cleanup needed in many

areas.

• Too difficult early on:

– Little confidence with system

– Not sure we could make good cleanup decisions.

Strategy: Prioritize cleanup tasks

• Identified areas where cleanup had to be

done on an as-needed basis (e.g., orders

migrated with wrong type).

• Set aside larger cleanup tasks that could wait

• Concentrated on helping staff understand the

environment as it was, rather than an

idealized, “clean” version of it.

Strategy: Put plans in place for later

• Several “high-value” target areas identified for near-future cleanup:

– Standalone E-book Portfolios

– Free E-Resource Collections

– Interface Names

• Document and flowchart cleanup processes as we can so we are ready to go when staff resources are available.

• A work in progress!

Thriving!...well, mostly

Strategy: Continued collaboration

• Electronic Resources Group continues to meet every three weeks; representatives from all campuses.

• Not lacking agenda items.

• 14 months from “Go Live” and we don’t have all the answers.

• We haven’t always felt like we were making forward progress, but in review we have made incredible strides in our procedures, policies, workflows and understanding.

Strategy: Share what we’ve learned

• Staff will need a lot of help to grasp basic, key concepts. Don’t assume any knowledge.

• Start with a focus on the big picture and work down to the details. The step-by-step how-to is important, but everyone needs to know how their work fits in.

• Visualize, visualize, visualize. Written documentation is good, but charts, pictures, and diagrams are valuable tools for both learning and everyday work.

Questions?

Sunshine J. Carter

Electronic Resources Librarian

University of Minnesota Libraries

scarter@umn.edu

Stacie A. Traill

Metadata Analyst

University of Minnesota Libraries

trail001@umn.edu