Implementing and maintaining ERMes

[Glenn Ferdman]

Hi, We're a small liberal arts college with about 40-50 databases and eBook collections, with no systems or tech services librarian. We could benefit from the services of an ERM program.

Question: for those of you who have implemented and maintain ERMes how much staff time (i.e., in hours) would you estimate it took to install (and the degree of difficulty); and how much time do you spend each week or month maintaining the system?

Many thanks for your replies.

Glenn Ferdman
Park University
gfer...@park.edu

[Sally Smith]

Hello Glenn,

I have been using ERMes for a few years now, tweaking and learning as I go.  We have about 130 databases. 

I didn't have any Access experience prior to ERMes, so there was a big learning curve.  I began by simply tracking our databases, and administrative information...logins and contacts.  I have since expanded to include 400 of our individual ejournals, a problem log and license information.

Once I loaded the databases and the admin data, the maintenance has been minimal.  I just update as we add or cancel.

I have not used the reports or loaded usage, but I think the potential is there.

I found the most difficult aspect is that there isn't much in the way of support or updates

Sally


Sally Smith                
Bethel University Library/Serials Dept.    
3900 Bethel Drive  St. Paul, MN 55112
Phone:  651-635-8544   Fax:  651-635-1979
http://library.bethel.edu

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[Asha Desai]

Hi

We have collection about 65 databases including e journal portal.  I also want to implement ERMes in my library but I could not change currency in Payment field as most of tile we are paying in INR (Indian Rupee).  Can anybody hep me out to solve this problem.

Thanks.

--
Asha Desai
Professional Assistant (Library)
IIM, Ahmedabad
Tel: 66324982

[G. Chilton]

Hi Glenn,

I had another potential ERMes user e-mail me last week with similar questions, and I thought that I would post a copy of my response here in case it is useful to you. Overall, the inquiry was about my perspective of the positives and negatives of  ERMes as a co-developer and former user of ERMe.

Please let me know if you have any further questions!

All the best,

Galadriel Chilton

Electronic Resources Management Librarian
University of Connecticut

Positives

·         Free and easily customizable

·         Web-hosting, server space, PHP/MySQL programming knowledge for the ERMS is not required

·         Minimal knowledge (e.g. MS Access) needed to begin populating ERMes and for local customizations to occur

·         Ideal for small to medium organizations that already have access to MS Access and in which 1-2 people will be editing ERM data or ideal to use if you have no ERMS right now and are looking to collect data to transition to a commercial or other system

·         Existing reports are great and save time and the potential to build custom reports is there

·         Works well for managing aggregate databases, e-journals at the package level, e-books at the package level, as well as e-books at the title level if desired

·         Code available to generate a public A-Z list of e-resources in ERMes: http://murphylibrary.uwlax.edu/erm/

 

Negatives

·         Prepopulated with some vendor and database/resource names, but not connected to a central, regularly updated knowledge base. Whether there is the possibility for ERMes to connect with GoKB (http://gokb.org/) in the future, I do not know.

·         MS Access is not always the most intuitive program

·         Free and Open Source in this case means that there is no formal support infrastructure. Documentation is available on the ERMes site (http://murphylibrary.uwlax.edu/erm/ERMesInstructionsv.2010.05.pdf) and Bill and I happily respond to inquiries via e-mail/phone as we are able and there is an ERMes Google Group, but I have not seen much activity on the Google Group. However, because ERMes is in MS Access, users have turned to MS Access tutorials/books for help with the database structure, etc.

·         Because we developed ERMes to support my workflow at University of Wisconsin – La Crosse, and a colleague managed e-journals at the title level and e-journal packages using SFX and our ILS acquisitions module, ERMes is not designed to manage e-journals at the title level. However, I believe that some ERMes users do use it for managing e-journals.

·         There is no web interface for using ERMes (other than the public A-Z list of resources you can generate)

·         No user rights/user permissions levels – anyone who has access to ERMes can edit and save the data. At UW-L, I always had two back-up copies that I saved regularly in case of accidently data deletion/overwriting. Additionally, I saved one copy of ERMes in a different location as read-only so that colleagues in ILL and reference could retrieve and view info in the database.

·         While easily customizable at a local level, and can be enhanced/evolved by anyone with MS Access knowledge, ERMes is not actively being developed by Bill or I.

Because UConn is such a large library with multiple campuses and many people needing to input/access ERM data, we needed a web-based ERMS with user levels and permissions; so, I started using ERMes to collect data, but UConn is now using CORAL. At UW-L, the entire University of Wisconsin System is moving towards a shared commercial ILS, discovery layer, open URL resolver, and ERMS so they are in the process of shifting to ExLibris’ Alma due as a system initiative.

Conclusion

In short, I would say that ERMes is a great little ERMS that is easy to use and does what it can do well, but it does have some limitations that mean it may/may not work for you.

 As for an alert/workflow system, you are right ERMes does not have such functionality. CORAL does, but UConn has not yet started using this feature so I can’t speak with in-depth knowledge about how it works.

When I was using ERMes, I typically used my Outlook calendar and created “appointments” with just myself or that included meeting invites with others as triggers for completing ERM tasks.

 In case it is at all helpful, here are links to presenter’s notes for a couple of presentations on e-resource management systems:

Open Source Electronic Resource Management Systems (ALA 2011)
(Presentation on CORAL and ERMes)
http://www.slideshare.net/gchilton/presentation-outline-62611

The ERMes Story (ALA 2010)
http://www.slideshare.net/gchilton/the-er-mes-story-chiltonala-2010