Building on the NASIG Core Competencies to support electronic resources management best practices as well as electronic resources lifecycle and management, this panel will explore in-depth, innovative approaches to electronic resources management at institutions that utilize the open source CORAL ERMS. Panelists will present different aspects of electronic resource management with attention to how CORAL supports those processes at their institutions. Collectively they tell the story of how an open source, community managed system can be used in flexible, extensible, and innovative ways. We hope this session will inspire and help others still struggling to find solutions for their electronic resources management. Aspects to be discussed will include: -Workflow support (completing all steps of the e-resource lifecycle) -Usage statistics management and reporting -ERMS metadata as embedded, automated source for discovery services (website a-z list, etc.) -ERM documentation ...and more *The presentation slides of the three presenters are posted separately on SlideShare. Presenters: Andrea Imre, Electronic Resources Librarian, Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Steve Oberg, Assistant Professor of Library Science, Electronic Resources and Serials, Wheaton College (IL); Adjunct Faculty, Dominican University Graduate School of Library and Information Science; Adjunct Faculty, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Graduate School of Library and Information Science. Scott Vieira, Electronic Resources Librarian, Rice University.

1. The Futureis Flexible, Extensible, and Community
Based: Stories of Successful Electronic Resources
Management
Steve Oberg
CORAL as Source for Databases A-Z
Slides: http://librarylink.wheaton.edu/nasig15

2. WHO ARE WE
• Total FTE: 2,969 (Students 2,729; Faculty 240)
• 40 undergraduate majors
• Doctoral programs in Bible and Theology,
Psychology
AT WHEATON?
• Total journal subscriptions: 6,607 (~400 print)
• 14 Master’s degrees
• Total databases: 240

3. Databases A-Z is a heavily used element of our
site.
This was an opportunity to figure out how we
could streamline maintenance of Databases A-Z.
At same time, we redefined (expanded) what
goes in Databases A-Z.
Website redesign project

4. Databases, abstracting and indexing resources,
online reference works, journal and e-book
packages, and freely available websites that are
selected by subject librarians as having value for
one or more subject areas.
Databases A-Z: Wheaton’s (new) definition

8. Metadata for and about databases was managed
in multiple places, and was inconsistent across all
of them. Particularly onerous was the need to
manually key in information into our website CMS
(Drupal) for each database, especially as we
added more and more new entries over time.
Problem we faced

9. These places included
• Voyager (local ILS)
• WorldCat Local (discovery layer)
• In some cases, SFX (link resolver)
• Our website CMS, Drupal
• CORAL
• LibGuides

10. So….Why CORAL?

11. CORAL is where…
• All e-resources are already inventoried,
including anything to be displayed in Databases
A-Z.
• Flexibility and functionality exist to easily
extract metadata in an automated way.
• All the relevant metadata was or could be stored.

12. Some specifics of CORAL functionality
• CORAL offers an optional add-on to allow
public access to CORAL resource data.
• We do not use or expose the public interface
locally but instead make use of the XML output.
• This add-on offers not only a public interface if
you choose to use it, but an XML output as well.
• We assign a specific resource type to each
resource record for Databases A-Z entries.

17. Some specifics of how this fits into Drupal
• We use Feed Importer module, pointing to
specific XML feed URL output from CORAL.
• XML data is parsed using XPATH and a node is
created in Drupal for each entry.
• cron job initiates fresh import on set schedule of
every 2-3 hours.
• A view is created to pull nodes together into a list
with alphabetized header.

18. Additional aspects to the workflow
• Any new entries from CORAL appear after the
next cron job is ready (2-3 hours).
• Any changes to existing entries are also handled
smoothly within the same timeframe.
• A view is created to pull nodes together into a list
with alphabetized header.
• Workflow also supports cross references for
alternate spellings, alternate names, etc.

23. I am not a Drupal expert. The Drupal side of
things was figured out and set up by my
colleague, Jeff Mudge, who is our Digital
Initiatives Coordinator. Together, we worked out
how to handle each part of the workflow.
Full disclosure

24. None of this would have been feasible without
CORAL’s flexible design and community-
created functionality.

25. 2. Technology
2.5 Markup languages (e.g. HTML, XML, wiki)
2.7 Software such as…Electronic resources
management software (ERMS)
3. Research and Assessment
3.7 Is able to identify the principles and
techniques necessary to identify and
analyze emerging technologies and
innovations in order to recognize and
implement relevant technological
improvements.
Tie-ins to NASIG Core Competencies for ERLs

26. steve.oberg@ wheaton.edu
Twitter: @TechSvcsLib