An an overview of selection acquisition, and usage of e resources

E-resources and library practice
an overview of selection,
acquisition, and usage
Linus C. Emeghara
Chief Operating Officer
Ifegrace Ventures Ltd

E-resources and library practice an
overview of selection, acquisition, and
usage
Being a paper presented at the
training workshop on issues in the
selection, acquisition and use of
e-resources in TETFUND funded
institutions

ABSTRACT
 Points to the fact that e-Books, databases
and e-Journals have become an integral part
of any modern library
 examines effective ways of selecting,
acquiring and use of the various e-resources
 further examines issues in the licensing and
management of the e-resources in order to
achieve the desired objectives.

Introduction.
 The Library landscape has indeed been altered
and reshaped by the information and
communication technology (ICT) across the
globe.
 Great and vibrant libraries are now measured by
the level of automation, Internet connectivity, and
accessibility to other libraries on real time basis,
subscription to reputable online databases as well
as quality of collections.

Introduction Contd.
 Information and communication technology (ICT)
has, thus become a defining parameter in
delineating libraries
 The ones that are fully ICT driven are regarded as
modern while those manually-driven are termed
traditional
 To disregard leveraging with this benchmark is to
accept extinction and irrelevance

Introduction Contd.
 e-resources have therefore become a part of
the modern library.
 Librarians are enthusiastic to incorporate
these resources into the library collection
 These resources have brought new
challenges & opportunities
 selection, acquisition, licensing and
management issues have become more than
necessary.

What is e-resource?
 An electronic resource is defined as a
resource which require computer access or
any electronic product that delivers a
collection of data, be it text referring to full
text bases, electronic journals, image
collections, other multimedia products and
numerical, graphical or time based, as a
commercially available title that has been
published with an aim to being marketed

Types of E-Resources
The e-resources are basically divided in two
major types are:
1. Online e-resources, which may include:
E-journal (Full text & bibliographic)
E-books
Online databases
Web sites

Types of E-Resources Contd.
The other electronic resources may
include:
CD ROM
Diskettes
Other portable computer databases.

eBook Acquisition Models
 Subscription Model/ Option. Under the
subscription model, libraries pay annually to
maintain their access to the eBooks and
therefore do not own the books.
 Acquisition/ Perpetual Model/ Option. Under
the acquisition model, libraries make an
outright purchase of the eBooks/ own the
books.
 Pay per View Model
 Patron-driven selection

Acquisition/ Perpetual Access
Model
 price for this model typically higher than print
 Even single-user access almost always costs
significantly more than the print list price
 Preset e-book packages, comprise all of a
publisher’s current content in a given subject
area
 Some aggregators charge libraries for
platform maintenance fee annually for
ongoing hosting of the e-books purchased

Benefits of Pay-Per-View Model
 Some aggregators and publishers offer content on a
pay-per-view or short-term rental basis especially
eBooks
 a cost-effective way to provide access to e-book
content for ongoing fees
 pays only for content used
 Usually, short-term loan fees is a small percentage
of the total cost of the book

Types of Databases
There are two types of databases. These are:
Subject Specific Databases: Subject specific
databases focuses on one subject or discipline;
eg Political Science Complete, Econlit with full
text, etc.
Multi-Disciplinary Databases: Multi-disciplinary
databases as the name implies
focuses on more than one subject, eg,
Academic Search Complete, Business Source
Complete, etc.

What is an e-Journal and how is it
different from a database?
Electronic journal is a journal published
in electronic format.
It is different from a database which is
an aggregation of electronic journals
under a given subject and or subjects.

Website
 A group of World Wide Web pages usually
containing hyperlinks to each other and
made available online by an individual,
company, educational institution,
government, or organization

E-Resource Vendors/ Aggregators
 EBSCOhost (Sales EBSCOhost databases
and eBooks)
 ProQuest (Sales ProQuest Databases and
eBrary
 Lexis Nexis (Law Publications
 Hein Online (for Law Publications

Concerns in the acquisition of
e-resources
 The cost
 Coverage
 Proprietary rights.
 License issues
 Agreements
 Technical Support
 Training

Ways of Acquiring E-Resources
Libraries acquire e-materials variously
Subscription (eBooks, Databases and
e-Journals)
Pay-per-view (eBooks)
Patron-driven/ selection (eBooks)

Selection Criteria
 Database brief to know scope and coverage
 Journal coverage list to ensure availability of
relevant journals
 Trial request to assess platform & relevance
 Access by password and IP authentication
 Agreement to support multi-user license
 Cost of subscription
 Technical Support .

Licensing Issues
 License is a major concern for libraries for all
electronic resource acquisitions
 Establish a standard agreement that
describes the rights of libraries and their
authorized users in a plain and explicit
language
The terms should reflect realistic
expectations concerning the ability to
monitor use and discover abuse

Licensing Issues Contd.
 In the acquisition of electronic books and journals, the
librarian is usually under pressure to sign lopsided licence
agreements.
 Those agreements assume that aggregators have obtained
necessary permission and authorization from copyright
holders.
 When subscribing to databases, eBooks and or e-journals
libraries must negotiate and execute a
license agreement with each publisher before access
is granted

INDEMNIFICATION CLAUSE
 Whether you are licensing e-books from a
publisher or an aggregator, it is important for
the licensor to indemnify the library against
third-party claims of infringement of copyright
or any other rights arising out of the library’s
use of the e-book
 A library cannot indemnify a licensor
against misuse (or abuse) by the
library’s authorized users

INDEMNIFICATION CLAUSE Contd.
 A library needs to be careful not to accept an
indemnification clause that requires the library to
indemnify the licensor against use by their patrons
 However, a library can agree elsewhere in the
license to take all reasonable measures to protect
the licensed materials from misuse and to inform its
users about the rights and restrictions they have in
using the licensed materials
 A library will, however, find it difficult to offer any kind
of guarantee that its users will not abuse their rights
and should not accept responsibility beyond due diligence.

Measuring returns on e-resources.
Tenopir & King (2000, 2007) suggested that value
on electronic collections can be measured through:
 Usage logs and vendors reports
 Surveys to measure purpose and value of use.
 Perceived value through surveys or interviews
.

Measuring returns on e-resources
Contd.
 Brown (2014) posited that library investment have
tremendous impact on student retention, teaching and
institution’s rankings as well as accreditation.
 The bottom line of this proposition is that libraries should
constantly articulate their concrete contributions to the
overall mission and objectives of the parent institution to
justify or warrant continued investment on e-resources.

Conclusion
 The pervasiveness and inevitability of the application of
e-resources to library collection is incontrovertible. It has
become a global standard and best practice.
 The impact of this current trend on the demands and
expectation of the savvy and more sophisticated library
clientele/ patron has been phenomenal
 Modern libraries must integrate e-resources to expand its
collection so as to expand the frontiers of its services.

Conclusion Contd.
 libraries must formulate an acquisition policy that
would make e-resources an integral part of the
library collection.
 It must also subject the acquisition to stringent
selection criteria with a view to ensuring relevance
and need.
 Above all, the acquired e-resources must be
evaluated from time to time through usage statistics
 Library Staff should be trained and retrained to cope
with the e-resource management skill.

An an overview of selection acquisition, and usage of e resources

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An an overview of selection acquisition, and usage of e resources