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Tips for Managing Electronic Resources

Last fall, I unexpectedly took on the electronic resources management (ERM) role at my university. Consequently, I had to teach myself–on the fly–how to manage 130+ electronic resources, along with a budget of several hundred thousand dollars. My initial six months focused on finances, licensing, and workflows rather than access, discoverability, or other key issues. So here are some life-saving tips for all you new e-librarians, because I know you didn’t learn this in library school! Let’s start, as always, with the users. Evaluate user needs. Are you new at your job? Then begin by conducting a needs assessments, formal or informal. Check the programs and course offerings to make sure they still align with the e-resources for which you pay. Seek out faculty, colleagues, and students to get a sense of what resources they assign, use, or see used. Pull usage statistics from each database–and be sure to cross-reference this vendor data with…