Serials Solutions to Give a "Sneak Preview" of New ERM Solution at ACRL
Serials Solutions’ beta version of its E-Resource Management System (ERMS) will be unveiled in a "sneak preview" for librarians at the upcoming ACRL (Association of College Research Libraries) conference in Minneapolis, April 7-10. ERMS is a new product that builds on the management tools currently available in Serials Solutions’ Access and Management Suite (AMS).
ERMS will help librarians manage the entire life cycle of an electronic resource. Modules now in beta testing include: resource discovery, pre-acquisition evaluation, license management, terms-of-use management, contact management, and note tracking and reporting. The system is expected to be released Summer 2005.
Serials Solutions is highlighting several key features that elevate its ERMS solution above those of its competitors:
ERMS is tightly integrated with Serials Solutions’ resource discovery products. Librarians will be able to make a single change that affects all of the library’s e-resource access and management services, including Article Linker, Central Search, Full MARC Records, and AMS. This eliminates redundant data entry and ensures that patrons and staff see the same accurate information about a resource.
ERMS is built on the foundation of Serials Solutions’ Unified Knowledgebase. This ensures accurate meta-data and enables a broad array of discovery and evaluation tools that are impossible without a comprehensive, underlying knowledgebase. Examples of these features include Overlap Analysis, E-Cat for finding every electronic manifestation of a resource, and Benchmarking for resource-usage forecasting.
ERMS is hosted at Serials Solutions’ central data center and accessed through a user-friendly Web interface. This means that libraries will not have to install or maintain the software onsite, thereby gaining more time to focus on managing their resources.
"We want to enable local control and eliminate local headaches," said Mike Showalter, ERMS product manager. "Based on our experience delivering hosted solutions to more than 1,300 libraries worldwide, we know that librarians want to manage their resources, not their software. With ERMS, they don’t have to become IT experts and instead can focus their energies on managing and growing their collections."
Building upon the guidelines of the DLF’s (Digital Library Federation) Electronic Resource Management Initiative (DLF- ERMI), Serials Solutions surveyed more than 50 libraries and had detailed discussions with nearly two dozen beta-testing librarians during the development process.
"Our new ERM System is an integrated, hosted solution that will save librarians time and money throughout the lifecycle of their electronic resources," said Steve McCracken, vice president and co-founder of Serials Solutions. "The feedback we have received thus far has been overwhelmingly positive. We are excited about ERMS and how it extends our ability to offer librarians complete solutions for today’s electronic collections."
About Serials Solutions:
Serials Solutions, part of ProQuest Information and Learning, provides complete e-journal access services to over 1300 libraries worldwide. Founded by a librarian for librarians, Serials Solutions helps librarians and patrons find and use electronic content through its Access & Management Suite, Full MARC Records service for e-journals, Article Linker™ - Serials Solutions comprehensive OpenURL link resolver, and Central Search - a powerful federated search engine.
ProQuest Information and Learning
ProQuest Information and Learning is a world leader in collecting, organizing, and publishing information worldwide for researchers, faculty, and students in libraries and schools. Known widely for its strength in business and economics, general reference, humanities, social sciences, and STM content, the company develops premium databases comprising periodicals, newspapers, dissertations, out-of-print books, and other scholarly information from more than 8,500 publishers worldwide. Users access the information through the ProQuest® Web-based online information system, Chadwyck- Healey™ electronic and microform resources, UMI® microform and print reference products, eLibrary® and SIRS® educational resources, and XanEdu® online faculty and student resources. For more information about ProQuest Information and Learning, visit www.il.proquest.com.
ProQuest Information and Learning is a business unit of ProQuest Company, which was recently named one of the top 100 fastest growing technology companies in the United States by Business 2.0.
ProQuest Company (NYSE: PQE) is based in Ann Arbor, Mich., and is a leading publisher of information solutions for the education, automotive and power equipment markets. We provide products and services to our customers through two business segments: Information and Learning and Business Solutions. Through our Information and Learning segment, which primarily serves the education market, we collect, organize and publish content from a wide range of sources including newspapers, periodicals and books. Our Business Solutions segment is primarily engaged in the delivery in electronic form of comprehensive parts and service information to the automotive and power equipment markets.