Collaborative Electronic Resource Management: From Acquisitions to Assessment

This textbook explores the technical side of library electronic resource management, and in this strives to be more general than quickly-out-of-date specific, but its strength lies in teaching the perennial usefulness of collaborative management to create strong, customer-centric, sustainable electronic resource services in libraries.Electronic resource management is a complex endeavor that spans the library organization: collection development, acquisitions, licensing, budgeting, cataloging, technological infrastructure, and user services -- to name but a few of the responsibilities that must work together to bring electronic resources to library customers. This 'collaborative' electronic resource management calls for an expansion of consistency- and control-oriented decisions to include a radical engaging of the dynamic cycle of organizational learning, improvement, service, and assessment. Collaborative decision making finds value in radically collaborative collegial relationships -- and in continually improving customer experience for continued library relevance.Book's blurb: Electronic resource management is becoming a primary responsibility of library managers. This book approaches electronic resource management as a system affecting all library work, linking it to concepts of collaborative management and the assessment cycle. The author demonstrates how collection development, acquisitions, licensing, budgeting, and cataloging techniques; technological infrastructure; and user services for electronic resources fit into the new collaborative management that relies on learning more than control to respond to change. The techniques presented for managing electronic resources improves the library's service value through relationships between library professionals and with library customers. Engaging the librarian in a cycle of constant learning and assessment, the approach ultimately makes work lighter, relationships with colleagues and customers more productive, and library services more relevant to community needs.