Final Reflections

I am not sure if I could actually select a “most important earlier entry”, but I can say that I learned a great deal about electronic resources, licensing, and ERMs over the course of the semester. One of the ways in which I have noticed a change in thinking is when I am looking for articles using Find It or on the library staff page seeing the “SFX Admin” link. I feel that I now have a fairly clear understanding as to how link resolvers, A-to-Z listing services, and OpenURLs function. To that end, I could possibly state that my entry for week 11 is one of my more important posts. It was in that post where I explored the content discovery tools and really began to put the bigger picture of how Find It / SFX and Ex Libris works. Related to that post are those from weeks 8 and 9, where I discussed TPMs and the different types of ERM systems. After the readings for week 11 and two presentations on SFX and Find It, the readings from weeks 8 and especially 9 began to make more sense. Although week 8 is not exactly about ERM systems and their functions, knowing how systems may determine who is an authorized user and how authentication works helped me with further understanding ERM systems.

In general, I found the second half of the course to be less intuitive than the first half. This is probably due to the fact that I have a background in electronic resources and have studied copyright and Fair Use prior to this course. Still, it was helpful to further develop my understanding of the earlier units before diving into ERM systems and functions. It would be difficult to discuss how ERM systems work without a base knowledge of licensing and copyright issues. Of particular importance is the TEACH, which I knew very little about, so that unit was quite informative, particularly during the Q and A session with Lipinski. Of the latter entries, I was particularly interested in perpetual access and digital archiving. I am glad that some organizations are trying to make sure that publishers' websites are archived, but institutions having perpetual access to a purchased or licensed product is an important topic.

I truly enjoyed the course, thank you!