If I could sum up this week's readings in one sentence, it would be don't panic and take advantage of any training opportunities, including paying attention to your colleagues' skill sets, as well as reaching out to other areas and departments. We had three different, but very related articles addressing the changing nature of the ER librarian. Albitz and Shelbern trace the evolution of the roles and responsibilities of the ER librarian, Griffin provides a great list of resources for help and education, while Affifi looks to the business world for a framework to work through the process of acquiring and using electronic resources.
Albitz and Shelbern began by looking at articles on position descriptions and job postings for ER librarians, following it up with a survey conducted through the ARL membership group to determine how accurate the actual tasks and responsibilities were to the job announcements, which also indicate how much ER management and implementation has changed since around 1997-8. The main focus of the electronic resource management articles was on the resource or database itself, not on staffing issues or who should and can administer the systems.
However, the authors found two good articles, one where the authors analyzed position description between 1990 and 2000 where the words digital and/or electronic appeared in the title. The second article, Fisher, looked at 298 position announcements from American Libraries, finding the ER positions tend toward public services and reference-type positions, as opposed to technical services. A third article by Albitz analyzed position announcements between 1997 and 2001 for academic libraries as published in College & Research Libraries News. ER librarian are found in many departments and prior knowledge was not necessarily a prerequisite for getting the job. So, how do the actual tasks reflect the position descriptions?
Albitz and Shelbern found that while ER librarians typically worked in technical services, with or without also working in public services, they typically report to public services and the primary responsibilities had been for reference and user education. However, public services were no longer highlighted in the descriptions, as the most common responsibility according to the surveys was ER coordination. The second most common activity is a combination (or equal frequency) of acquisitions, license negotiations, and technical support. This was highlighted by Judith’s presentation, when she stated that she frequently needed to figure out why a link was not functioning properly. However, from the surveys, reference and bibliographic instruction was down. Keep in mind that the survey was conducted in 2005, while the articles only went up to 2001. Everything changed since then, at least technologically speaking, so this difference is not a surprise.
ERs are still relatively new, standards are being worked on (DLF, NISO), but there are always delays and it takes time to get the appropriate stakeholders to adopt new standards. Meanwhile, back at the library, it is not always clear which types of skills are necessary to the effective management and utilization of ERs. Therefore, Affifi approaches this problem by looking at process mapping as a way to deal with these issues.
Similar to business process re-engineering (BPR) with roots in total quality management (TQM), process mapping breaks down a process, such as acquiring and administering an ER, into steps with clear beginning and end points. Basically, it helps to analyze a product and how to more effectively utilize said product or process. Several studies and examples indicate that process mapping can be useful to libraries and librarians. One process mapping output can be the input of another, which will how the processes are connected; a very useful tool in a complicated system. Affifi provides a sample flow chart and textual output of possible process mapping for ER systems and products, beginning with the vendor contacting a library about acquiring a resource. What is interesting is that Affifi leaves out “routine product maintenance” from the process mapping, which includes troubleshooting. That is one of the more common tasks performed by ER librarians, according to other articles. Still, libraries have been borrowing models from the business world, and I see how this model could easily benefit an ER librarian, as illustrated by the case study.
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