The Canadian Research Knowledge Network, which has 73 academic institutions as members, has completed three-year license agreements worth $140 million with 14 scholarly publishers. It is estimated that over $40 million was saved compared to institutional licenses for comparable content.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Despite major financial constraints and uncertainty worldwide, CRKN continues to meet its goals of providing high-impact content for over 850,000 university researchers and students across the country. “This achievement signals CRKN’s contribution to a fertile research environment in Canada, and ability to maintain advantageous terms and price predictability in spite of turbulent economic conditions,” states Deb deBruijn, Executive Director. “Through strong arrangements with vendors, member participation in these national agreements has been largely maintained from the previous period, and has even grown on some agreements, across all sizes of universities.” Please refer to the Backgrounder for publishers, products and participation levels.

CRKN members have taken advantage of new flexibility offered in the renewal as multiple agreements have been unbundled by CRKN, allowing members to tailor their participation in each separate agreement. Members’ return on investment is high through these agreements. A conservative estimate reflects savings of between 15% to over 50% within the national agreements compared to institutional prices for comparable content, representing savings of over $40 million over a three-year period. In addition, members derive value through superior price protection with caps on annual increases set below market norm, expanded usage terms through the CRKN model license agreement, and the most strategic influence with publishers regarding future services and developments. . . .

In keeping with the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) Statement on the Global Economic Crisis and its Impact on Consortial Licenses, CRKN seeks to work with strategic partners that demonstrate flexibility, competitive pricing models, and delivery of long-term value. Vendors with whom CRKN works have shown their commitment to members by providing flexible payment terms, making cost containment a priority, and developing forward-looking ways to add value to the relationship. For example, several vendors will now provide support for Shibboleth, an open-source implementation for identity-based authentication and authorization, and will also participate in the recently-implemented Canadian Access Federation, which will provide federated access management services for identity providers (including universities and libraries) and service providers (such as publishers).

Indiana University has been awarded a $2.38 Million Grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the Kuali OLE (Open Library Environment) project.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

IU will lead the Kuali OLE (Open Library Environment) project, a partnership of research libraries dedicated to managing increasingly digital resources and collections. Together, these libraries will develop "community source" software that will be made available to libraries worldwide.

Kuali OLE (pronounced Oh-LAY) partners include Indiana University; Florida Consortium (University of Florida representing Florida International University, Florida State University, New College of Florida, Rollins College, University of Central Florida, University of Miami, University of South Florida and the Florida Center for Library Automation); Lehigh University; Triangle Research Libraries Network (represented by Duke University and North Carolina State University); University of Chicago; University of Maryland; University of Michigan; and the University of Pennsylvania.

Large academic research libraries such as these manage and provide access to millions of items, using software to track interrelated transactions that range from ordering and paying for items to loaning materials to library patrons.

As the nature of library collections expands to include more digital materials—including leased electronic journals and digitized photograph collections—libraries are increasingly interested in developing management software for these resources, said Interim Ruth Lilly Dean of University Libraries Carolyn Walters.

"Libraries now create, lease and share digital materials, but the systems in place for cataloging and tracking these items are based on print collections," said Walters. "With this project, we benefit from working together with a community of academic libraries that want to change the way that information is managed in the scholarly environment."

"Research libraries are in dire need of systems that can support the management of research collections for the next-generation scholar," said Robert H. McDonald, executive director for the project and IU's associate dean for library technologies. "This approach demonstrates the best of open-source software development, directed partnership resource needs, and a market of commercial support providers to truly align with the needs of research libraries within the higher education environment."

More than 200 libraries, educational institutions, professional organizations and businesses laid the groundwork for the Kuali OLE project by participating in the original OLE project, a design phase that was supported by an earlier grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and led by Duke University.

The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Murphy Library has released ERMes v. 2009.05, an open source electronic resource management system. Iowa State University contributed code to the project.

Simon Fraser University Library's Linux-based reSearcher, which is widely used in Canada, is an open source software suite that includes:

• Citation Manager: "Citation Manager allows faculty, students and staff to quickly and accurately capture citations or references from library resources into their own personal, online database."
• CUFTS (serials management): "As a knowledgebase of over 375 fulltext resources, CUFTS provides Electronic Resource Management services, an integrated serials database, link resolving, and MARC records for your library."
• dbWIZ (federated searching): "dbWiz provides library users with a single interface for searching a wide range of library resources, and returns records in an integrated result listing."
• GODOT (link resolution): "Launched from a link embedded in your library's citation databases or other resources, GODOT provides direct links to your fulltext collections, using the CUFTS knowledge base, and also reveals holdings in your catalogue or in other locations."

A subcommittee of the Digital Library Federation’s Electronic Resource Management Initiative, Phase II has released White Paper on Interoperability between Acquisitions Modules of Integrated Library Systems and Electronic Resource Management Systems.

Here's an excerpt from the "Executive Summary":

The following white paper investigates interoperability between the acquisitions modules of integrated library systems (ILS) and electronic resource management systems (ERMS). The first section of the paper features four case studies: UCLA, Cornell University, the Tri-College Consortium of Bryn Mawr, Haverford, & Swarthmore Colleges, and the Library of Congress. Each case highlights the library’s institutional environment, consortium considerations, systems architecture (ILS, ERMS, and link resolver), and electronic resource workflows. . . .

The second part of the paper reports on conversations held with product managers and other relevant staff of the leading ERMS. . . .

The paper concludes with a recap of the general value of ILS/ERMS interoperability and some of the more significant barriers to achieving it. Finally, it is proposed that further discussions among stakeholders take place, and that these discussions focus on establishing agreement on a small set of elements for exchange and on the development of standard identifiers.

The LITA/ALCTS Electronic Resources Management Interest Group has established a mailing list (lita-erm@ala.org).

Here is a description of the IG from its home page:

Established in 2005. The purpose of the LITA/ALCTS Electronic Resources Management Interest Group is to promote and enable the exchange of information and discussion among librarians, publishers, electronic resource management system vendors and related service organizations concerning issues related to the management of electronic resources. The group will assist in developing appropriate and responsive systems and standards by fostering open and collaborative discussions and implementation issues.

The Digital Library Federation’s Electronic Resource Management Initiative Phase II Steering Committee has released a draft white paper on the interoperability of ILS acquisition modules and electronic resource management systems.

Here is the introduction:

Electronic resource management systems are becoming an important tool in many libraries. Commercial ERMS development has been driven in part by the lack of accommodation within integrated library systems for elements specific to electronic resources. Financial aspects of acquiring e-resources, in particular, necessitate recording an array of data not suited to ILS acquisitions modules. Unlike other data recorded in an ERMS such as licensing and administrative terms, a moderate percentage of acquisitions data is redundant, being populated in ILS during the acquisitions process, while also being accommodated within ERMS in accordance with the data structure detailed in Electronic Resource Management: Report of the DLF Electronic Resource Management Initiative (Digital Library Federation, 2004). ERMS implementers are eager to automate the process by which acquisitions data move from their ILS into their ERMS. This interest has grown substantially over the past few months as the prospect of connecting financial data to usage statistics has been facilitated through the Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI), a NISO draft standard.

This white paper describes workflows at four libraries; reports on conversations held with product managers and other relevant staff of the leading ERMS; summarizes common themes; and suggests next steps. The paper is a draft for comment; it is hoped that those with interest in this area will provide insight to further this investigation.