NASIG 2007: Electronic resources workflow management

Paoshan Yue from the University of Nevada, Reno and Liz Burnette from North Carolina State University Libraries presented two models of managing electronic resources workflow and integrating it into existing libary workflow. Paoshan focused on technical integration of e-resources into serials workflow by presenting the evolution of UNR's procedures for making e-resources available from aquisitions to cataloging to accessibility. Their final (well, at least in use at present) workflow is presented at http://www2.library.unr.edu/serials/ERMworkflow.pdf.

Liz presented the staffing side of integrating e-resources into serials workflow. She emphasized the need to begin by examining existing procedures and the procedures required for e-resources processing before trying to integrate the two. She also explained an unexpected advantage of the process that they discovered at NCSU: the decrease in the occurence of inevitable slowed production when a staff member is away from the library or leaved altogether that resulted from cross-training several staff members to complete each task or step in the work flow.

This got me thinking about how we have really just squished e-resources and e-journals into our existing processed at TAMUCC and sparked a desire in me to go back and take a look at what we're doing and why. I was reminded of what I've learned about a point that was made about library web sites. That we tend to structure them in a manner similar to the organization of the physical library and that really doesn't need to be the case. Similarly, I think e-resources workflow does not necessarily need to be patterned on print serials workflow.