Verde and ERMes, a (kind of) brief analysis

In the belief (or maybe false hope?) that someone outside of my wonderful ERM class may stumble across this blog, I decided to look at two ERM systems we read about, Verde by ExLibris and Ermes, an open source system made in Wisconsin. Based on this reading and a few other sources, I will judge them by the standards and checklists that Horgatrh and Bloom in the book Electronic resource management in libraries: Research and practice and Collin's article ERM systems: Background, Selection and Implementation , set out. I chose these two systems because they represent the opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of ERMs. Verde is a proprietary system, by a major library vendor, with a very shiny advertising website . The second is a system based on Access, created by a librarian at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse, which advertises itself via its own blog . Perhaps the following analysis will help someone make a decision on ERMs?

Both Hogarth and Bloom and Collins list important aspects of functionality to look for in an ERMs. Since I am trying to not write an article, I will look at just three aspects these works emphasize: the ability to help with communication and support well organized workflow from department to department, the ability to be interoperable with other ILS and serial tools, like A-Z lists and SFX linking, (so that an entire library system does not have to be overhauled to add an ERMs), and the ability to get usage statistics in report form, including the coveted cost/use report.

Verde

Verde's main page does not provide a huge amount of information about how it works, which makes sense as its point is to try and sell you a product, not provide complete documentation. So I also looked at a report I found from CUNY (City University of New York) explaining their decision to use Verde. Verde's main selling point,as explained on their website, is that they have "Built-in workflow management capabilities that enable the library to define consistent and replicable processes, helping staff keep track of task assignments throughout the e-resource life cycle." They also allow staff to access all of these capabilities through one main interface, which helps with management and ease of learning the software. According to CUNY's report, Verde automatically sends out reminder emails to help people stay on top of their duties, and in general works well in coordinating people and communication across numerous departments, an important thing for large library systems

In terms of interoperability, Verde obviously is easy to integrate with Aleph Voyager, as that is the ILS also put out by Ex Libris. The Verde Website claims that it can be "integrated with existing library applications such as SFX®, your library online public access catalog (OPAC), A-Z list, and more". CUNY believes this is also one of Verde's best points claiming "One of the strengths of Ex Libris is product interdependence and interoperability, critical factors in enabling numerous technologies to interface with one another and create a seamless experience for both back and front end users". However, CUNY does mention that it takes some programming to get tools like SFX to fully work with the system. While this was not a major concern for CUNY, it could be one for small libraries who do not have this type of technical expertise.

Finally, Verde allows SUSHI data transmission (a new standard in vendor usage data transmission via XML) and as such works well with COUNTER data, both good things in terms of ease of use and following library standards. Verde's main page does not mention what types of reports they run, except to say "Staff can easily derive cost-per-use metrics as vendor usage data is automatically retrieved and uploaded". This leaves it unclear if the reports can be automatically generated using Verde of or they have to be manually done in some outside program and Verde just stores the data. The stats are built on Oracle, according to CUNY, which makes me believe that reports can be created pretty easily if one knows that database. Again, though, at a small library this might not always be the case.

Verdict:

In general, it seems that Verde is especially strong in Workflow management, and pretty good in interoperability, especially if you have someone with some programming knowledge. It does keep usage statistics and is up to date in following standards, but is unclear about how it runs reports.

Ermes

Ermes has numerous things outside of the categories I will be examining going for it. For one, its free! Secondly, it is created by librarians for librarian needs in mind, and it has a lot of customer support from the creators.

Ermes, as far as I can tell, does not contain anything like email reminders or other communication tools to assist with workflow management. It seems to be meant to be used by only a few people, and therefore not appropriate for large scale, department crossing ERM work. In does allow reports to be run to track renewal dates as well as tracking when payments are due, which would be useful for workflow and management. I could see, since everything is on one Microsoft Access record (license info, usage stats, pricing, vendor information), that this could help communication, as everything would be easy to find and people could see all the information quickly. However, it could also be a trick to coordinate all the entry, making sure that everything is filled out to the same level across all departments. It really seems like this system is meant to be used by a small team, that can organize their workflow with the aid of ERMes, but do not need to rely on it.

Through reading the documentation, there seems to be very little interoperability between this system and others. It does have a way to create one's own A-Z list, but does not incorporate information from an ILS or knowledge base. Everything must be added by hand into the Access database. Since it is already nicely set up in Access, this would not require a huge amount of technical expertise, but would require a lot of time. As such, this system is not feasible for a large library system, unless that large system figures out some technical wizardry to batch import records in the right fields from some preexisting source.

In terms of usage statistics, it does work with COUNTER and helps one run reports with this data. However, because it does not have an easy way to bring in these in (it does not support SUSHI) , everything must be imported by hand, which can be time consuming. While it allows reports to be run showing price per year comparisons, which is very nice, it does not auto generate/provide a template for price/use comparisons.

Verdict:

For a college that has a small amount of periodicals, a small ERM staff, and simply wants to be able to keep track of each database's information in one place (and run some nice reports based on that!) ERMes is a good solution. For example, I think this would be great for many small private colleges who do not have the need or a budget for anything too complex. The main issue is that it does not integrate with the OPAC or SFX. For libraries that are larger or that really want everything to be integrated, this is not a good system