Week 8 - Electronic Resource Management Systems: Vendors and Functionalities

In this week's readings, I noticed that ERMS and those who study them seem to use quite a few unique vocabulary words.  For my own clarification, the following are the most important acronyms or phrases I wasn't familiar with and their definitions:

• ONIX - ONline Information eXchange
• According to Wikipedia's citation from www.editeur.org, this is basically an XML schema for book product information 
• PAMS -  Public Access Management Services
• From reading "ERM Systems: Background, Selection and Implementation" it seems that these are essentially ERM systems offered by third party for-profit organizations
• MARC 856 field
• The guide for this field written by the Network Development and MARC Standards Office at the Library of Congress (http://www.loc.gov/marc/856guide.html) states that this field is used for "electronic location and access information to an electronic resource," ie: a URL, DOI, or handle
• The "Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems" chapter as well as quite a few webpages (for example: http://bibwild.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/marc-856-i-dont-like-you/) seem to indicate that this field is not an effective way to maintain location and access information
• COUNTER - Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources
• An "international set of standards and protocols governing the recording and exchange of online usage data" according to COUNTER's official website (http://www.projectcounter.org/)
• From the website, it seems that COUNTER is aimed at aiding libraries and licensees by creating standards for usage reports and listing which vendors are compliant with them
•  SUSHI - Standardized Usage Statistics Harvest Initiative
• According to "Project COUNTER and SUSHI: An Overview," a report on www.niso.org, SUSHI improves COUNTER by automating the process of gathering and managing usage data from a large number of providers
  

One thing I would like to see after finishing this week's readings is a survey of libraries' ERMS purchases.  The articles were excellent in explaining the different types of ERMS available as well as their advantages and disadvantages.  However, I would like to know what percentage of libraries are using each type of company (ILS, PAMS, Subscription Agent, etc.), what percentage make their own ERMS, and what percentage use the same company for their ERMS and ILS.  I haven't been able to find an article on this in LISTA, Library Lit, LISA or a simple Google search so perhaps no one has done a survey like this.

On a somewhat unrelated note, at MERIT yesterday a patron asked about emailing a particular article to their colleague in the Department of Education.  The article happened to be from a journal published by SAGE so I was able to tell him that yes, a copy can be distributed to a single colleague who is also an authorized user.