Development Partnership in Action

In 2002, Head of IT Services at Glasgow University Library, Mark Denham, attended the Innovative Users Group (IUG) meeting in Houston, where he heard about the development efforts between Innovative and the University of Washington to create the first fully integrated e-resource management tool. As the Library’s e-journal titles grew to well over 10,000, he and his fellow staffers were realizing that they needed a better management system to handle this growing information set.

Denham returned to the University of Glasgow excited about Innovative’s pioneering work. Soon after the IUG meeting, the Library became an Electronic Resource Management development partner. The process began with a series of discussions with Innovative and the University of Washington to learn about what was being done up to that point.

In the spring of 2003, Glasgow installed the beta version of Electronic Resource Management. Stevenson recounts regular conference calls with Innovative's product manager. Especially helpful were virtual conference calls where participants could talk and see each other’s software configurations to make discussions easier. Based on ideas, suggestions, and problems needing resolution, Innovative staff would create software updates, at times only a few weeks after a discussion.

Just one year later, the Library implemented the general release version of Electronic Resource Management. “Now we can display information related to e-resources through the Web OPAC,” says Systems Administrator Karen Stevenson. “Licensing information is very important for library staff to see, for example knowing how many concurrent users can access a database at the same time.”

The development of Electronic Resource Management is a case study in how Innovative is always looking out for the emerging needs of libraries around the world and is well positioned to work in partnerships to make outstanding solutions a reality.