UKSG Introduction to E-Resources Online Seminar 2025 by Vicky Drew

Metadata

2025-06-24 11:22:00 UTC

Quality of metadata, sometimes needs a lot if editing

perpetual access

2025-06-24 11:25:51 UTC

Changes to perpetual access

High costs for unlimited access and DRM-free

2025-06-24 11:26:15 UTC

High costs of Law textbooks and monographs

2025-06-24 11:26:30 UTC

Pricing

events108 — 2025-06-24 11:35:51 UTC

This is a big issue for us at the moment and we may be forced to cut our subscriptions.

Changes towards subscription models

2025-06-24 11:38:33 UTC

ProQuest may just be the first of the suppliers to move to a subscription model - what do we do (both as individual libraries and as a sector) if this is more widespread?

Resilience

2025-06-24 11:40:58 UTC

Electronic resources are vulnerable not only to simple infrastructure issues but also to more complex problems like cyberattacks - how can we ensure access to resources that can be taken out of commission so easily?

Meeting WCAG 2.2 standards & show an awareness of the European Accessibility Act (EAA)

2025-06-24 11:42:59 UTC

Having a VPAT/roadmap available and being transparent.

Lack of uniformity within the eBook market

2025-06-24 11:49:17 UTC

Differences between publishers regarding pricing and access, a.k.a. worst offenders mean certain areas of knowledge more affected than others, i.e. Business, Health.

The importance of a metadata team

2025-06-24 12:02:05 UTC

Metadata roles seem to not be given enough attention generally. This is a problem for institutions with shared systems, as records become overwritten with new acquisitions, and the work done by some becomes erased. Prioritising metadata quality enhances discoverability, usage, and user experience. It also supports resources and systems librarians. There are too many institutions with not enough - or not at all - people looking after metadata.

Data

2025-06-24 12:23:34 UTC

This is an area we are looking at serious expansion into. We need good data to compare all the other areas. With such, we can properly analyse the deals, both individually and as an ecosystem. It would greatly help negotiations.

Increase usage for students

events108 — 2025-06-24 12:24:01 UTC

Our university is committed to advancing digital literacy and sustainability by prioritising the use of e-books. We aim to increase student engagement with electronic resources, encouraging the adoption of e-books as the preferred option over print materials whenever possible

With tightening budgets

2025-06-24 12:24:55 UTC

With tightening budgets and other pulls on library financial resources - pricing and the opportunity cost of going/not going for a subscription / deal is important.

Monographs and open access.

2025-06-24 12:26:51 UTC

The criteria was pulled from last REF after consultation - but very likely to be included in the next. UKRI long-form policy has begun - an expansion could be very costly, especially for those Dept/Divs with smaller budgets for such OA costs (HUMS)

Ensuring smooth access

2025-06-24 12:26:57 UTC

Some resources have very convoluted methods to access or require multiple hoops to jump through that do not function well with an LMS or discovery layer

Platform uniformity

2025-06-24 12:42:10 UTC

Some platforms just offer a better UX than others do - it would be good to see publishers/aggregators investing in improving platform utility and performance.

Licence Reviews

2025-06-24 12:42:44 UTC

What to look out for when reviewing a licence agreement? What agreement information to record (and strategies for recording this data)?

Price Increases

2025-06-24 14:16:24 UTC

How to manage price increases above 5%

Evaluation between similar platforms

2025-06-24 14:18:09 UTC

Effective resource evaluation between similar platforms

Digital Rights Management-free

2025-06-24 14:30:12 UTC

I would like to see more DRM-free content available, with fewer ebooks that have restricted access, such as those that expire after a certain number of uses or days.

Boosting engagement with e-resources

2025-06-24 15:30:45 UTC

As students increasingly rely on AI tools that may lead them to non-peer-reviewed or unreliable content we are looking for ways to increase engagement with our resources. Usage of some resources remains low, which may indicate that students are simply unaware of their availability. How can we make our resources more visible and appealing to students?

Boost awareness and engagement with e-resources and book titles

2025-06-24 16:00:25 UTC

It can be challenging to engage academics to update and utilise software such as reading lists to their fullest extend, as well as then actually get students to engage with their reading lists once they have been created. How can we best promote these services to not only get the best value for money from our purchases, but also to ensure that the materials we buy are visible and accessible?

Supplied Metadata

2025-06-24 16:08:23 UTC

Continue to liaise with vendors to ensure that the quality of metadata we receive for eTextbooks meets our standards.

Improving Metadata

2025-06-24 16:15:24 UTC

Continue to explore innovative ways using MarcEdit to improve metadata en masse for vender supplied eBook package records; and taking advantage of the 'task list' feature within MarcEdit.

AI permissions in licences

2025-06-24 21:43:10 UTC

AI isn't going away - it's too late for that. But some publishers aren't thinking ahead. A blanket "No" to text and data mining isn't the solution. A certain percentage, maybe?

Costs

2025-06-25 07:19:48 UTC

How can we provide all required resources with sustainable costs

Freedom to choose

2025-06-25 07:41:44 UTC

We see a trend from some publishers to move towards selling book packages or in specific platforms, and formats. Ideally we would like to continue to be able to purchase single books, DRM free and unlimited users

Textbooks

2025-06-25 07:42:52 UTC

Textbooks at a reasonable price

libraries collaborations

2025-06-25 07:54:34 UTC

Work together to get better deals, for example to explore the possibility of shared resources like expensive encyclopedias

2025-06-25 08:02:25 UTC

More accessible and user friendly UI of discovery system

Improving user experience or UX. As a recent student, I found it very frustrating to access our library resources without a clear user journey. Buttons are sometimes hidden, or difficult to customise. Hence, a flexible UX (which feeds into accessibility), could be a good approach. Consistency across board would be useful too.

2025-06-25 09:38:09 UTC

E-textbook models

2025-06-25 10:45:02 UTC

E-textbook models are high in cost, have limited suppliers who blame the costs on publishers, but then the publishers attribute the costs to suppliers, and unlike other subscription services like e-journals, don't provide any room for a post-cancellation access scenario with textbooks.

The increasing ubiquity of AI

2025-06-25 10:47:35 UTC

A lot of different suppliers and platforms are introducing AI features, and I know at my organisation we have been cautioning students against using AI as much as possible, and then on the platforms we use there will be an AI bot which we don't necessarily want.

Licences

2025-06-25 18:59:51 UTC

more unlimited licenses so that we can better accommodate reading lists.

Licences

2025-06-25 19:03:38 UTC

I would like to see a ban on one user licences as they are pretty useless

2025-06-25 19:04:16 UTC

Better in built screen readers for accessibility

AI influencing usage stats?

2025-06-26 08:01:15 UTC

AI may skew usage stats, as it may be hard to determine natural vs machine (bot) clicks. It may also be hard to capture open access use if the resources are in disparate places, if they cannot be indexed in Discovery.

Legal resources

2025-06-26 08:07:55 UTC

The big legal resource databases often do not share their metadata with Discovery suppliers, so cannot be indexed, which leads to us having to create supplementary links, which then opens another page for the user. The one search to rule them all is becoming harder to implement, in my opinion.

Engagement in eResources

events108 — 2025-06-26 08:08:24 UTC

With engagement in courses dropping and pleasures on budgets we're looking at how hard our resources are working and liaising with colleagues on how long a resource needs to be active before we see a return on investment.

Authentication & Spreadsheets

events108 — 2025-06-26 08:09:15 UTC

It took me awhile to get my head around authentication and I still get stuck on this sometimes. I also didn't realise how many spreadsheets I'd end up with/using either before I came into this E-Resources role!

Pricing & Perpetual Access

2025-06-26 09:00:21 UTC

This is a particular issue with text books that seem to be an opportunity for publishers to print money. They even decide what is a text book!