The 2CUL E-Resources Team recommends that we not renew the Resource Manager Consortial Edition product with ProQuest/Serials Solutions (renewal cost: $20,000 split between Cornell and Columbia). We have found it to be not an adequate workflow sharing tool as designed, and in some cases to not function even as designed. The few functions that we still can take advantage of do not justify the $20,000 cost to renew when our current subscription ends in February. We feel that we can make considerably better progress operating together in the separate instances of Resource Manager, than we can with the CE layer.
This decision will also open up an opportunity to move to the Intota platform for our e-resource management, if we feel that gives us improved workflow options. We feel that Resource Manager is still a good place for us to be collaborating, and that the other ProQuest/Serials Solutions products are useful to that end. As it currently stands, the CE system is not a viable piece of the overall puzzle for us.
Renewal date - February 1, 2015
Communicate cancellation with ProQuest by December 15, 2014
CE status review – CE has not been as particularly fruitful thus far due to bugs and generally not meeting our expectations for functionality. Let’s discuss where we are with it and where to go from here. The four areas that are possible to share data via CE are:
Databases - Our intent was to be able to manage some of our common ejournal, ebook, and database collections via CE, reducing duplicate effort across 2CUL.
- Reality: Inherited resources have no flexibility on the local level for even slight variation in titles or status. All resources inherited from CE appear as "From Consortium" instead of the actual resource status. This requires considerable additional clicking and searching to simply see the status before making any changes. This compounds our concerns about the overall slowness of the Client Center (see below)
Contacts - Our intent was to store all Contacts at the CE level, then connect them to appropriate providers and databases at either the CE or local level, depending on the situation. This would have reduced double entry of data and would have provided a one stop location for identifying contacts when troubleshooting or maintaining resources for each other.
- Reality: Unfortunately, a software bug makes this not function as desired or designed. We have an outstanding ticket for this issue, but do not expect a timely resolution.
Licenses - Our intent was to enter all e-resource licenses at the CE level, then use those as templates in the local RM systems in order to make necessary institutional customization. We expected to be able to save effort by entering 90% of the license data once for both institutions. This seems to function as desired, but this one function is not enough to justify the cost for CE.
Notes - We have not yet identified any 2CUL need for common notes and do not feel that this functionality warrants the additional cost of CE.
Summary of functionality and issues:
Not really a "shared workflow" tool. Really a top down consortia tool.
Recommend: Cancel CE, explore Intota platform for e-resource management, get involved in Intota consortial functionality implementation planning. Ideally at a zero additional cost.
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Pros of ditching CE:
- Intota becomes an option
- Potential savings in time/effort can be found without CE
Slowness of Client Center itself is an issue. CE compounds this as there ends up being more clicking.
Massive slowness at Columbia is a separate, but high priority issue. See support issue #: