Job ads for electronic resource librarians

This week's Albitz and Shelbern (2007) reading pointed out that many electronic resource (ER) librarian positions vary dramatically from library to library. Some jobs focus more on public services while others focus more on technical services. Other jobs throw the "kitchen sink" at their jobs ads and expect the librarian to complete tasks that only a "superhuman" could perform.

I can see how this might happen. It seems like electronic resources management in general is still shaking out...which means that we will probably see lots of differences between jobs ads. As it turns out, I am planning on applying for an "e-resources librarian" at a law school library. (Hopefully I can get that cover letter finished very, very soon...) I thought it would be interesting to take a look at this particular position and relate this week's readings to it.

The main role of the e-resources librarian position at the law school library is to manage the "evaluation, acquisition, licensing, cataloging, maintenance, training, and promotion of electronic and serial resources." The incumbent will also have to collaborate and coordinate with library staff. The next important duty is supporting the research duties of school staff, including faculty, staff, and students conducting statistical research. Much of the emphasis is on helping staff the research community find data sources and to help with statistical analyses. The librarian also provides related instruction, for datasets and statistical software programs (e.g., Stata), but also to advise the research community on acquiring other online resources. The librarian will also have to develop their own web-based projects and will supervise staff. The list of required and preferred characteristics matches to the duties quite reasonably (e.g., MLIS and advanced degree in law or social science required, Drupal and HTML preferred, etc.).

This position seems to fall more strongly in the public services camp than the technical services camp. When I read Albitz and Shelbern's article, I found it surprising that an ER librarian position might fall into public services at all. It seemed to me that managing electronic resources would map pretty well onto more traditional technical service job duties. But this position description helps me to see how it makes sense that an ER librarian might work in a public services capacity. The ER librarian can be the person to both manage the electronic resources, but also promote their use to their community. And who better to instruct users on electronic resources than the ER librarian herself?

The emphasis on statistical support seems to fall somewhere between public services and kitchen sink. It is obviously public services in that you are actively supporting the research community's statistical needs. On the other hand, it feels a bit like a kitchen sink-y in that providing such statistical support is a pretty unique, niche role to fill. It might be hard to find someone who would have experience in both e-resources and statistical support.

On yet the other hand, it seems like there are quite a few jobs ads that require a bit of everything. It seems like this is not at all unusual for librarians. I think that is a pretty interesting and fun part of librarianship--you get to be a jack-of-all-trades that enables access over here, supports scholarship over there, and instructs a bit over here. There is so much change happening in our field that it is necessary to stay flexible and be able to fill multiple roles.

References:

Rebecca S. Albitz, Wendy Allen Shelbern (2007) “Marian Through the Looking Glass: The Unique Evolution of the Electronic Resources (ER) Librarian Position” in Mark Jacobs (Ed) Electronic Resources Librarianship and Management of Digital Information: Emerging and Professional Roles, Binghamton NY: Hayword, pp 15-30.

When library stuff follows you around

Yes, it is following me everywhere! I sat down for a nice, quiet lunch in the SLIS commons and as I am wont to do, I opened up The Chronicle of Higher Education, or "People magazine for academics," as one of my friends describes it. Low and behold I came across an article by Jennifer Howard titled, "Publishers Find Ways to Fight 'Link Rot' in Electronic Texts" in the Hot Type column.** The focus was on CrossRef. Lunch was ruined! I kid, I kid.

Howard does a nice job of describing how CrossRef manages citation linking through DOIs. One of the important points that Howard mentions (which I was also mentioned in this week's readings) was the collaborative nature of this whole endeavor. Thousands of publishers need to be on board with CrossRef and the DOI system for it to even work a little bit. The CrossRef association needs to exist to manage all of these DOIs. It is an important point to make. Additionally, much of the initial emphasis was on large publication houses, especially for STEM fields. Now, more and more small publishing ventures are being incorporated (although some find it hard to afford).

Another interesting point mentioned was that DOIs are useful for objects other than scholarly, text-based articles. If you are more interested in linking to data, then DataCite is the DOI consortium for you. It is interesting to see that there are multiple DOI associations. I am curious to know why CrossRef does not handle all DOIs. I imagine that each association has its own strengths that they can apply to different forms of digital objects.

A final interesting point was that the final frontier of DOIs is so-called "gray literature," which are reports not published in a scholarly venue (think government documents and white papers). They are usually housed in a spot on an organization's website and links are probably more prone to breaking than others. Gray literature is still cited, though, and therefor worthy of DOIs.

Howard also mentions Ars Technica's "DOIs and their discontents" blog post. This science-related blog frequently uses DOIs. However, they sometimes fail because the DOIs are sometimes published before the actual article. (Ars gets access to articles and their DOIs before they are published.) So you might try to click on the DOI, but it would just fail since the article hasn't actually been published yet.

I find it fascinating that publishers, organizations, and libraries have come together to create such nifty software that really enables users to find and link to material. DOIs get my stamp of approval!

**I realize that this link will not work. You can try waiting a month for the Chronicle of Higher Ed to plod through its subscription embargo on our licensed database. Or you can try tracking down a print copy for now.

Howard, J. (2010, October 31). Hot Type: Publishers Find Ways to Fight 'Link Rot' in Electronic Texts. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/article/Publishers-Fight-Link-Rot-in/125189/

Believe me, I find it very ironic that I am trying to discuss the merits of a text that is all about access and connection, and my readers will not even be able to easily click-through to the article.

ERMes Electronic Resource Management (ERM) Software

Many thanks to Katy K for teaching our class about ERMes Electronic Resource Management (ERM) Software at Murphy Library of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. The hands-on example really made ERM software much clearer. I have to say, the readings for this week were less than inspired. What a slog. It was really hard to take anything from them. I think you kind of had to know what ERM software looked like already to get much from the readings. But Katy came to the rescue with her demonstration.

I think the demonstration proved that ERMes is simple enough to use. I can't make any claims about other software, but if they are like ERMes, it seems like you could get a handle on the software pretty easily (especially if you are familiar with relational database design). I think the other thing that the demonstration proved is that entering all of your local data into the software could take a really, really long time. Now it does not seem surprising that some libraries might want ERM software, of even to have already bought it, but have no way of implementing it. There could be some real staffing hurdles when it comes to ERM software implementation. It will be interesting to see how licenses get incorporated into ERM software (perhaps via SERU).