Electronic Resources and Collection Analysis Department (ERaCA)

The mission of the Electronic Resources and Collection Analysis Department (ERaCA) is to:

• acquire and license online resources as selected by the subject specialists for the collections
• establish and maintain seamless access to online content
• initiate and fulfill requests for collection analysis
• support collection budget management.

Within these broad goals of the mission, there are countless tasks to achieve them.

Acquisitions of electronic resources includes:  (see New E-Resources at Northwestern [1])

1. ordering
2. licensing of the content
3. building lists of titles already subscribed to for a single publisher
4. getting the publisher paid for uninterrupted ongoing access.

Managing access to content involves:

1. setting up the initial link
2. taking care of broken links
3. tracking down rights to content in backfiles, as well as titles sold from one publisher to another, or just migrated from one delivery platform to another
4. access through article linking and federated search software
5. some cataloging work.

Collection analysis and planning:

1. evaluates collections from many viewpoints
2. drills into data that helps describe the Library’s collections and the use of them
3. enhances and maintains the Collection Assessment: Data & Methods Bank [2]

Collection budget management support:

1. interfaces with collection analysis for all of the collections
2. will aid subject specialists with evaluation of and decision-making on existing collections and those under consideration for acquisition.