Continuing to meet the e-resources challenge

The services that libraries provide continue to evolve with technology and user expectations. The availability of electronic resources has allowed library users to find full-text resources from wherever they're searching, and library staff members have been able to repurpose space to encourage more collaboration. But managing e-resources poses challenges that libraries are still working to overcome.

In 2013, OCLC released Meeting the E-Resources Challenge, which outlined the ways in which libraries were learning to incorporate e-resources into their workflows. This update to that report checks in with eight libraries in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States to find how both the challenges and the solutions have evolved.

The libraries discuss challenges related to each step of the e-resources workflow: select, acquire, describe, discover, and renew. The report suggests that while e-resource workflows have improved, library staff will continue to look for ways to simplify them and offer more services to users.

This case study is available in English, German, Spanish, French, and Simplified Chinese.