For me, part of the new experience of being an academic librarian is the encouragement to participate in conferences and engage with colleagues from other academic institutions. This past April, I had the wonderful opportunity to attend and present at my first national library conference as a librarian, the Electronic Resource and Libraries (ER&L) Conference in Austin, Texas.

ER&L is a small conference with about 400 attendees. To me, it was evident that this intimate and focused conference, allowed for those of us who work with electronic resources (everything from ejournals, databases, ebooks, discovery tools, Electronic Resource Management systems, and even those engaged in library publishing ventures), being in the same space and engaging with others who do the exact same thing is extremely valuable.

I took a great deal out of the conference, both in terms of the learning experience of working on a presentation with librarians from other institutions, as well as how to engage in a conference as a participant. Though I saw numerous, fascinating presentations here are a few highlights:

All you can ERMS: Laying out the Buffet of eResource Management Systems

A two-session panel discussion with librarians from different institutions on how they implement and utilize their different ERMs. ERMs covered included Innovative (what we have at OSU), CORAL (open source), Worldshare (OCLC), 360 Resource Manager (Serials Solutions), and Verde (Ex Libris).

Take-away: Each ERM offers a slight different solution to the user and selection of an ERM is highly depend on the needs of each institution, however if all the functionality of all the different vendors’ ERMs could be rolled into one product, that would be awesome. That day will come, hopefully sooner rather than later.

The Textbook Affordability Crisis and the Academic Library: Exploring Alternatives (Monica Metz-Wiseman, University of South Florida)

A compelling argument correlating the rising cost of textbooks, total cost of a college education, and student loan debt, and a call to librarians to participate and support the campus discussion on textbook affordability.

Take-away: The total cost of a college education and discussion of student-load debt are issues that are not going to go away. Campuses must find creative solutions to help students with the lowering the total cost of a college education. Librarians have specialized knowledge on the copyright, the economics of information and publishing industry and may be able to offer valuable insight or creative solutions in campus discussions on textbook affordability

Ohio Librarian Get-together:

Although this was not a presentation, prior to the conference two librarians from Denison organized an evening social for those of us in attendance from Ohio. Buckeyes were served and it was a great opportunity to talk to other electronic resource librarians on what they are doing with statistics, ERMs, OLinks and other specific issues or questions I run across all the time.

Take-away: Whether it’s because of OhioLINK or not, there’s a lot of good camaraderie among Ohio librarians who are more than willing to share their experiences and help each other out with issues that may be experienced across academic institutions.

There were so many other fascinating presentations that I couldn’t cover here, but I have notes and powerpoint slides from many of them, so feel free to send me an e-mail if you’re interest in a specific presentation.