Thanks to all who responded to my query and confirmed there's no simple
solution, though the degree of distribution of activity varies.
I haven't had chance to analyse and summarise so have just included the
(anonymised) responses in this message.
I also received a spreadsheet of an Australian survey, but JISCmail rules
don't allow me to distribute that. If the list owner agrees we could post it
on the list homepage.

Ian Winship

----------------------------------------------------------
I am responsible for the following:

* accessing deals NESLI and otherwise as Library Rep.
* administration of licences in tandem with our Intellectual Property Rights
officer
* placing orders for e-journals, chasing free-with-print, activating titles
* overseeing usage statistics
* checking availability and sorting out problems
* authentication, management of passwords (but not Athens yet as that is
within our system support team)
* subscription administration work such as checking title lists, first
contact with customer support
* overseeing web pages for e-resources and creating most of them
* cataloguing in tandem with others - a half-time cataloguer who also does
work with usage stats, an e-strategy support asst. who helps with small
projects
* troubleshooting for all e-resource queries, around 80 a week, from
students and academics, and Library staff
* training - for students as part of their Infoskills sessions, for
librarystaff (Faculty Teams, Reader Services, induction for new staff)

plus other little jobs as they come up such as cost analysis, etc etc.
---------------------------------------------------------
For us at ..............the e journals seems to be divided up between myself
(I'm the Medical Liaison Librarian) and the Journals librarian. We both
troubleshoot user queries. I find out about the licensing and she orders. An
Information assistant keeps the A-Z list webpage of journals up to date, we
also link to them from Unicorn and the Jnls librarian put the URLs in the
MARC record too.
We could do with an e-journals librarian (part time). The current system
doesn't work very well and we don't have a mechanism by which to check if
they are still available, other than to rely on readers telling us.
We are looking into management systems eg TD Net.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
I am the electronic resources librarian at .... I manage ejournals, I'm
Athens administrator and web-editor of the Library website. I'm also
subject librarian for 2 departments. On the ejournals side I maintain our
ejournals database, activate subscriptions, do troubleshooting and user
enquiries. Our Periodicals Librarian deals with orders and liaison with
subscription Agents
--------------------------------------------------------------
We have a very distributed set-up:

Assistant Director (Research Support) - selection, in consultation with
subject librarians
Cataloguing & Acquisitions Manager - access (web catalogue, A-Z lists, proxy
server, scripts) and co-ordination
Acquisitions Librarian - registration etc
Cataloguers - catalogue
Branch periodicals assistants - queries etc
Information and subject librarians - promotion and training

The advantages of a distributed system are that it makes use of the skills
of a number of different people, and also spreads familiarity with
e-journals around the library. The disadvantage is the difficulty of
co-ordinating things - we manage, but it is a bit ad hoc. For the future we
are thinking of introducing some kind of group or forum so that we all know
what each other is doing, and also trying to increase the involvement of the
periodicals assistants, who have a lot of relevant experience in the print
environment.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
We have me (Electronic Resources Manager) and the equivalent of 1.5 FTE
information officers who keep the content in our library Web site up to date
and look after everything to do with electronic resources, including what we
call the Forth Bridge Project - keeping lists of ejournals up to date! We
are part of the Online Team, which includes 3 FTE techie types who develop
the technical side of the Web site and also other electronic projects and
initiatives. We've just started adding the e-resources to the catalogue,
which is being done in our Bib Services Unit and the lists on the Web will
be generated from the catalogue when this exercise has been completed. At
the moment we have an Oracle database sitting behind the Web site and use
php scripts to pull the info out on to the Web. I also manage the copyright
clearance service which fits quite neatly with the e-resources.
---------------------------------------------------------------
At present both I (with responsibilities for acquisitions and bib services
and an overview of recurrent finances) and our Systems Support librarian
look at the various deals that come our way, usually bringing our Serials
librarian (responsible to me) into the picture. If something looks a
possibility at all in terms of cost, subject spread, cross-site networking,
etc we then involve relevant Faculty subject librarians, who may in turn
consult faculties. A final decision on acquisition will be taken by Library
Management Team, of which Systems Support lib and myself are members.

Ordering, licence checking, linking to our home page, authentication are
done by Systems Support Librarian and his staff. For the moment we see the
inital set up taking place in Systems Support but begin to bring into
"normal" Serials routines within Resource Management renewal of
deals/subscriptions, processing of invoices, anything that can be
"routinised".

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------
I guess like you , responsibility for the actual "day-to-day" management of
e-journals (and e-texts in general come to that!) is divided between
different people due to the different skills and knowledge required. Hence
the information (subject) librarians, website manager, cataloguers (metadata
..) and acquisitions librarian all have key roles to play. In addition, the
information resources manager (me!) has overarching responsibility for both
the general and financial management of e-j's

I agree that the mechanisms of management of e-journals are fundamental to
the implimentation of e-resources, without prior management planning,
libraries are asking for trouble. Pity I cannot find all the needed skills
in one person .... maybe you are lucky enough to have done so?

At the end of the day, this is just part of the re-engineering of academic
libraries and their services, and of course, for librarians to re-image
themselves in terms of their work and work roles ....
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------
In reply to your message, I am the 'electronic journals co-ordinator for the
University of .... I do this on a full time basis (working 4 days a week) .
My job revolves around the University electronic information pages web-site
where I maintain the journal links either directly to publishers or via a
host (Swets, Ingenta, Catchword) .
I am required to liase with publishers directly or via our agents
(SwetsBlackwell) with any queries regarding the set-up of online journals as
well as keeping our rsl's informed of the latest electronic journals news. I
work closely our University head of information services, when working out
costings of the latest publishers offers and I try to make some sense of
various 'statistics' we are given.
In the last two years I have worked on the design and set-up of our A-Z
listings of e-journals web-pages ( we now have full text access to over 3400
titles), and I am responsible for keeping them up to date and for
investigating any access problems which should arise.
I should add that I enjoy this work immensly.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Here at ... I am the ejournals administrator, based in the serials office

I deal with maintaining the ejournal web pages which include an A-Z and
subject list.
I also am responsible for registering new titles and setting up access,this
include liasing with publishers
I look after all queries regarding ejournals.
We currently do not catalogue our ejournals, but it is something that falls
under my responsibility

The purchasing is done by the head of serials and decisions on aquisitions
are made by a steering group which includes subject librarians and head of
bibliographic services
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've only been here since October, and our Periodicals Librarian is covering
our Engineering Librarian's maternity leave, so boundaries are pretty fluid
at the moment.

As Electronic Resources Manager, I am based in our Systems Team. I seem to
have ended up doing both strategic management and micro-management.

At the strategic level I chair our Electronic Resources Group where I:

- provide analysis of usage stats (and I have used this to bid succesfully
for additional recurrent funding from the university for us to take up more
NESLI deals, and to be able to renew the print subscriptions tied to these).

- prepare simplified costings of latest NESLI deals, evidence of demand from
ILL stats, recommendations (in consultation with subject librarians),
etc.

- advise our senior management team in areas of e-journals, ebooks,
databases, eprints, etc.

At the micro level, I:

- activate online access where this is included in our print subscriptions
- liaise with our computing service over the list of domains that use our
EZProxy server for off-campus access (and our cache bypass list, until we
stopped needing it yesterday!)

- maintain our e-resources web pages, inc lists of e-journals generated from
our catalogue records, and a page of known problems

- take on e-resources enquiries that can't be answered by our enquiry desk
staff

- catalogue some e-journals

In Technical Services:

- our (acting) Periodicals Librarian deals with p-journals (so any access
problems due to underlying p-journal subscription problems are hers), and
invoicing and ordering.

- 2 x 0.5 FTE cataloguers catalogue most ejournals, under my supervision,
and also catalogue other materials too. So we can call on them when we have
major collections or updates, but I can do day-to-day maaintenance where it
is as quick for me to do it, as it is to tell someone else what needs doing.

In Academic Liaison:

- Academic Liaison Librarians negotiate which journals to subscribe to, but
I advise over e-access, e.g. don't buy titles/can't cancel titles included
in NESLI deals; move to online-only where it saves us money and the
acadmeics agree.

I'm not sure why I'm in Systems but as an IT-minded person I quite like it.
With plenty of contact with Tech Services, Acad Liaison, and senior
managers, it is, as one of the previous replies said, thoroughly enjoyable.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ian Winship
Learning Resources, University of Northumbria at Newcastle
City Campus Library, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST, UK
                  ----------------
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
phone: 0191 227 4150 fax: 0191 227 4563
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