ERM

ERM - Electronic Resources Module

Status:	In Development
Sponsored by:	Biblibre, ByWater Solutions, PTFS Europe
Developed by:	Jonathan Druart
Expected for:	2022-02-01
Bug number:	Bug
Work in progress repository:	No URL given.
Description:	Add a new well integrated ERM module to Koha inspired by comparable features in other systems

 Koha Electronic Resources Module (ERM)

Koha currently has no support for electronic resources management.

Although an open source project cannot "own" the content distributed by journal providers, we can integrate with third-party knowledgebases and discovery services (such as EDS, Summon etc.).

There are many advantages of having the electronic information in the same system as the print, including the ability to report across both sets of data. 

The proposal is to create a new ERM module which is broken down into a number of sub-components: -

• Agreements
• eHoldings
• Licences
• Usage Statistics
  

Agreements

Agreements describe what you can access (compared to licences, which describe what you can do with them). We will have a number of tables which link together the agreement itself to agreement periods, users, lines, and licences. This consolidates all the information which, historically, was often kept in spreadsheets, filing cabinets etc.!

eHoldings

Will be able to integrate with a number of knowledgebases, starting with the EBSCO knowledgebase (which can be connected to via their HoldingsIQ tool). 

Other databases can be added after that, popular ones include GOKb (USA/Global), bacon (France) and KB+ (UK)

We can also add support for KBART files. 

In Koha we (ideally) only want to store titles that are part of our holdings (that is, selected). So, eHoldings module should be able to search the entire KB but flag which titles/packages are held (and therefore in our local db). It should be possible to select both Packages and individual Titles. 

Licences

Will be able to store information about the licence as well as hold licence files themselves (in PDF, DOC etc.). It will be possible to import ONIX-PL files

Acquisitions

All of the above ties into the acquisitions module by way of the vendor record. In the world of electronic resources, "vendors" is not necessarily a good description as they are really "Organisations" divided into bodies such as "platforms", "consortiums", "vendors", "libraries", "providers", "publishers" etc. Renaming the Koha Acquisitions modules to "Organisations" may be a step too far for now but we can add a search filter to filter out actual print vendors from the rest. 

Ordering of e-resources is done via the current acquisitions ordering processes.

Usage Statistics

Support for both SUSHI and COUNTER. 

We could potentially integrate with services like EBSCO's Usage Consolidation service

Reporting

How do we report across e and print holdings? Common questions are about comparing usage of print and e resources. We need a way to link the biblionumber of the print edition to the eresource record in Koha eRM.

A-Z Title Index

From the information stored above in the eHoldings table it could also be possible to add an OPAC A-Z Journals Listing. 

Workflow Management

This is probably the topic of a larger Koha module that could be applied to modules other than ERM.