OpenAthens’ mission to break down barriers to knowledge with library and publisher collaboration
We’re joined by Emma Wilson-Shaw, e-resource manager at OpenAthens for a guest blog post about library and publisher collaboration.
Read Emma’s commentary below:
As a cloud-based authentication service, OpenAthens is all about making access to digital resources easy and secure. It allows library patrons to discover and access online content wherever they choose. They can use any discovery platform they like and they need only a single set of credentials. In essence, it puts library users in the driving seat on a discovery journey without hold-ups, diversions or roadblocks.
Ultimately, libraries are customers with power. Ones that work closely with their vendors and publishers have an advantage in understanding challenges, overcoming technical issues and providing a great user experience for their patrons. Fostering these relationships makes sound sense and, in most cases, libraries will be pushing at an open door when they kick off those conversations. After all, happy customers mean vendors and publishers have fewer support tickets and an easier time when it comes to subscription renewals.
Collaboration gets things done
Last year OpenAthens and Technology from Sage ran a webinar encouraging partnerships between library professionals and IT specialists within their organisations to anticipate and overcome technical challenges. These days new technologies become mainstream fast, and closer cooperation can help hard-pressed library services to keep their systems up to date, and their staff’s skills current. Adoption of AI went from 0-60 in what felt like moments, and librarians with effective relationships with their IT departments will have been able to tap into IT knowhow and fast-track skills development.
In the same collaborative spirit, we strongly encourage libraries to collaborate with publishers. Complicated, multi-layered library systems don’t always integrate optimally with vendor platforms; when they don’t, resources can become harder to discover and use.
In these cases, it’s usually best to arrange a call between the parties, and we’re always keen to facilitate this. Our priority is to scope out a technical issue and fix it, and it helps if the relationship is already established. Typically, a call will involve our library customer, OpenAthens technical support and often me as well.
There isn’t always a quick fix, however. Where this is the case, it helps to be having honest conversations to understand the vendor or publisher’s priorities and make sure they know the library’s difficulty. We may be aware that the issue is more widespread and urgent than the publisher thinks, and relay this to them. And if the library is part of a purchasing consortium, we might be able to leverage its buying power to encourage a speedier resolution.
Advice for libraries
Taking the first step towards developing closer working relationships is simple. Talk to your account manager at the publisher or vendor, if you have one. If you don’t, contact your OpenAthens support provider, and we can bring all parties together.
By understanding each other’s needs, requirements, struggles and challenges, libraries and publishers can work together towards shared goals of making the library end user experience the best it can be.
Publishers and vendors benefit from their licensed resources being available to the people who are entitled to them. And the library can offer a personalized, added-value service that is measurable to ensure future business decisions regarding resource management and product development are data-driven with anonymized user data.
