Electronic resources

Selection

Depending on the resource, decisions pertaining to the selection, retention, and deselection of electronic resources are made by liaison librarians who have designated responsibility for relevant subject areas, the Collections Team, the Coordinator, Collections Management, and the Associate University Librarian, Collections, or a combination thereof. 

• The following categories of electronic resources may be selected after system compatibility assessment:
  • full text electronic resources, including monographs, serials, etc.
  • multimedia resources
  • and databases, including abstract and index databases and data repositories
• Accessibility: in addition to quality of content, accessibility of content and platform must be taken into consideration.  (See Accessibility of collections). 

Electronic resource trials

An electronic resource trial is an agreement made between the Libraries and an electronic resource provider whereby the Libraries provides to its users access to the resource for a limited time. The trial normally has no cost to the Libraries.

The purpose of a trial is to determine the suitability, quality, and/or feasibility of an electronic resource in supporting the scholarly activities of the University community.

Trials are only run when there is reasonable likelihood that the Libraries will subscribe to or purchase the resource. It should not be used as a substitute for a subscription or purchase, nor should it be used to provide short-term access to a resource for purposes other than those stated above. Repeated and/or regular requests for trials of an individual resource may be rejected.

Licensing

Electronic Resources Librarians negotiate licenses for electronic resources that address the University's needs and recognize its obligations to the licensor.

• A single license is negotiated for the entire University, including the Université de St. Boniface.
• The license agreement sets terms that will best serve the community, whether they are on or off campus.

Maintenance of resources

• Deselection of electronic resources will in general follow the same guidelines applicable to deselection of other materials (see Discarding library materials).
• Functionality of URLs in catalogue records is maintained through vendor notifications and updates. URLs are not monitored manually.  For those URLs that cannot be maintained automatically Libraries relies on user-reporting of malfunctioning links.
• In exceptional circumstances, and if copyright allows, printed copies of documents from electronic resources can be added to the physical collection when a liaison librarian or the Collections Team determines that the material should be permanently retained, online access is at risk, and the additional cost of printing, storing and binding the document is warranted.
• Collections Team and Electronic Resources librarians are responsible for the discovery of electronic resources.

If you have any questions, contact the Associate University Librarian, Collections.