While there was some variability in how electronic resourcesmanagement work was organized at the four institutions, most functions, including licensing, acquisitions, cataloging and discovery were handled within technical services or dedicated electronic resources units rather than by public services units. Public services units were sometimes responsible for reporting and troubleshooting less complex problems, engaged in collection development at various levels and sometimes participated in committees or groups along with their technical services colleagues to plot strategy or set policy for higher level objectives within their libraries. Three of the libraries have significantly reorganized units responsible for managing electronic resources within the past five years while the other underwent significant reorganization within the past ten and also established an interdepartmental licensing team in 2010. The comments of the panelists suggested that trends regarding the consolidation or reduction in support staff positions and the repurposing of positions to manage electronic resources were likely to continue. Three of the four libraries already make use of a library services platform (LSP) while the fourth is actively engaged in the FOLIO project to develop an LSP. Most would like to see improvements in the ability of systems to track perpetual access and entitlements, streamline accounting systems, metadata and knowledge bases, and a consolidation in the number of tools required to manage information. Flat or declining materials budgets for acquiring electronic resources, the consolidation of vendors, inventory control, new technologies, resistance to change among library staff, and insufficient resources for tackling underlying problems rather than recurring symptoms were all cited as significant challenges by the Panel. New business models, open access, movements toward the standardization of metadata and resource records, and improvements in technologies and systems used to manage electronic resources were all cited as potential opportunities for improvement.
