Where eResource Professionals Learn, Connect, and Grow.

ER&L Tracks

The Electronic Resources and Libraries Conference tracks are maintained by our Program Planning Committee. The 2027 program will include these tracks, subtopics, and related areas of interest to our community.

1. E-Resources Management & Licensing

Managing electronic resources is a challenge, whether you’re new to it or have been engaged in the endeavor for years. Which systems and tools can be used to manage electronic resources more effectively? How are we successfully handling new content formats? What can we achieve through more thoughtful and assertive licensing? How can standards and best practices assist our efforts? How do we best accommodate the rapidly changing authentication and access landscape?

  • Managing multiple formats (including digital and streaming audio/video)
  • New acquisitions models
  • E-resources workflows and troubleshooting, including AI-assisted workflows
  • License negotiation and management
  • AI-related license terms (training rights, RAG, text and data mining, model input/output, and usage restrictions)
  • Content retention (including perpetual access, archival access, and digital preservation)
  • Text and data mining (copyright issues, licensing, pricing, etc.)
  • Data security, breaches, prevention and resolution: responsibilities of libraries, publishers, vendors; data ethics, patron data privacy (PII)
  • Authentication, authorization, and identity management for AI-integrated resources
  • Data storage, description, and access
  • Evolving library management systems and ERM applications
  • Metadata (article and chapter-level) and content delivery (KBART, etc.)
  • Standards and best practices
  • Access, authentication, and authorization models, challenges, developments
  • Consortial collaboration
  • Platform migrations
  • Documentation and training
  • Vendor transparency regarding AI capabilities, data use, and model training

2. Collection Development & Assessment

How do we demonstrate value to our larger organizations? Are our collection analysis processes efficient and effective enough? How can collecting and using data be made easier? How can we best assess our online collections?

  • AI’s impact on collection strategy and collection development
  • Employing new business models for targeted collection growth
  • Extracting and analyzing electronic resource data
  • Evaluating and selecting AI-enabled resources
  • Using analytics/data mining
  • AI-assisted collection analysis and decision support
  • Calculating ROI and showing value to funding bodies (including development of nontraditional metrics)
  • Deselection and its impact on e-resources collections strategies
  • Incorporating free and open access resources into library collections
  • Managing AI-generated content within library collections
  • Emerging usage metrics in AI-assisted research environments

3. Organizational Strategies & Promotion

Our organizations are quite dynamic. They routinely evolve due to changes in leadership and strategic vision, budget constraints, research interests, and user needs. All of these factors impact the way we acquire and manage e-resources. How can leadership support our efforts to keep up with rapid change? What type of leadership has helped create positive change? What are some examples of beneficial organizational shifts and improved communication? Where are there opportunities for internal collaboration, as well as external collaboration? Where do we still need to improve the way we work?

  • Preparing personnel for change
  • Fostering staff morale and engagement
  • Staffing needs and skills
  • Training and reskilling stories (good and not so good)
  • Collaborative internal relationships for e-resources support
  • Leadership and team-building
  • Communication at all levels of the organization
  • Building and maintaining inter-departmental partnerships
  • Organizational structures that get the work done effectively
  • Remote and hybrid work environments
  • Navigating organizational culture and challenges
  • Building organizational AI literacy
  • Strategic planning for AI adoption
  • Ethical decision-making around AI implementation

4. External Relationships

In the digital world, libraries don’t stand alone. They work closely with consortia, vendors, other libraries, and intermediaries. How are these relationships working? Are we getting the most out of our partnerships with other organizations and groups? How can we improve our external relationships?

  • Relationships/issues between librarians, vendors, publishers
  • Partnering with vendors to develop responsible AI products
  • Working with subscription agents, knowledge base providers, and other intermediaries
  • Working with faculty, departments, and community groups
  • Consortial relationships/Consortial approaches to AI procurement and licensing
  • Collaborative relationships in e-resource delivery
  • Building partnerships to evaluate emerging AI technologies
  • Negotiating AI transparency and accountability with publishers and vendors
  • Cross-institutional collaboration around AI governance

5. User Experience & Online Presence

Libraries exist in large part to support our users. How can we better serve our user populations? What kinds of communications will help us reach them when so much is competing for their attention? What tools, activities, or methods can help libraries better understand and track user needs? How can we demonstrate to users the value of libraries and create a better user experience? How do we integrate library content and services into online spaces users already inhabit?

  • AI-powered discovery and search experiences
  • Marketing/promoting e-resources to your users
  • Designing AI-assisted research experiences
  • Accessibility
  • Social media
  • Responsible integration of generative AI into library services
  • Tools and methods
  • Student/patron advisory boards
  • Web or online presence

6. Scholarly Communications & Library Publishing

How do we deal with new models of scholarship that are emerging? How do we accommodate new forms of content? What can we do to facilitate knowledge sharing and access? What role can the library play in the creation and distribution of the products of scholarship and creativity?

  • AI and scholarly communication
  • Read & publish / transformative agreements
  • Library publishing and university press partnerships
  • Open educational resources (OERs)
  • Open science and digital humanities
  • AI and research integrity
  • Research workflows and automation
  • Digital rights management and copyright
  • Rights metadata
  • Data curation
  • Institutional and disciplinary repositories, locally digitized materials
  • Altmetrics

Tags

ER&L 101

ER&L 101 sessions span all of the tracks, introducing an attendee to a foundational area of librarianship (such as licensing, ebook management, or troubleshooting). These sessions would not require background knowledge of the topic and would be appropriate for a practitioner new to electronic resources.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is quickly transforming the landscape of research, scholarly publishing, discovery, and library management. How are we navigating the unique opportunities and