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2009 ERA Members Forum
On 25 March 43 ERA members, ERA Executive Committee and library representatives gathered together to discuss key issues and provide advice on the future directions for the national consortia. We were able to celebrate the fact that ERA now reaches approximately 8.5 million Australians through 1,193 libraries.
We were delighted to announce the new selection of products which increased the subject areas to incorporate suggestions from the last years forum – the new subject areas were– Humanities & Social Sciences and Science & Technology.
The participating vendors on the new product panel joined us for much for the day – and contributed significantly to excellent discussions about promotion and marketing and our knowledge of products.
Some of the very important issues discussed at the forum were:
- The importance of continuing to offer products that can be purchased on a calendar year or financial year basis;
- Governance framework – a paper outlining suggested changes to the framework was agreed in principle.
- Future ERA Business Model - a very useful paper was background for discussion about billing and purchasing models. We agreed that the ERA Executive and NLA would consider the forum’s views and determine priorities for ERA and report back to ERA members;
- “Best price” is now included in the new Head Deed. The intention of this clause is that prices achieved through ERA should, not only match those provided direct to libraries or through other consortia, but should be better. This clause requires vendors to ensure that libraries are not disadvantaged financially by participating in ERA.
Wendy Quihampton, the Program Manager for Re-imagining Library Services (National and State Libraries Australasia (NSLA)), gave an inspiring paper outlining the 10 projects underway as part of strategic plan in particular noting the projects of particular relevance to ERA. You can find more information about these projects at http://www.nsla.org.au/projects/rls.
Do share your views with us – to make ERA an even more useful means of obtaining quality full text content for Australians through their libraries.
Roxanne Missingham - ERA Executive Committee Chair
[photo left to right: Tony Leschen, Geoff Strempel, Lynn Fletcher, Roxanne Missingham, Nikki Darby, Lynette Miller, June Wall and Ann Ritchie]
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