Yale University Library

Beginning in February 2007, Electronic Collections and Medical
Library staff began a pilot project to jointly resolve electronic
resource access issues. The pilot has been successful, and we are
pleased to announce the official launch of The Electronic Resources
Problem Team (E-ResProb) to the general community.

Purpose
E-ResProb
<<mailto:e-resprob@mailman.yale.edu>e-resprob@mailman.yale.edu
<mailto:e-resprob@mailman.yale.edu>> responds to and resolves access
problems for electronic resources purchased by the library. The
service is staffed Monday to Friday from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm. The
team is committed to responding to queries by the end of the
following business day. The team's specific focus is library access
problems, such as the inability to download full text copies of a
journal or to access databases. This includes broken URLs and
knowledgebase issues with Yale Links/SFX.

Team Composition
Currently, the team consists of M&P and C&T staff members and
maintains a weekly schedule of half-day shifts. All problems are
reported to the E-ResProb listserv with the person on duty making
the initial reply. All messages are copied to the list for tracking
and monitoring purposes. Problems are triaged with staff responding
to their level of expertise, and either handing off or consulting
with more experienced e-resource staff on complex problems. Problems
outside the team's scope are forwarded to the appropriate group
(i.e. Metalib problems go to IS&P, catalog issues to Catalog
Management, reference issues are forwarded to the appropriate
reference desk or librarian, etc.)

Key reasons for having the team
Our goal is provide timely response to electronic resource access
problems by staff with the most understanding of these products and
how they are acquired. We hope to remove bottlenecks caused by
problems reported to individuals resulting in more efficient use of
staff time. It is our hope that we can expand our team and hours
with staff from other library units with e-resource experience or
responsibilities in the future.

Current team members:
Earl Badger
Nisa Bakkalbasi
Daniel Dollar
Mary Hughes
Kimberly Parker
Jeannette Ponzio
Diana Quinones
Evviva Weinraub

We look forward to assisting you with your Electronic Resource issues.

If you have additional questions about this service, you may direct
them to Daniel Dollar <mailto:daniel.dollar@yale.edu><daniel.dollar@yale.edu>.