When first starting out at the British Columbia Electronic Library Network, I knew that my main area of work would be around license renewals. Knowing very little about this area of work, I was interested to find out what the process entailed!
As summarized in the image above, licensing involves three main things:
- Writing and structuring emails
- Beginning with the first point, writing emails was more complex than I initially expected. Content needed to be written in a familiar format tailored to that specific renewal, and details needed to be checked and double-checked before sending them off to academic institutions for their responses.
- Communicating with vendors and academic instituti
ons
- When communicating with vendors, more often correspondence was through email to obtain pricing spreadsheets, updates, and details such as trial access links. However, I found myself needing to make some phone calls to ensure clarification on both ends.
- Creating and updating licensing renewal webpages
- As the BC ELN runs on the Drupal Content Management System, I was able to practice using this particular CMS and create/update renewal webpages according to each license's requirements.
I used some simple HTML skills and learned about Tableizer (a spreadsheet-to-HTML online tool) for creating clean tables on the webpage.
Of course, I received immense support from the BC ELN Licensing Coordinator with my first few renewals, but am currently working on new renewals independently. While it does require a lot of focus and attention to detail, I am enjoying these new skills and my increasing confidence in e-resource licensing renewals!