Electronic Access to Resources (EAR) Committee Report

By Norman Buchwald (Chabot College), Committee Chair

Dear librarians:

We want to thank you for your input to the CCL-EAR Committee, including answering our survey for our potential future reviews in 2018.  When we meet in December as we are finalizing our Fall reviews, we will also plan our Spring reviews and plan to go forward via the direction you gave us.

Given that, based on your comments I should point out that we have recently written a thorough comparison review on video streaming services, which include streaming services that do not work with consortia such as Kanopy.  We are as a committee currently investigating the lack of some closed captioning in Films on Demand videos, especially those in the World Languages discipline and are talking with the vendor and hope to provide an update by early spring via the Outlook.

During the EAR Committee’s October teleconference meeting, in addition to discussing Films on Demand we did also discuss the issue of dated and outdated ebooks in ebook subscriptions.  This will likely move to a spring project, potentially a new review to address the content and content trends in Ebook subscriptions.  This should not be confused with an upcoming review on the platforms and usability of Ebook databases as that review analyzes multi-publisher platforms that may contain subscriptions or only perpetually owned or patron driven materials.  That review is currently being worked on and should be published by this Spring.

Please participate, if you can, in our future meetings!  Our calendar through the rest of the year is below. Look for email announcements with details on how to join the meetings.

Telephone Conference December 8, 2017
Telephone Conference January 26, 2018
Burbank Face-to-Face February 22-23, 2018
Telephone Conference April 27, 2018