CORAL: an open source Electronic Resource Management (ERM) System

CORAL: an open source Electronic Resource 

Management (ERM) System

CORAL (Centralized Online Resource Acquisition and Licensing) is originally developed by University of Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Libraries, released in the year 2010. It runs on PHP 5, MySQL 5 and webserver. CORAL provides libraries the option of collecting information of all their electronic resources at one central place and reorganize their acquisition, licensing, and providing usage statistics. Being open source, it provides libraries struggling with dwindling budgets, a new option for organizing their electronic resources.

URL link: http://erm.library.nd.edu

Compatibility:  HTML, LDAP (Light Weight Directory Access Protocol)

Language, Database: Linux, Window, Mac and 

                                      JavaScript, PHP5, MySQL5

Its features promise to fit local needs.

• Open source software, so no annual fees.
•  No need of huge investment for implementation.
•  Easy installation.
•  It has web-interface.
•  Its modular infrastructure allows phased in implementation. 
•  It has four major modules such as Resource, Licensing, Organizations and Usage Statistics (focus on specific resources) and other module Management is meant to store documents, such as policies, processes, and procedures, related to the overall management of electronic resources.
•  All the modules are connected and information included in the various modules is linked together.
• Field values and workflow steps can be easily customized with the CORAL administration tool. And every library can create its own distinct workflow for ordering, licensing, invoice approval, payment, and activation, moreover distinct workflow can be created for different types of resources like journals through consortia, journals through EBSCO, for journals in which payments are made directly to the publishers or journals through vendors and free resources also.
• Automated emails are generated to indicate staff when new task is available.

Licensing module:  provides the facility of organizing licenses of resources. It allows the uploading of digital format licenses in to CORAL, attaching the licenses to the resources especially when multiple resources (like journal packages, ebooks packages and databases) are governed by single license. It allows searching the licenses by vendor name or product name and easily checking all information about licenses.

Resource module:  library can gather the information about general product descriptions, acquisition data, access parameters, cataloging metadata, and information about contacts and accounts.

Organization module: keeps the vendor information. Its organization module comes preloaded with Organization’s names and organization names aliases.

Usage statistics module: this module lets the staff to generate their own reports.  It comes predefined with six reports for viewing roll-ups, specific title usage and top journal uses. It allows management of statistics vendor vise and publisher vise. Any type of suspicious activity regarding abnormal downloading of a journal articles or excess downloading in one month can also be checked.

To know more: http://coral-erm.org/