CORAL to the Rescue: An E-Resource Management Solution for Small-Staffed, Budget-Challenged Academic Libraries

Richard Wisneski, Assistant Director, Digital Resources & Discovery Services, Cleveland State University Yuezeng Shen, Head, Cataloging, Cleveland State University Yiu-Man Yee, Network Support Specialist, Cleveland State University Last year, Cleveland State University’s main library re-examined its home-grown Electronic Resource Management (ERM) system, which had been developed years ago and lacked essential functionality many commercial ERMs had since come to include. In the course of this re-examination, the library researched, and eventually adopted, an open-source ERM known as CORAL (Centralized Online Resources Acquisitions and Licensing). In this presentation, we will discuss the factors that led to our decision to migrate from our home-grown system to CORAL. We will present our installation of and workflows in CORAL, and the functionality we are currently investigating that will allow us to further streamline our work, data gathering, and data analysis. We will discuss CORAL in relation to other commercial products such as Innovative Interface’s ERM, and the training that goes into showing others how to use and navigate CORAL, from technical services librarians, to interlibrary loan librarians, to subject librarians. Lastly, we will discuss ways CORAL can be customized to meet the needs and workflows for libraries based on their own staffing and assessment needs