Beyond the Job Title: Electronic Resources Librarian

A library tech job interview with Michelle Bowers

Posted on June 15, 2026 in Job Profiles

Authors:

Michelle Bowers
A librarian learning about the tech job, Electronic Resources Librarian

Core to LibTech Insights’s mission is demystifying the broad and dynamic field of tech librarianship in higher ed. In this series, we interview a librarian every month to learn a little more about their position. As library tech jobs proliferate, they sometimes come with unfamiliar, jargony, or intimidating titles. We want to go beyond the title and look at the responsibilities, skills, and joys that make up the job. We hope this series will increase your knowledge of library tech jobs and skills and offer you greater insight into the working lives of your colleagues.

For this installment, we spoke to Michelle Bowers to learn more about her job as an Electronic Resources Librarian. Check out our archive of job profiles. 💫

What is your job title and responsibilities?

I am the Electronic Resources Librarian at Upstate Medical University. Some of my core responsibilities include setting up and testing access to new databases, journals, and eBooks, and keeping up with any changes to how our users access those resources (such as authentication changes, new platforms, or new features). I also do a lot of troubleshooting when users report problems accessing those resources, and work with our vendors to resolve those issues. 

I’m also heavily involved in the library’s web presence. I review and update content on our website as well as our LibGuides/LibAnswers platforms, paying special attention to outdated information and accessibility concerns. I also serve as the point person for our institutional repository, which involves sharing information about the repository, reviewing submissions, and working with the authors to resolve copyright, embargo, and accessibility issues. 

Many Electronic Resources Librarians also handle vendor negotiation, licensing, and procurement. At my institution, this is handled by another librarian who oversees all purchasing. I support the decision-making processes for purchasing and renewal by setting up COUNTER usage reports and sharing usage information with colleagues.

Can you describe your career trajectory leading up to this position? 

I spent my early career years providing circulation and reference services at public libraries and picked up a part-time copy cataloging job on the side. I ended up loving the cataloging work and used that experience to get a full-time Catalog Librarian role at an academic health sciences center. As that library’s collections shifted away from print to focus more on our digital collections, my position shifted with it and was restructured as Electronic Resources Librarian. A few years later, I saw the posting for my current position and thought it would be a great way to expand my skill set into areas I wasn’t yet familiar with, like institutional repository management and usage tracking. I was also excited to join a library that was part of the SUNY (State University of New York) system, which has been a phenomenal source of information, support, and community.

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Can you give an example of a project you’ve worked on as the Electronic Resources Librarian? 

One of the biggest projects I’ve worked on in recent years has been reviewing our web presence for accessibility concerns and working with colleagues to remediate content. This is really a bunch of individual projects under one big umbrella, as it’s involved everything fromend-user testing of licensed resources to learning how to remediate PDF submissions for the institutional repository.

But the project I’ve had the most control over has been reviewing and remediating our website and LibGuides/LibAnswers platforms. I went through every page of our published content with a combination of automated testing tools (primarily the WAVE browser extension) and manual testing (tab order, color contrast, and screen readers). I took note of all concerns and either fixed them on the spot or gathered them to review with my supervisor, who has more expertise with coding. For issues that neither of us could fix, I reached out to dedicated support (such as our campus web team and SpringShare support).

I’ve found accessibility work to be very much a moving target (the more I learn, the more problems I become aware of), so I can’t say that this project is truly finished. However, it’s been very rewarding to be able to track my progress and feel like the library and our patrons are on much firmer ground than we were before.

For librarians taking on accessibility work or who want to make it a bigger part of their roles, what advice do you have for them? 

Try not to let perfect be the enemy of good. It can feel overwhelming to look at a report full of errors and know that you don’t have the ability to fix everything due to the limits of your time, knowledge, skill, or financial resources. But by fixing the things that are within your wheelhouse, you’re making that resource more accessible than it was before and making it a little easier to address the remaining problems when resources allow. Wherever possible, find a way to document the problems you found and what you resolved—and equally important, what you haven’t been able to resolve yet and why.

Related to that, seek out training with whatever resources are available to you. Our institution has access to Deque University, which has some really good courses tailored to particular roles and skill levels. For free resources, I found section508.gov and webaim.org to be really helpful, and a lot of libraries have put out some excellent LibGuides on accessibility practices. I also follow a variety of local listservs and communities of practice to stay up to date with new problems, new solutions, and new tools, as it really helps to be able to hear from colleagues facing similar issues rather than trying to solve every problem on my own.

Amid changes in the tech and e-resource landscape, how do you see the role of Electronic Resources Librarian evolving in the next few years? 

I think the biggest changes, unsurprisingly, will involve AI. Most of the large vendors include at least some form of generative AI in their platforms and products, with varying degrees of transparency about where it’s used, how it functions, how the data is stored and used, and whether customers have the ability to adjust or turn off those features. With how rapidly that sector is shifting and growing, it’s going to take some time investment to stay aware of those features across each platform and share that information with colleagues, particularly with those in reference and instruction. It’s also likely to impact licensing and subscription decisions; currently, many AI features are freely available or in beta version, but that will likely change as the technology advances and as users grow more accustomed to it.

Beyond that, I think that licensing and subscription decisions will continue to get even more complex than they already are, as subscription costs continue to rise while library budgets overall shrink or flatten. I believe we’ll see more libraries moving toward outside-the-box solutions, like rejecting traditional subscription models that don’t provide enough value for the cost, or vendors that don’t show commitment to making their content accessible. Being able to reliably track and analyze usage data will become even more important for making and justifying those decisions. As always, staying aware and informed of how other libraries are handling these challenges will be essential.

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