Quest for the Perfect ERM: Using Airtable to Manage Electronic Resources

Learn more about this new tool!

Posted on August 12, 2024 in Blog Posts

Authors:

Jacqueline Carrell
A librarian using Airtable as an ERM

There’s a famous (and hilarious) scene from the television show I Love Lucy where Lucy and Ethel get a job working at a chocolate factory. Their job is to wrap candies as they come down the conveyor belt. The conveyor belt moves at increasing speeds, and they quickly learn they can’t keep up. Lucy shouts, “I think we’re fighting a losing game!”

Managing electronic resources can sometimes feel like that. It is easy to get overwhelmed by the onslaught of new orders and renewals, the sheer variety of packages (DDA, EBA, and now TA), the random emails to price out or trial a database, combing over license agreements to ensure compliance, and remembering all the steps to properly activate or deactivate a resource. 

Over the years, many e-resources librarians have developed tools to assist them with this work that supplement the functionality of a library catalog. These tools can run the gamut from a hodgepodge of spreadsheets, email folders, forms, and project management programs to full systems built by in-house programmers. Nothing is ever perfect, and the quest for “one program to rule them all” goes on.

Enter Airtable

Airtable is a new(ish), cloud-based platform that combines some of the best features of spreadsheets, Microsoft Access databases, forms, data visualization, and project management tools. It integrates with industry-leading, third-party applications, like Box, Asana, Trello, and Slack. Layered over top are automation capabilities like “send an email” upon a specific trigger. And no coding knowledge is required. It’s a versatile platform with ongoing development and a vibrant user community.

Here are just two examples of what it can do for the e-resources world:

  • Automate the approval process for renewals: In larger libraries, it is common for different librarians to make decisions about whether to renew a database. In Airtable, you can create a base that lists your resources, assign them to the librarians with a due date, and set up automatic email reminders for them to login and flag it “renew” or “cancel” and even document a reason why.

  • Receive feedback during database trials: Typically, librarians will create a survey to ask users for feedback during a trial. The problem is the results of the survey are stored in another system away from any records on whether it was purchased. In Airtable, you can create a form, fire the results into an Access-style database, and link those results to an official record that indicates whether it was purchased or declined.

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Learning Curve

Even though no coding knowledge is required for Airtable, there is still a learning curve. When you first sign up and begin exploring, you will be tempted to think of it like a spreadsheet. Don’t. An older article put it best:

“Airtable data is all about relationships. Conceptually, this is completely different from a spreadsheet like Excel or Google Sheets. When you link records in a base, it’s not a static connection, but rather a two-way relationship. This allows data to be used, viewed, linked, and rearranged in seemingly endless ways … Our advice is to accept the fact that you’re going to spend some time making crappy data relationships that don’t work properly … Invest time in monkeying around before you even think about importing your own data because grokking this relationship is truly the key to understanding the tool.”

Tips for Getting Started

Another big key to understanding Airtable is to learn the terminology for the main components. Here are some of them:

  • Workspace – Primary landing page where all your bases are stored.
  • Base – Short for database, this is where all your data related to a project or workflow is stored.
  • Table – Bases are made up of tables, which hold information about one type of item—for example, databases, vendors, and licenses.
  • View – Way to look at and organize the underlying data in a table; a table can have multiple views such as grid view, calendar view, gallery view, Kanban view, and more.

Airtable also provides training through guides and webinars. The “Move your spreadsheet to Airtable” webinar is especially useful for understanding how Airtable’s grid view is not a spreadsheet.

Quest Complete?

Of course, it is unlikely that a single system will ever satisfy all the ERM needs that an e-resources librarian can dream up. Our work is constantly evolving, and industry changes will always necessitate new workflows. Airtable is simply the latest player on the scene, but it is definitely worth investigating by all e-resources librarians seeking to streamline their work!

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