RFR 17_100_Technical_Requirements_Content.xlsx
XLSX spreadsheet 32 KB Posted
- Attached to
- statewide library electronic resources
- Solicitation number
- BD-17-1007-1007C-1007L-10726
- Issued by
- Suffolk County, Massachusetts
About this file
This document is a technical requirements specification for a state and local government contract opportunity to provide electronic library resources to the Massachusetts Library System (MLS) and the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC). The contract seeks a vendor to provide a range of electronic resources including journals, books, databases, and multimedia with full-text, abstract, and citation-only content across various subject areas. The vendor must meet requirements for service level agreements, browser and mobile support, ADA accessibility, privacy protections, authentication and authorization, metadata and cataloging integrations, administrative features, usage reporting, and permitted uses of the content. The contract term is unspecified but may include renewal options.
The vendor must provide a robust set of electronic content titles and comprehensive search and retrieval capabilities to meet the needs of the Massachusetts library community. Pricing and licensing terms are not provided, but the vendor should accommodate interlibrary loan, course reserves, and perpetual access as permitted by copyright law. The MBLC and MLS will manage statewide and individual library-level administration and configuration of the selected product(s).
View the file
Other files
| File | Type | Posted |
|---|---|---|
| RFR17_100_statewide_electronic_databases_final.docx | DOCX document |
On GovTribe
Work with this file
- Download the original file
- Contacts named in this file
- Similar government files
- Ask GovTribe AI about this file
Text version
7.2.1 GENERAL
| General | ||||
| Section | Item | Priority | Description | Bidder Status |
| 7.2.1 | 1 | High | Service Level Agreement - Bidder provides a service level agreement that guarantees up-time, bandwidth provisioning, and assures high-quality connectivity. | |
| Summarize highlights and provide a copy of your proposed initial SLA. | ||||
| 7.2.1 | 2 | High | Browser Support - Bidder supports all contemporary browsers with full product functionality. | |
| Provide browser support policy and explain any exceptions. | ||||
| 7.2.1 | 3 | High | Mobile Device Support - Products deliver full functionality to smart phones, tablets and other mobile devices. | |
| Describe mobile solutions, including whether separate apps are required. How is functionality limited or enhanced as compared to the desktop web interface? | ||||
| 7.2.1 | 4 | High | ADA Accessibility - Proposed products are fully ADA accessible. | |
| Describe the extent to which your product is ADA accessible and list any known deficiencies. |
Make specific reference to WCAG 2.0 and Section 508 compliance. Describe your testing methodology, and how you have included people with disabilities in your testing.
Describe how you have incorporated universal design principles into your products.
| 7.2.1 | 5 | High | HTTPS - Bidder protects user privacy by using secure web protocols. |
| Describe the measures that you take to ensure that patron privacy is maintained, including when and how SSL encryption is used, how patron accounts and search histories are protected. Describe any security auditing practices. | |||
| 7.2.1 | 6 | High | Privacy - User specific information should not be collected or stored by the information provider. |
| Provide a copy of your privacy policy and terms of use |
How is your privacy policy made available to users? Identify where links to the privacy policy appear in your interface and any related communications (e.g. saved, emailed, printed documents or links to those documents)
Does your policy conform to the ICOLC Privacy Guidelines for Electronic Resource Vendors (July 1, 2002) ? (http://icolc.net/statement/privacy-guidelines-electronic-resources-vendors)
Describe your practices for protecting user privacy. Speak to the types of data stored on user accounts, and how those data are protected.
Identify any user options that would affect default privacy settings.
When, if ever, do you communicate directly with users?
7.2.2 AUTHENTICATION & AUTHORIZ
| Authentication & Authorization | ||||
| Section | Item | Priority | Description | Bidder Status |
| 7.2.2 | 1 | High | Authorized Users - Bidder acknowledges that: |
a) All Massachusetts residents are considered authorized users.
b) K-12 schools and academic institutions authorized users include currently enrolled students, faculty, staff and visiting scholars.
c) Any MLS member library may provide in-library access for all walk-in users.
d) All Massachusetts automated resource sharing network, MLS and MBLC staff are considered authorized users.
| Please confirm. | |||
| 7.2.2 | 2 | High | Authorized Use - Bidder acknowledges that authorized users shall be able to access the system from any device in Massachusetts, or from any location via a current library card or institutional ID from a Massachusetts Library System member library. |
| Please confirm. | |||
| 7.2.2 | 3 | High | Unlimited Simultaneous Access - Bidder acknowledges that access is not limited or throttled for use by authorized users. |
| Please confirm. | |||
| 7.2.2 | 4 | High | Geolocation - Geolocation by Massachusetts IP address and HTML5 geolocation services is accepted as sufficient authentication for access to all licensed products. |
| Confirm that any user within Massachusetts will be authorized user based on the IP address of their device or HTML5 geolocation data. Explain any exceptions. | |||
| 7.2.2 | 5 | Medium | Mobile Geolocation - The Bidder will support other forms of location based authentication for mobile devices. |
| Describe how your products can authenticate users in Massachusetts using the devices' own location services (e.g. GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cell towers) |
Explain whether and how location based authentication differs between web access and access via your app(s).
| 7.2.2 | 6 | High | Library Proxy Servers - The Bidder will support proxy server authentication from authorized Massachusetts libraries. |
| Massachusetts academic libraries, consortia, and some school libraries run their own proxy server, primarily EZProxy and Follett Destiny. The Bidder will allow access to licensed content via these proxy servers. |
The Bidder will provide direct assistance to libraries that use proxy servers.
| 7.2.2 | 7 | Medium | Alternative Forms of Authentication - The bidder is able to accommodate other standard forms of library authentication and authorization (e.g., in-library/campus IP address ranges, Shibboleth, OpenAthens) |
| Provide a summary of all forms of authentication that you supported. |
Indicate which types of authentication can be configured at the library level, and managed by MBLC and MLS through an account management interface.
| OPTIONAL | |||
| 7.2.2 | 8 | Medium | IP Geolocation Service Provision - The bidder is willing to act as the single provider of IP geolocation services for all statewide database contracts (Preferred, only one vendor needed). |
| If you are willing to act as the single geolocation lookup service for this contract, and extend that service -- through the MBLC authentication proxy -- to authenticate other vendor's products that Massachusetts licenses statewide, please so indicate. |
If you are not able to provide the geolocation service for Massachusetts, put "Not Applicable".
| 7.2.2 | 9 | Medium | IP Whitelist - The bidder will create and maintain a whitelist of IP addresses for Massachusetts library buildings, and academic and school campuses when geolocation fails. |
| If you agree to offer your company as the single geolocation service provider for database authentication (see previous question), describe how you will maintain a whitelist of exceptions. Will the list associate specific IP ranges with specific libraries? How will you accept updates from MLS and from member libraries? |
Acknowledge that MBLC and MLS may receive a copy of the whitelisted addresses upon request and a final report at the end of the contract.
If you are not able to act as the geolocation service, put "Not Applicable".
7.2.3 INTEROPERABILITY
| Interoperability | ||||
| Section | Item | Priority | Description | Bidder Status |
| 7.2.3 | 1 | High | Knowledge Base - Bidder maintains and provides access to an accurate, up-to-date knowledge base of the proposed content. | |
| Discuss how you make title lists, title updates, and related metadata available to statewide customers, consortia and individual libraries. |
Describe your compliance with the NISO KBART standard.
How do you control for the quality and accuracy of your title lists (e.g., consistent content elements, format and uniform character encoding)?
What, if any, are the restrictions on the use of these metadata?
| 7.2.3 | 2 | High | MARC Records - Libraries may easily retrieve sets of high-quality MARC records for import into their ILS or ERM system. |
| Describe available download options such as MARC-8 or UTF-8 encoding, USMARC, MARC21, MARCXML, and XML record syntax. |
Describe the process for downloading individual and batch records. Provide any policy guidance on availability or usage restrictions.
Provide your MARC record quality standards and submit a sample.
| 7.2.3 | 3 | Medium | ILS Catalog Linking (Outbound) - library systems with bibliographic records to database content will be able to provide authenticable, links via MARC 856 fields. |
| Describe how current consortia members provide discoverability and access to your products through their library catalog. (Discovery layer compatibility requirements are addressed below) | |||
| 7.2.3 | 4 | High | Persistent Article Identifiers - Individual articles, chapters, or pages may be shared with both authenticated and non-authenticated users via a persistent link. |
| Describe how users may share links to specific content via email, social media, and other communications channels, and how these links interact with authentication mechanisms. |
Can non-authenticated users view individual articles, pages, or entries from these links? What are the restrictions?
| 7.2.3 | 5 | High | OpenURL Linking - Products support inbound and outbound openURL linking |
| Document compliance with the OpenURL standards for both inbound and outbound linking. |
Provide technical documentation for most effective inbound linking strategies (e.g., which key/value pair combinations are most accurate and produce the least number of failures).
Describe how Massachusetts authentication/authorization will work with openurls. How can authorization tokens be passed in with the inbound openURL?
| 7.2.3 | 6 | High | Discovery Solutions - proposed content is shown to integrate in major library discovery layer solutions, especially consortial implementations. |
| Enumerate instances where your products are fully integrated in your own and/or 3rd party discovery. Identify known issues. | |||
| 7.2.3 | 7 | Medium | Web Scale Discovery - Licensed content is made available on the open web for ease of discoverability. |
| Describe ways in which you expose product metadata to major search engines so that material licensed under this contract can be found. |
How are those links scoped to authorized users and authenticable links to the actual content provided.
| 7.2.3 | 8 | Medium | 3rd Party Mobile Library Solutions - What is the bidder's track record with generalized library apps |
| Describe whether the proposed content has been integrated into known general mobile solutions for libraries such as Boopsie, Capira or Communico. How has metadata been provided, and authentication handled? |
How would you facilitate integrated access to your content at both the consortial, and individual library levels?
7.2.4 ADMIN ACCOUNTS
| Admin Accounts | ||||
| Section | Item | Priority | Description | Bidder Status |
| 7.2.4 | 1 | High | Statewide Accounts - The product platform has user accounts for statewide (MBLC and MLS) staff to manage both statewide and library level configurations. | |
| Describe the top level access that will be provided to MBLC and MLS staff. |
Describe how hierarchical access to the administrative interface is configured. Provide relevant screenshots.
| 7.2.4 | 2 | High | Library Accounts - The product platform has accounts for each participating library. |
| Describe the individual library elements maintained in your admin system. |
If direct access by library staff is not possible, discuss how you will manage requests for configuration changes from libraries.
Library staff should not be able to view or alter profiles or reports of other libraries. How is library "privacy" in the administrative interface secured?
| 7.2.4 | 3 | High | Library-Level Customization and Statistics - The vendor provides mechanisms for authorized individual library contacts to customize their libraries' instances of the product and to access statistical and other relevant diagnostic information. |
| Describe the customizations and reports that are available and the mechanisms for authorized individuals to access them. | |||
| 4 | High | State Level Branding - The user interface allows for state branding and attribution | |
| Describe your ability to support branding elements within the user interface including: attribution to the Agency and to the Massachusetts Library System. | |||
| 7.2.4 | 5 | Medium | Library Level Branding - The user interface allows for local library co-branding. |
| Describe your ability to support library-level branding elements in addition to state branding, including links to local library websites. | |||
| 7.2.4 | 6 | Low | Customizations - User Interface elements can be customized at the library level. |
| What customization options are available to the library interface? |
How does your company handle existing local library account customizations when an upgrade or new feature set requires bulk updates to library account configurations (e.g., a statewide change)?
| 7.2.4 | 7 | Medium | Locally Licensed Content - Libraries can add additional, locally licensed, database products to those provided by the statewide contract. |
| Discuss whether libraries may integrate their own content titles / packages that they have licensed from you with statewide licensed titles. |
Describe how this would be accomplished.
What impact there would be in the administrative interface when accessed by MBLC/MLS staff and by the local library staff.
What impact would there be on usage statistics for the library and usage statics rolled up into state reports?
7.2.5 STATISTICS & REPORTING
| Statistics and Reporting | ||||
| Section | Item | Priority | Description | Bidder Status |
| 7.2.5 | 1 | High | Granularity and Aggregation - Statics Can Be Delivered at the Statewide, Consortial, and Library Level | |
| Can you provide reports showing usage statistics at the library level, and also aggregate statistics to a consortium of libraries and at the statewide level. Provide example reports. |
Can you include specific Massachusetts Library Identifiers so that usage can be correlated with other Massachusetts library data?
| 7.2.5 | 2 | High | Code of Practice - Statics are delivered in a commonly understood standardized format. |
| Do your reports follow the COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources)'s Code of Practice. Please describe the level of compliance, versions and exceptions. | |||
| 7.2.5 | 3 | Medium | Formats and Delivery Options - |
| In what formats do you provide usage statistics (csv, xls, xml, json, pdf) ? |
Discuss if and how libraries can take statistical reports and import into ERM systems, or other standards packages such as Springshare's LibAnalytics.
How can statistical reports be delivered to library staff?
Do you support SUSHI? Describe.
| 7.2.5 | 4 | High | Report Types - |
| What level of reporting do you provide for what types of content? (searches, full-text views, document retrievals, chapters, pages, abstracts), usage by database product, and journal title |
7.2.6 ALLOWABLE USE
| Allowable Use | ||||
| Section | Item | Priority | Description | Bidder Status |
| 7.2.6 | 1 | High | Interlibrary Loan - The bidder follows recognized library standards for interlibrary loan of licensed content where possible. | |
| Provide a statement regarding your policy regarding ILL, copyright and fair use. Address CONTU guidelines and Section 108(g) of the Copyright Act of the US, as well as usage in academic, special and school libraries, as well as public libraries. |
Are all copyright payments for full text usage covered?
| 7.2.6 | 2 | Low | Archiving and Perpetual Access - |
| Discuss any opportunities for perpetual access to content contracted for under this procurement. | |||
| 7.2.6 | 3 | High | Course Reserves - The bidder makes content available for course reserve in academic and school libraries. |
| Describe any restrictions on any database content when used for creating multiple copies in print or digital form for classroom instruction, course packs, electronic reserves, or course management systems. | |||
| 7.2.6 | 4 | Medium | Other Licensing restrictions - The bidder has no additional limits on content use. |
| Describe any other restrictions on copying, displaying, printing, downloading, emailing, mailing, or archiving of text and multimedia content. |
7.3 CONTENT
| Product Content | ||||
| Section | Item | Priority | Description | Bidder Status |
| 7.3 | 1 | High | Product / Package Content - The proposed content falls within the RFR scope as describe in Section 1.1 | |
| Provide a brief description of the product(s), including: |
- the primary audience,
- number of titles included,
- primary subject/topical areas
- ratio of records: full text / abstract / citation only
- years of coverage
Formats of content (periodicals, news, books, reference, multimedia) are included
Formats of full texts (e.g. html, pdf, text)
Types of content ( articles, book reviews, obituaries, directory listings, advertisements)
Explain why this is a good value for the Commonwealth.
| 7.3 | 2 | High | Title List - The proposed product(s) provide a robust set of titles to meet the needs of the Massachusetts library community. |
| Attach, or provide a link to, a complete list of titles for each product proposed, including: |
- date ranges of coverage
- embargo period
- full-text/abstract/citation
If a curated collection of titles, explain how the curation was accomplished
Provide the percentage of full-text titles
Provide the top 200 full-text titles based on usage
For multiple packaged offerings indicate the amount of title overlap between packages.
For the package as a whole, provide information about:
- time between publication and appearing in your product
- frequency of updates
- percentages of titles added and removed over the last 12 months
| 7.3 | 3 | High | Data Elements and Indexing - The products provides comprehensive points of access to content for search and retrieval |
| For each product category, identify all discrete data elements and indicate those are indexed for advanced searching and limiting. What classification schemes are used (e.g., LCSH, MESH)? | |||
| 4 | Medium | Product Landing Page - The landing page(s) for the product(s) offers a variety of features to surface valuable content, capture the attention of users and facility searching | |
| Describe the features exposed on the product's landing page and how they contribute to a successful user interaction. | |||
| 7.3 | 5 | High | Searching - The search interface produces highly successful search results for both novice and advanced users. |
| Describe the search features for each of the proposed products. |
Discuss how your company tests and evaluates its search interface, and how improvements are made, including UX testing with a variety of end users.
| 7.3 | 6 | Medium | Search Widgets - The product has tools to encourage usage from library websites and related locations. |
| Describe any search widgets or similar services available to libraries that would enhance access to the product(s). | |||
| 7.3 | 7 | High | Search Results Display and Management - The product search results will have powerful result sorting and filtering options. The user will be able to accomplish a variety of tasks for the search results, such as multiselect for bookmarking, printing or downloading. |
| Describe the default behaviors and available features available from the search results. | |||
| 7.3 | 8 | High | RSS, Persistent Links & Sharing - Individual articles, marked lists, searches can be easily shared using contemporary social channels. |
| Describe user options for sharing search results and article content through social networking sites, via RSS and cloud services such as Google Drive or Dropbox. | |||
| 7.3 | 9 | High | Citations and Bibliographies - Users may format references into the most common citation styles (e.g., APA, MLA) and export into bibliographic management tools (e.g., RefWorks, EndNote). |
| Describe your system's capabilities in this area, including formats and 3rd party tools supported. | |||
| 7.3 | 10 | Medium | UX Translation Capabilities - Users may view the interface in a wide variety of languages. |
| Enumerate all interface language options. Note any parts of the UI where translation does not occur or there is a partial implementation. | |||
| 7.3 | 11 | Medium | Read Aloud Capabilities - The product has the ability to convert read documents aloud. |
| Describe your products' capabilities to read content aloud, including controls (e.g., speed, voice, pitch, volume) | |||
| 7.3 | 12 | Medium | Upcoming Features - The product interface is updated with new features on a regular basis to improve usability and customer success. |
| Describe any new features scheduled for release in the next 12 months. | |||
| 7.3 | 13 | High | Product Support - The product is supported by extensive web documentation. |
| Describe the types of support resources administrators, librarians and users will have for immediate access. How are those resources found by users? Provide links to support resources for review. | |||
| 7.3 | 14 | Medium | Ancillary Product Tools - The product is accompanied by tools and features that facilitate usage. |
| Describe any additional product features not covered elsewhere that help users navigate content and lead to a successful search for information. | |||
| 7.3 | 15 | Medium | User Accounts - The product allows users to save activities and preferences by establishing a user account on the system. |
| Enumerate the functionality available through the user account. |
Describe how accounts are established and removed.
Are accounts associated with the particular library?
File details come from the government source that posted it. Updated .