This case study follows a three-year odyssey into the world of electronic resource management (ERM) and open source systems (OSS). Led by the Fenway Libraries Online (FLO) office, the Electronic Resource Management Task Force, and eventually the FLO CORAL Development Committee (FCDC), members of the FLO community participated in system trials, product evaluation, implementation and enhancements, all in the pursuit of bringing order to the chaos that is electronic resource management. Along the way, we also learned a great deal about evaluating, implementing and supporting open source software and about participating in open source communities.