I am indebted to Nicola Osborne for her excellent advice on live blogging, which she has written about in a two-part-post on the Edina's website, at the following links:
Part I: why LiveBlog
Part II: top 10 tips
Thursday 8 November 2012
Friday 21 September 2012
Second Linked Open Data Conference
I have been live blogging the Second Linked Open Data Conference organised by CILIP Cataloguing and Indexing Group, which was held on 19th September 2012 in Edinburgh.
This was a very interesting day covering a diversity of approaches to Linked Open Data and the live blog can be found on the CIG's website.
There is also a short url to view this event's live blog: http://bit.ly/PNJSuc
This was a very interesting day covering a diversity of approaches to Linked Open Data and the live blog can be found on the CIG's website.
There is also a short url to view this event's live blog: http://bit.ly/PNJSuc
Thursday 13 September 2012
IGeLU 2012 - Plenary closing session
Bibliographic Framework Initiative Approach for MARC Data as Linked Data
Sally McCallum, Chief, Network Development and Standards Office, Library of Congress
MARC
Although MARC is 40 years old, it still dominates the environment. There are lots of sharing options on a MARC format based record. It has adjusted to various cataloguing norms. It has lots of data elements even compared to other norms that may be more sophisticated in other respects. MARC has adapted to technical change. There are structural limitations (for example when extending MARC in xml) so we need to move ahead.
RDA and more
There are new cataloguing norms, in particular RDA, but there are others too. Within the RDA ground there is more option for parsing data. It's a 2-way sword because that creates more data elements. There is a use of codes rather than terms and an emphasis on relationships. RDA also offers more flexibility with authoritative headings. Is it possible to include the broader cultural community in library cataloguing norms? We say that and we'll be able to accomodate all the various cultural environments but it is not clear yet that we'll be able to.
Transcriptions
There are pros and cons to transcriptions. As resources are published in more than one way, that is transcribed in more than one way, this is becoming less of something that we have to be focussing on. In the cataloguing area, and headings versus terms, what should we use? At the LoC we use headings, but at we don't know what the future will be. There is also more user supplied information (crowd sourcing).
Type of resources
The printed resource production doesn't seem to go down whilst e-resources is increasing from the publishers as well as in collections. We'll be in a situation where the collection of printed resources is changing. Then there are casual resources, for example, twitter etc. We don't really know what to do with that, should we archive it?
Systems
There is more need for e-resources access management and this should take into account licensing and rights management. E-resource object management implies preservation. There is a lot of push on retrieval needs, both basic and scholar. Libraries have a role to play still in this area.
So the main issue is flexibility. In the next 5 years all of this will have changed again.
Framework Initiative - the bold venture
We need to work together to share bibliographic description and save money. We've included people with broad perspectives and have defined the requirements and the approach for the Initiative.
Requirements:
- Broad accommodation of content norms and data models
- New views of different types of metadata: descriptive, authority, holdings / coded data, classification data, subject data / preservation, rights, technical, archival
- Reconsideration of the activity relationships: exchange, internal storage, inupt interfaces and techniques
- Enhanced linking: traditional = textual, identifiers / semantic technology = URIs
- Accommodate different types of libraries: large, small, research, public, specialised...
- MARC compatibility: maintenance of MARC21 continued / enable reuse of data from MARC / provision of transformations to new models
Approach
Orientation towards the web and linked data. Investigate the use of semantic web standards (RDF data model, various syntaxes: xml, json, n-triples etc.) We want to work with high models and collaboration.
Linked data is important because of the amount of social media on the web, the way search engines work, more and more applications are going towards linked data and there is an increased flexibility to describe resources.
Initial model development
We have a contract with Zepheira (May 2012), because we wanted someone who wasn't completely absorbed in MARC, RDA etc. and who had a broad approach, with a good understanding of DC (?)technologies. So our partner has a long experience of MARC, as well asW3C and a pratcial application of RDF. We had 2 major tasks: Review of several related initiatives and translating bibliographic data to a
linked data form (evolution, not revolution / a basis for cummunity discussion and dialogue).
Balancing factors
- MARC21 historical data and roles
- Previous efforts for modelling bibliographinc information (FRBR - RDA, Indecs - Onix)
- Previous efforts to express bibliographic information as linked data (BL, Deutsche Nazional Bibliothek, Library of Congress' ID, OCLC Worldcat, schema.org)
- Using the web as model for expressing and connecting information (URIs, decentralisation of data, annotation)
- Library community social and technical deployment probabilities
- Adoption outside the library community
- Flexibility for future cataloguing and use scenarios
- Leverage machine technology for the mechanical while keeping the librarian expertise in control
So we started by descontructing MARC, that means identifying MARC resources (MARCR), for example people, places, institutions, subjects etc. Since you need a replacement for those, they have to be pulled out first.
Phase 1 - High level model
4 core classes (initially 2 but rare books / music librarians felt this was not enough):
- Work: resource reflecting the conceptual essence of the cataloguing item / roughly equivalent to FRBR work or expression
- Instance: resource reflecting an individual, material embodiment of the Work
- Authority: resource reflecting key authority concepts that have defined relationships
- Annotation: resource that "decorates" other MARCR resources (e.g. holdings, cover images, reviews)
Each of these are represented by URIs.
So subjects and creators relate to Work; publisher and format relate to Instance; Instance and Work are linked together. Annotations can relate to either Work or Instance so there are lots of places that we can use URIs.See model photos here
Phase 1.5 - early experimentation
- Preliminary work at the LoC
- Very small group of early experimenters
- Working with high level model, vocabularies, conversion tools
- Creative development of syntaxes and configurations
- Adjust model
Model development
- Make model, mappings and tools available and encourage broader experimentation?
- Parallel phase 2 to refine the model and keep folding in experience based changes
- Follow the progress: www.loc.gov/marc/transition
- Join the discussion: bibframe@listserv.loc.gov
Sally McCallum, Chief, Network Development and Standards Office, Library of Congress
MARC
Although MARC is 40 years old, it still dominates the environment. There are lots of sharing options on a MARC format based record. It has adjusted to various cataloguing norms. It has lots of data elements even compared to other norms that may be more sophisticated in other respects. MARC has adapted to technical change. There are structural limitations (for example when extending MARC in xml) so we need to move ahead.
RDA and more
There are new cataloguing norms, in particular RDA, but there are others too. Within the RDA ground there is more option for parsing data. It's a 2-way sword because that creates more data elements. There is a use of codes rather than terms and an emphasis on relationships. RDA also offers more flexibility with authoritative headings. Is it possible to include the broader cultural community in library cataloguing norms? We say that and we'll be able to accomodate all the various cultural environments but it is not clear yet that we'll be able to.
Transcriptions
There are pros and cons to transcriptions. As resources are published in more than one way, that is transcribed in more than one way, this is becoming less of something that we have to be focussing on. In the cataloguing area, and headings versus terms, what should we use? At the LoC we use headings, but at we don't know what the future will be. There is also more user supplied information (crowd sourcing).
Type of resources
The printed resource production doesn't seem to go down whilst e-resources is increasing from the publishers as well as in collections. We'll be in a situation where the collection of printed resources is changing. Then there are casual resources, for example, twitter etc. We don't really know what to do with that, should we archive it?
Systems
There is more need for e-resources access management and this should take into account licensing and rights management. E-resource object management implies preservation. There is a lot of push on retrieval needs, both basic and scholar. Libraries have a role to play still in this area.
So the main issue is flexibility. In the next 5 years all of this will have changed again.
Framework Initiative - the bold venture
We need to work together to share bibliographic description and save money. We've included people with broad perspectives and have defined the requirements and the approach for the Initiative.
Requirements:
- Broad accommodation of content norms and data models
- New views of different types of metadata: descriptive, authority, holdings / coded data, classification data, subject data / preservation, rights, technical, archival
- Reconsideration of the activity relationships: exchange, internal storage, inupt interfaces and techniques
- Enhanced linking: traditional = textual, identifiers / semantic technology = URIs
- Accommodate different types of libraries: large, small, research, public, specialised...
- MARC compatibility: maintenance of MARC21 continued / enable reuse of data from MARC / provision of transformations to new models
Approach
Orientation towards the web and linked data. Investigate the use of semantic web standards (RDF data model, various syntaxes: xml, json, n-triples etc.) We want to work with high models and collaboration.
Linked data is important because of the amount of social media on the web, the way search engines work, more and more applications are going towards linked data and there is an increased flexibility to describe resources.
Initial model development
We have a contract with Zepheira (May 2012), because we wanted someone who wasn't completely absorbed in MARC, RDA etc. and who had a broad approach, with a good understanding of DC (?)technologies. So our partner has a long experience of MARC, as well asW3C and a pratcial application of RDF. We had 2 major tasks: Review of several related initiatives and translating bibliographic data to a
linked data form (evolution, not revolution / a basis for cummunity discussion and dialogue).
Balancing factors
- MARC21 historical data and roles
- Previous efforts for modelling bibliographinc information (FRBR - RDA, Indecs - Onix)
- Previous efforts to express bibliographic information as linked data (BL, Deutsche Nazional Bibliothek, Library of Congress' ID, OCLC Worldcat, schema.org)
- Using the web as model for expressing and connecting information (URIs, decentralisation of data, annotation)
- Library community social and technical deployment probabilities
- Adoption outside the library community
- Flexibility for future cataloguing and use scenarios
- Leverage machine technology for the mechanical while keeping the librarian expertise in control
So we started by descontructing MARC, that means identifying MARC resources (MARCR), for example people, places, institutions, subjects etc. Since you need a replacement for those, they have to be pulled out first.
Phase 1 - High level model
4 core classes (initially 2 but rare books / music librarians felt this was not enough):
- Work: resource reflecting the conceptual essence of the cataloguing item / roughly equivalent to FRBR work or expression
- Instance: resource reflecting an individual, material embodiment of the Work
- Authority: resource reflecting key authority concepts that have defined relationships
- Annotation: resource that "decorates" other MARCR resources (e.g. holdings, cover images, reviews)
Each of these are represented by URIs.
So subjects and creators relate to Work; publisher and format relate to Instance; Instance and Work are linked together. Annotations can relate to either Work or Instance so there are lots of places that we can use URIs.See model photos here
Phase 1.5 - early experimentation
- Preliminary work at the LoC
- Very small group of early experimenters
- Working with high level model, vocabularies, conversion tools
- Creative development of syntaxes and configurations
- Adjust model
Model development
- Make model, mappings and tools available and encourage broader experimentation?
- Parallel phase 2 to refine the model and keep folding in experience based changes
- Follow the progress: www.loc.gov/marc/transition
- Join the discussion: bibframe@listserv.loc.gov
IGeLU 2012: Ex Libris General Q&A
Ex Libris responds to general questions submitted in advance by the customers about the company and its directions.
Q: Pivotal weak system, will it be replaced?
A: We have selected a new system, called SesForce (spelling?). We are planning the implementation in Q1 2013. We'll communicate with the steering committee about the roll-out of this product.
Q: Can Ex Libris have more support staff?
A: Yes we are planning to increase the support workforce.
Q: Monthly status report about SIs that are nder development including SInb and the defect number
A: I understand you are looking for more transparency on issues and resolutions. We want to introduce a technology for creating the KB items. It will be updated for almost every incident with a new number. We will work on providing more transparency. KCS (Knowledge Centre Support) will be communicated in a few months time.
Q: Should Ex Libris be more attentive when releasing a new service pack (issues with Aleph and Primo upgrade 3.1.4)
A: Short answer is yes. We are developing KPI (key performance indicators). We also have lessons learned. We do automated testing with Solenium (?) and we will continue to do more tests. The recent Primo 4.0 release shows a significant improvement to prior releases.
Q: Documentation in html format only viewable in IE or Chrome requireing well-known security threats?
A: We create help docs using Adobe and other standard outputs. So there are other alternatives.
Q: Why not use a wiki for the documentation?
A: We'll take it up with our documentation team
Q: It would be more efficient if Ex Libris developers, support and customers used historical company knowledge in design and development...
A: We do. If you look at Alma with 10,000 components, we get some right. Of course we have some missing pieces, not necessarily that we forgot but becaues our development schedule is based on needs and we feel obliged to prioritise things. A promotion path within the company means people move accross products and take with them their prior knowledge. So we do that but we can certainly do better. This can not be automated and it's hard when we change paradigms. It requires transformation.
Q: What redress does Ex Libris offer to a situation of a customer's unsuccessful move to a cloud hosted application, as a lot of costs and disruption are involved?
A: this situation never happened to us, but we would have the most to loose from such a situation. The focus in this question is the data. What is in our centre is your data, so you are free to download back your data and take it back to your previous operations. You are also free to take it and go to another vendor.
Q: Why does Ex Libris not keep check lists of local customisations? For example SSL, Apache redirects, PDS Shibboleth
A: We have specific instructions so customisations are not over-written. There have been cases where this has happened, but we have been reviewing our processes to make sure this will not happen again
Q: Can Ex Libris update the users on the development of any negotiations with other vendors about the use of holdings data within Primo Central?
A: Ex Libris doesn't own the data and this includes Primo. As far as I know, there is a problem with one vendor who doesn't believe data belongs to libraries. This is an ongoing debate, see Carl Grant recent blog post (12 September 2012) talking about that.
Q: Can we get an update on progress with Ebsco to either provide richer metadata via the deepsearch function or progress in harvesting content? Do conversations continue between Ex Libris and Ebsco?
A: We getting closer to achieving this goal. Regarding Ebsco we continue to try and have discussions and there is an open letter. Unfortunately we are getting second hand information on what Ebsco says about our converstation but there is no other word than to say this is not true. The good news for scholarship is that we can't be highjacked by a vendor because there are alternative coverages, maybe not exactly the same but close enough to satisfy the needs of end users, hopefully.
Q: When will the Aleph community receive a response to the expansion of the OCLC control number question (incident)
A: We are aware of this and the short answer is that there is no impact on Aleph
Q: Is there going to be a collaboration between Alma and Primo Central Index knowledgeBases, since they are maintenained by different teams?
A: Primo is item level. We created a data service. teams will be consolidated for management level and what type of data. This is a good question and we will make sure the collaboration is consolidated but it will take time.
Q: How to combine Automatic Storage System for library's collections as interface with Voyager with Alma? Without such an interface moving to Alma will be impossible
A: Only 20 institutions in the whole world use Dematic but we are taking this question on board and will work on creating an interface.
Q: What reporting options are available in Alma for custom reports allowing to define parameters and columns?
A: We selected Oracle and others for tools for accessing data in Alma, so the data exposed in those systems will be available. It is a strong products and can be used with various formats. Some features are exposed via Alma itslef (security reasons) but the data can be formatted in different ways. (see also previous session on Alma analytics)
Q: What cataloguing standards and policies shall apply in the Community zone (establishing master records, avoiding duplication etc.)?
A: We are not completely there yet. We will focus more on this particular area as well as open data and have just signed an agreement. You'll start seeing results in 2013. We are looking at what licence agreements we need to aime for. We'll work with our user groups in those activities.
Q: When new enhancements requests come in for existing backend products, do Alma developers have a look at them and decide if the functionality might be useful for Alma as well?
A: The collaboration between Alma, voyager and Aleph teams works well. Every feature can not always be cross-referenced but we do look at that. Alma and Primo work together and the browsing functionality on Primo initially came from Alma. So we do it and will do it even more in the future.
Q: What is Ex Libris' position on a consortial environment for Alma?
A: We are in the process of developing the functionality for consortia customers in production in 2013. So the functionality is there and 2013 was always our planning. The important question is whether we see a place for consortia in Alma and the answer is clearly yes, even with a move to the cloud. The hybrid model with local and collaborative zone with Alma is unique and very well suited to the consortia. We are hosting webinars on September 24
Q: How do, in practice, Alma's web sesrvices and APIs (user interfaces, real time APIs...) work?
A: Moving to the cloud in Alma hasn't changed anything in terms of APIs. It is core of the product to supply that. This question is even very suprising...
Q: SFX code (perl) has been rewritten in Java to implement the link resolver functionalities of Alma, is Ex Libris going to ensure that both code bases stay consistent?
A: We have one knowledge base team that feeds content into both environments. The target services are also shared but the business logic is different because both products are different. The accumulated knowledge and experience is this field is tremendous and we'll continue the devleopment of SFX as well as moving to a new environment in Alma.
Q: What are Ex Libris future plans on EL commons and developers cooperation - when all Ex Libris software comes as a service on Ex Libris hosted servers?
A: We haven't forgotten those resources and have invested a lot. The purpose is to engage with the community and we continue to think this is the right thing, developers meet developers. We are committed to that type of cooperation. The platform is active but I could ask the question: why are you not getting more involved?
Q: What are the tendencies and/or features of the Next Gen OpenUrl approach mentioned by Shlomo in the strategy update?
A: In reality the OpenURL can be used for many different things. In terms of moving forward, the situation is messy today in terms of linking into information content but we are going more and more granular. We need to tackle that part to make it more operational and we can better link. We have a great opportunity to improve the linking, especially since we have more and more open repositories and we want better open linking, so we need to develop standards.
Q: Which directions will take Alma and Rosetta in the future since they both seem legitimat for Digital Asset Management?
A: Yes they are both appropriate but one is in the cloud the other not. Rosetta is in the long term perserveation area. In terms of basic functionality both are legitimate. Our ambition is to allow our customers to look at both platforms. With Alma the migration can be done earlier
Q: What about the preservation of research data for academic libraries?
A: We are currently working on a strategy. We will update user groups. A focus group on the research data preservation aspect will be created.
Q: What does Ex Libris think about the world market of library software and how it might develop in the next five years (example of a big American manufacturer with about 3000 customers that has been overtaken by two equity firms recently)?
A: We like competition, we can't avoid the evolution of the companies, it is a natural process. The three main questions are: How does the company manage the transition? Who is running the company? What's the products' strategy, do we develop a next generation system or not? That is the key, it's less about ownership and that's how we've been developing, that is our priority.
Finally: Tom Lehrer's Alma song on YouTube
Q: Pivotal weak system, will it be replaced?
A: We have selected a new system, called SesForce (spelling?). We are planning the implementation in Q1 2013. We'll communicate with the steering committee about the roll-out of this product.
Q: Can Ex Libris have more support staff?
A: Yes we are planning to increase the support workforce.
Q: Monthly status report about SIs that are nder development including SInb and the defect number
A: I understand you are looking for more transparency on issues and resolutions. We want to introduce a technology for creating the KB items. It will be updated for almost every incident with a new number. We will work on providing more transparency. KCS (Knowledge Centre Support) will be communicated in a few months time.
Q: Should Ex Libris be more attentive when releasing a new service pack (issues with Aleph and Primo upgrade 3.1.4)
A: Short answer is yes. We are developing KPI (key performance indicators). We also have lessons learned. We do automated testing with Solenium (?) and we will continue to do more tests. The recent Primo 4.0 release shows a significant improvement to prior releases.
Q: Documentation in html format only viewable in IE or Chrome requireing well-known security threats?
A: We create help docs using Adobe and other standard outputs. So there are other alternatives.
Q: Why not use a wiki for the documentation?
A: We'll take it up with our documentation team
Q: It would be more efficient if Ex Libris developers, support and customers used historical company knowledge in design and development...
A: We do. If you look at Alma with 10,000 components, we get some right. Of course we have some missing pieces, not necessarily that we forgot but becaues our development schedule is based on needs and we feel obliged to prioritise things. A promotion path within the company means people move accross products and take with them their prior knowledge. So we do that but we can certainly do better. This can not be automated and it's hard when we change paradigms. It requires transformation.
Q: What redress does Ex Libris offer to a situation of a customer's unsuccessful move to a cloud hosted application, as a lot of costs and disruption are involved?
A: this situation never happened to us, but we would have the most to loose from such a situation. The focus in this question is the data. What is in our centre is your data, so you are free to download back your data and take it back to your previous operations. You are also free to take it and go to another vendor.
Q: Why does Ex Libris not keep check lists of local customisations? For example SSL, Apache redirects, PDS Shibboleth
A: We have specific instructions so customisations are not over-written. There have been cases where this has happened, but we have been reviewing our processes to make sure this will not happen again
Q: Can Ex Libris update the users on the development of any negotiations with other vendors about the use of holdings data within Primo Central?
A: Ex Libris doesn't own the data and this includes Primo. As far as I know, there is a problem with one vendor who doesn't believe data belongs to libraries. This is an ongoing debate, see Carl Grant recent blog post (12 September 2012) talking about that.
Q: Can we get an update on progress with Ebsco to either provide richer metadata via the deepsearch function or progress in harvesting content? Do conversations continue between Ex Libris and Ebsco?
A: We getting closer to achieving this goal. Regarding Ebsco we continue to try and have discussions and there is an open letter. Unfortunately we are getting second hand information on what Ebsco says about our converstation but there is no other word than to say this is not true. The good news for scholarship is that we can't be highjacked by a vendor because there are alternative coverages, maybe not exactly the same but close enough to satisfy the needs of end users, hopefully.
Q: When will the Aleph community receive a response to the expansion of the OCLC control number question (incident)
A: We are aware of this and the short answer is that there is no impact on Aleph
Q: Is there going to be a collaboration between Alma and Primo Central Index knowledgeBases, since they are maintenained by different teams?
A: Primo is item level. We created a data service. teams will be consolidated for management level and what type of data. This is a good question and we will make sure the collaboration is consolidated but it will take time.
Q: How to combine Automatic Storage System for library's collections as interface with Voyager with Alma? Without such an interface moving to Alma will be impossible
A: Only 20 institutions in the whole world use Dematic but we are taking this question on board and will work on creating an interface.
Q: What reporting options are available in Alma for custom reports allowing to define parameters and columns?
A: We selected Oracle and others for tools for accessing data in Alma, so the data exposed in those systems will be available. It is a strong products and can be used with various formats. Some features are exposed via Alma itslef (security reasons) but the data can be formatted in different ways. (see also previous session on Alma analytics)
Q: What cataloguing standards and policies shall apply in the Community zone (establishing master records, avoiding duplication etc.)?
A: We are not completely there yet. We will focus more on this particular area as well as open data and have just signed an agreement. You'll start seeing results in 2013. We are looking at what licence agreements we need to aime for. We'll work with our user groups in those activities.
Q: When new enhancements requests come in for existing backend products, do Alma developers have a look at them and decide if the functionality might be useful for Alma as well?
A: The collaboration between Alma, voyager and Aleph teams works well. Every feature can not always be cross-referenced but we do look at that. Alma and Primo work together and the browsing functionality on Primo initially came from Alma. So we do it and will do it even more in the future.
Q: What is Ex Libris' position on a consortial environment for Alma?
A: We are in the process of developing the functionality for consortia customers in production in 2013. So the functionality is there and 2013 was always our planning. The important question is whether we see a place for consortia in Alma and the answer is clearly yes, even with a move to the cloud. The hybrid model with local and collaborative zone with Alma is unique and very well suited to the consortia. We are hosting webinars on September 24
Q: How do, in practice, Alma's web sesrvices and APIs (user interfaces, real time APIs...) work?
A: Moving to the cloud in Alma hasn't changed anything in terms of APIs. It is core of the product to supply that. This question is even very suprising...
Q: SFX code (perl) has been rewritten in Java to implement the link resolver functionalities of Alma, is Ex Libris going to ensure that both code bases stay consistent?
A: We have one knowledge base team that feeds content into both environments. The target services are also shared but the business logic is different because both products are different. The accumulated knowledge and experience is this field is tremendous and we'll continue the devleopment of SFX as well as moving to a new environment in Alma.
Q: What are Ex Libris future plans on EL commons and developers cooperation - when all Ex Libris software comes as a service on Ex Libris hosted servers?
A: We haven't forgotten those resources and have invested a lot. The purpose is to engage with the community and we continue to think this is the right thing, developers meet developers. We are committed to that type of cooperation. The platform is active but I could ask the question: why are you not getting more involved?
Q: What are the tendencies and/or features of the Next Gen OpenUrl approach mentioned by Shlomo in the strategy update?
A: In reality the OpenURL can be used for many different things. In terms of moving forward, the situation is messy today in terms of linking into information content but we are going more and more granular. We need to tackle that part to make it more operational and we can better link. We have a great opportunity to improve the linking, especially since we have more and more open repositories and we want better open linking, so we need to develop standards.
Q: Which directions will take Alma and Rosetta in the future since they both seem legitimat for Digital Asset Management?
A: Yes they are both appropriate but one is in the cloud the other not. Rosetta is in the long term perserveation area. In terms of basic functionality both are legitimate. Our ambition is to allow our customers to look at both platforms. With Alma the migration can be done earlier
Q: What about the preservation of research data for academic libraries?
A: We are currently working on a strategy. We will update user groups. A focus group on the research data preservation aspect will be created.
Q: What does Ex Libris think about the world market of library software and how it might develop in the next five years (example of a big American manufacturer with about 3000 customers that has been overtaken by two equity firms recently)?
A: We like competition, we can't avoid the evolution of the companies, it is a natural process. The three main questions are: How does the company manage the transition? Who is running the company? What's the products' strategy, do we develop a next generation system or not? That is the key, it's less about ownership and that's how we've been developing, that is our priority.
Finally: Tom Lehrer's Alma song on YouTube
Primo and Primo Central Product Update, Roadmap and Q&A
Moderator: Mandy Stewart, Resource Discovery Projects Manager, British Library
Gillad Gal, Director of Product Management, Discovery and Delivery Solutions, Ex Libris
I will start with a general view of some of the strategies which we are covering. Customers are becoming more aware of the importance of an integrated product rather than different modules.
Primo 4.0 was released in June 2012 and there are already hundreds of institutions who use it. It was a smooth release and the number of users speaks for itself, five years after we started working on it.
Most of the discovery customers are going SaaS (software as a service) and a multiteancy solution (for example Direct and TotalCare, MetaLib+, Primo Centra and bx or Consortia). The way we do SaaS is not that everything is managed by the centre, some can be spread to institutional staff but the main administration is done centrally, that is cleaning old logs, backups and upgrading operating systems. We see a future in SaaS, without saying that's the only option, we still support hybrid solutions with or without a SaaS component.
We believe in Open Access and as a content-neutral software vendor, we are strongly committed to supporting open access. Hybrid journals is where you have subscriptions as well as articles open to everyone. The highly appreciated journals now often allow some form of open access but the problem is that you have no way of knowing which article is available to whom. We have now made open access articles in hybrid journals available to Primo customers by marking them specifically. So for example the Oxford Journals Open Access is activated by default.
If you subscribe to green Open Access for Institutional repositories, you filter by availability. We want to promote discoverability by making institutional research globally available. So we are harvesting institutional repositories' content, starting with the most distinguished ones. So in Primo Central backend you can enter details of your institutional repository, add the url and agree to terms and conditions (to ensure the data is used in the right way).
We have been developing bx (article recommender) since 2009 and in 2012 we made it available to mobile devices. In 2013 we will be developing the metrics, to show the most and least used articles for example.
We also believe in granularity, because users are interested in article, chapter or at the most book level, rather than journal or database. So we are working on creating efficient links to articles and managing the granular level. We want a fast direct access to full content with a high success rate with pre-checked links.
We also work on the basis of the concept of Provisioning, which is the process of preparing and equipping a network to allow it to provide (new) services to its users. It is easy to activate Primo Central because of this concept. "Provisioning often appears in the ocntext of virtualisation, orchestration, utility computing, cloud computing and open configuration concepts and projects" (wikipedia). We believe we can industrialise this and we will be doing this to your benefit.
A/B testing is a way of representing the fact that various users see various things. It is important to reduce things and leave only what people actually use, this is a known technique in software development to make things more pleasant to the user. This is based on usage patterns.
In summary, our objectives are:
- Ease of administration and TCO (SaaS, multi-tenancy, provisioning)
- Open access (Gold - enabling open access from hybrid journals / Green - institutional repositories discoverability)
- Future directions: new metrics, item level services, A/B testing
Tamar Sadeh, Director of Marketing, Ex Libris
I will give you an update on some of the things I've been working on.
Ranking: This is about subtelties and balance. It is a complexe process and to decide what is more important at a certain point in time. We try to take everything into account. The whole point about ranking is the tuning. When we speak to each other we tune in. There are 3 things to look at in ranking: the query, the document, and the user who gives the context of the query. So we look at the match between the query and the item. We also know that not all documents are the same, some are more significant than others. Finally we look at the user and take into account their discipline and their academic degree. That may say something about the in-depth quality of items looked for. The query shows the broadness of the topic.
So in Primo 4.0, we have been working on tuning the parameters, dealing for example with recency and the significance of the materials types (analysing the kind of material we have and ranking more the ones that we consider more significant, for example journal articles compared to newspaper articles etc.). We have developed personalised ranking, which as mentioned takes into account academic degree and disciplines, but users have to agree to that. We felt it was important that users are aware of that.
Example: a query "memory AND efficiency" would mean something different to a psychology student or a technology student. So we have made a list of disciplines but this may still change in the future (more will likely be added). We have also made sure people can use more than one discipline (check boxes). At the moment, institutions can't change this list, but you can change or translate the names or remove some. In the future we will also allow a default discipline to be selected.
Next on our agenda:
- We want to improve full-text searching
- Special handling of pecularities, e.g. very short metadata
- Add other impact factors
- Enhance linguistic capabilities
In the long term:
- Add PageRank measurements
- A/B testing
- Develop searching for formulas (mathematical)
Ido Peled, Primo Product Manager, Ex Libris
I want to give you an update since the last IGeLU meeting. Primo continues to grow at the same pace as last year. We have more than 1000 institutions using Primo and a lot have already upgraded to version 4.0. We also have a voting process (NERS) which has allowed the discussion of enhancements. We are moving to an agile development methodology. This means we can improve functionalities in a rapid way and you can constantly upgrade, instead of having one-shot bigger and slower changes.
Primo Version 4.0
Based on what we promised to do in May 2011, we are happy to say that all of this has been achieved. Examples:
- Improving support for consortia and multi-tenant environments
- Personalised ranking
- Multi-facet selection: we have added options and features, for example the possibility of excluding or including various facets. This provides more choice
- Exporting formats
- Sharing results in Facebook: so this is not only about "liking" things but making them more usable
Beyond the scope of version 4.0, there are examples of integration of other functionalities, for example Cardiff has integrated syndetics and links to the content where available. We also provide the option of searching WorldCat within Primo. Those options are available on EL Commons.
MetaLib+
We've added the option of customising MetaLib+ using CSS and html. We have also provided options to deep linking which means you could start your search from your library and have all the pre-set options available. We also have multiple personal quicksets, so users can define their own quicksets, combining different databases etc.
Browsing
We will soon provide browsing functionalities over four different entities: subject headins, call number, author and title. Initially this will be in Alma, Aleph and Voyager. But for Aleph and Voyager, the call number browsing will need a few extra adjustments so that will be available in 2013. In Primo, this will be available next month.
Enhancement resulting from the NERS voting system
- Enhancing the display of FRBR groups: we will enable this option
- Linking sign in and location tabs, so users can continue their work with no interruption
- Better page navigation
- Bx Hot articles in Primo: this will be set as default but can be removed
Primo back-office demo: We have made short videos providing explanations on the walk through the back office tasks. This is in the pipeline and will be made available soon.
Primo Central
The number of institutions continues to grow. The searching depends on the time of the year. We are also intending to add more content, including for example Credo Reference, GeoRef, BL Ethos, Emerald e-books and e-journals, etc. We have already a strong focus on research data but we will extend this by adding institutional repositories.
We will add Wikipedia in Primo Central. This is a controversial subject so we made a survey to ask ussers what they would think about this. 1/3 of the responses were positive and English the favoured language. So we thought we would add wikipedia but make it optional.
There is content not indexed directly in Primo Central but we receive a list of databases whose content is available when activated in Primo Central so those also provide extra options and content.
Finally we encourage you to participate in the NISO Open discovery Initiative (ODI) survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QBXZXSB . We also encourage you to upgrade to version 4.0 and to give us your feedback.
Questions and Answers
Q: About registration of institutional repository, can we define the format used, for example complexe xml?
A: We'll start with simple DC standard but afterwards we'll be looking at extending the options
Q: Call number browsing: how are you going to normalise the data for call numbers, as there are so diverse?
A: We'll be adding normalisation in the out of the box version
Q: Can you make the Primo back office easier to use? There is walkthrough and A/B testing, but it's very time consuming, things need to be changed in more than one place etc.
A: We received enhancement requests so if you want specific things let us know. We are putting a lot of development efforts in improving things and are listening to your suggestions but in the last NERS voting, there was nothing about the back office. We hope the walkthrough videos will assist. A lot of the request about the back office are about making cleare how to do things and describing how to do a task and that's why we've made those videos.
Q: What about searching chemical formulas?
A: The keyboard with mathematical formulas can be switched to chemical formulas
Q: Will you make service pack applications safer?
A: There are a few instructions. You can make a lot of changes in Primo, it is a challenge on our side as well when changes are made. We need to find appropriate procedures. We definitely take this into account.
Gillad Gal, Director of Product Management, Discovery and Delivery Solutions, Ex Libris
I will start with a general view of some of the strategies which we are covering. Customers are becoming more aware of the importance of an integrated product rather than different modules.
Primo 4.0 was released in June 2012 and there are already hundreds of institutions who use it. It was a smooth release and the number of users speaks for itself, five years after we started working on it.
Most of the discovery customers are going SaaS (software as a service) and a multiteancy solution (for example Direct and TotalCare, MetaLib+, Primo Centra and bx or Consortia). The way we do SaaS is not that everything is managed by the centre, some can be spread to institutional staff but the main administration is done centrally, that is cleaning old logs, backups and upgrading operating systems. We see a future in SaaS, without saying that's the only option, we still support hybrid solutions with or without a SaaS component.
We believe in Open Access and as a content-neutral software vendor, we are strongly committed to supporting open access. Hybrid journals is where you have subscriptions as well as articles open to everyone. The highly appreciated journals now often allow some form of open access but the problem is that you have no way of knowing which article is available to whom. We have now made open access articles in hybrid journals available to Primo customers by marking them specifically. So for example the Oxford Journals Open Access is activated by default.
If you subscribe to green Open Access for Institutional repositories, you filter by availability. We want to promote discoverability by making institutional research globally available. So we are harvesting institutional repositories' content, starting with the most distinguished ones. So in Primo Central backend you can enter details of your institutional repository, add the url and agree to terms and conditions (to ensure the data is used in the right way).
We have been developing bx (article recommender) since 2009 and in 2012 we made it available to mobile devices. In 2013 we will be developing the metrics, to show the most and least used articles for example.
We also believe in granularity, because users are interested in article, chapter or at the most book level, rather than journal or database. So we are working on creating efficient links to articles and managing the granular level. We want a fast direct access to full content with a high success rate with pre-checked links.
We also work on the basis of the concept of Provisioning, which is the process of preparing and equipping a network to allow it to provide (new) services to its users. It is easy to activate Primo Central because of this concept. "Provisioning often appears in the ocntext of virtualisation, orchestration, utility computing, cloud computing and open configuration concepts and projects" (wikipedia). We believe we can industrialise this and we will be doing this to your benefit.
A/B testing is a way of representing the fact that various users see various things. It is important to reduce things and leave only what people actually use, this is a known technique in software development to make things more pleasant to the user. This is based on usage patterns.
In summary, our objectives are:
- Ease of administration and TCO (SaaS, multi-tenancy, provisioning)
- Open access (Gold - enabling open access from hybrid journals / Green - institutional repositories discoverability)
- Future directions: new metrics, item level services, A/B testing
Tamar Sadeh, Director of Marketing, Ex Libris
I will give you an update on some of the things I've been working on.
Ranking: This is about subtelties and balance. It is a complexe process and to decide what is more important at a certain point in time. We try to take everything into account. The whole point about ranking is the tuning. When we speak to each other we tune in. There are 3 things to look at in ranking: the query, the document, and the user who gives the context of the query. So we look at the match between the query and the item. We also know that not all documents are the same, some are more significant than others. Finally we look at the user and take into account their discipline and their academic degree. That may say something about the in-depth quality of items looked for. The query shows the broadness of the topic.
So in Primo 4.0, we have been working on tuning the parameters, dealing for example with recency and the significance of the materials types (analysing the kind of material we have and ranking more the ones that we consider more significant, for example journal articles compared to newspaper articles etc.). We have developed personalised ranking, which as mentioned takes into account academic degree and disciplines, but users have to agree to that. We felt it was important that users are aware of that.
Example: a query "memory AND efficiency" would mean something different to a psychology student or a technology student. So we have made a list of disciplines but this may still change in the future (more will likely be added). We have also made sure people can use more than one discipline (check boxes). At the moment, institutions can't change this list, but you can change or translate the names or remove some. In the future we will also allow a default discipline to be selected.
Next on our agenda:
- We want to improve full-text searching
- Special handling of pecularities, e.g. very short metadata
- Add other impact factors
- Enhance linguistic capabilities
In the long term:
- Add PageRank measurements
- A/B testing
- Develop searching for formulas (mathematical)
Ido Peled, Primo Product Manager, Ex Libris
I want to give you an update since the last IGeLU meeting. Primo continues to grow at the same pace as last year. We have more than 1000 institutions using Primo and a lot have already upgraded to version 4.0. We also have a voting process (NERS) which has allowed the discussion of enhancements. We are moving to an agile development methodology. This means we can improve functionalities in a rapid way and you can constantly upgrade, instead of having one-shot bigger and slower changes.
Primo Version 4.0
Based on what we promised to do in May 2011, we are happy to say that all of this has been achieved. Examples:
- Improving support for consortia and multi-tenant environments
- Personalised ranking
- Multi-facet selection: we have added options and features, for example the possibility of excluding or including various facets. This provides more choice
- Exporting formats
- Sharing results in Facebook: so this is not only about "liking" things but making them more usable
Beyond the scope of version 4.0, there are examples of integration of other functionalities, for example Cardiff has integrated syndetics and links to the content where available. We also provide the option of searching WorldCat within Primo. Those options are available on EL Commons.
MetaLib+
We've added the option of customising MetaLib+ using CSS and html. We have also provided options to deep linking which means you could start your search from your library and have all the pre-set options available. We also have multiple personal quicksets, so users can define their own quicksets, combining different databases etc.
Browsing
We will soon provide browsing functionalities over four different entities: subject headins, call number, author and title. Initially this will be in Alma, Aleph and Voyager. But for Aleph and Voyager, the call number browsing will need a few extra adjustments so that will be available in 2013. In Primo, this will be available next month.
Enhancement resulting from the NERS voting system
- Enhancing the display of FRBR groups: we will enable this option
- Linking sign in and location tabs, so users can continue their work with no interruption
- Better page navigation
- Bx Hot articles in Primo: this will be set as default but can be removed
Primo back-office demo: We have made short videos providing explanations on the walk through the back office tasks. This is in the pipeline and will be made available soon.
Primo Central
The number of institutions continues to grow. The searching depends on the time of the year. We are also intending to add more content, including for example Credo Reference, GeoRef, BL Ethos, Emerald e-books and e-journals, etc. We have already a strong focus on research data but we will extend this by adding institutional repositories.
We will add Wikipedia in Primo Central. This is a controversial subject so we made a survey to ask ussers what they would think about this. 1/3 of the responses were positive and English the favoured language. So we thought we would add wikipedia but make it optional.
There is content not indexed directly in Primo Central but we receive a list of databases whose content is available when activated in Primo Central so those also provide extra options and content.
Finally we encourage you to participate in the NISO Open discovery Initiative (ODI) survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QBXZXSB . We also encourage you to upgrade to version 4.0 and to give us your feedback.
Questions and Answers
Q: About registration of institutional repository, can we define the format used, for example complexe xml?
A: We'll start with simple DC standard but afterwards we'll be looking at extending the options
Q: Call number browsing: how are you going to normalise the data for call numbers, as there are so diverse?
A: We'll be adding normalisation in the out of the box version
Q: Can you make the Primo back office easier to use? There is walkthrough and A/B testing, but it's very time consuming, things need to be changed in more than one place etc.
A: We received enhancement requests so if you want specific things let us know. We are putting a lot of development efforts in improving things and are listening to your suggestions but in the last NERS voting, there was nothing about the back office. We hope the walkthrough videos will assist. A lot of the request about the back office are about making cleare how to do things and describing how to do a task and that's why we've made those videos.
Q: What about searching chemical formulas?
A: The keyboard with mathematical formulas can be switched to chemical formulas
Q: Will you make service pack applications safer?
A: There are a few instructions. You can make a lot of changes in Primo, it is a challenge on our side as well when changes are made. We need to find appropriate procedures. We definitely take this into account.
Wednesday 12 September 2012
Voyager: Cloud nine or Cloud over?
Elena Menendez-Alonso, Plymouth University
9th largest UK higher education institution, with a recent development of distance learning. The library is open 24/7, we have 75+ staff, 500,000 books/e-books, 90 electronic resource packages, 16,800 unique serial titles. Our e-provision is growing and we are supporting the digital strategy.
Over the last 5-6 years we have had a lot of developments and our University sees the library as an important asset.
Our relationship with Ex Libris: Voyager 2004, SFX 2006, MetaLib+Verde 2007, Primo 2012 and hoping to be Alma early adopters at the beginning of next year.
Reasons for moving to the cloud:
- We were going to implement Primo
- We wanted to make savings on licensing and hardware because, as well as on resources
- We needed technical support, especially 24/7 since that's our opening days
Our process to move to the cloud started in October 2011 with the Primo project kicking off and we went Primo "beta" in March 2012 after we ensured the servers and the software were ready and installed. Our resources included a project Office in Hamburg, the local team in Plymouth University, the Ex Libris Cloud services support team in Amsterdam and the Voyager engineers in Chicago.
We found there was a lack of documentation on technical requirements. With Primo we started the configurations on the test server, but we realised we couldn't access the production server and things were different. We understand with hindsight that this is not uncommon with Ex Libris products but we would have found it useful to have this information upfront.
We also found that we could have done with more clarification between respective responsibilities. We expected Ex Libris to do the whole configurations for us but that was not the case. We had to rely on our systems librarian but he didn't have all the necessary information. So it is also about communication. We realised that Chicago is not as well integrated with European offices unfortunately. We also came accross a bug in V8.1 that meant the transfer of bibliographic information with the BL was not seemless.
Pros of going to the Cloud:
We had a project manager who provided great communication and support, advice on legal issues etc. There was the prospect at some point of having to host Voyager in Chicago rather than in Europe but Ex Libris had a plan B which we didn't know about.
We have been getting good performance and stability on the system, less downtime and fewer CRM incidents (and have been on the Cloud for 9 months). The transactions are going faster.
So globally our experience has been very positive. We would advice to watch out for documentation about configuration and roles and responsibilities, as well as communication. We think it will now be easier for us to move to Alma.
9th largest UK higher education institution, with a recent development of distance learning. The library is open 24/7, we have 75+ staff, 500,000 books/e-books, 90 electronic resource packages, 16,800 unique serial titles. Our e-provision is growing and we are supporting the digital strategy.
Over the last 5-6 years we have had a lot of developments and our University sees the library as an important asset.
Our relationship with Ex Libris: Voyager 2004, SFX 2006, MetaLib+Verde 2007, Primo 2012 and hoping to be Alma early adopters at the beginning of next year.
Reasons for moving to the cloud:
- We were going to implement Primo
- We wanted to make savings on licensing and hardware because, as well as on resources
- We needed technical support, especially 24/7 since that's our opening days
Our process to move to the cloud started in October 2011 with the Primo project kicking off and we went Primo "beta" in March 2012 after we ensured the servers and the software were ready and installed. Our resources included a project Office in Hamburg, the local team in Plymouth University, the Ex Libris Cloud services support team in Amsterdam and the Voyager engineers in Chicago.
We found there was a lack of documentation on technical requirements. With Primo we started the configurations on the test server, but we realised we couldn't access the production server and things were different. We understand with hindsight that this is not uncommon with Ex Libris products but we would have found it useful to have this information upfront.
We also found that we could have done with more clarification between respective responsibilities. We expected Ex Libris to do the whole configurations for us but that was not the case. We had to rely on our systems librarian but he didn't have all the necessary information. So it is also about communication. We realised that Chicago is not as well integrated with European offices unfortunately. We also came accross a bug in V8.1 that meant the transfer of bibliographic information with the BL was not seemless.
Pros of going to the Cloud:
We had a project manager who provided great communication and support, advice on legal issues etc. There was the prospect at some point of having to host Voyager in Chicago rather than in Europe but Ex Libris had a plan B which we didn't know about.
We have been getting good performance and stability on the system, less downtime and fewer CRM incidents (and have been on the Cloud for 9 months). The transactions are going faster.
So globally our experience has been very positive. We would advice to watch out for documentation about configuration and roles and responsibilities, as well as communication. We think it will now be easier for us to move to Alma.
Ex Libris Alma: questions and answers
Question to Diane:
You said Alma cared about staff and Aleph doesn't, can you expand?
Answer:
Mostly the task list is extremely useful and it makes the tasks much easier (for example closing lots of open orders)
Questions:
1. What are the main functionality that are not working in Alma compared to Aleph
2. Primo with no OPAC, how to you sell Primo?
Answers:
1. Diane: It's not that it doesn't work but it's that the functionality is coming (lots of laughs!), it's not quite the same thing. We had some problems that have been fixed. We haven't pushed the limits of Alma's functionalities, some are a little primitive but we didn't find them to be priorities. It is the resource management that is important. But we are quite confident that Alma improves constantly.
2. Trevor: We still provide access to the OPAC because of the lacking functionality in Primo that I mentioned. But we all talked about our working relationship with Ex Libris and we are confident that those functionalities will come.
Bar: We found that a lot of customers were still using the OPAC, the browse functionality is coming out soon, this forces ex Libris to look at those missing functionalities and we will be delivering those.
Angela: We are still unhappy with the OPAC! So we've very much customised Primo
Question:
Have you had the opportunity to test the community zone?
Answer:
Diane: There is not much to test, it is a promise of Alma and there is still lots to do, but it works well with bibliographic data. We will eventually discontinue our external authority control activity.
Question:
How does your staff cope with the monthly update to Alma?
Answer:
Diane: We know they're coming, in some cases we can anticipate what is in the release because it is an answer to one of our requests, in some cases we don't know and we would use the sandbox (a wonderful tool!) and we can start experimenting. We alert the staff there there is being a release. Mostly it is a state of mind. Mostly we have to remind staff that they are still testers.
Bar: We are going to introduce something which will help to deal with this, it is called "walk-about" and will show a "do tour" and you will be able to see an option, so you can take a tour in a pop-up screen. The whole training of Alma will be in Alma. This is coming out on the 1st October
Question:
What if you don't want a functionality? Can you turn it off?
Answer:
Diane: There is not an option to turn off a functionality but we can still decide if we want to use it or not. If there is anything wrong with it, it is our job to report it.
Trevor: as development partners, at this stage we don't have the luxury to test things that we want to do in the testing environment, but once Alma becomes a little more robust, we can work on more customisations in the production environment but at this point it may not make sense
Bar: The notion of sandbox is different in Alma, there are 2 flavours: the standard that every one gets as part of the system with standard data from Ex Libro and the primo sandbox that is an option and that you can populate with your data. In terms of the ability to control the functionalities, it is still limited now but in the future we will increase it. The new releases in the sandbox will also come a little sooner but at the moment the monthly realeases don't allow that
You said Alma cared about staff and Aleph doesn't, can you expand?
Answer:
Mostly the task list is extremely useful and it makes the tasks much easier (for example closing lots of open orders)
Questions:
1. What are the main functionality that are not working in Alma compared to Aleph
2. Primo with no OPAC, how to you sell Primo?
Answers:
1. Diane: It's not that it doesn't work but it's that the functionality is coming (lots of laughs!), it's not quite the same thing. We had some problems that have been fixed. We haven't pushed the limits of Alma's functionalities, some are a little primitive but we didn't find them to be priorities. It is the resource management that is important. But we are quite confident that Alma improves constantly.
2. Trevor: We still provide access to the OPAC because of the lacking functionality in Primo that I mentioned. But we all talked about our working relationship with Ex Libris and we are confident that those functionalities will come.
Bar: We found that a lot of customers were still using the OPAC, the browse functionality is coming out soon, this forces ex Libris to look at those missing functionalities and we will be delivering those.
Angela: We are still unhappy with the OPAC! So we've very much customised Primo
Question:
Have you had the opportunity to test the community zone?
Answer:
Diane: There is not much to test, it is a promise of Alma and there is still lots to do, but it works well with bibliographic data. We will eventually discontinue our external authority control activity.
Question:
How does your staff cope with the monthly update to Alma?
Answer:
Diane: We know they're coming, in some cases we can anticipate what is in the release because it is an answer to one of our requests, in some cases we don't know and we would use the sandbox (a wonderful tool!) and we can start experimenting. We alert the staff there there is being a release. Mostly it is a state of mind. Mostly we have to remind staff that they are still testers.
Bar: We are going to introduce something which will help to deal with this, it is called "walk-about" and will show a "do tour" and you will be able to see an option, so you can take a tour in a pop-up screen. The whole training of Alma will be in Alma. This is coming out on the 1st October
Question:
What if you don't want a functionality? Can you turn it off?
Answer:
Diane: There is not an option to turn off a functionality but we can still decide if we want to use it or not. If there is anything wrong with it, it is our job to report it.
Trevor: as development partners, at this stage we don't have the luxury to test things that we want to do in the testing environment, but once Alma becomes a little more robust, we can work on more customisations in the production environment but at this point it may not make sense
Bar: The notion of sandbox is different in Alma, there are 2 flavours: the standard that every one gets as part of the system with standard data from Ex Libro and the primo sandbox that is an option and that you can populate with your data. In terms of the ability to control the functionalities, it is still limited now but in the future we will increase it. The new releases in the sandbox will also come a little sooner but at the moment the monthly realeases don't allow that
Alma Early Adopters 5: University of Manchester
Andy Land
Brief background information because the context is very important. If you don't know much about Manchester, you will know about the football side of things. It is primarily a city that is both united and divided by football! The university has got almost 40000 students and is very much about research. The library has over 4million books, manuscripts and archives and over 2.5 million items in the ILS. We have been with Talis since 1993. We had been with it for so long we needed to look at best value.
We had to review the library startegy: Support the reasearch and teaching, provide better access and discovery, improve methods of collection management. In terms of external context, there were also studies about LMS, esp. the JISC & SCONUL study (2008).
What we were looking for was a system that could meet the needs of our users and staff, value for money, improve system interoperability and partner with a company that understands the present and future needs of a large research library in a world class university.
We came to Alma because we found it would satisfy the majority of our requirements and represented value for money. We rationalised a lot of our current systems and it provides a lot of functionality. We hope to be able to take advantage of a number of API's. There is also a strong development network. We were drawn to Ex Libris client base. We feel that the clients that Ex Libris has enables us to pull our resources together and Ex Libris has a good record in innovation.
Our risks related to the fact that we're no longer a big fish in a small pond. Alma is a concept, not a product (at least at the time that we signed up). UK functionality is being developed and we haven't seen much of that yet. Primo is a sole interface (more later).
Initial benefits coming out of the procurement exercise include the cloud infrastructure. We were looking for environmental efficiencies around the IT services. It is allowing us to review our workflows and processes. One of the key thing is to try and simplify our circulation. We have 10 sites with different rules and we want to go down to the essentials. We hope to deliver new services and functionalities.
Our implementation project starts next month. Angela mentioned the Alma Academy. Our staff also show testing fatigue. We've been able to influence UK specific functionality and that was a positive experiences, as well as the shared experiences with other Early Adopters.
Issues for us is the switch to Primo as the main interface. That is a concern so we need to buy into Primo before we move to Alma. That is our biggest challenge over the next 2-3 months. There are also issues around missing information. We'd expect to see some information around our special collections for example, so we have plans of using some other solution. Staff also were suprised for example that there is no serials prediction patterns.
Finally data migration, especially coming from a non Ex Libris environment, will be challenging. We are still working on that, issues with historic and legacy data in particular, but so far our experience has been very good.
Brief background information because the context is very important. If you don't know much about Manchester, you will know about the football side of things. It is primarily a city that is both united and divided by football! The university has got almost 40000 students and is very much about research. The library has over 4million books, manuscripts and archives and over 2.5 million items in the ILS. We have been with Talis since 1993. We had been with it for so long we needed to look at best value.
We had to review the library startegy: Support the reasearch and teaching, provide better access and discovery, improve methods of collection management. In terms of external context, there were also studies about LMS, esp. the JISC & SCONUL study (2008).
What we were looking for was a system that could meet the needs of our users and staff, value for money, improve system interoperability and partner with a company that understands the present and future needs of a large research library in a world class university.
We came to Alma because we found it would satisfy the majority of our requirements and represented value for money. We rationalised a lot of our current systems and it provides a lot of functionality. We hope to be able to take advantage of a number of API's. There is also a strong development network. We were drawn to Ex Libris client base. We feel that the clients that Ex Libris has enables us to pull our resources together and Ex Libris has a good record in innovation.
Our risks related to the fact that we're no longer a big fish in a small pond. Alma is a concept, not a product (at least at the time that we signed up). UK functionality is being developed and we haven't seen much of that yet. Primo is a sole interface (more later).
Initial benefits coming out of the procurement exercise include the cloud infrastructure. We were looking for environmental efficiencies around the IT services. It is allowing us to review our workflows and processes. One of the key thing is to try and simplify our circulation. We have 10 sites with different rules and we want to go down to the essentials. We hope to deliver new services and functionalities.
Our implementation project starts next month. Angela mentioned the Alma Academy. Our staff also show testing fatigue. We've been able to influence UK specific functionality and that was a positive experiences, as well as the shared experiences with other Early Adopters.
Issues for us is the switch to Primo as the main interface. That is a concern so we need to buy into Primo before we move to Alma. That is our biggest challenge over the next 2-3 months. There are also issues around missing information. We'd expect to see some information around our special collections for example, so we have plans of using some other solution. Staff also were suprised for example that there is no serials prediction patterns.
Finally data migration, especially coming from a non Ex Libris environment, will be challenging. We are still working on that, issues with historic and legacy data in particular, but so far our experience has been very good.
Alma Early Adopters 4:Purdue University
Paul Bracke
We are "new early adopters" but have been very involved since then. We are a public university in Indiana and have 10 academic colleges/schools with strengths in engineering, agriculture and the sciences.
In the library, we have 12 subject libraries, archives and special collections. We have a small number of volumes, about 2.5M but with an emphasis on electronic journals.
Our current automation environment is fairly fractured. Our ILS is Voyager, we don't have an ERM and that's a bit of a problem. We use SFX and Metalib for discovery. We are hoping to use Primo and metalib for discovery in the future.
When we were first approached by Ex Libris we reflected that we wanted better tools because of the fractured nature of our infrastructure and we wanted a better electronic resources management tool. We also wanted better analytics for decision support and a better collaborative approach. So the community zone in Alma was appealing. We also wanted a system for other types of collaboration, for example for shared print archives, resource sharing etc. Finally, it was a question of focus for us and to have a commitment. We have an ambitious plan for new programmes, esp. Research Data and Library Publishing.
If we compare our preparation to other universities, it is very similar. We had concerns about Primo, the task list functionality but there were things we wanted to do to make this a success for us. We wanted a structure for our staff for approaching the testing and a good communication with Ex Libris. We worked on the mental switch for our staff and had a lot of conversations internally. We adapted our workflows and identified our most important ones in order of priority in 2 levels: required to go live and not required but needed within 1 year. This did not include all our workflows.
Initially we had a Voyager speak but then it was translated to an Alma-speak.
We reflected on our objectives and the reason why we wanted to go live. Initially our communication was difficult with Ex Libris because we were talking in Voyager terms and their developpers were talking in Alma language. So that forced us to do the mental change: how do we describe what we do in Alma? It gave us a better opportunity to better understand and re-examine work practices. We had to work on a framework for training and support. Ex Libris can only go so far on how they can train our staff. We needed to provide more context to our staff so we have a few foundation training sessions for staff, including supervisors and the people needing the first line of support. Then we also trained acquisitions staff and other key members of staff.
So far I can say that our experience has been very positive.
We are "new early adopters" but have been very involved since then. We are a public university in Indiana and have 10 academic colleges/schools with strengths in engineering, agriculture and the sciences.
In the library, we have 12 subject libraries, archives and special collections. We have a small number of volumes, about 2.5M but with an emphasis on electronic journals.
Our current automation environment is fairly fractured. Our ILS is Voyager, we don't have an ERM and that's a bit of a problem. We use SFX and Metalib for discovery. We are hoping to use Primo and metalib for discovery in the future.
When we were first approached by Ex Libris we reflected that we wanted better tools because of the fractured nature of our infrastructure and we wanted a better electronic resources management tool. We also wanted better analytics for decision support and a better collaborative approach. So the community zone in Alma was appealing. We also wanted a system for other types of collaboration, for example for shared print archives, resource sharing etc. Finally, it was a question of focus for us and to have a commitment. We have an ambitious plan for new programmes, esp. Research Data and Library Publishing.
If we compare our preparation to other universities, it is very similar. We had concerns about Primo, the task list functionality but there were things we wanted to do to make this a success for us. We wanted a structure for our staff for approaching the testing and a good communication with Ex Libris. We worked on the mental switch for our staff and had a lot of conversations internally. We adapted our workflows and identified our most important ones in order of priority in 2 levels: required to go live and not required but needed within 1 year. This did not include all our workflows.
Initially we had a Voyager speak but then it was translated to an Alma-speak.
We reflected on our objectives and the reason why we wanted to go live. Initially our communication was difficult with Ex Libris because we were talking in Voyager terms and their developpers were talking in Alma language. So that forced us to do the mental change: how do we describe what we do in Alma? It gave us a better opportunity to better understand and re-examine work practices. We had to work on a framework for training and support. Ex Libris can only go so far on how they can train our staff. We needed to provide more context to our staff so we have a few foundation training sessions for staff, including supervisors and the people needing the first line of support. Then we also trained acquisitions staff and other key members of staff.
So far I can say that our experience has been very positive.
Alma Early Adopters 3: University of Salford
Angela Walker
The University of Salford is part of the European Early Adopters, we aim to be going live in June 2013. We are not Ex Libris ILS (Talis) so that makes things a bit slowlier.
Information aobut Salford: we are neighbours to Manchester and work closely with our colleagues there. It is a small University, 3 colleges and 10 schools, our curriculum is very much based on employability.
The Library is based accross 4 sites and has 100 members of staff. We have 17000 e-journals and 300000 e-books and that's one of the reasons why we went down the Alma route.
We have had Talis since 1996. It is mostly aimed at print resources and is a complexe system. One of a big issues for us is the internal hosting of the system. The IT was moved away from the library as well as the system so we have no control. The University has a plan of creating a new IT infrastructure and the ILS is at the bottom of the list.
Because we have more and more electronic resources we need a better system. We are also interested in a cloud system and looking at future developments. The management information was becoming too complexe using different systems. We also wanted to reduce the total cost of ownership.
Why Alma? We had already been looking at Primo and wanted a next generation system. Now our students generally use Primo to search our resources. We had funding in place for a new LMS. We were initially looking at Aleph but then heard of new generations systems with better workflows so we held back a little bit. We wanted a better control of our system. Although Alma is in the cloud, it will be controlled by library staff.
Our staff are involved in circulation, acquisition, academic support and IT services, they help us for the testing. One of the big things for us is the management of historic data. We've looked at how we would go about the data migration. In the UK there is a lot of requirements for data security so we had to look at that as well, as well as RFID, our current processes and workflows, we expect we'll have to make huge changes to our policies and will need to give a good communication to our colleagues.
Preparing for Alma: We had to do some data clean up, stock check, review our workflows and prepare for data migration. Ex Libris contacted us recently and that made us realise there was a lot of preparation work. We had a kick off meeting last week so the preparation is in the early stages.
Our expectations are the we will have a better functionality, streamlined workflows, better reporting and metadata management, improved functionality in Primo, reduction in number of systems and better control. Although we've used Primo as our main search tool, users still need to go into the OPAC for requesting material.
We anticipate possible issues because we are aware it is a new system. Because we are coming from a non ex Libris system, the data migration may be more complicated. Alma is a very different way of working, for example, we don't talk of circulation but fulfilment! We are hopeful on a lot of new functionality. We have concerns how we will be able to collaborate with the IT services, as well as on system integration. We know from other early adopters that that can be a challenge, both from our end and Ex Libris' end.
Our experience so far has been very positive. The communication channel that we are using is a lot via webex. We are moving from a small UK based ILS to a big international one so the communication is different. The training for staff will be a big cultural change as it will be done via webex. The Alma Academy is maybe not happening in the US, we don't have a test system at this stage. It is a weekly event done via webex with Alma early adopters UK where we all sit down and discuss funtionalities and submit questions to Ex Libris.
In the future we're hoping to use most of the functionalities in Alma, bookings, online payments, intergration with our course management system and integration with the fincance system.
If you want to contact me feel free to send me an email to langley-walker@salford.ac.uk
The University of Salford is part of the European Early Adopters, we aim to be going live in June 2013. We are not Ex Libris ILS (Talis) so that makes things a bit slowlier.
Information aobut Salford: we are neighbours to Manchester and work closely with our colleagues there. It is a small University, 3 colleges and 10 schools, our curriculum is very much based on employability.
The Library is based accross 4 sites and has 100 members of staff. We have 17000 e-journals and 300000 e-books and that's one of the reasons why we went down the Alma route.
We have had Talis since 1996. It is mostly aimed at print resources and is a complexe system. One of a big issues for us is the internal hosting of the system. The IT was moved away from the library as well as the system so we have no control. The University has a plan of creating a new IT infrastructure and the ILS is at the bottom of the list.
Because we have more and more electronic resources we need a better system. We are also interested in a cloud system and looking at future developments. The management information was becoming too complexe using different systems. We also wanted to reduce the total cost of ownership.
Why Alma? We had already been looking at Primo and wanted a next generation system. Now our students generally use Primo to search our resources. We had funding in place for a new LMS. We were initially looking at Aleph but then heard of new generations systems with better workflows so we held back a little bit. We wanted a better control of our system. Although Alma is in the cloud, it will be controlled by library staff.
Our staff are involved in circulation, acquisition, academic support and IT services, they help us for the testing. One of the big things for us is the management of historic data. We've looked at how we would go about the data migration. In the UK there is a lot of requirements for data security so we had to look at that as well, as well as RFID, our current processes and workflows, we expect we'll have to make huge changes to our policies and will need to give a good communication to our colleagues.
Preparing for Alma: We had to do some data clean up, stock check, review our workflows and prepare for data migration. Ex Libris contacted us recently and that made us realise there was a lot of preparation work. We had a kick off meeting last week so the preparation is in the early stages.
Our expectations are the we will have a better functionality, streamlined workflows, better reporting and metadata management, improved functionality in Primo, reduction in number of systems and better control. Although we've used Primo as our main search tool, users still need to go into the OPAC for requesting material.
We anticipate possible issues because we are aware it is a new system. Because we are coming from a non ex Libris system, the data migration may be more complicated. Alma is a very different way of working, for example, we don't talk of circulation but fulfilment! We are hopeful on a lot of new functionality. We have concerns how we will be able to collaborate with the IT services, as well as on system integration. We know from other early adopters that that can be a challenge, both from our end and Ex Libris' end.
Our experience so far has been very positive. The communication channel that we are using is a lot via webex. We are moving from a small UK based ILS to a big international one so the communication is different. The training for staff will be a big cultural change as it will be done via webex. The Alma Academy is maybe not happening in the US, we don't have a test system at this stage. It is a weekly event done via webex with Alma early adopters UK where we all sit down and discuss funtionalities and submit questions to Ex Libris.
In the future we're hoping to use most of the functionalities in Alma, bookings, online payments, intergration with our course management system and integration with the fincance system.
If you want to contact me feel free to send me an email to langley-walker@salford.ac.uk
Alma Early Adopters 2: Princeton University Library
Trevor A. Dawes
We have been using Voyager for a few years. The format in which we collect our resources has become more diverse and we needed a more effective system. We used SFX and Meridian, Dspace for our digital collections. We have several interfaces for our users, using both Primo and Summon, as well as the classic OPAC.
Our process of selecting Alma is probably not very different from the other speakers. We wanted to make the management of our resources simpler. We had too many silos and different types of records. Ex Libris approached us a few years ago to ask if we wanted to be early developper partners. So we agreed. We were quite confident there weren't other systems as developped as Alma.
We had the opportunity to provide critical analysis to Ex Libris about Alma. We are waiting next year for the implementation but that is less to do with the product as with some concerns from our staff and users. We will plan on using Primo as discovery service.
If you are concerned about Alma being a cloud system, we didn't have that concern because we had already moved to the cloud. We see this as moving some expertise to limit staff cost. We want to take advantage of automated workflows. We have hopes for easier acquisitions workflows altough we also expect this to be the most challenging.
In our testing so far, we have several staff testing. Alma is designed to automate process and allow customers to have greater control over the activities. In our current environment we have very manual processes, so there is quite a lot of apprehension of letting go of that type of control . We have to get our staff used to the fact they will be working in a very different way.
Staff include both line staff as well as managers. We have time to plan for our implementation in 10 months. We had great support from Ex Libris, online meetings as well as seminars. The documentation still needs some work but it has got better thanks to feedback. We need explanation of consequences of changes in activities and certain aspects of Alma. We have the opportunity to try, fail and try again but the documentation is really important.
Some of the staff have become very adept at using Alma. In some areas we've not been able to perform workflow testing. We are reviewing the migration of our data next month. Some areas need tweeking but they are not major areas. Because we manage this process outside of Voyager, we are planning to use Alma for course reserve functionality next year.
One of Alma's goals is to simplify circulation. We initially tried to simplify some activities in Voyager. We realised we had a large amount of policies and activities, with some duplication. We worked with the circulation staff on campuses. We were only partly successful! This was an opportunity to look at our policies and try and implement some changes. We've managed to reduce by about half our number of policies in Alma!
We haven't completed the testing of importing the records from OCLC but hope to do so soon, as well as student data. The electronic transactions seem to be running on schedule. We expect the automotated processes in acquisition to work very well.
Reporting in Alma is very effective. They can be viewed as well as exported. There are templates that can be used. This functionality will help to free up staff time and reports can be prepared on a regular basis.
General data migration experience: we have had a large amount of our data migrated. The first round were partly successful. some acquisitions data didn't migrate correctly. We had to do some vendor record clean-up. We had to match as best we could the records and that was complicated and time-consuming. We had a lot of locations and this had to be mapped to the new concept of libraries on Alma. We had to evaluate the impact of this mapping.
We hope to correct some of these issues with the next migration. We had to make decisions on the mapping and that was done with some managers. We haven't done an extensive of data in Voyager but did some bibliographic clean up last year as well as the circulation policies as mentioned.
Overall I'd describe our experience positive, especially for the e-resources. Our head of cataloguing is thrilled with the automating rules. Our public services staff expressed concerns of the lack of functionalities in Primo. Some of the functionality they'd like to see includes call number browsing but some of this functionality is coming with the next release of Primo and we're looking forward to that. The requesting functionality is well integrated in Alma. Alma is at a point where it's being used by some libraries. We've been woring with Ex Libris for a long time and the collaboration has been very good. We had to find some compromise but that has worked well. For example we were initially reporting using spreadsheets but that grew up too quickly so we then used Pivotal, although that will be changing soon as well! But it has helped for the reporting and an improved communication.
Some of our staff are expressing testing fatigue and are hoping to move to Alma soon.
We have been using Voyager for a few years. The format in which we collect our resources has become more diverse and we needed a more effective system. We used SFX and Meridian, Dspace for our digital collections. We have several interfaces for our users, using both Primo and Summon, as well as the classic OPAC.
Our process of selecting Alma is probably not very different from the other speakers. We wanted to make the management of our resources simpler. We had too many silos and different types of records. Ex Libris approached us a few years ago to ask if we wanted to be early developper partners. So we agreed. We were quite confident there weren't other systems as developped as Alma.
We had the opportunity to provide critical analysis to Ex Libris about Alma. We are waiting next year for the implementation but that is less to do with the product as with some concerns from our staff and users. We will plan on using Primo as discovery service.
If you are concerned about Alma being a cloud system, we didn't have that concern because we had already moved to the cloud. We see this as moving some expertise to limit staff cost. We want to take advantage of automated workflows. We have hopes for easier acquisitions workflows altough we also expect this to be the most challenging.
In our testing so far, we have several staff testing. Alma is designed to automate process and allow customers to have greater control over the activities. In our current environment we have very manual processes, so there is quite a lot of apprehension of letting go of that type of control . We have to get our staff used to the fact they will be working in a very different way.
Staff include both line staff as well as managers. We have time to plan for our implementation in 10 months. We had great support from Ex Libris, online meetings as well as seminars. The documentation still needs some work but it has got better thanks to feedback. We need explanation of consequences of changes in activities and certain aspects of Alma. We have the opportunity to try, fail and try again but the documentation is really important.
Some of the staff have become very adept at using Alma. In some areas we've not been able to perform workflow testing. We are reviewing the migration of our data next month. Some areas need tweeking but they are not major areas. Because we manage this process outside of Voyager, we are planning to use Alma for course reserve functionality next year.
One of Alma's goals is to simplify circulation. We initially tried to simplify some activities in Voyager. We realised we had a large amount of policies and activities, with some duplication. We worked with the circulation staff on campuses. We were only partly successful! This was an opportunity to look at our policies and try and implement some changes. We've managed to reduce by about half our number of policies in Alma!
We haven't completed the testing of importing the records from OCLC but hope to do so soon, as well as student data. The electronic transactions seem to be running on schedule. We expect the automotated processes in acquisition to work very well.
Reporting in Alma is very effective. They can be viewed as well as exported. There are templates that can be used. This functionality will help to free up staff time and reports can be prepared on a regular basis.
General data migration experience: we have had a large amount of our data migrated. The first round were partly successful. some acquisitions data didn't migrate correctly. We had to do some vendor record clean-up. We had to match as best we could the records and that was complicated and time-consuming. We had a lot of locations and this had to be mapped to the new concept of libraries on Alma. We had to evaluate the impact of this mapping.
We hope to correct some of these issues with the next migration. We had to make decisions on the mapping and that was done with some managers. We haven't done an extensive of data in Voyager but did some bibliographic clean up last year as well as the circulation policies as mentioned.
Overall I'd describe our experience positive, especially for the e-resources. Our head of cataloguing is thrilled with the automating rules. Our public services staff expressed concerns of the lack of functionalities in Primo. Some of the functionality they'd like to see includes call number browsing but some of this functionality is coming with the next release of Primo and we're looking forward to that. The requesting functionality is well integrated in Alma. Alma is at a point where it's being used by some libraries. We've been woring with Ex Libris for a long time and the collaboration has been very good. We had to find some compromise but that has worked well. For example we were initially reporting using spreadsheets but that grew up too quickly so we then used Pivotal, although that will be changing soon as well! But it has helped for the reporting and an improved communication.
Some of our staff are expressing testing fatigue and are hoping to move to Alma soon.
Alma Early Adopters1: Boston University
Diane Aydon?, Boston University
In my 10 minutes I will try to tell you about our implementation and what it-s like in my department.
Our implementation was not typical, we had been inside Alma for at least 2 years, testing features, giving feedback, looking at our data. At various stages our data was migrated so the migration was in various stages and we were looking at the various functionalities so it was different each time.
Migrations was our greatest challenge and especially for electronic resources because it was coming from our home-grown system. And Alma was still in development. Each time there was a new release of Alma with new functionalities. This requires a great amount of flexibility. So this has been our implementation, an ongoing period of using and testing and watching what was changing.
Pros:
We had a great deal of infuluence on Alma development. We had internal training so a lot of inhouse expertise, we knew what was coming and had a lot of support from Ex Libris, especially when we went live. Our experience changed when we went live, because you are dealing with your regular workflows and you learn things very quickly which you couldn't anticipate.
Cons
We made mistakes and discovered bugs. We were inside so we didn-t have too much time to think through processes. Some of the functionality came late. We are somehow jealous of other ealy adopters, we were lonely because we were the first. We had to focus on our institutions but couldn't see the whole of Alma like others and think through the strategies, prepare our steps and users etc. so it's been a balancing act for us.
My words of wisdom
- Be ruthless! It will be easier to configure Alma is you have a simple structure. We used Aleph because we could configure a lot but then the migration was very challenging because of that complexe structure.
- Prepare your public services staff with the loss of the OPAC. This is even more important than the first point. Primo is very different from the OPAC. Force people how to use it! Ask for feedback. We had to "indoctrinate" our staff to being developmement partners. We have to use it to improve it.
- Clean up your data. Obvious but important! Records not problematic in Aleph became so in Alma. Look at your MARC fields, how is Primo going to use them, vendors etc. Anything that may work fine in your current environment may not in a new one. Start now!
How do we use Alma:
Our department is the lifecycle of all monographic material. My focus was on the acquisitions side. We are loading files of vendor supplies, OCLC cat records, both for approval and for overlay vendor records, EDI invoices, sending invoice data to the Uni financial system, loading e-book records, cataloguing as needed and we are using Alma's work orders to track the various processes, something we had been dreaming of being able to do. Alma provides this functionality as it is built in. for example the task list, exceptions that need staff attention. Alma groups things for you so you don't need to constantly search various parts of the system. The import profiles, the set up for bring things in is beautifully designed.
That's my quick overview of our recent migration and current status.
In my 10 minutes I will try to tell you about our implementation and what it-s like in my department.
Our implementation was not typical, we had been inside Alma for at least 2 years, testing features, giving feedback, looking at our data. At various stages our data was migrated so the migration was in various stages and we were looking at the various functionalities so it was different each time.
Migrations was our greatest challenge and especially for electronic resources because it was coming from our home-grown system. And Alma was still in development. Each time there was a new release of Alma with new functionalities. This requires a great amount of flexibility. So this has been our implementation, an ongoing period of using and testing and watching what was changing.
Pros:
We had a great deal of infuluence on Alma development. We had internal training so a lot of inhouse expertise, we knew what was coming and had a lot of support from Ex Libris, especially when we went live. Our experience changed when we went live, because you are dealing with your regular workflows and you learn things very quickly which you couldn't anticipate.
Cons
We made mistakes and discovered bugs. We were inside so we didn-t have too much time to think through processes. Some of the functionality came late. We are somehow jealous of other ealy adopters, we were lonely because we were the first. We had to focus on our institutions but couldn't see the whole of Alma like others and think through the strategies, prepare our steps and users etc. so it's been a balancing act for us.
My words of wisdom
- Be ruthless! It will be easier to configure Alma is you have a simple structure. We used Aleph because we could configure a lot but then the migration was very challenging because of that complexe structure.
- Prepare your public services staff with the loss of the OPAC. This is even more important than the first point. Primo is very different from the OPAC. Force people how to use it! Ask for feedback. We had to "indoctrinate" our staff to being developmement partners. We have to use it to improve it.
- Clean up your data. Obvious but important! Records not problematic in Aleph became so in Alma. Look at your MARC fields, how is Primo going to use them, vendors etc. Anything that may work fine in your current environment may not in a new one. Start now!
How do we use Alma:
Our department is the lifecycle of all monographic material. My focus was on the acquisitions side. We are loading files of vendor supplies, OCLC cat records, both for approval and for overlay vendor records, EDI invoices, sending invoice data to the Uni financial system, loading e-book records, cataloguing as needed and we are using Alma's work orders to track the various processes, something we had been dreaming of being able to do. Alma provides this functionality as it is built in. for example the task list, exceptions that need staff attention. Alma groups things for you so you don't need to constantly search various parts of the system. The import profiles, the set up for bring things in is beautifully designed.
That's my quick overview of our recent migration and current status.
ExLibris ALMA update and view from the development/Early adopters
This session is about an update from ExLibris on where the Alma deveopmentnow stands and how this new product is unfolding, as well as presentations from representatives from four institutions that have made the commitment to Alma; they will give us their insight into the product and into their decision to adopt Alma to replace their curent systems. If time permits, there will be an aooortunity for questions form the audience.
Moderator: Michele Newberry, Florida virtual Campus-Gainseville: IGeLU steering committee
We will be starting with an update form ExLibris and then the four early adopters. I am going to turn it over to Bar.
ExLibris Update
Bar Veinstein, VP, Resrouce Management Solutions, ExLibris
I was wondering how many people would turn up this morning. A lot of people wonder what Alma stands for, actually nothing, that's why it's not written in capital letters. I will talk of intresting facts about Alma. My presentations will last about 40 minutes because I think it-s important that we hear the other presentations!
Here is a confusing slide which shows the Alma journey. I will not use this slide anymore. We went live in the beginning of the year. boston College was the first customer to go into production but for the last 4 years we've been working hard to keep the schedule for going into production.
I will give you 3 examples of great benefits Alma brings to the customers. Alma is not just the technology, it's a bit change in the company as well. I also want to talk about the different paths to go into Alma. We don't expect everyone to jump into Alma but we want to show you what's good about it.
Key objectives when we designed Alma:
- efficiencies: unified management
- collaboration
- Innovation
Alma screenshot showing an example of a form for physical material. Location of the item, vendor information, pricing, funding etc.
Now is the same screen for e-resources, the same fields appear again. So the idea is that when we looked at the workflows, although there are differences, there is a lot in common. That is the essence of the unified management. How to keep the uniqueness of certain type of material and make the workflows work seemlessly.
Some workflows are very intertwined. In Alma, we don't use modules anymore because it is all workflows. There is no such separation.
Screenshot of the dashboard: it is made of widgets.
Collaborative zone: a place for consortia. Example of a simple search, we look for certain titles in the private zone, that is our own collection. If we switch to the community zone, and you don't need to run the search again, you search within the consortia collections.
Analytics: we are not only talking of what's been happening but what will happening, so it is predictive. Alma analytics is integrated in the product itself. It is embedded in the dashboard and part of the workflows.
I will now switch over to work behind the scenes. We worked very hard to develop Alma. We started with one data centre in the US. We now have a 3rd one in Asia (Singapoure). We work with partners who provide services but the products are owned by Ex Libris. It's a cloud data centre. We release developments in small chunks but fairly quickly. We release Alma every month, it requires a lot of effort on the quality side, we're still working on that but it shows how quickly things are changing.
Implementation is changing very much at Ex Libris. We try to do that rapidly. For a large institution it shouldn't be more than 8 months. Our target is 4 to 8 months. We introduced the cowork implementation so we combine the implementation of various institutions.
Ex Libris does the initial configuration and then we teach the institution how to do the configurations itself. It makes the process simpler and quicker. We also create certification programmes. We have trained people internally. This is for customers, different types of users, etc. We try to be more consistent compared to what we did in the past.
This was a quick overview of where we are. How did we get there? There are several paths. One would be: you do nothing! The second path is to start moving towards the second generation platform. Two elements: the concept of cloud and discovery. Hosting your servers in a hosted environment is moving to a cloud service. Alma doesn't work with an OPAC. So discovery is very important. It is not a simple path. A lot of our customers try to run it together with their OPAC so moving to a discovery interfact only is a big step. The third path is the momentum that is going!
I will not pass over to the panel.
Partner/Adopters Update
Paul Bracke, Associate Dean for Digital Programs and Information Access, Purdue University
Trevor A. Dawes, Circulation Services Director, Princeton University Library
Angela Walker, Digital Library and Systems Manager, Salford University
Andy Land, Digital Systems Manager, The University of Manchester Library
Moderator: Michele Newberry, Florida virtual Campus-Gainseville: IGeLU steering committee
We will be starting with an update form ExLibris and then the four early adopters. I am going to turn it over to Bar.
ExLibris Update
Bar Veinstein, VP, Resrouce Management Solutions, ExLibris
I was wondering how many people would turn up this morning. A lot of people wonder what Alma stands for, actually nothing, that's why it's not written in capital letters. I will talk of intresting facts about Alma. My presentations will last about 40 minutes because I think it-s important that we hear the other presentations!
Here is a confusing slide which shows the Alma journey. I will not use this slide anymore. We went live in the beginning of the year. boston College was the first customer to go into production but for the last 4 years we've been working hard to keep the schedule for going into production.
I will give you 3 examples of great benefits Alma brings to the customers. Alma is not just the technology, it's a bit change in the company as well. I also want to talk about the different paths to go into Alma. We don't expect everyone to jump into Alma but we want to show you what's good about it.
Key objectives when we designed Alma:
- efficiencies: unified management
- collaboration
- Innovation
Alma screenshot showing an example of a form for physical material. Location of the item, vendor information, pricing, funding etc.
Now is the same screen for e-resources, the same fields appear again. So the idea is that when we looked at the workflows, although there are differences, there is a lot in common. That is the essence of the unified management. How to keep the uniqueness of certain type of material and make the workflows work seemlessly.
Some workflows are very intertwined. In Alma, we don't use modules anymore because it is all workflows. There is no such separation.
Screenshot of the dashboard: it is made of widgets.
Collaborative zone: a place for consortia. Example of a simple search, we look for certain titles in the private zone, that is our own collection. If we switch to the community zone, and you don't need to run the search again, you search within the consortia collections.
Analytics: we are not only talking of what's been happening but what will happening, so it is predictive. Alma analytics is integrated in the product itself. It is embedded in the dashboard and part of the workflows.
I will now switch over to work behind the scenes. We worked very hard to develop Alma. We started with one data centre in the US. We now have a 3rd one in Asia (Singapoure). We work with partners who provide services but the products are owned by Ex Libris. It's a cloud data centre. We release developments in small chunks but fairly quickly. We release Alma every month, it requires a lot of effort on the quality side, we're still working on that but it shows how quickly things are changing.
Implementation is changing very much at Ex Libris. We try to do that rapidly. For a large institution it shouldn't be more than 8 months. Our target is 4 to 8 months. We introduced the cowork implementation so we combine the implementation of various institutions.
Ex Libris does the initial configuration and then we teach the institution how to do the configurations itself. It makes the process simpler and quicker. We also create certification programmes. We have trained people internally. This is for customers, different types of users, etc. We try to be more consistent compared to what we did in the past.
This was a quick overview of where we are. How did we get there? There are several paths. One would be: you do nothing! The second path is to start moving towards the second generation platform. Two elements: the concept of cloud and discovery. Hosting your servers in a hosted environment is moving to a cloud service. Alma doesn't work with an OPAC. So discovery is very important. It is not a simple path. A lot of our customers try to run it together with their OPAC so moving to a discovery interfact only is a big step. The third path is the momentum that is going!
I will not pass over to the panel.
Partner/Adopters Update
Paul Bracke, Associate Dean for Digital Programs and Information Access, Purdue University
Trevor A. Dawes, Circulation Services Director, Princeton University Library
Angela Walker, Digital Library and Systems Manager, Salford University
Andy Land, Digital Systems Manager, The University of Manchester Library
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