[live-blog IGeLU Conference 2013, Berlin - please forgive typos etc.]
Q: Read-only access to the Alma configuration screens availability?
A: First let me explain what this is: it refers to the process during implementation, ExLibris performs the configuration in the first instance but once the customer has received the Certification Training, ExLibris doesn't do this anymore. This at the moment is near the end of the implementation just before Alma goes live. We've received this as an important feedback, that people want more transparancy and understand better the configuration options during implementation. By the end of the year we will have a read-only option for the configuration. This will first be at the fulfilment level. This will be incorporated as part of the permissions based on roles.
Q: Data quality and how to re-use cataloging already done is important. What is happening with the plans for the Alma community zone where we expect we should be able to find most records instead of searching them via external sources?
A: It's part of our key goals to improve efficiencies, focus on enabling streamlined sharing. We've started this by modelling this, we're at the stage where we work with the policies and cataloguing advisory group and expect to get results towards the end of the year. We presented the suggested model now and you will recognise real efficiencies in processes. We are finalising the development of those recommendations.
Q: Plans to share EzProxy configurations in the community zone?
A: The community zone isn't planned for that, but it's a good question and we should think about that.
Q: When can we expect to see license information in Alma's uResolver? (obligation to display copyright information in e-resources)? Will we ba able to rename fields or add local terms to be added to the uResolver copyright information when finally built out?
A: The option to show the licensing info is planned for the 2nd quarter of 2014. We will allow to adjust the wording of those fields to be more user friendly. This is in our roadmap.
Q: Cloud safety - What if anything happens to a Data Center? How will Ex Libris restore services to customers whose data and applications are housed in the Cloud?
A: We're aware that out Cloud is a lot of responsibility. We've looked at all the details for hardware, using the best hosting that we can find. We have 6 internet providers providing to the site, multiple firewalls, applications designed specifically and testing in that way. We've upgraded our backup, we used to do it on tape but now we do it on disc offsite. The ability to restore from there to another location would be much quicker than in the past. We have multiple ways to resolve such issues. It's easier to restore from site, but we can do it differently. Restoring is not a simple process. In a catastrophic situation, it would be less than a year... But more like a week...
Q: When can we finally expect daily analytics for Alma?
A: We've just announced that this is near release. It's been rolled out in 10 institutions of the US as part of the testing and it should be available to all customers by mid-October. The short answer is that it's already there.
Q: WorldShare Management Services is OCLC's response to Alma. Although Alma is more mature, given WorldCat as the primary cataloguing datase of WMS do youreally think it makes sense to build a second (semi-)global Bib library within Alma?
A: We want to build efficiencies in processes, not to re-build WorldCat, which was designed a few decdes ago. We're looking into the future. We want to integrate any existing service that is useful to you. Such environments includes WorldCat and this can be included in Alma. Wheter you're an alone-institution or part of a consortium, integration is possible. Others who don't work with WC may find new efficiencies in Alma.
Q: OCLC has recently published info about the WC metadata API. What about ExLibris, planning to integrate in Alma (looks like a good replacement for Z39.50)?
A: We've started discussion with OCLC about this, it's on its way
Q: UStat is the first SaaS component from ExLibris. How long will it remain as a separate product for sfx users? Will it's functionalities be integrated in Alma?
A: Alma anlytics will have greater functionalities
Q: Does Salesforce offer a Claud Status page in order to indicate when the servesr hosting Salsefoce CRM are down?
A: We will post in our Customer portal page the status of our services, including Salesforce
Q: The Ex Libris Customer Center platform is not easy to search, after developping such a good product like Primo, can we expect the same for the Customer Centre?
A: Priority is on services to users but we will look to improve the search engine for the Customer Centre next year
Q:With OA issues, this changes how content is made available. Ins SFX, with effect in Primo, we work at Journal level but OA is at article level, how will ExLibris manage this?
A: Part of our next linking project is to provide this info to the link resolvers
Q: Are e-book loans sheduled in any ExL software?
A: This is more of a question for vendors and we'd be interested to see vendors' models
Q: How far did the implementation of RDA in combination with Aleph & Alma proceed?
A: Voyager team work closely with the Library of Congress team, Aleph didn't need to do any configuraiotn work and Alma cataloguing support will be finalised in the next few months. Next steps: all eyes on on bibFrame but they've not agreed to implement FRBR they're working on a new model also don't think MARC21 should be the standard, so it's too soon to say on how we'll move forward on this question.
Q: Primo was launched as part of the strategy to decouple the frontend from the backend.Many primo services are availabolo only to Alma users and the front end of Alma *is* Primo, could you expand on this strategic shift to a monolithic (or symbiotic) couple?
A: It's tactical/pragmatic rather than strategic. The dicoupling process between front and back end are still relevant, both Primo and Alma can enable 3rd party component. Next gen framework is still relatively young, we develop a lot of user case but we still don't have enough best practice etc. but it will come. Tightly connected interaction between A & P is based on interfaces
Q: Marketplace for metadata requires cooperation between all parties. What about collaboration with EBSCO? Other discovery tools seems to be able to agree with each other to share data. Why not Ex Libris?
A: Good news is that it becomes more apparent what's going on and that EBSCO doesn't enable the subscription based index for discovery services such as Primo. You have to buy EDS to access EBSCO content so you are told to buy another discovery system. Otherwise it would be through API. Indexing is the best way to do it but they offer their service through API. This is a problem especially for those of you who pay for this content. We find it hard to find a way around it. In terms of other deals, when it comes to conent and aggregators such as EBSCO, their content is not unique and we are making good progress to provide alternatives. We sign deals with publishers.
Showing posts with label Alma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alma. Show all posts
Tuesday, 10 September 2013
Monday, 9 September 2013
The shift to electronic - managing e-resources in Alma
Roger Brisson, Boston University
[live-blog IGeLU Conference 2013, Berlin - please forgive typos etc.]
There are different kinds of e-resources: e-journals, e-books, databases, mixed packages etc. There are also different types of orderning e-material. We were very early adopters of Alma and at that time, Alma was still undergoing lots of developments. This gave us an opportunity to shape Alma. Over the past year, we've seen new functionalities every month, which has helped to refine workflows. The first thing we wanted to do when going live was to stabilise. We were also looking at how to automate things based on our core values. The library system used influences the reality of services we provide and with our old system designed for print, we were creating work arounds which were becoming unsustainable. When we started working with Alma it was really good to see how everything could be integrated together.I also monitored tasks that we were duplicating and seeing how this could be improved.With the discovery system, we can do things with our data.
As libraries, we need to re-define ourselves and we have to be more efficient with the management of e-resources. We must also change the way we do our cataloguing and share more. Our old system was too flat, not dynamic enough. Because of the print-based design, there was no flexibility and nothing more we could add. We now have more or less the same numer of electronic resources as print and it is likely that next year our e-books will be larger. We use 90% of our budget on e-.
Alma can enrich our records and make our discovery system better. E.g. there is a special box for 856 links in Primo and we are using this more and more. As early adopters, we've been setting up automatic workflows in Alma. We use existing standards (RDA and MARC) to optomise the new environment that we're working in and cutting down things we don't need anymore. An e-book for example doesn't have any physicality. So we work visually to understand what is happening and how to design a system that works. Is an electronic copy a variant? What is it? With an e-book there are additional things, article links, videos, table of content etc.
Examples linked to resources for a new MOOCS that we are setting up: Cataloguing an e-book is not that easy. We have a pdf file and an ebook reader. The numbering of pages is not the same. How do you describe this? We scrutinise these kind of questions. Or if you have a subscription, a closed package that you make available on the net. The package has 96 resources, it's a subscription, it's very dynamic because new e-books are added all the time. Managing a dynamic package is much more challenging than a static one. Or we have an e-book database. It's designed to be read and used in the database. We won't treat this in the same way as an academic paper. Traditionally we would have pre-selected books to our readers but now we are exposing lots of books that the user has to choose from. We are expecting a lot of Alma to manage this new type of model.
In terms of uniform resoucre management and automation we want to take advantage of the central knowledge base in Primo. SFX has been mostly ingested in the central KB. We have to have a means of pulling out data out of Primo and at the same time, new books are pushed in. There needs to be a trusted interaction between the publisher/vendor and Ex Libris so that when I activate a subscription, it's reliable because I can't check 96 books every month. The confidence has to be built. That's taken care of by the CKB. We initially had an issue because the data wasn't reliable, the records weren't good enough and we've worked to change that. We are loading vendor records that we trust every month. We're not quite where we would like to be yet. Those are mostly bib records, we have separate records for acquisitions, licenses etc.We can work at a package level, either doing a simple import or an OAI.
If we consider the bib record in the institution zone, we have a record in the community zone, which is the discovery record = work (FRBR). When we have an e-version, it is par of the electronic inventory = portfolio. The manifestation should be in the inventory so based on the FRBR model, we should first see a unique record. In terms of the logic of Alma, it would make a lot of sense because at the moment a bib record contains a lot of things that are not relevant. We should really clean this up. Alma shows clearly what records come from the community zone. Activating one should include all related records in the protfolio. When migrating to Alma, part of the process is changing print records and using the P2E cleaner helps. A lot of cleaning was still required afterwards. Having all of your inventory in one system allows you to think of efficiencies, such as having only one record for both print and electronic and having all of the data together.
Q: How do you manage condition of use at e-book level?
A: You set up your licensing information, because Alma's functionality is vendor-centric and it's through the vendor record that we set up the licences etc. Depending if it's single or multiple-usage, we can manage that through the portfolios. The actual usage is controlled by the plataform itself. If the licences are separate, you may want to have different records and have them all to display differently in Primo. This might be confusing to users but those are 3 copies of a book and we want all 3 links to be viewable and active.
ExL A: when there is a tilte available through different vendors, you can specify which ones you want to show by setting up "preferences". In terms of management, we are developping overlap analysis so you will know in advance what duplications you have in your system between packages.
[live-blog IGeLU Conference 2013, Berlin - please forgive typos etc.]
There are different kinds of e-resources: e-journals, e-books, databases, mixed packages etc. There are also different types of orderning e-material. We were very early adopters of Alma and at that time, Alma was still undergoing lots of developments. This gave us an opportunity to shape Alma. Over the past year, we've seen new functionalities every month, which has helped to refine workflows. The first thing we wanted to do when going live was to stabilise. We were also looking at how to automate things based on our core values. The library system used influences the reality of services we provide and with our old system designed for print, we were creating work arounds which were becoming unsustainable. When we started working with Alma it was really good to see how everything could be integrated together.I also monitored tasks that we were duplicating and seeing how this could be improved.With the discovery system, we can do things with our data.
As libraries, we need to re-define ourselves and we have to be more efficient with the management of e-resources. We must also change the way we do our cataloguing and share more. Our old system was too flat, not dynamic enough. Because of the print-based design, there was no flexibility and nothing more we could add. We now have more or less the same numer of electronic resources as print and it is likely that next year our e-books will be larger. We use 90% of our budget on e-.
Alma can enrich our records and make our discovery system better. E.g. there is a special box for 856 links in Primo and we are using this more and more. As early adopters, we've been setting up automatic workflows in Alma. We use existing standards (RDA and MARC) to optomise the new environment that we're working in and cutting down things we don't need anymore. An e-book for example doesn't have any physicality. So we work visually to understand what is happening and how to design a system that works. Is an electronic copy a variant? What is it? With an e-book there are additional things, article links, videos, table of content etc.
Examples linked to resources for a new MOOCS that we are setting up: Cataloguing an e-book is not that easy. We have a pdf file and an ebook reader. The numbering of pages is not the same. How do you describe this? We scrutinise these kind of questions. Or if you have a subscription, a closed package that you make available on the net. The package has 96 resources, it's a subscription, it's very dynamic because new e-books are added all the time. Managing a dynamic package is much more challenging than a static one. Or we have an e-book database. It's designed to be read and used in the database. We won't treat this in the same way as an academic paper. Traditionally we would have pre-selected books to our readers but now we are exposing lots of books that the user has to choose from. We are expecting a lot of Alma to manage this new type of model.
In terms of uniform resoucre management and automation we want to take advantage of the central knowledge base in Primo. SFX has been mostly ingested in the central KB. We have to have a means of pulling out data out of Primo and at the same time, new books are pushed in. There needs to be a trusted interaction between the publisher/vendor and Ex Libris so that when I activate a subscription, it's reliable because I can't check 96 books every month. The confidence has to be built. That's taken care of by the CKB. We initially had an issue because the data wasn't reliable, the records weren't good enough and we've worked to change that. We are loading vendor records that we trust every month. We're not quite where we would like to be yet. Those are mostly bib records, we have separate records for acquisitions, licenses etc.We can work at a package level, either doing a simple import or an OAI.
If we consider the bib record in the institution zone, we have a record in the community zone, which is the discovery record = work (FRBR). When we have an e-version, it is par of the electronic inventory = portfolio. The manifestation should be in the inventory so based on the FRBR model, we should first see a unique record. In terms of the logic of Alma, it would make a lot of sense because at the moment a bib record contains a lot of things that are not relevant. We should really clean this up. Alma shows clearly what records come from the community zone. Activating one should include all related records in the protfolio. When migrating to Alma, part of the process is changing print records and using the P2E cleaner helps. A lot of cleaning was still required afterwards. Having all of your inventory in one system allows you to think of efficiencies, such as having only one record for both print and electronic and having all of the data together.
Q: How do you manage condition of use at e-book level?
A: You set up your licensing information, because Alma's functionality is vendor-centric and it's through the vendor record that we set up the licences etc. Depending if it's single or multiple-usage, we can manage that through the portfolios. The actual usage is controlled by the plataform itself. If the licences are separate, you may want to have different records and have them all to display differently in Primo. This might be confusing to users but those are 3 copies of a book and we want all 3 links to be viewable and active.
ExL A: when there is a tilte available through different vendors, you can specify which ones you want to show by setting up "preferences". In terms of management, we are developping overlap analysis so you will know in advance what duplications you have in your system between packages.
Alma - early adopters' experience
Notes from IGeLU 2013 Conference, Berlin
University of Bolzano Library
Reasons to adopt Alma: Future oriented solution for whole integration of all resources in every phase of the life-cycle, support for library processes (core business) including analytics, networking & best practice exchange of similar libraries etc. Joined at an early stage , so needed flexibility & change management. Took opportunity to simplify rules & policies in the data migration process.
Timeline went from April 2012 (Alma training) to Jan 2013 (Alma live). Started at the circulation/fulfillment stage, even if it sounds strange, it was good to manage staff anxiety, followed by cataloguing and rest of the migration (electronic resources etc.).In the first months, work on workflow revisions, configuration revisions, changing opinion about things thought of before moving to Alma, troubleshooting, optimisation etc. Resource management area to clean up records etc. More recently work on analytics.
Positive points and changes: Overal positive experience, good cooperation despite time pressure, solution-oriented and pragmatic approach. Lessons learned are that Cloud Computing requires a new approach to software, so monthly updates, no traditional test environment so all change is made in production. Occuring problems have to be notified "to the Cloud" instead of IT department. Reporting and controlling is improved with positive impact on the organisation in decision-making. Standardised workflows. Cleaning up work requires manual input.
Open and critical issues: Activation of electronic resources is very complexe (some databases are still missing), lack of functionalities of Alma Uresolver, still developments required for analytics, batch updates and set creation not always easy, migration of subscriptions and entering of acquisitions data, customisation in workflows, cataloguing or display of data is still needed, are the major points.
Northeastern University Boston
Why Alma? System that can handle electronic resources, better analytics, no local hardware maintenance, financial incentive to become an early adopter.
Timeline and challenges: April to July 2013 for actual implementation, with a 9-month overall period, quite challenging! Mostly because there was no on-site visit, missing context in WebEx training, missing and developing data migration documentation, confusing project management plans. Other main challenge was that configurating Alma without it going live wasn't available.
Two months live... Optimistic about the future of Alma, happy to have hot fixes and monthly release cycle, forces to look at workflows, already impressed with analytics. Biggest disappointment is in e-resource management, in particular, Uresolver still needs lots of customisation, lack of clarity about the knowledge base (same as sfx?) portfolio management is difficult and time-consuming, missing stability and flexibility in licensing. In addition, missing flexibility & customisation options in user roles & permissions, order records, licensing and notices (can only be customised at the institutional, not library, level). The software is not intuitive, some workflows are clunky. However, still very optimistic! Happyy to work with Ex Libris to improve it and to build a strong community.
University of Bolzano Library
Reasons to adopt Alma: Future oriented solution for whole integration of all resources in every phase of the life-cycle, support for library processes (core business) including analytics, networking & best practice exchange of similar libraries etc. Joined at an early stage , so needed flexibility & change management. Took opportunity to simplify rules & policies in the data migration process.
Timeline went from April 2012 (Alma training) to Jan 2013 (Alma live). Started at the circulation/fulfillment stage, even if it sounds strange, it was good to manage staff anxiety, followed by cataloguing and rest of the migration (electronic resources etc.).In the first months, work on workflow revisions, configuration revisions, changing opinion about things thought of before moving to Alma, troubleshooting, optimisation etc. Resource management area to clean up records etc. More recently work on analytics.
Positive points and changes: Overal positive experience, good cooperation despite time pressure, solution-oriented and pragmatic approach. Lessons learned are that Cloud Computing requires a new approach to software, so monthly updates, no traditional test environment so all change is made in production. Occuring problems have to be notified "to the Cloud" instead of IT department. Reporting and controlling is improved with positive impact on the organisation in decision-making. Standardised workflows. Cleaning up work requires manual input.
Open and critical issues: Activation of electronic resources is very complexe (some databases are still missing), lack of functionalities of Alma Uresolver, still developments required for analytics, batch updates and set creation not always easy, migration of subscriptions and entering of acquisitions data, customisation in workflows, cataloguing or display of data is still needed, are the major points.
Northeastern University Boston
Why Alma? System that can handle electronic resources, better analytics, no local hardware maintenance, financial incentive to become an early adopter.
Timeline and challenges: April to July 2013 for actual implementation, with a 9-month overall period, quite challenging! Mostly because there was no on-site visit, missing context in WebEx training, missing and developing data migration documentation, confusing project management plans. Other main challenge was that configurating Alma without it going live wasn't available.
Two months live... Optimistic about the future of Alma, happy to have hot fixes and monthly release cycle, forces to look at workflows, already impressed with analytics. Biggest disappointment is in e-resource management, in particular, Uresolver still needs lots of customisation, lack of clarity about the knowledge base (same as sfx?) portfolio management is difficult and time-consuming, missing stability and flexibility in licensing. In addition, missing flexibility & customisation options in user roles & permissions, order records, licensing and notices (can only be customised at the institutional, not library, level). The software is not intuitive, some workflows are clunky. However, still very optimistic! Happyy to work with Ex Libris to improve it and to build a strong community.
Sunday, 8 September 2013
Alma analytics
Asaf Kline, Alma Product Manager, Ex Libris
[live-blog IGeLU Conference 2013, Berlin - please forgive typos etc.]
Roadmap goes from descriptive analytics to predictive analytics (=how should we take action) to prescriptive analytics (=what will happen). We're still at the stage of descriptive. This should help to have a deeper understanding of what's going on in your library. Alma is optimised for anlytics e.g. cost per use etc. We are doing a lot of work behind the scenes to make this happen. The model is a star schema, in the middle there is a fact and then there are different strands. It's optimised for reporting. There is a shared platform and institutions can share their anlytics data. It is also role based, so any report or dashboard created is sensitive to an individual's role.
There is a functionality to schedule and distribute reports. Any user can subscribe to the reports that they want to receive. Analytics work with APIs because for any report created you get an xml representation of the report and it can be sent to the programme of your choice. The analytics provide a history and that's how it can be predictive, because based on previous years, we can see what may happen (e.g. funds burn down).
Usage and cost per use. We take the counter info from the vendor and provide you information
from subject area and from within Alma. We use Ustat for loading in a vendor usage via a spreadsheet or sushi. When we know what's in your inventory and how much you pay for it, then
we can provide cost per usage data. Usage is on a title level but when libraries buy packages, we bring up the title data to the package level and give data for the package. The analogy is like a TV - we pay for lots of channels and may only watch two. What's important is the cost per usage, not so much what we watch. (Question here: we often raise purchase orders at package level but get invoiced at title level so that could be a problem?...).
This has been a central activity in 2013, now being rolled out to Data Centers with a continuing effort to ensure scalability of infrastructure. There are additional subjects that we're working on:
- Usage (Alma generated)
- Requests and booking
- Vendors and vendor accounts (more analytic in nature)
- BIB (bib data) - unfortunately analytics and MARC don't work well together so we will have tools to search for and process info that we have in the catalogue so at the moment there is the option to choose 5 local fields to get data from
Usage data is Alma generated, captured via the Alma Resolver, it will answer questions such as:
- What services were provided?
- What queries ended without any services?
- What were the sources/ip ranges that accessed the system?
We want to provide a set of tools to gain insight into the structure and use of your collection, e.g. print or electronic inventory and usage, but we're missing overlap analysis so e.g. comparing titles from a package so it's combining a system job that we run together with analytics. We want to take our tools to collection level, e.g. shelfmark/classification ranges, and embedd it/make it actionable so that it becomes part of the purchasing workflow, based on facts and analysis. We also want to start generating KPIs (performance measure), to help evaluate success or sucess of a particular activity, e.g. how much time it takes to process purchase order or vendor supply, avg % of items not picked up by user, request processing time etc.
The data will also be made available to be viewed on mobile devices. We want to bring it up to network level, i.e. cross institution reporting, using benchmark analytics (comparing to others "like me") and network analysis (members of a consortia), so this is more about disclosing strength/weaknesses/overlap and how collaboration can be improved.
[live-blog IGeLU Conference 2013, Berlin - please forgive typos etc.]
Roadmap goes from descriptive analytics to predictive analytics (=how should we take action) to prescriptive analytics (=what will happen). We're still at the stage of descriptive. This should help to have a deeper understanding of what's going on in your library. Alma is optimised for anlytics e.g. cost per use etc. We are doing a lot of work behind the scenes to make this happen. The model is a star schema, in the middle there is a fact and then there are different strands. It's optimised for reporting. There is a shared platform and institutions can share their anlytics data. It is also role based, so any report or dashboard created is sensitive to an individual's role.
There is a functionality to schedule and distribute reports. Any user can subscribe to the reports that they want to receive. Analytics work with APIs because for any report created you get an xml representation of the report and it can be sent to the programme of your choice. The analytics provide a history and that's how it can be predictive, because based on previous years, we can see what may happen (e.g. funds burn down).
Usage and cost per use. We take the counter info from the vendor and provide you information
from subject area and from within Alma. We use Ustat for loading in a vendor usage via a spreadsheet or sushi. When we know what's in your inventory and how much you pay for it, then
we can provide cost per usage data. Usage is on a title level but when libraries buy packages, we bring up the title data to the package level and give data for the package. The analogy is like a TV - we pay for lots of channels and may only watch two. What's important is the cost per usage, not so much what we watch. (Question here: we often raise purchase orders at package level but get invoiced at title level so that could be a problem?...).
This has been a central activity in 2013, now being rolled out to Data Centers with a continuing effort to ensure scalability of infrastructure. There are additional subjects that we're working on:
- Usage (Alma generated)
- Requests and booking
- Vendors and vendor accounts (more analytic in nature)
- BIB (bib data) - unfortunately analytics and MARC don't work well together so we will have tools to search for and process info that we have in the catalogue so at the moment there is the option to choose 5 local fields to get data from
Usage data is Alma generated, captured via the Alma Resolver, it will answer questions such as:
- What services were provided?
- What queries ended without any services?
- What were the sources/ip ranges that accessed the system?
We want to provide a set of tools to gain insight into the structure and use of your collection, e.g. print or electronic inventory and usage, but we're missing overlap analysis so e.g. comparing titles from a package so it's combining a system job that we run together with analytics. We want to take our tools to collection level, e.g. shelfmark/classification ranges, and embedd it/make it actionable so that it becomes part of the purchasing workflow, based on facts and analysis. We also want to start generating KPIs (performance measure), to help evaluate success or sucess of a particular activity, e.g. how much time it takes to process purchase order or vendor supply, avg % of items not picked up by user, request processing time etc.
The data will also be made available to be viewed on mobile devices. We want to bring it up to network level, i.e. cross institution reporting, using benchmark analytics (comparing to others "like me") and network analysis (members of a consortia), so this is more about disclosing strength/weaknesses/overlap and how collaboration can be improved.
Ex Libris Alma Community Zone data strategy - from concept to reality
Dana Sharvit Product Manager, on behalf of Sharona Sagi, Director of Data Services Strategy, Ex Libris
Alma Community Zone and next-generation linking initiatives
[live-blog IGeLU Conference 2013, Berlin - please forgive typos etc.]
The Alma institution has its own zone, the local catalogue and the inventory. The local catalogue includes the Library's collections, in all formats. There is also an inventory to help manage the collections' holdings. The workflow for managing acquisition of resources is the same for all formats.
When it comes to managing electronic resources, we see that there is much effort from each individual library and we want to leverage this effort for the community. The metadata should be available for the Community Zone.The CZ is built out of 3 things: a portion of the community catalogue, the central KB and the authority catalogue.
The Authority Catalogue contains copies of authority files from major providers, in particular Library of Congress subject heading, the LoC NAF (Name Authority File) and the MESH, as well as GND Name & Subjects as of October. Those are updated regularly. So ExLibris runs a central service instead of each library loading and on-going updating of Authorities files locally.
The Central Knowledge Base includes all the offerings of the different vendors. We have also all the linking information that will enable linking the articles. So the central KB is a resource that describes packages of electronic resources offered by a wide variety of vendors, including the titles that are part of that package and linking information for individual titles and articles in those packages.
The Community Catalogue holds all the metadata records. The sources come from different publishers and aggregators, as well as Library of Congress, British Library etc. We have a dedicated data services team that manages this and goes over the quality of the records to ensure they fit all the needs for the various workflows.This will start with e-resources and we'll add print later. The metadata that we load needs to fit a lot of purposes and to fit a diversity of workflows.
We want the catalogue to be for and by the community and we want the community to share the experience of relevant metadata information, so that it can be as full, correct and comprehensible as possible. The Advisory Group is composed of the core group, including representatives from different parts of the world and the aim is to listen and to understand the global needs of the Community Zone for the Community Catalogue. The full group is much wider. Its focus areas are:
- The Community Zone data model - matching/merging records from different sources, issues relating to various metadata schemas, goverance and policies relating to local annotation
- Contribution to the Community Catalogue by individual Alma libraries
- Workflows - what are the most streamlined workflows for working with Community zone records
- Licensing implications - as we are assuming a CC0 license, are there implicaitons for any of the above?
A shared record becomes part of the library inventory. Inventory information is handled locally at the institution level, including linking information, provider data, public notes, access notes, PDA programmes, lincense information etc. This will be published through the discovery service (Primo) and the record can be enhanced with book reviews, book covers, reading lists etc.
Every change that is done in the Community Zone will be beneficial for others because it is transfered to the local zone as both are linked. The Community Catalogue is part of a collaborative network. There are differennt member institutions that create the Community Catalogue. This is the Community Zone. Each member can use their own catalogue or the Community Catalogue. It is very flexible and the Community Zone can be used in different ways.
In the next few months we are planning to add more records in the Community Catalogue. We'll be working with the Advisory Group and implement their recommendations. By mid 2014, we plan to implement the shared record model, then support the community contribution by the end of the year. In 2015, after establishing a robust catalogue for electronic resources, we'll start adding support for print records.
Libraries will gain through the maximised sharing for mainting and managing the records. The central authority control will help for the management of those recors. There is a funcitonality making the importing process more efficient.
Question and answers
Q: One record fits all but what if we take a record home and make some changes etc, how does this impact on shared catalogue?
A: There will be a functionality in place to help you to contribute to the records managed via the Central Catalogue. today this is not yet the case because if you want to add information you do need a local copy of the record and it defeats the purpose of the Community Catalogue, but this is going to change. So the inventory is where it will be possible to manage this
Q: It is good that records will be CC0, are there any plans for people not part of the Community to access this data?
A: Those records can be used by all. This is not however all in our hands, we have to negotiate with data publishers etc. We are not allowed yet to completely open up the Community Zone but we want to maintain some value to our customers so whenever possible we will open up the data but it may not be possible everywhere
Q: How to integrate other catalogues?
A: We are looking into this
Q: Catalogues that have a high update frequency, how will that work?
A: E.g. authority records are updated on a regular basis automatically. If a specific catalogue managed in the Community Zone is often updated, we would have to look at this on a case to case basis.
Q: In different countries the authority files are connected to different standards, how will you handle these different connections in one catalogue entry?
A: That will be one question that the Advisory Group will have to look into
Alma Community Zone and next-generation linking initiatives
[live-blog IGeLU Conference 2013, Berlin - please forgive typos etc.]
The Alma institution has its own zone, the local catalogue and the inventory. The local catalogue includes the Library's collections, in all formats. There is also an inventory to help manage the collections' holdings. The workflow for managing acquisition of resources is the same for all formats.
When it comes to managing electronic resources, we see that there is much effort from each individual library and we want to leverage this effort for the community. The metadata should be available for the Community Zone.The CZ is built out of 3 things: a portion of the community catalogue, the central KB and the authority catalogue.
The Authority Catalogue contains copies of authority files from major providers, in particular Library of Congress subject heading, the LoC NAF (Name Authority File) and the MESH, as well as GND Name & Subjects as of October. Those are updated regularly. So ExLibris runs a central service instead of each library loading and on-going updating of Authorities files locally.
The Central Knowledge Base includes all the offerings of the different vendors. We have also all the linking information that will enable linking the articles. So the central KB is a resource that describes packages of electronic resources offered by a wide variety of vendors, including the titles that are part of that package and linking information for individual titles and articles in those packages.
The Community Catalogue holds all the metadata records. The sources come from different publishers and aggregators, as well as Library of Congress, British Library etc. We have a dedicated data services team that manages this and goes over the quality of the records to ensure they fit all the needs for the various workflows.This will start with e-resources and we'll add print later. The metadata that we load needs to fit a lot of purposes and to fit a diversity of workflows.
We want the catalogue to be for and by the community and we want the community to share the experience of relevant metadata information, so that it can be as full, correct and comprehensible as possible. The Advisory Group is composed of the core group, including representatives from different parts of the world and the aim is to listen and to understand the global needs of the Community Zone for the Community Catalogue. The full group is much wider. Its focus areas are:
- The Community Zone data model - matching/merging records from different sources, issues relating to various metadata schemas, goverance and policies relating to local annotation
- Contribution to the Community Catalogue by individual Alma libraries
- Workflows - what are the most streamlined workflows for working with Community zone records
- Licensing implications - as we are assuming a CC0 license, are there implicaitons for any of the above?
A shared record becomes part of the library inventory. Inventory information is handled locally at the institution level, including linking information, provider data, public notes, access notes, PDA programmes, lincense information etc. This will be published through the discovery service (Primo) and the record can be enhanced with book reviews, book covers, reading lists etc.
Every change that is done in the Community Zone will be beneficial for others because it is transfered to the local zone as both are linked. The Community Catalogue is part of a collaborative network. There are differennt member institutions that create the Community Catalogue. This is the Community Zone. Each member can use their own catalogue or the Community Catalogue. It is very flexible and the Community Zone can be used in different ways.
In the next few months we are planning to add more records in the Community Catalogue. We'll be working with the Advisory Group and implement their recommendations. By mid 2014, we plan to implement the shared record model, then support the community contribution by the end of the year. In 2015, after establishing a robust catalogue for electronic resources, we'll start adding support for print records.
Libraries will gain through the maximised sharing for mainting and managing the records. The central authority control will help for the management of those recors. There is a funcitonality making the importing process more efficient.
Question and answers
Q: One record fits all but what if we take a record home and make some changes etc, how does this impact on shared catalogue?
A: There will be a functionality in place to help you to contribute to the records managed via the Central Catalogue. today this is not yet the case because if you want to add information you do need a local copy of the record and it defeats the purpose of the Community Catalogue, but this is going to change. So the inventory is where it will be possible to manage this
Q: It is good that records will be CC0, are there any plans for people not part of the Community to access this data?
A: Those records can be used by all. This is not however all in our hands, we have to negotiate with data publishers etc. We are not allowed yet to completely open up the Community Zone but we want to maintain some value to our customers so whenever possible we will open up the data but it may not be possible everywhere
Q: How to integrate other catalogues?
A: We are looking into this
Q: Catalogues that have a high update frequency, how will that work?
A: E.g. authority records are updated on a regular basis automatically. If a specific catalogue managed in the Community Zone is often updated, we would have to look at this on a case to case basis.
Q: In different countries the authority files are connected to different standards, how will you handle these different connections in one catalogue entry?
A: That will be one question that the Advisory Group will have to look into
Alma Product Update and Roadmap
Bar Veinstein, Corporate Vice President, Resource Management Solutions
[live-blog IGeLU Conference 2013, Berlin]
This session is about Alma.If you'd asked me 3 years ago I wouldn't have thought we would have reached 33 live institutions today, which is quite amazing. There are an additional 52 in implementation phase.
Success factors: Customer trust (reliability, security), east of implementation, openness & interoperability, depth of functionality & efficiency, innovation/cutting edge. People talk a lot about ineroperability but it is not until I joined this industry that I grasped what this really means. Banks compete with each other, they don't share api's etc.
Multi-tenancy, why should you care? A lot of customers don't care or prefer the hosted environment because they think it means a dedicated environment for them. The multi-tenancy is valuable for the vendor, but actually it is for the customer as well. This is bercause:
- One version: no customer is left behind when the software is updated. This means there is one single version for everyone and it doesn't matter anymore which version we're on. It also means that new features are made available much more quickly because we don't need to maintain older versions
- Painless upgrades: vendor-managed updates, automatic
- Disaster recovery: a matter of economies of scale, with quicker response and resolution
- Vendor is responsible: customisations & integrations mus work in the new version
One of the main concerns of customers is security. We need a multi-dimensioinal approach. We take this very seriously, we have an ISO certification, we have an external company that monitors 24/7 our firewalls, we've implemented a lot of capabilities on the business continuity etc. This is valid for all products but it is mostly because of more and more working in the Cloud that we've put in place the 24/7 monitoring. With regards to Alma, it is not possible to connect to it without https. For cases where the protocol of an institution is not encrypted, we've developed a solution that uses ssl as a wraper, to ensure that the communication is secure and encypted.
Ex Libris can monitor user experience per transaction, such as end user time, health of the transaciton, errors, calls per minute, etc. so we look at the performance of all the instances across the world. This is something new specifically developed with Alma. Alma deplys in months, not in years, this includes ERM and link resolver and in some cases, discovery. This is what customers have asked for. We know it's not perfect yet, we know some people are complaining and we need to work on better training. But we've created a methodology around this. We are also working on migration from a diversity of other products.
We have a strong vision for developer collaboration. We understand that moving to the Could with sql access is not feasible. We have to take the responsibility of developiong the api's so we have a developer platform, where we are committing to deliver these api's and services and extensions to apply them. Until now, we've developed them but haven't yet done all the delivery. But we are going to embedd the API Management Infrastructure, to allow us to have much stronger capabilities for the delivery of api's. The API Console will be available as part of the portal so people can learn and test api's before implementing. This will be released in the second half of 2014.
Dvir Hoffman, director, Marketing and Product Management
Roadmap planning - some highlights
Collaboration - maximise cooperation, integration and sharing between institutions while supporting each institution's particular worklows and standards
Efficiencies - reduce costs by streamlining processes and redirecting staff to other more important taks
Digital - Continue to enhance unified resource management and provide increased consolidation options
We arealso working hard on analytics solutions. The community zone includes more authority records, we've created a working group to bring a community catalogue in the comunity zone. We are also working on the unified digital resource management.
Next year we will focus on emerging electroinc licensing and purchasing models. The community catalogue will be licence free, i.e. CC0 as we are committed to oppeness. We want our Knowledge Base to expand. Alma should be a multi-format solution and was built from the ground with this multi-format model in view. We want more predictive analytics.
We have a master plan but we maintain the flexibility to adapt and allow for changes in the roadmap. Initial plans for the next release is customer values:
- Overlap analysis = ability to overlap analysis of packages or between vendors: we plan to push the analytics into the workflows, firstly by helping to save costs for acquisitions
- Next year we want to provide you with a benchmark analytics by developing KPIs.- you can define your own and they can be compared with the Alma community
- We continue our investment in digital resources, by providing enhanced collection and metadata management for existing digital collections - no need to migrate files or ingest processes, thereby simplifying the process for staff. Provide ongoing OAI-PMH based harvesting of resources into Alma
- Resource sharing in ILL, i.e. Resource Sharing Driven Acquisitions
- Copyright control, embedd licensing information, monitoring digitisation requests in order to make sure thee are not copyright violations
- Patron Requests for Purchase - better service for patrons
Customers can choose their networks, so you can be part of a consortium but there is flexibility, such as shared catalogue, acquisitions, resource sharing (ILL) etc. Other things we are working on are:
- New purchasing options with vendors: this should come in the next few months, we are working with vendors to streamline the processes, reduce duplication etc.
- We've also engaged actively with some vendors in terms of security, some don't use secure protocols and are not Cloud ready, so we are working on that
- New acquisitions models: vendors themselves need to make decisions, especially for electronic resources
- Bibframe: we are taking an active part
Questions & answers
Q: What about e-book acquisitions workflows and platforms, e.g. ebrary etc.
A: We started working with a few vendors to streamline acquisition processes, including e-books, so using Alma acquisitions tools. The customers using Alma today have e-book purchasing. It is not yet very efficient. So we are working with the vendors to integrate different selection processes and loading the metadata. It's not easy, some vendors are very protective because they make money on their metadata.
Q: New Developer Platform and API console: how are you going to communicate with us, the developers, what is your stragegy?
A: We haven't engaged yet because we had to finalise the vendor we will use first. Once the contract is signed (end 2013) we will start engaging with the user group at the latest at the beginning of 2014.
Q: Electronic resource management: are you talking to local initiatives, e.g. in the UK we have KB+ and are you talking to JISC etc.
A: We are aware of KB+ in the context of licensing, so we've started active engagement, we are looking into ways to integrate or link into external products. This is not just with Alma, but also concerns SFX. We believe working at the national level, in Germany there are other similar programmes and we work together. So it's not because we work closely with vendors that we forget national initiatives.
Q: Alma puts a lot of emphasis on opening up and using CC0, will you do the same with your own Knowledge Base?
A: Good question! At the moment there are no such plans but we should discuss this. We are not a non-profit organisation, so we make money on Alma, and because we are profitable we were able to develop a good product. We should raise this quesiton in front of the management team.
Q: In which way are you thinking of public libraries? Especially interested in circulaiton and e-books readers
A: Most customers of ExLibris are academic but there are lots of consortiums that include more and more other types of libraries and we know we have to focus on this. In terms of e-books readers we are talking to some vendors. This is on our roadmap.
[live-blog IGeLU Conference 2013, Berlin]
This session is about Alma.If you'd asked me 3 years ago I wouldn't have thought we would have reached 33 live institutions today, which is quite amazing. There are an additional 52 in implementation phase.
Success factors: Customer trust (reliability, security), east of implementation, openness & interoperability, depth of functionality & efficiency, innovation/cutting edge. People talk a lot about ineroperability but it is not until I joined this industry that I grasped what this really means. Banks compete with each other, they don't share api's etc.
Multi-tenancy, why should you care? A lot of customers don't care or prefer the hosted environment because they think it means a dedicated environment for them. The multi-tenancy is valuable for the vendor, but actually it is for the customer as well. This is bercause:
- One version: no customer is left behind when the software is updated. This means there is one single version for everyone and it doesn't matter anymore which version we're on. It also means that new features are made available much more quickly because we don't need to maintain older versions
- Painless upgrades: vendor-managed updates, automatic
- Disaster recovery: a matter of economies of scale, with quicker response and resolution
- Vendor is responsible: customisations & integrations mus work in the new version
One of the main concerns of customers is security. We need a multi-dimensioinal approach. We take this very seriously, we have an ISO certification, we have an external company that monitors 24/7 our firewalls, we've implemented a lot of capabilities on the business continuity etc. This is valid for all products but it is mostly because of more and more working in the Cloud that we've put in place the 24/7 monitoring. With regards to Alma, it is not possible to connect to it without https. For cases where the protocol of an institution is not encrypted, we've developed a solution that uses ssl as a wraper, to ensure that the communication is secure and encypted.
Ex Libris can monitor user experience per transaction, such as end user time, health of the transaciton, errors, calls per minute, etc. so we look at the performance of all the instances across the world. This is something new specifically developed with Alma. Alma deplys in months, not in years, this includes ERM and link resolver and in some cases, discovery. This is what customers have asked for. We know it's not perfect yet, we know some people are complaining and we need to work on better training. But we've created a methodology around this. We are also working on migration from a diversity of other products.
We have a strong vision for developer collaboration. We understand that moving to the Could with sql access is not feasible. We have to take the responsibility of developiong the api's so we have a developer platform, where we are committing to deliver these api's and services and extensions to apply them. Until now, we've developed them but haven't yet done all the delivery. But we are going to embedd the API Management Infrastructure, to allow us to have much stronger capabilities for the delivery of api's. The API Console will be available as part of the portal so people can learn and test api's before implementing. This will be released in the second half of 2014.
Dvir Hoffman, director, Marketing and Product Management
Roadmap planning - some highlights
Collaboration - maximise cooperation, integration and sharing between institutions while supporting each institution's particular worklows and standards
Efficiencies - reduce costs by streamlining processes and redirecting staff to other more important taks
Digital - Continue to enhance unified resource management and provide increased consolidation options
We arealso working hard on analytics solutions. The community zone includes more authority records, we've created a working group to bring a community catalogue in the comunity zone. We are also working on the unified digital resource management.
Next year we will focus on emerging electroinc licensing and purchasing models. The community catalogue will be licence free, i.e. CC0 as we are committed to oppeness. We want our Knowledge Base to expand. Alma should be a multi-format solution and was built from the ground with this multi-format model in view. We want more predictive analytics.
We have a master plan but we maintain the flexibility to adapt and allow for changes in the roadmap. Initial plans for the next release is customer values:
- Overlap analysis = ability to overlap analysis of packages or between vendors: we plan to push the analytics into the workflows, firstly by helping to save costs for acquisitions
- Next year we want to provide you with a benchmark analytics by developing KPIs.- you can define your own and they can be compared with the Alma community
- We continue our investment in digital resources, by providing enhanced collection and metadata management for existing digital collections - no need to migrate files or ingest processes, thereby simplifying the process for staff. Provide ongoing OAI-PMH based harvesting of resources into Alma
- Resource sharing in ILL, i.e. Resource Sharing Driven Acquisitions
- Copyright control, embedd licensing information, monitoring digitisation requests in order to make sure thee are not copyright violations
- Patron Requests for Purchase - better service for patrons
Customers can choose their networks, so you can be part of a consortium but there is flexibility, such as shared catalogue, acquisitions, resource sharing (ILL) etc. Other things we are working on are:
- New purchasing options with vendors: this should come in the next few months, we are working with vendors to streamline the processes, reduce duplication etc.
- We've also engaged actively with some vendors in terms of security, some don't use secure protocols and are not Cloud ready, so we are working on that
- New acquisitions models: vendors themselves need to make decisions, especially for electronic resources
- Bibframe: we are taking an active part
Questions & answers
Q: What about e-book acquisitions workflows and platforms, e.g. ebrary etc.
A: We started working with a few vendors to streamline acquisition processes, including e-books, so using Alma acquisitions tools. The customers using Alma today have e-book purchasing. It is not yet very efficient. So we are working with the vendors to integrate different selection processes and loading the metadata. It's not easy, some vendors are very protective because they make money on their metadata.
Q: New Developer Platform and API console: how are you going to communicate with us, the developers, what is your stragegy?
A: We haven't engaged yet because we had to finalise the vendor we will use first. Once the contract is signed (end 2013) we will start engaging with the user group at the latest at the beginning of 2014.
Q: Electronic resource management: are you talking to local initiatives, e.g. in the UK we have KB+ and are you talking to JISC etc.
A: We are aware of KB+ in the context of licensing, so we've started active engagement, we are looking into ways to integrate or link into external products. This is not just with Alma, but also concerns SFX. We believe working at the national level, in Germany there are other similar programmes and we work together. So it's not because we work closely with vendors that we forget national initiatives.
Q: Alma puts a lot of emphasis on opening up and using CC0, will you do the same with your own Knowledge Base?
A: Good question! At the moment there are no such plans but we should discuss this. We are not a non-profit organisation, so we make money on Alma, and because we are profitable we were able to develop a good product. We should raise this quesiton in front of the management team.
Q: In which way are you thinking of public libraries? Especially interested in circulaiton and e-books readers
A: Most customers of ExLibris are academic but there are lots of consortiums that include more and more other types of libraries and we know we have to focus on this. In terms of e-books readers we are talking to some vendors. This is on our roadmap.
Wednesday, 12 September 2012
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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