Monday, 9 September 2013
Next geneeration Library Services - Emerging roles and opportunities
Oren Beit-Arie, Chief Strategy Officer Ex Libris
[live-blog IGeLU Conference 2013, Berlin - please forgive typos etc.]
The context in which we operate today is significant, increase in scale and diversity of content type, increase in cost especially serials, economic challenges in many institutions, increase scholarly research and learning (e.g. MOOCS), increased pressure and competition for library services etc. there is also a greater value of the value of libraries. We are also moving increasingly on Cloud delivery, so this is our framework.
We started developing it about 6-7 years ago, including sfx, the knowledge base, Primo and Alma. So we supported both the front end and the backend. Collections in the way that library built them in the past is changing, we're moving away from the "bigger is better" and from ownership and we're going more towards access. Many libraries are paying attention to fulfilment rather than selection, that means that it's more geared towards the information need of the user. That means also moving from the "just-in-case" to the "just-in-time". The economy around the research activities is also changing, there are more cases in which access would be free but there is more attention towards the economy of the creation of content, i.e. who will pay for the collections? Is it the reader, the researcher, the library?
Data services: The goal is to maximise the benefits of sharing, optimise management and discoverability. The two areas of focus is the Alma community zone and the next generation linking, of which I won't talk very much today, except that there are paradigms of linking, for example the sfx knowledge base, it's about pre-computered strored links at the article level. The notion of the Alma community zone was introduced a few years ago because there was a need for creating more efficient management tools and this needs to be done in the library context, so the community catalogue in the community zone enables libraries to add to shared content, information to the user community, to add or use vendor information etc. so the bibliographic control is improved. By creating a community environment, we support collaboration.
All this information that is shared is made readily available for discovery services in a streamlined way, so that you shouldn't have to work hard to enable this. It is a work in progress, especially for something like e-books. We work with the advisory group, which is composed of a broad number of represenatatives of users from around the world and this group is helping us to pin down the model that works best for all (see yesterday's session).
Linked data has the potential to extend the level of sharing of knowledge between libraries and external sources. In libraries we are very collaborative within our own island, but linked data has a greater promise. We are interested in this, we think this concept is tremendously important for the content that libraries created and to outreach to external content. For example an activity we're involved in is DME which stands for Digitised Manuscripts to Europeana and we are testing this, it's an important activity that involves big players such as Google. Other examples include NISO bibliographic framework project, the W3C schema bib extend community group (Shlomo), the LC bibframe initiative etc.
Other things we are involved in is that we try to evaluate trends and needs in education and try to build support for those needs by creating new platforms. Users perceive (e)resources as free we-bresources ("found it in Google"), the value of access to electronic content is not recognised by users, and in this realm there is lack of recognition of the role of libraries. It is paradoxical because there is something good about this, you want the user to get to content as soon and easily as possible but the libraries are getting pushed aside because users are not acknowledging their involvement and this could impact on funding for libraries. Our project enables libraries to brand those products developed to your institutional needs so they are customised by your library and build awareness of your library. It is still in pilot stage, we haven't yet talked about it publicly. (See Academic Libraries existence at risk, suggested by @chrpr)
We are also taking initiative for open access because we are aware of the significant drive toward OA around the world. Publishers are starting to respond, maybe not always in the way we'd like to but there is a lot of activity around OA. We are following the debates especially between green and gold OA because we need to be aware of what it going on. CHORUS is a publisher initiative that is about enforcing the OA mandate by publishers, is this how we want the world to be modelled in the future, is it an opportunity for libraries? We want to discuss this with you and I would encourage you to come and speak to us about this. We are in a transition period. Primo is enabling OA and when we are looking at this, it raises an important question. Some content is totally open with unrestricted access and discovery, others have unrestricted discovery but restricted access. There is some bad stuff out there, there is closed access and closed discovery and this is not just about us. Do academics/researchers who create content understand that some of their output is blocked out? So there are lots of opportunities to create better management of OA. When we talk of different models for OA, we see that many librarires are engaging in this.
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.
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