Systems Unite! Consolidating ILS, ERM, and Discovery at a small liberal arts college through a...
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Systems Unite! Consolidating ILS, ERM, and Discovery at a small liberal arts college through a cloud-based URM Nate Hosburgh, Systems & Discovery Erin Gallagher, E-Resources & Serials Rollins College ER&L Conference Feb. 25, 2015
Transcript of Systems Unite! Consolidating ILS, ERM, and Discovery at a small liberal arts college through a...
Systems Unite! Consolidating ILS, ERM, and Discovery
at a small liberal arts college through a cloud-based URM
Nate Hosburgh, Systems & DiscoveryErin Gallagher, E-Resources & Serials
Rollins College
ER&L Conference Feb. 25, 2015
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Introduce ourselves and thank everyone for joining us.
Background & Overview
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Information about school and library Current system(s) SIRSI Symphony Serials Solutions ERMS ContentDM ILLiad Digital Commons/BePress IR LibGuides Discovery SIRSI OPAC (mostly books, e-books, A/V) Summon (designed to surface *almost* everything we have: books, e-books, journal articles, conf papers, newspaper articles, research guides) Libguides A-Z Journal List Database list
Motivation to Change
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Challenges that spurred investigation/ Motivations for wanting to migrate How do you know when it’s time to migrate? ILS/URM Task Force charge Specifications for a new ILS/URM from lib employees (wish list) Fall 2012 This was time sensitive based on SIRSI server Budgeting; trying to save money overall
Investigation
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We employed Angela Landsbury to lead our investigation. She was kind of expensive, but she had a solid background in this kind of thing… Next gen ILSs vs. URMs Established, functional, proven product vs. an incomplete product in development Got recommendations from peer institutions on Alma/Worldshare A lot of institutions on WorldShare (even in FL) Alma – Lewis & Clark with Orbis Cascade – phone conference Alma – VCU? Email conversation; somewhere else? ISQ: Future of Lib Systems document by NISO Fall 2012 (used this for a “consumer reports” of the various next-gen systems) The FLVC was looking at a new statewide system and we were interested in getting involved with them, but their process timeline was outside of scope for us
Comparing Systems
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Narrowed down the field to the bona fide cloud-based URMs: Alma & WorldShare Also got an EDS demo for discovery alternative with either Alma or WorldShare WorldShare: Although a lot of academic libraries of our size have gone with WS, it didn’t fit our needs/live up to our expectations Beta discovery “WorldShare Discovery” was demoed, but was not really fully built out and seemed clunky; did not produce satisfactory results Discovery piece is free with Worldshare, but there was also the option to use EDS Weren’t sure if the License Manager add-on would be an adequate replacement for our SerSol ERM Alma: Initially skeptical because not as many libraries on it (especially not smaller academic libraries with limited staff) Is it more than we need? Concerned about major learning curve working with completely new system (we currently do not have any experience with ExLibris) Initially quoted us a price that seemed scaled more for a large research institution vs. small liberal arts college
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Need explanation here of comparison……
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Narrowed down to 2 systems Held internal meetings with the URM task force Constant conversation with both vendors; questions based on feedback from demos; concerns of lib staff Generated “URM Cost Comparison Timeline” to compare projected costs along various services that both systems would provide (screenshot) Involved some negotiation to level the playing field with pricing b/n ExL and OCLC With OCLC overall cost was cheaper and would bundle OCLC products/services we were already using (ILL/cataloging Price was not to be our determining factor in making a decision All things considered, we believed Alma to be a superior system that met the needs put forth by the URM taskforce – a truly comprehensive, mature, sophisticated system
Pre-implementation
Data Cleanup(the fun stuff)
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Developed Google Doc to track Q & As/implementation issues with Alma/Primo by functional area (screenshot) Communication plan shared with everyone in the library; allowed everyone access to the conversation Monthly meetings at this stage; more regular conversations related to specific areas Highest degree of tracking was with the data cleanup related to SIRSI ILS Copy cataloger/data specialist Amanda Vocks did a tremendous job identifying, organizing, and undertaking a plethora of data cleanup projects: Locations Item types Call number changes LOST/MISSING Batch modifications using API on the server Erin & Natalie met to discuss which data elements in SerSol needed attention for data cleanup for migration (but, this was guesswork because we didn’t exactly know how/what would migrate from the ERM)
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Example of master spreadsheet where all questions/answers and data cleanup was tracked during the pre-implementation phase.
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Another example of the spreadsheet using the Acquisitions tab as an example. Each “functional area” of Alma was broken out on a separate tab.
And so it begins…
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Format/structure of meetings I took on the role of project manager and developed functional experts responsible for each functional area of Alma Basecamp – helped to organize the project timeline, milestones, tasks, tutorials, communication channel, documentation, Real-time email updates based on posts Daily digest of Basecamp activity This is pushed to all recipients so everyone is in the loop (although this can be limited to certain individuals) Learning Center videos Documentation Center (forms & documentation) Change management Learning the functional areas/structure of Alma – this can be quite different from the ILS you are coming from Challenges/looking ahead Learning new terminology/vocabulary – need a glossary! (do a “manual poll” about the terminology) Data Migration Initially sent ExL some data elements for them to analyze since we were coming from a non-ExL source environment Test Load due Feb 13th Talk about all the different types of forms This was a lot of work to prepare all this data/make numerous decisions in a short timespan We have a limited group of people working on project & also limited expertise in a number of areas (ex: cataloging)
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We have used Basecamp third party software as a portal for tracking all of our discussions, tasks, documents, etc. related to implementation of Alma/Primo. This has worked very well for us vs. tracking all of this kind of thing via email.
Thanks!
