2020 Annual Meeting

Social Event

None - General

Social Event

At last year’s conference opening, I shared thoughts on “Data All Around Us,” the role of libraries in this new data environment, and what libraries need to be on the lookout for during the current period of Digital Transformation.  However, Digital Transformation equals Digital Disruption, which brings us to the 4^th Industrial Revolution, sometimes referred to as one of “cyber physical systems,” the merging of capabilities of both human and machine.”  This is the era of artificial intelligence, virtual reality, genome editing, biometrics,  3D scanning/printing, autonomous vehicles and the Internet of Things (IoT).  Libraries are faced with this new “disruption” from both the patron/research service aspects and the software application aspects from both locally developed or vendor provided applications.  Libraries need to be thinking about how they will deal with this digital transition and decide how to provide the appropriate services, be it with technology or by providing Data Science service.

Plenary

None - General

None — General Audience

We live in the age of acceleration, in a world of extreme data. How can libraries thrive and move from VOLUME to VALUE to IMPACT. Join this session to learn about Ex Libris & ProQuest strategies and vision in dealing with 2020 and future libraries challenges.

Plenary

None - General

None — General Audience

Update on new and upcoming features in Alma Analytics. We will show live recently developed features as well as discuss plans for the coming year.

Analytics

Alma

None — General Audience

The bibliographic database is central to almost all library functions, and also a representation of how materials are in the world, so we can realize the basic impulse of librarianship: getting things in order and keeping them in order so they can be used.  What happens when the database doesn’t actually represent the world, and materials have been moved without regard for the catalog?  This presentation will detail the effects of the past in the University of Miami Libraries Special Collections—dramatically increased time and energy to do our work, decreased security and increased risk—to then detail what we've done to rise to the demands of the future.  We’ll outline our goals, tools, and processes developed, our results, and how we used Analytics to achieve our goals, and monitor and report our work.  We’ll close with an overview of what this project has shown about the capacities of Alma and Analytics.

Practical Applications

Alma

This session will go over the steps we took to implement Alma-D at Purdue to provide access to digitized material using Alma and Primo at Purdue.  We will cover both the high-level as well as detailed configurations needed to get everything up and running.

Digital Initiatives

This presentation highlights the positive effects our library has experienced by shifting away from a siloed system management structure. When UCSC Library formed our Alma implementation team with working members from across the library, we saw how much more successful a team with diverse expertise could be in continued system management. This success was the main motivation in the decision to create a team to manage our Alma/Primo VE system rather than rely on our previous model of a single Systems Librarian. With wide representation, this team has increased communication and knowledge about the system across the library. Problem-solving is more efficient and effective, and we are better able to identify cascading consequences when changes are made to the system. By describing the foundation of a team approach and the details of the charge and team formation, we will demonstrate how this approach can be transformative.

Strategy

The Washington Research Library Consortium migrated from Voyager to Alma in mid-2018.  After nearly 20 years in the Voyager environment, workflows had been optimized to facilitate the efficient movement of materials in and out of the consortium's shared collections facility (a shared remote storage facility).  It quickly became clear that new workflows were required to deliver this same level of efficiency and service when accessioning new materials with Alma.  

Using a mix of new API development, workflow restructuring, and Google Data Studio applications, the staff at Washington Research Library Consortium was able to not only restore the speed and volume of accessions to pre-migration levels, but now have leveraged these tools to exceed the efficiency found in Voyager.  This has resulted in lower accession costs per item and faster turn-around for large projects.   

Migration/Implementation

Alma

P2E (Physical to Electronic) is the name for the migration process that converts electronic resource records from the ILS into electronic inventory in Alma. The process requires pre-migration planning and post-migration cleanup. This presentation will demystify the process and recommend different approaches for your institution's needs. Learn how P2E relates to acquisitions data, ERM holdings, and the Alma Community Zone.

Migration/Implementation

Alma

Beginner

Join Ex Libris for a Primo and Primo VE Product update, an overview of their roadmaps, and an opportunity for Q&A.

Discovery

None — General Audience

As tempting as it is to focus attention immediately on the technical layer of an ILS implementation–given the significant amount of work involved–overall project success is better served if the project team prioritizes core project management tasks as soon as the team is formed. The Tri-College Consortium (Bryn Mawr College, Haverford College, and Swarthmore College) migrated from Millennium and VuFind to Alma (single Institution Zone) and Primo VE in December 2018. This presentation will cover communications, information organization, and decision-making processes that the TriCo’s ILS implementation team put in place within the first few months of the project and continued to refine throughout the project. It will conclude with how the team laid the groundwork for the management of Alma and Primo VE post Go-Live. Although this presentation will use examples from the TriCo’s ILS implementation, many of the approaches covered are applicable to non-ILS implementation projects.

Migration/Implementation

None — General Audience

Automation is coming.  The typical narrative surrounding this fact emphasizes catastrophism.  Automation will destroy jobs and industries by eliminating the need for human workers.  But is this prophesy valid?  In this presentation, I will focus on how the rise of automation represents not an end to employment, but a shift in focus from proactive content-management and generation to subsequent quality control and content auditing.  As a test case, I will demonstrate how the Ex Libris Community Zone model of automated collection management eliminates the need to manually input portfolios while also creating the need to monitor post-automation holding accuracy against actual subscribed content.  This process is achieved by a systemic rolling audit of Alma holdings.  The robots may be coming, but they still need humans to check their work.

Content

Alma

Beginner

Join Ex Libris for a Summon update, a review of key feature enhancements, overview of the Roadmap, and an opportunity for Q&A.

Discovery

Summon/360 Services

None — General Audience

For better or for worse, Alma user notes in patron records are free-form text. Did you migrate from another system and save all the user notes from your migration and now you want to clean these up? Do your staff and student workers always use the same format and vocabulary for user notes and always spell everything correctly? Do user notes live in your user records forever? It is difficult to remove or modify user notes in bulk once they exist in a record as this cannot be done by regular Alma jobs. The presenter will explain the characteristics of user notes in Alma patron records, working with Alma APIs and the XML/JSON format of user notes, will discuss a few different cleanup projects undertaken using Alma Analytics and Python scripts, and will demonstrate tools for making your own Alma user note fixes.

Practical Applications

Alma

Intermediate

Learn how to use OpenRefine to retrieve and manipulate Ex Libris data. OpenRefine is a free and open source tool for working with data. OpenRefine has an extremely useful function called "Add column by fetching URLs" that works like an API, but requires no coding. Therefore, if data exists at a URL, you can pull it with OpenRefine. In this presentation, you will learn how to programmatically: 1) retrieve ideas from the Idea Exchange and 2) retrieve records from Alma. In addition to "Add column by fetching URLs," we will discuss key functions, such as replace, join, and parseHtml.

Practical Applications

None - General

Beginner

The City University of New York (CUNY) libraries (22 institutions) have been employing a single instance Aleph system. Our legacy practice of sharing a catalog database, but not bibliographic records has led to, among other issues, significant duplication of effort in creating and maintaining bibliographic records. It also generates potentially confusing Primo search results coming from duplicate records.  In light of this increasingly unsustainable practice, the CUNY community agreed to take advantage of Alma migration to merge duplicate records and build a true single instance bibliographic records environment for better efficiency. This presentation will illustrate how CUNY Office of Library Services managed the OCLC reclamation process and developed a mechanism to capture current OCLC numbers in WorldCat and populate them into Aleph for records merging purposes. We will also describe how we retrieved deduplicated OCLC master records for use as base records to build the Alma Network Zone. 

Migration/Implementation

None — General Audience

The Kennesaw State University Collection Development Department started a systematic weeding project in 2017.  As the systems librarians, we created several reports from Alma analytics. These reports played an essential role in facilitating the collection librarian to make decisions on items for keeping and withdrawal. In this presentation, we would like to share our four years of experience in building these reports. We want to discuss what reports we needed and created, what issues we faced, and how we solved them. We would like to share our tips and lessons learned from our experience. We hope that our presentation will reduce the librarians’ learning curve period and provide additional resources for those who would like to build analytics reports for their library collection weeding project.

Analytics

Alma

Intermediate

Migration often exposes the “hidden artifacts” your old system is covering up. Suppressed records, inconsistent and often uninterpretable holdings notes, incomplete deletion jobs, and other practices in  legacy system mean data is less than perfect, in spite of the best efforts to clean it up pre-migration.  After migrating from Voyager to Alma in Summer 2018, Marymount University found that many of our legacy collections statistics we’d built reports on for years were inaccurate. These discoveries led us to uncover clean-up projects, and allowed us to evaluate our record-keeping to ensure we are keeping accurate and necessary statistics.

Migration/Implementation

Alma

None — General Audience

The NREL Library is in the process of scanning our large collection of government technical reports.  This session will describe the project and go into detail on the workflow and tools we developed for the mass conversion of print to electronic records in Alma.   Our process involves large scale scanning and QA, exporting title records to MARCedit, transformation of those records in MARCEdit, reimport of those files to Alma, and the deletion of the print holdings.  The end result of the project is increased discoverability of our extensive grey literature collection for both internal and external audiences.

Digital Initiatives

Intermediate

Are you new to ELUNA? Come to this session to learn more about the many ways that the Ex Libris Users Group of North America serves Ex Libris customers including communication, events, and the product enhancement processes.

2020 Vision for the Future of Libraries

None - General

None — General Audience

This session will provide details on workflows, settings, and tools to enhance and streamline your RapidILL borrowing and lending activities to provide better service to your users. We will also be sharing information on new features and future directions.

Demonstrations

Rapid ILL

Intermediate

Join us for an update on the latest advancements of Esploro and an overview of the roadmap, as well as and an opportunity for Q&A. This session will also highlight the experience and results from institutions that are live with Esploro.

Strategy

Esploro

None — General Audience

Strategy

None — General Audience

At California State University San Marcos, the implementation of Leganto created more efficient and effective workflows for Course Reserves, as well as, increased library support for affordable learning initiatives. Implementing Leganto has increased the number of faculty using Course Reserves and library resources. The use of reading lists and the library catalog has also led to changes in collection development policies. With seamless integration between Alma and Moodle, faculty have been using Leganto to locate library resources and request the library to purchase new materials. In addition to improving Course Reserves workflows and collection development policies, Leganto has increased collaborative efforts between the library and campus partners. Presenters will discuss how Leganto was implemented to ensure faculty support and involvement, how it increased campus partner collaborations, supported affordable learning initiatives, and changed the way the library makes collection purchase decisions.

Practical Applications

None — General Audience

See ProQuest Rialto, the ground-breaking solution transforming the selection and acquisition workflow for Ex Libris Higher Ed platform users. There will be a live demonstration with time for Q&A.

Gold Sponsor

Alma

None — General Audience

The session will include a high level overview of the GOBI and SSD migration processes for migrating Alma customers, GOBI and SSD updates for current customers, and a high level overview of the workflows and services available for GOBI customers.

Gold Sponsor

Alma

The University of Kansas Libraries is a co-sponsor of local Carpentries events (https://carpentries.org/) where coding, software and other data skills are taught to researchers.  In addition, during the summer of 2018, a series of customized Library Carpentry workshops were held which targeted skills/tools for the Acquisitions and Cataloging Departments.  

This session will cover our experience with the locally developed Library Carpentry workshop and provide some practical examples of how we are using skills/tools learned in the Carpentries workshops to work with Voyager and Primo.  Example of tools:  Open Refine, MacroExpress, Notepad ++

Practical Applications

Beginner

Please join the Primo Product Working Group to review what's happened since the last ELUNA, and Working Group plans for the coming year. There will be a short presentation followed by a period of discussion. Attendees are strongly encouraged to raise topics or submit questions in advance by emailing the presenter. We look forward to hearing your thoughts and hopes for the Primo product and Working Group activities. 

Discovery

None — General Audience

The purpose of this presentation is to provide an overview of Alma import profiles for physical and electronic resources. The presenter will walk through the various import functions and describe the practical implications of each. Import profiles encompass various Alma concepts and understanding them will make resource management more efficient and streamlined.

Import profiles can be scheduled to automatically load Marc bibliographic records on a regular basis. Indication rules exclude records based on Marc fields and normalization rules make batch changes to bibliographic records as they are imported. When dealing with incoming and existing records, match methods specify how records match and merge rules determine how they overlay. As records are loaded physical (Marc holdings and item records) and electronic inventory (portfolios) may be created. Import profiles can also delete bib records and portfolios.

Practical Applications

Alma

Beginner

Business meeting for the ELUNA Summon/360 Product Working Group, open to all interested attendees.

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

Summon/360 Services

None — General Audience

Update on new and upcoming features in acquisitions. We will show recently developed features as well as discuss plans for the coming year.

Demonstrations

Alma

Intermediate

Provides an overview on Alma UX continuous improvement. What are the new system wide tools we provide and plan to add. Our plan to address pain points in various workflows. And ... Metadata Editor new UI and improved workflows.

Demonstrations

Alma

Intermediate

Learn the reasons why Boston College decided to move their library data into Boston College's Enterprise Data Warehouse and how they worked with Ex Libris to use Alma's Publishing Profiles and APIs to work towards this goal; this presentation will address stumbles and lessons learned along the way.

Practical Applications

Alma

None — General Audience

Ever wonder how you can make sure the content you’ve purchased is available to your librarians and patrons in the best way possible? We’re here to help set things straight by introducing the content-level interactions between your products and propose some best practices for content activation to ensure maximum reach, accessibility, and discoverability.

Content

None — General Audience

Join users and Ex Libris staff for discussion and Q&A regarding Esploro.

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

Esploro

None — General Audience

UNLV University Libraries rebuilt our physical item withdrawal and reinstatement processes in 2018 to better use available Alma functionality. This presentation will describe how we use work orders, sets, jobs, and Alma Analytics to manage withdrawal projects, and how we use Alma Analytics and the deleted repository to handle item reinstatements. Specific workflow decisions and configuration settings will be shared, as well as hiccups and lessons learned along the way! Some details of our processes may appear specific to our institution, but the intention is to present our processes in a way that allows other institutions to determine how they might develop workflows that are specific to their own institutions. Prior knowledge of work orders, Alma Analytics, and the deleted repository will be helpful but not required.

Practical Applications

Alma

Learn how you can use Leganto analytics to improve your library, support the data needs of teaching and learning, and highlight the value of your library.

Analytics

Leganto

Beginner

The University of Texas at Dallas received a grant to convert oral history audio cassettes to online audio streaming files. Our library currently owns multiple systems that could manage digital assets, including DSpace, ArchivesSpace, and Alma. We started the project by addressing these questions:  What file format are these cassettes being converted to? Which system do we want to ingest those files? What metadata standard should we adopt? Where do we store the original files for preservation purposes? This presentation will cover how we make the decisions to select the most suitable system to store and display the audio streaming files, how to map and convert the Metadata for those files, and where we store the original files for long-term preservation purposes. Finally, we will discuss whether to migrate other types of digital content to Alma-D and how we integrated and unified multiple systems to better manage our digital assets.

Digital Initiatives

Intermediate

Workday is a cloud-based ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system used by many academic institutions. When Georgetown University Library migrated from III’s Sierra to Alma in 2018, a major challenge was to synchronize Alma’s financial information with our University’s Workday-based financial management system. We will describe how we automated invoice loading from Alma into Workday, and how we integrated Workday’s payment information into Alma to close Alma invoices.

Migration/Implementation

Alma

The library at Rice has a long history of integrating third-party services with it’s library systems, and this meant it was crucial that the we achieved these integrations before or near when we went live with Alma. Prior to going live, we successfully integrated five major third-party systems with Alma. We will discuss the Finance, Bursar, Remote Storage and SIS integration profiles, how they are set up and how and how we use them. We will also discuss how we historically used the open source Booked software with our library system and how we do this in Alma. We will touch on using webhooks and APIs to integrate that system to allow for booking rooms and equipment. We will also discuss how we run some of these integrations jobs through API calls.

Practical Applications

Alma

Intermediate

LibKey is now being used by more than 900 libraries to simplify and expedite access to content. 2020 brings significant development of LibKey services as we continue to redefine how users connect to content, both from within library services and on the open web. These developments include using LibKey Link anywhere OpenURL is used and the release of LibKey.io, an article look up and scholarly linking syntax.

Gold Sponsor

None — General Audience

User data is an integral component of library services, and it usually involves multiple systems, authentication methods, and user types. Alma administrators should not only understand the data lifecycle for user information, but also have well-defined procedures for managing user data. While Alma provides a single user data model for all user types, the reality of managing and tracking these users can stretch this model in challenging ways. In this presentation, we will begin with an overview of Alma user management. We will then share our journey of establishing workflows to handle different scenarios, as well as provide several real-life examples for strategies to handle complex situations. This overview will include SIS load profiles, user purging, systematic management of roles and privileges for staff accounts, streamlining Alma notification letters for privacy, and other parts of the user data lifecycle.

Practical Applications

Alma

The University of Denver Libraries have prioritized the acquisition of resources by and about underrepresented groups, particularly local Native American tribes. But the acquisition of these resources is only part of the equation. Accurate and fair representation in the library catalog through the metadata is necessary for these resources to be found and used. Some of the most crucial metadata for search and retrieval are the authorized name and subject headings. However, these authorized headings do not always accurately reflect the names used by people groups to describe themselves and sometimes include offensive or pejorative terms that we no longer wish to use. One way of dealing with these issues is to use local authorities in Alma. This session will focus on the process of setting up local authorities in Alma including authority definitions and records. Native American tribal names will serve as the example throughout this session.

Practical Applications

Alma

Back for 2020, this customer-driven event facilitates an open exchange of questions and ideas between our Summon and 360 communities and Ex Libris Product Management. Think of it as live version of what often occurs on our listserv, as the session will offer a unique opportunity to interact in real time with both our peers and our vendor. The questions that fuel this discussion were contributed directly from the Summon and 360 Communities and are representative of North American and International customers.

Discovery

Summon/360 Services

None — General Audience

The collections feature in both Alma and Primo provide the ability to pull physical, electronic, and digital resources together to support a class, showcase a collection, or access topic-based resources to benefit user discovery. This session will demonstrate how to add various formats of resources into collections and subcollections in Alma both manually and automated, configure Primo to display those collections utilizing normalization rules, and provide images to enhance the display. Additionally, potential applications of this feature will be explored.

Practical Applications

Intermediate

How can libraries move from managing volume of data, to delivering value, to demonstrating impact to their stakeholders while maintaining high level of user experience? Join us for an Ex Libris update about library management and discovery solutions, designed to accelerate library impact & satisfaction.

Plenary

None — General Audience

In preparation for the 64 campus SUNY System Consortia’s migration from Aleph to Alma in June 2019, team members worked for over a year at both the system and local levels to achieve a vision for a new modern integrated library system with active development.  In this session, David and Caryl will describe how one campus participated in group project preparations, how it worked independently, and what was learned. They will discuss leadership roles in consortial working groups and the decision making process at the system level, as well as how the local migration team envisioned best practices for workflows and setting priorities and policies.  They will conclude with an evaluation of the project’s success and a summary of what was learned from working in a consortial environment. 

Migration/Implementation

None — General Audience

The joint ELUNA/IGeLU Analytics and Interoperability Working Groups will each give an update on what their groups have been working on

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

Alma

None — General Audience

As of the January 2020 release, Alma and Alma Analytics fully support COUNTER Release 5. During this session we will look at: setup, manual and automated harvesting, Analytics reporting.

Analytics

Alma

None — General Audience

One of the most important tasks in configuring MARC field display in Primo VE involves customizing the normalization rules behind each display and local field. While Primo VE normalization rules can offer libraries a great deal of flexibility in modifying local displays, they can be challenging to learn, especially since they do not use the same syntax as the Alma normalization rules available in the metadata editor. This presentation will provide an introduction to altering Primo VE normalization rules for the out-of-the-box display fields and instruction on adding local fields for MARC content not defined in the default Primo VE record display. Additionally, the presentation will include more complex instructions on how to rectify Primo VE’s haphazard display of various MARC fields and subfields. Lastly, the presenters will demonstrate how to use Alma bibliographic normalize-on-save functions in tandem with local display fields.

Discovery

This joint Primo/Summon meeting will discuss the current roadmap to define improvements to Database Recommender and Topic Explorer. Current focus group members and anybody interested in these two features are encouraged to attend.

Discovery

None — General Audience

We will take you through a brief walk through of our implementation process. We will also cover certain topics in more detail such as: researcher feeds and organization structure, considerations for author matching and asset migration, and steps involved in a successful rollout to the university.

Migration/Implementation

Esploro

None — General Audience

Practical Applications

Alma

None — General Audience

The Vista is the school newspaper of the University of Central Oklahoma. Since its inception in 1903, The Vista experienced a couple dozen frequency changes, suffered six university name changes, was christened with different aliases for some summer issues—all of which that not only make serials cataloging rightfully earn its difficult reputation but also were left for the present catalogers to handle by our predecessors from decades before. The untangling of this publication off one bibliographic record included creating ten new bibliographic records that required vigilance to ensure that FRBRization in Primo was not de-duping the records inappropriately. Come learn (or commiserate!) about complex serials problems and gain cataloging tips for ensuring the metadata itself is not hindering display and discovery.

Content

Intermediate

Merge rules are powerful but complicated, and out-of-the-box rules often don’t do what they claim to do. This presentation will describe the merge rules themselves, how to evaluate, edit, and create rules to accomplish different needs, and will also review the profile and configuration areas where merge rules are specified for different processes. This presentation will include guidance for consortial environments, showing what configuration is necessary in both the Institution Zone and Network Zone.

Practical Applications

Alma

What do we know about how novice users approach discovery? How does their search behavior differ from librarians? Join us for an exploration of the area where users and discovery meet and discussion of how libraries can help users navigate more successful.

Discovery

Beginner

This presentation will discuss the importance of providing long-term access to selected digital content, understanding how to manage your digital resources, and describe how to use Rosetta software to manage file formats, digital storage, obsolescence risks, metadata, and to avoid changes to digital files. Long-term management and access is important for everyone working with digital materials to understand, not only the importance of digital preservation, but how to implement a program within your organization. The presentation will look at six fundamental topics of preserving digital objects: 1.) Identify the types of digital content you have and select the digital content you want to be accessible long-term. 2.) Use standard methods for managing long term file metadata 3.) Store your digital content securely 4.) Protect your content from everyday threats (changes, obsolescence, loss, etc.) 5.) Create a preservation plan for long term management. 6.) Provide access to digital content over time.

Digital Initiatives

Rosetta

None — General Audience

Learn how you can integrate your Springshare Tools and content (LibGuides, LibCal, LibAnswers, and more!) into your Ex Libris tools and vice versa. See how other libraries are integrating their Springshare content and beyond!

Gold Sponsor

None — General Audience

Introducing the Provider Zone! In this session we will introduce a new concept in Alma which will allow Content Providers to create and manage their content offerings directly within the Community Zone!

Content

Alma

Beginner

Alma/Primo implementation and ongoing management is an inherently challenging journey, but proper strategies and team building can help you strive and thrive along the way. In this presentation, we will share our experience and tips from the perspectives of two different NA institutions--one in a consortia setting, and another in a single Alma/Primo instance. We will start with the common grassroots work, including systematic project planning, constructing a collaborative team structure and setting up structure and processes. We will follow up with our practices, and then wrap up with future directions for discussion. The session covers overall Alma/Primo management strategies, as well as practical framework and techniques on team building, project management, assessing needs, and mapping/revamping workflows. Attendees will be able to apply our methodologies to their Alma/Primo journey.

Migration/Implementation

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

None - General

None — General Audience

The Alma Licensing Special Interest Group will meet to discuss the licensing functionality in Alma. The group will scheme to increase the number of votes on Idea Exchange entries pertaining to Alma licenses. Co-Chaired by Sunshine Carter and Danielle Ostendorf.

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

Alma

None — General Audience

Alma allows several options for automating POL creation at the point of order, thereby increasing acquisitions workflow efficiency. This practical presentation examines the benefits and drawbacks of two different tools designed to automate POL creation in Alma: the new order API and the new order import profile. This presentation compares how each workflow interacts with various formats and acquisition models including firm, demand-driven, approval, and ebook upgrades. Best practices for using the API and import profiles will be discussed and general guidance on Alma configuration will be provided.

Practical Applications

Alma

An opportunity for Ex Libris' consortial customers to meet and share news, concerns, and ideas that relate to using Ex Libris' products in a consortial setting. The conversation is informal, collegial, and not product-specific. 

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

None - General

None — General Audience

Introductory meeting of FedSIG, a newly formed interest group for librarians who work in Ex Libris customer sites within the United States Federal Government. The purpose of this meeting is to introduce the SIG to potential members and brainstorm discussion topics for future gatherings.

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

None - General

None — General Audience

Are you planning to migrate to Alma soon and wondering how the project will begin? The Ex Libris Customer Onboarding Team will be your first point of contact after your contract is signed and will guide you through your preparations for your project. We will share details of the process and tips for what you can do now to ensure a smooth transition into your project.

Migration/Implementation

Beginner

In January 2018, University of Massachusetts Boston, a nationally recognized as a student-centered urban public research university, launched its first state-of-the-art comprehensive online resources and discovery Alma-Primo library system, locally branded as ‘UMBrella’. A study was conducted 3 years after the launch of Alma-Primo to evaluate the effect of Alma-Primo implementation on user utilization of the new library system. In this presentation, the presenter will share the methods and the results.

Strategy

None — General Audience

Utilizing the functionality of the recent OBI 12 update libraries can now conduct and complete data visualization projects from within Alma. This session will cover the basics of data visualization and provide ideas on how to use this new feature.

Analytics

Beginner

Intended for law librarians and law library staff who currently use, or are potentially migrating to Ex Libris products, primarily Alma & Primo. Possible discussion topics include management of legal e-resource collections in Alma, migration questions/issues, or managing Alma in a multi-library environment.

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

None — General Audience

The Linked Open Data Working Group will report on this past year and on its plans for the future. Itai Veltzman from Ex Libris will bring us up to date on the linked data roadmap for Ex Libris products. At the end, we will open it up for questions

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

None — General Audience

The Medical Libraries SIG provides opportunities for medical librarians (both technical and user services types) to get to know each other and to network both formally and informally.

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

None - General

None — General Audience

During Carnegie Mellon University Libraries’ migration, technical issues like system incompatibilities, implementation decisions such as aggressive timetables, and insufficient human resources to address technical debt, left personnel scrambling to achieve a seamless return to pre-migration levels of service quality.  

These constraints required reckoning with the quality of imported data, underutilized system configurations, and a lack of buy-in from stakeholders. To alleviate these issues, a LibWizard survey was repurposed into PrimoVE so that patrons/liaisons could communicate access problems at point-of-contact.

While this quickly deployable reporting tool immediately improved customer service response time and tracking, it became clear that this methodology could create datasets to advance other ERM applications without affecting pre-existing budgets. This solution crowdsourced and quantified the identification of improperly migrated data, allowed the swift discovery, communication, and resolution of access problems, and provided quantitative and qualitative UX information to inform future system management and collection development.

Practical Applications

The ELUNA 2020 Program Committee will meet to discuss the past year's program planning process in anticipation of the 2021 meeting.

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

None - General

None — General Audience

This session will show how to scan and fix bibliographic and holding records in Alma sets by using MARC indication rules and MARC normalization processes. We will discuss indication rule logic, normalization rule syntax, rule salience, conditional vs. unconditional rules, normalization processes for MARC21 Bibliographic and Holding profiles, and best practices for working with indication and normalization rules. Example scenarios and rules will be provided. Note: This session assumes basic knowledge of Alma sets and manual jobs.

Practical Applications

Alma

Beginner

In 2019 at the University of Calgary, we transformed our course reserve service to a self-service model, making reserve materials available whenever the library building was open. To do this, we used Alma’s "Self Check" integration profile, Stunnel, and self-serve “reserve kiosks” (book lockers). In the fall semester, we deployed 16 of these kiosks (13 in the Taylor Family Digital Library and three in the branch libraries) to circulate our reserve collections. Users borrow and return reserve items at their convenience without staff mediation. At the branches, kiosks are outside of the libraries so reserve materials are accessible even when the library is closed. Between September and December 2019, there were more than 9,700 kiosk loans. In this presentation, you will learn how to implement self-serve reserve kiosks and transform your course reserve service for users and staff.

Practical Applications

Alma

Intermediate

In many cases, libraries chose to have their University’s IT departments code the XML for the patron load.  In our case, we wish the flexibility to be able to assign certain privileges and statistical categories via the patron load as we did with our Voyager system.  For example, how do we handle staff that are also students?  How do we automate expiring patrons via the patron load—be they students, adjuncts, or staff/faculty with a termination date?  How do we automate the assignment of statistical categories?  The Cheng Library converted scripts that were used to create the Voyager SIF files into scripts that create XML files for Alma. 

Migration/Implementation

Alma

Social Event

None - General

None — General Audience

Internal meeting of the Content Working Group and Ex Libris staff

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

None - General

None — General Audience

Opportunity for RUG chairs to meet with ELUNA Steering Committee members and discuss issues related to Regional User Groups. 

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

None - General

None — General Audience

General update on what's new and what's coming in Alma.

Demonstrations

Alma

None — General Audience

Following up on focus groups with students conducted last year that centered on their impressions of Primo (findings presented at ELUNA 2019 and IGeLU 2019), we have expanded our target audience by conducting a campus-wide survey that included students, staff, and faculty. From November 11 - December 13, 2019, we went live with an online survey that concentrated on usage of the features and facets of Primo. Additionally, we asked for satisfaction with the search interface and search results. Come learn what our campus constituencies, including transfer students, first generation students, graduate students, and staff/faculty like, dislike and use within Primo. Other insights include features that are heavily used or misunderstood, and a discussion around facet satisfaction and usage as reported in Primo Analytics.

Discovery

Primo

None — General Audience

In 2019, the University of Kansas migrated our digital collections to a new platform as well as added a major new digitization project, the Phog Allen Papers.  We also (finally) implemented course reserves from Voyager in Primo.  These projects required us to clarify which digital records should be represented in a discovery system.  Along with determining what records to harvest - and from where - we also had to clean up legacy records and develop creative methods to harvest and delete records.

Digital Initiatives

In 2018, Notre Dame migrated to ArchivesSpace for the archival materials in the University Archives and Library Special Collection. This past year, we implemented a record loading process to integrate ArchivesSpace with our Primo Discovery system, using an OAI pipe. This session will review our approach, implementation and results of the project. 

Discovery

Primo

Historically, the discovery layer has exposed materials that libraries own or where an active subscription exists.  As delivery services shorten the amount of time a patron waits, more institutions are exposing materials that are open access, owned by other libraries, or not yet owned.  The availability of services such as Unpaywall allows the enrichment of delivery options by providing links to pdfs for open access content.  New delivery services in CDI are also enabling the delivery of parts of works -tracks of a CD, chapters of a book, etc.  This presentation will demonstrate some of this new Ex Libris functionality, as well as institution-built customizations, such as image/media players, in-line interlibrary loan requesting and links to open access content.

Demonstrations

None — General Audience

See how RefWorks insights and usage patterns can inform your collection purchasing decisions and how discovery users can benefit from recommendations based on RefWorks connections between items.

Discovery

None — General Audience

The Aleph WG will provide a short update about the group's activities, followed by a review of the highlights of the recent Aleph releases, including NERS enhancements and other technical enhancements to Aleph.

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

Aleph

None — General Audience

Come learn about managing a team of volunteers to teach data science across your university's campus. The Carpentries organization aims to teach "foundational coding, and data science skills to researchers worldwide." Oklahoma State University's (OSU) library has run these introductory data science workshops since 2015. In 2016 we became a member organization and have since built a sustainable volunteer community of instructors and helpers to teach a variety of data science topics in two-day workshops hosted by the library. While the majority of participants are OSU graduate students from various fields, workshops are open to all, and attendees from other institutions within the region also participate. The presenter will discuss how OSU organizes and runs their local Carpentries community. Come see if these practices apply to your library’s education initiatives.

2020 Vision for the Future of Libraries

None - General

None — General Audience

When a library system moves to a new service platform, the whole staff needs to be trained at roughly the same time, while the implementation team is still learning and getting ready for migration. How do you give everyone what they need to start work on Day 1 with minimal interruptions to productivity? Using examples from Harvard University and SUNY Library consortium, the presenter will example a variety of approaches and tools to spread the training net wide, and discuss what level of training customization would most benefit staff.

Migration/Implementation

None - General

None — General Audience

Voice technology has advanced by leaps and bounds in recent years. Conversational AI is transforming the way we interact with the digital world and voice assistant, such as Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri, is the new intermediary between questions and answers.

Primo’s Voice Search Assistant (VSA) is an encouraging first step toward a full-blown conversation user interface. In this presentation, Nili Natan, Ex Libris Product Manager, and I will explore VSA use cases and future development plan of integrating voice technology in the Primo user interface.

2020 Vision for the Future of Libraries

RA21, now rebranded as SeamlessAccess, specifies an access model for e-resources that replaces IP filtering.  Great progress has been made in the past year and the service is now in beta status. This presentation will delineate the problems associated with IP filtering, review the components and recommendations of SeamlessAccess, and will include a live demonstration of the new model.

2020 Vision for the Future of Libraries

None - General

Intermediate

Join Ex Libris for a Voyager product update, an overview of the roadmap, and an opportunity for Q&A.

Demonstrations

Voyager

Intermediate

Ex Libris provides a System Status page (https://status.exlibrisgroup.com/) which provides the latest information on the availability of Ex Libris products. Customers can view this page to see the current status of products or subscribe to be notified via email of interruptions to any individual service.  

Unbeknownst to some, Ex Libris also provides programmatic access to the system statuses via a RESTful API. This access is extremely useful. In this presentation, we will discuss how the Online Strategy team at Arizona State University Library leverages the API to automate public facing outage notices on their Primo interface.

In order to create these notices, the team created their own internal service to clean up and anatomize responses from the API into more granular data. Using Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the Serverless framework, a bot checks the API and parses the response, the result of which is then stored in small database accessible by a GET request. Future work is expected to address unexpected Primo outages via public Twitter notifications and internal Slack channels.

Discovery

Primo

Beginning with ELUNA membership renewals for 2021 the ELUNA membership database, invoicing and payment system, and institutional contact management will move from our current paper based system to an online membership management system.  Information will be shared throughout the year, but this session will offer the rational for the change and provide a sneak preview to using the new system.

Demonstrations

None - General

None — General Audience

Hear first hand from California State University about how Alma consolidates the various departmental and library services -- negotiation, purchase, and management of electronic resources for consortium.

Content

Alma

Intermediate

You can create a discovery journey that can satisfy the needs and meet the expectations of today’s set of diverse library users. Learn about the various methods and means to enhance the user experience and help researchers get to their desired destination.

Discovery

None — General Audience

See how RefWorks insights and usage patterns can inform your collection purchasing decisions and how discovery users can benefit from recommendations based on RefWorks connections between items.

Analytics

None — General Audience

Come learn about CloudApps, the latest innovation in the Ex Libris Open Platform. CloudApps enable developers to write apps and extensions that run inside Alma and extend the built-in functionality. This non-technical overview will demonstrate how to enable CloudApps in your institution, and will feature community developers who will showcase their early apps.

2020 Vision for the Future of Libraries

Alma

Advanced/Expert

Please join us for a look back at the work of the Alma Working Group members since last ELUNA. Updates will include work on enhancements, Alma UX, DARA Smart Recommendations, Community Zone Management, Alma Apps Center, and Performance. The new structure of the Alma Working Group will be discussed and attendees will have the opportunity to meet the new leadership of the Alma WG. There should also be time for open discussion on priorities for the next year. This session is open to all conference attendees.  

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

Alma

None — General Audience

Using Alma tools, configurations, and metadata, American University (AU) created a “digital window browsing” experience to promote unique collections, including board games, comics, cookbooks, and media. While metadata describes resources, thumbnails and collections show the resources while grabbing users’ attention. The presentation will showcase the browsable collections, discuss obstacles, and share the semi-automated workflow and procedures necessary for implementing this discovery enhancing project. Attendees of beginner-intermediate Alma experience will learn to create collections, manage inventory, and configure thumbnails.

Discovery

This session is intended to promote an engaging dialog between small and medium/non-consortia libraries and Ex Libris executive management. The unique plight of these types of institutions is that they largely reside on outdated technology and have neither the bandwidth nor funding to migrate to current state-of-the-art products. As an open forum, we hope to have an interactive discussion where we will not only better understand each other’s pain points, but also, explore any possible solutions that might prove to be mutually beneficial.

Strategy

None - General

None — General Audience

Efforts in access and collections services to save students money by defraying costs for course materials are becoming more common, yet remain difficult to quantify. This presentation covers two institution’s efforts to develop student savings measures that reflected their Leganto implementations and its impact on affordability. Questions and roadblocks, both conceptual and technical, arose as data about courses, reading lists, citations, and usage were pulled from Analytics and transformed into reports for outside stakeholders and internal discussions. Join us to hear stories from scrubbing data and reconfiguring workflows to defining basic questions about what constitutes savings and how to apply these in meaningful ways.

Strategy

Beginner

This meeting will be to discuss changes to Summon Analytics based on feedback from last year's report, and define a direction to move to in the future.

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

Summon/360 Services

None — General Audience

This presentation will discuss a project at Metropolitan State University to utilize Alma e-journal holdings subject data to perform holistic collection analysis. Specifically, the presentation will detail how subject data from Alma CZ MARC records can be retrieved via Analytics, used to assign subject and academic department categories, and then be re-uploaded back into Alma portfolio Note fields for further Analytics use. Project background, a brief technical walkthrough, the end product, and a discussion of the benefits and drawbacks of the process will be featured, as well as audience Q&A time permitting.

Analytics

Alma

Digital Initiatives

None — General Audience

For those without user experience or a systems background, conducting usability testing and customizing Primo VE can feel overwhelming. This presentation, aimed at participants with beginner/intermediate level experience, will focus on the work conducted at Washington & Lee University to build a culture of usability within the library, and the ups and downs of the UX process. Additionally, this session will look at specific customizations that can be made to Primo VE pre-and post-usability study including changes to the language, customizing the brief and full record, adding a problem report form, and expanding location details. This session will also look at the procedures at W&L for implementing changes to discovery and the roadblocks faced both internally and externally throughout that process.

Discovery

Primo VE

This presentation will aim to highlight how the use of Top-level collections in Alma have been used to increase resource discoverability and access in Primo. The presentation will pull examples from both a standalone school, The University of Arizona, and a member of a consortia, Georgia Southern University. Examples will include: utilizing Top-Level collections to take advantage of Primo’s Collection Discovery feature, building collection specific search scopes, and utilizing Primo’s PNX functionality to create custom collection based facets.

Practical Applications

None — General Audience

Come join your Voyager WG officers to hear about the group's latest activities and a chance to ask your pressing Voyager questions.

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

Voyager

None — General Audience

While some TED Talks records are available from vendors such as Films on Demand, our consortium has created MARC records for these freely available resources in OCLC Connexion. This presentation will demonstrate the steps involved in adding a local electronic collection of TED Talks to Alma and making it discoverable in Primo. Using this collection of MARC records, users will learn how to create a local electronic collection, as well an import profile. Also, learn from our experience in trying to contribute these records to the Alma Community Zone.

Content

Beginner

A panel discussion/question-and-answer session with staff from SUNY (62 campuses) who have recently migrated and staff from CUNY (26 campuses) who are in the process of migrating from Aleph to Alma.

Migration/Implementation

Aleph

Beginner

We started our API journey by using and customizing Georgetown's inventory tool.  It was such a success we quickly built our own tools using API's to add barcodes to unbarcoded items and process items being sent out for scanning.  We have several more goal projects as we continue to see work flow improvements with every use of the Alma/Primo API. Some tools we've picked up along the way include containers, Postman, Javascript and more. In this talk we want to walk you through our journey to help empower others to get started and share the tools we've built.  

Demonstrations

This presentation will discuss the aftermath of the migration to Alma that J. Murrey Atkins Library at UNC Charlotte conducted in 2017 and our efforts to correct problems with our data that arose during the transition to the new system. We identified some of these problems in a previous ELUNA presentation, “Difficult Transitions” (2018), which focused on our experience as one of the first WorldShare Management Services (WMS) institutions to migrate to Alma. Drawing on two subsequent years of experience with Alma, this presentation will describe our efforts to clean and correct our data post migration and make records fully functional. Offering a deep dive into our cleanup strategies for print and electronic records, we will describe our learning experience with Alma and roadblocks we have encountered. Alma newcomers and veterans alike will gain a clearer understanding of how to tackle data cleanup projects using Alma functionalities and other tools.

Migration/Implementation

None — General Audience

It is commonplace for academic libraries to load patron information into Alma. Generally, this data is ported directly from the campus student information system to the ILS, with all of the quirks and limitations of SIS information. But, with some creative automated data work between SIS export and Alma import, the information loaded to the ILS can provide for normalized statistical data and better reconciliation with campus financial systems. The same process can be used to push patron data to EZproxy and other library services for improved access control. This presentation will provide particulars, including procedures and scripts, about how and why one library took advantage of their patron load to improve information across library systems.

Practical Applications

Alma

Join Ex Libris for a Leganto Product Update, an overview of the roadmap, and an opportunity for Q&A.

Strategy

Leganto

None — General Audience

The University of Central Oklahoma's Max Chambers Library has reworked our problem reporting method and procedures in several ways over the past years. This presentation will cover our current problem reporting method, our procedures to ensure issues are addressed, and the considerations that got us to this point. Practical configuration information for both Alma and Springshare LibWizard will be included in presentation. 

Practical Applications

Intermediate

Update on our recent significant 6.2 release, including the fast-track preservation planning, support for streaming video, and more. Come and hear details on many exciting features planned for 7.0 and beyond, in addition to community updates and more.

Demonstrations

Rosetta

Intermediate

Three years after Old Dominion University Libraries migrated to ProQuest Ex Libris products, I was appointed the Resource Discovery Librarian largely responsible for the configuration and maintenance of Alma. I created a strategic plan to guide me through my first year in this new role. In this breakout, I will share the highlights of my strategic plan including conducting a needs assessment, creating a SWOT analysis, and techniques for documentation.

Strategy

Is your library preparing to migrate from Voyager to Alma?  Do your current catalog records meet the new system's specifications to ensure that all existing information migrates seamlessly and displays accurately in the new system?  Can you say with absolute certainty that none of your catalog records contain any errors?  If your current catalog is far from perfect, come learn how ad hoc Access Reports and GDC rules can help clean up your database pre-new system migration.

Migration/Implementation

Voyager

None — General Audience

This presentation will demonstrate how to use Design Analytics (Primo) as well as a spreadsheet software to better understand patron's search strategies when using the library's Primo interface.  The presentation will first explain how to get data from Analytics.  Then, it will discuss coding and interpreting the data.

Analytics

None — General Audience

Iowa State University and University of Iowa partnered with ConverSight.ai Libro in 2019 to develop a platform that would allow students and staff to search their Ex Libris ILS, events systems and FAQs through a natural language conversation with their mobile devices and smart speakers. Following search, students are able to reserve materials and/or space for events, learn about library hours, policies and more, and interact with the library in this tech-savvy way. Due to the voice integration, sight-impaired students and those who have difficulty with screens are able to interact with the library like never before. This year, Libro is rolling out a text-chat version that integrates with the voice components and offers features that should lead to deeper adoption and better third-party integrations.

Gold Sponsor

None — General Audience

Esploro enables your library to showcase all the publications and datasets of all affiliated researchers in your institution, across all disciplines. Esploro harvests output & data from external sources such as indexes, national repositories, and disciplinary repositories. Join this session to understand how Esploro machine learning algorithms facilitate library productivity and helps showcase institutional research.

2020 Vision for the Future of Libraries

Esploro

None — General Audience

The Libraries recently assumed responsibility for the Equipment Loan Center formerly, managed by the Office of Informational Technology.  After moving the equipment to Access Services, we needed to quickly create nearly a hundred Alma descriptive records, profile fulfilment, and make equipment bookable.  Keeping it simple, we used a spreadsheet for record creation  and the Alma booking module to manage availability. In this presentation, I will discuss how we set everything up, show the simplicity of spreadsheet import, and discuss the successes and surprises we encountered along the way.  My involvement focused on Alma configurations and imports, but I will also show informational and supporting web pages created by colleagues. To my surprise, the import process was so simple and was such a time-saver that we expanded it to other projects: textbooks and zines record creation. What would take hours or days can be accomplished in seconds or minutes. 

Demonstrations

Alma

Beginner

This session is for everyone who utilizes the knowledge bases (Alma, SFX, 360) and/or discovery indexes (Primo Central, Summon, Central Discovery Index). Concerned about what collections are present, how up-to-date they are, metadata quality and how it affects the use of the content? We will review the activities of the Content Working Group and have an open discussion about areas of concern and upcoming initiatives. The second part of the meeting will be a Q&A session with Ex Libris Content Operations staff.

Discovery

None — General Audience

Voyager generates a number of log files during bulk imports. However, as the logs generate record-by-record, useful information is scattered throughout the file, and the summary at the end may not provide enough detail at a glance. This session demonstrates the use of a Python script to parse the import log file and reformat record IDs according to type. This enables rapid identification of issues related to specific records during a large record load.  The talk will also cover information about resources for learning Python and other possibilities for its use with Voyager.

Practical Applications

Voyager

Learn how to leverage the Alma Open Platform to integrate with your IT ecosystem and your own custom tool and apps. Hear about the latest updates and planned features.

2020 Vision for the Future of Libraries

Alma

Intermediate

Analyzing your data is important for all aspects of efficient library operations.  We will be sharing some ideas to help you effectively gather and analyze your data using Alma Analytics.  After our presentation, you will know how to use multiple filters in the same field, how and why to create bins, how to save a filter for reuse in another analysis, and how to create and use a sub-query.  We will also be sharing a couple of complicated formulas that are not included in Alma documentation.

The presentation will be geared to advanced beginner/intermediate Analytic users.  We will be assuming that those who attend the presentation will know how to create an Analysis and be familiar with filters, formulas, and other basic configuration tools.

Analytics

Alma

Intermediate

The transition from III Millennium to Ex Libris Alma created an opportunity to better account for gifts and generate statistics. In this session we will describe our pre-Alma gift accessioning evolution, including how we decided which items to add to our collection and the limitations of the III workflow.  In ALMA, we will explain our new workflow using the gift order template and the improved statistics we can now generate.

Practical Applications

Alma

None — General Audience

The Item Data Loader (IDaL) application uses a simple interface to update an item by 1) scanning an item barcode and 2) entering data for that item. The application was developed in-house using the Alma BIBs API and a python GUI toolkit. It is especially helpful for updating large numbers of physical items that require non-batch data updates, such as updating storage location ID, enumeration/chronology, or internal notes. In this presentation, our Stacks Manager will show a mock demonstration of this app and speak to possible uses for the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries. The application developer will discuss how to get the app running for you and your library staff and where to find easy-to-use implementation documentation. Application accessibility, quality control, and security will also be covered. 

Demonstrations

Alma

Please come join us at the Leganto Working Group meeting. We will present a short agenda and take questions from the attendees. All are welcome to attend.

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

Leganto

None — General Audience

In recent years the Georgia Tech library went through a number of significant changes including ILS migration, major renovation to the campus library, which resulted in more than 95 percent of its print books being moved to an off-campus location, and organizational restructuring of all areas of the library including access and technical services. Migration to Alma coupled with organizational restructuring required rethinking of many workflows and communication strategies between different groups and staff members responsible for different elements of  providing access and discovery. In this presentation, we will discuss how rethinking Alma/Primo related workflows helped us to recognize the significance of cross-functional collaborations and communication across functional areas. We will show specific examples of using project management tools (Trello) to communicate and implement changes in our discovery interface; cross-training to improve understanding of the different elements of workflows and how cataloging decisions can impact fulfilment and discovery.

Strategy

None — General Audience

Deciding what to do in Alma regarding authority control has been a debate since Alma launched. MARCIVE, Inc. partnered with Temple University to get an evaluation of outsourced authority control services in Alma. We will learn about the workflow, compare match rates, and see if this service is the right fit for your library.

Gold Sponsor

Alma

None — General Audience

Although the joint IGeLU / ELUNA Rosetta WG has a separate annual meeting, we have set aside this time to review Rosetta WG activities in the past year and plans for the separate WG meeting in June. The session will include an open discussion of all things Rosetta, especially in regard to WG focus for 2020/2021. All conference attendees are welcome to join this meeting regardless of whether or not they have Rosetta.

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

Rosetta

None — General Audience

We will show recently developed features as well as discuss plans for the coming year.

Demonstrations

Alma

Intermediate

Our library recently moved from ILLiad to Tipasa for all interlibrary loan services. In addition, we implemented a number of suggested changes for the Primo New UI from presentations at previous ELUNA conferences. In this session, we will share the results of our usability testing of these changes and the additional improvements needed to meet the unique needs of patrons at a small, private, liberal arts college.

Discovery

Primo

None — General Audience

Join this Ex Libris session to learn about the latest solutions, enhancements, and vision in the areas of learning, research resource sharing and the academic ecosystem.

Plenary

None - General

None — General Audience

Customer Success has and will always be our top priority at Ex Libris. The Global Operations management team will present the Customer Success Cycle, the new initiatives it includes and how it is tailored to accelerate the path to your success.

Plenary

None - General

None — General Audience

Update on some of the great new features recently introduced, primarily the newly designed, attractive, and fully customizable Alma viewer, which can be seamlessly embedded into Primo. In addition, come and learn about the exciting upcoming roadmap and update on our migration kits.

Digital Initiatives

Alma

Beginner

Metadata analysis is a growing need in libraries of all types and sizes, as demonstrated in many recent job postings. Data migration, transformation, enhancement, and remediation all require strong metadata analysis skills. But there is no well-defined body of knowledge or competencies list for library metadata analysis, leaving library staff with analysis-related responsibilities largely on their own to learn how to do the work effectively. In this presentation, two experienced metadata analysts will share what they see as core knowledge areas and problem solving techniques for successful library metadata analysis, along with some suggested tools. This session will help library staff and their managers develop a shared understanding of the skillsets required to meet their library’s metadata analysis needs. It will also be useful to individuals interested in pursuing a career in library metadata analysis and wondering how to enhance their existing knowledge and skills for success in analysis work.

Strategy

None - General

None — General Audience

The University of Tennessee – Knoxville has been a Primo customer since 2009 but switched to Primo VE in the fall of 2019.  In this presentation Mike Rogers and Anchalee (Joy) Panigabutra-Roberts will share their experience with switching to VE.  Mike (as the Enterprise Systems Manager) will explain the reasons for moving to VE, provide an overview of the migration, and detail the pros/cons of moving to VE.  Joy (as the Head of Cataloging at UTK Libraries) will discuss how she identified MARC codes for custom resource type mapping and cleaned up Alma catalog records to ensure proper resource type display.  Joy will also discuss how RDA elements should be considered for future resource type mappings in Primo VE.  At the conclusion we hope to answer these questions:  Is switching to VE worth it?  What would we have done differently? Do we regret our decision?  We hope you join us!

Migration/Implementation

Primo VE

None — General Audience

See a live demonstration of Esploro, the Ex Libris research services solution. Discover how your library can partner with researchers and research office and better support research productivity across the institution.

2020 Vision for the Future of Libraries

Esploro

None — General Audience

To achieve our strategic vision of having a multi-use research facility with flexible space, the Libraries needed to reduce the footprint of our legacy print collections. Taking advantage of strong lending agreements between Michigan libraries, a cohort of academic libraries joined together to create a shared initiative for creating sustainable print collections. Originally participating while using Voyager, Western Michigan University (WMU) joined 8 libraries in the first round of the Michigan Shared Print Initiative (Mi-SPI). Now updated and expanded, Mi-SPI 2.0 kicked off late 2019 with 14 institutions sending their collection data to be compared and analyzed using OCLC’s GreenGlass software. This is a practical walk-through of WMU Libraries’ current participation in Mi-SPI 2.0, including data selection, extraction, enrichment, and submission. We’ll show how we utilized Alma and Alma Analytics to gather bibliographic, holdings, item and circulation data in a focused and efficient way to allow for data-driven collection analysis.  

Practical Applications

Alma

Intermediate

As academic libraries increasingly engage in cross-departmental projects, the need to share data outside of the library becomes essential. Integration between Alma Analytics and third-party systems is often handled by API applications, but there are instances when an API solution might not be the best option.

At the UM Libraries, we have adopted the FTP feature of Alma Analytics to send scheduled reports to an FTP server, and then we route them to SharePoint and connect them to Power BI. Power BI’s dashboards can then be embedded in a designated SharePoint site. This workflow enables us to manage Analytics reports along with other library or university reports in an external, secure, and sharable Office 365 environment.

The workflow:

1. Pre-selected reports are sent routinely to an FTP server as TSV files.
2. A PHP application converts the TSV to CSV files and changes the encoding from UCS-2 to UTF-8 so that those reports can be fully compliant with other systems.
3. The application uploads the CSVs to SharePoint from which they are used to generate interactive dashboards using Power BI.

Analytics

Join Ex Libris for an SFX Product Update, overview of the Roadmap, and an opportunity for Q&A.

Demonstrations

SFX

None — General Audience

Last year, librarians from Northeastern University shared their experience of preparing and conducting initial Leganto pilots, and then, figuring out what to do next in terms of wider engagement. One year later, we'd like to follow up on our engagement experiences since then -- during the Fall 2019 and Spring 2020 semesters -- as Leganto adoption increased, creating the need for a unified marketing message across campus and diverse training opportunities for new users of the system (instructor/student end users as well as university staff). We'll discuss which campus partners are crucial in creating an awareness and engagement program for Leganto that reaches beyond the library, and our successes -- and challenges -- in creating training materials and hosting training programs for a wide range of users, some more enthusiastic than others. We look forward to a lively Q&A discussion with other sites who have recently implemented and want to see the system flourish. 

Strategy

Leganto

Ex Libris Leganto helps institutions reduce the cost of course materials for students and schools by maximizing the using of library-owned and freely available resources. Learn how Leganto can help your library contribute to learning affordability, streamline the management of course materials, highlight the library collection and expertise, and improve communication around course materials.

Demonstrations

Leganto

None — General Audience

You’ve heard the phrase “we’re stronger together” and you almost certainly know just how powerful people working together towards a common goal can be. In this session, we’ll discuss how integrations created by Atlas Systems (the creators of Aeon, ILLiad, and Ares), Ex Libris, and your peers are helping to demonstrate how this can be true for software as well. Meant to be a dialogue, presenters will also field questions from participants on the types of integrations and automations needed to supercharge your workflows.

Gold Sponsor

None - General

None — General Audience

Covering Aleph Services and SQL for cleaning up bibliographic, item, and acquisitions data; manage-33 (bib and related HOL/ADM); item-11 (item), cleaning up Cash and Patron Data: cir-78 (Circ logger); util x/13 (z36h, z30h, z69, z35 -- new in v22); cir-23 and cir-77 (patron); old, paid cash records; SQL; Course Reserves. Additional topics include what data to migrate and preserving data that the vendor does not migrate.

Migration/Implementation

None — General Audience

At this presentation, an instruction librarian and a cataloger will deconstruct the brief and full records in regards to research instruction and the vantage of discovery. At Portland State University Library (PSU), these records are annually evaluated for instruction and research efficacy by the Primo Lead, Head of Cataloging and eAccess, and the long-standing Primo Design Group. The full record is also assessed through usability testing to make sure that users can readily find significant resources. This presentation will evaluate field choices made by the Orbis Cascade Alliance Norm Rules Standing Group and the PSU Library through the lens of discovery.

Discovery

Primo

Intermediate

Got a big problem? We have some solutions. Using a combination of Analytics, Alma, and APIs, record cleanup can be painless and workflows become more efficient. This presentation demonstrates how to use Analytics to perform searches which are not possible in Alma, and how to use the results to clean up data in Alma. Then, attendees will see how to write basic indication rules to filter sets, and examples of norm rules which can perform batch cleanup functions. Finally, this presentation will introduce some APIs developed by the ELUNA community to maintain records and improve workflows. Example APIs include batch moving data among item fields and performing duplication checks for records. At the end of this session, attendees will be able to create and import Analytics searches into Alma as sets, apply basic indication and normalization rules, and will learn some useful tools.

Practical Applications

In this presentation we will discuss our small team approach to continuous user experience research, iterative design, and interface customization of our Primo VE discovery layer. We will present a case study, describing our work in addressing student confusion around locating physical items in the library. We will explain methods for prioritizing and selecting a user experience issue, developing research questions, determining an appropriate methodology for data gathering, designing usability assessments, and using student assistants to administer the tests and collect data. We will also discuss our implementation process, which incorporates communication and coordination among library units. 

Discovery

Intermediate

Meeting for users from Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia. We extend an open invitation to any of the surrounding states. Come join us as we have an informal meeting and learn more about the upcoming eBUG 2020 conference held in Knoxville, TN on June 18-19th.

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

None - General

None — General Audience

Meeting for Ex Libris product users located in or around California (North and South).

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

None - General

None — General Audience

Meeting for Ex Libris product users located in or around Washington, DC.

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

None - General

None — General Audience

Meeting for Ex Libris product users located in or around New Brunswick, Newfoundland & Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, or Quebec.

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

None - General

None — General Audience

Meeting for Ex Libris product users located in or around Georgia and/or a member of GALILEO Interconnected Libraries.

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

None - General

None — General Audience

Meeting for Ex Libris product users located in or around Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio.

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

None - General

None — General Audience

Meeting for Ex Libris product users located in the Hawaiian islands.

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

None - General

None — General Audience

Meeting for Ex Libris product users located in or around Connecticut, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, or Vermont.

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

None - General

None — General Audience

Meeting for Ex Libris product users located in or around British Columbia, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, or Washington State.

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

None - General

None — General Audience

Meeting for Ex Libris product users located in or around Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, or Texas.

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

None - General

None — General Audience

Meeting for Ex Libris product users located in or around Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, or South Carolina

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

None - General

None — General Audience

Meeting for Ex Libris product users located in or around Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, or Utah.

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

None - General

None — General Audience

Meeting for Ex Libris product users located in or around Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, or Wisconsin.

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

None - General

None — General Audience

Regional meeting for Ex Libris product users in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and/or Manitoba.

Meetings -- Leadership, RUG, SIG, or WG

None - General

None — General Audience

Attendees will be able to register for a dine around on Sched. More information forthcoming.

Private Meeting for Primo WG and Ex Libris staff.

Discovery

Primo

None — General Audience

If the future of libraries is now, then it’s probably the vision of an Acquisitions unit that made it possible! So, new to Alma Acquisitions and need a safe space to ask that “stupid” question? Better yet, are you an Alma Acquisitions expert who is comfortable sharing your experience and expertise? Join your colleagues for an information sharing and discussion session focused on the Alma Acquisitions Functional Area.

Migration/Implementation

Alma

None — General Audience

Do you feel that you could be getting more out of Alma but don't know where to start? Join us as we discuss tactics for maximizing Alma's value and explore how to get more out of the platform. In this session we’ll discuss best practices for staying on top of changes, using the tools in Alma to streamline operations, and utilize the product’s reporting capabilities to easily utilize the information you need. This session is provided by the Ex Libris Customer Success Team, and is based on best practices we’ve learned from libraries about the challenges of managing Alma.

Strategy

Alma

Beginner

Gain more knowledge about the Central Discovery Index (CDI). Learn what it is, what it means for discovery, the status of its rollout, educational resources available, and more.

Discovery

None — General Audience

COUNTER r5 represents a big change from previous versions. Learn more about these new metrics and how to update views of your collection usage.

Demonstrations

Beginner

In 2019, University Libraries at the University of Denver established a floating collection for the material located in our off-site, high density storage facility.  This project sought to create better access for material for which a demonstrated need had been identified.  This session will show participants how to create a floating circulating collection in Alma between an off-site, high density warehouse and an on-campus library.  Additionally, potential pitfalls will be identified and workarounds will be discussed.

Practical Applications

Alma

Have you ever wanted to use ALMA Analytics to learn some new and interesting fact about your Library collections? Have you ever found yourself looking for a certain bit of information you know should be there, but your search keeps coming up blank? If you answered “Yes” to any and/or all of these questions, then this session is for you. This session will cover a range of analytics processes from simple to complex, and provide a number of tips and tricks on how to optimize your analyses. Come loaded with questions, as that's what analytics aims to accomplish: provide the right answers.

Analytics

Alma

Beginner

For digital collections, most software seems designed to meet a small set of needs which over time can lead to multiple instances of software or hidden collections. Southern Methodist University wanted a way to share the disk images, Word documents, and databases in their collections. After a complex decision-making process, SMU navigated a path forward through the integration of the SMU instance of Alma/Primo and Rosetta. 

The Library of Virginia, which held digital collections in multiple places with varied discoverability, also opted for an integration between Alma/Primo and Rosetta. This integration offered a way to untangle the mess of past systems and workflows and begin creating a new one that benefits both staff and the end-users.

Presenters will discuss their workflows which allows them to take the first step in providing access to digital material and highlight the decision-making process that guided them every step of the way.

Digital Initiatives

Beginner

Exemplifying the value of tapping into campus expertise for project success, join presenters as they share the Waterloo journey with Alma implementation from a project and change management perspective. Presenters will speak to experiences at the local level within the broader context of a consortium. With a primary focus on change management, presenters will introduce tools and activities undertaken to promote positive outcomes for staff and endusers. The presentation will also share insight into using central IT project management expertise. Lessons learned will be shared to help you prepare for future projects. While focus will be on an Alma/PrimoVE implementation, these concepts can be applied across the board to any institution and product.

Migration/Implementation

None — General Audience

When a student or an instructor reports a broken link from a reading list in Leganto, library staff needs to respond as soon as possible. We need to first test the link, then make changes if needed and test them, then we need to contact the person who reported the link and let them know that it is working or to ask them how they attempted to open the link, in order to find out what may have gone wrong. Contacting patrons lets them know that their reports really matter and that the library staff is there to help them, along with letting them know that they can now access assigned reading or viewing. Establishing a way to go about this that can be shared and repeated can save staff time and open up this service so that more library staff can lend a hand in this effort.

Strategy

None — General Audience

Do you want to have your Alma and OCLC holdings match without creating SalesForce cases and Normalization Rules?  This session gives a complete explanation of an easy procedure to withdraw items from Alma and remove bibliographic holdings in OCLC Connexion with skills and tools you already have.  The session will show how  to 1) Create analytic sets of records which are being withdrawn, 2) Run a Job to remove the records from Alma, 3) Generate a printout of withdrawn items, 4) Batch delete the relevant OCLC numbers in OCLC Connexion.

Practical Applications

Alma

Intermediate

We will discuss the direction of RS solutions and take a glimpse into Rapido.

2020 Vision for the Future of Libraries

None - General

Intermediate

Have you ever wondered if you could use Alma to facilitate resource sharing outside your current consortia or even from another state?  Over the past year the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Northwestern Libraries have engaged in a resource sharing experiment to connect our two Alma environments…ourselves. We will give a brief overview of the resource sharing environment at each location, discuss steps used to enable the connection between Alma, as well as our experiments with Primo deep search discovery.  Since sometimes the technical configuration is the easy part, we will also share our real-world experience with logistics, shipping, and workflow training. Our workflow instructions, customized slips, configuration documentation and an Alma Analytics dashboard for tracking materials will be shared at the presentation.

Practical Applications

The State University of New York, SUNY, comprises of 62 campuses, formed a library consortium for the central support and migration/implementation project to move from Aleph to Alma and Primo VE, as the central consortial library service platform.

All SUNYs went live with Alma/PrimoVE in July 2019. This presentation will list out items and things, e.g. reports and statistics, that you might want to keep in a safe place before the decommissioning the old Aleph servers or before disconnecting the client services to the server.  This presentation will also highlight and discuss the most important strategies and potential downfalls to cope with the anxiety during the migration.

Migration/Implementation

Aleph

None — General Audience

Alma can be both pretty great and really challenging, depending on the data you need to extract. For a lot of us who came from systems with more robust data tools, migrating to Alma (and therefore Analytics) meant time spent learning those quirks -- fields that don't exist in Analytics, field data that is tweaked between Alma and Analytics, the dreaded 24-hour lag between updates, etc. This presentation will show some ways to work around those limitations using the Alma interface, as well as talking about a few things we really do need Analytics for and some outside tools we can use to help get the data we need.

Analytics

Alma

Beginner

Got questions? Need help? Want to know if there's an easier way to do that one thing? Need a refresher of the quarterly release features? Join us, and bring your questions!

Demonstrations

Beginner

The University of Washington Libraries uses a variety of metadata sources, including the Alma CZ, the OCLC KB, vendor records, and manual cataloging, to provide access to its ebook and streaming media collections. Information about our electronic collections had previously been recorded in disparate places, including Alma, our intranet, and spreadsheets. By implementing structured collection notes and leveraging these using an Analytics Dashboard, we have created a powerful cross-departmental tool to better see and manage electronic collection details, including metadata source for each collection, knowledge base collection ID, frequency of updates, and detailed notes about collection access and metadata standards. Additional dashboard pages for quality control facilitate screening for known metadata issues and spotting portfolios that might need attention. Finally, the dashboard is also drillable to the portfolio level, providing details for electronic resource management and troubleshooting.

Analytics

Alma

Intermediate

Determining what data cleanup projects are best for your library can be daunting.  There are several factors to consider...the most important of which is the amount of time you have to prepare.  Starting with the list of optional data preparations given in Ex Libris's "Appendix B" is helpful, but which projects will have the most impact when you go live? At Rice University, we accomplished several data cleanup projects...including an OCLC reclamation before we went live.  What projects we considered will be listed, from "Appendix B"  to cleanup task we learned from others along the way.  The decisions and priorities given to each project will be discussed as well as what we learned during the onboarding process.  While we migrated from Sirsi, this information may also be applicable to libraries migrating to Alma from other systems as well.

Migration/Implementation

None — General Audience

Library digital collections data lives in many different systems and is created using varying standards and practices. Bringing these heterogeneous digital collections into Alma and Primo requires leveraging options and workflows throughout the digital repository landscape. This presentation will consider and outline various options for how to efficiently house, harvest, edit, and discover digital collections data between Digital Commons, Preservica, Springshare, and Alma/Primo. It will focus on how these practices will change with our upcoming migration from Back Office to Primo VE, and the different data harvest and display options available for digital repository systems outside of the Ex Libris ecosystem. 

Digital Initiatives

If every user started their research journey at the library, accessing licensed library resources would be much easier. Integrated Library Systems, such as Alma, serve as the central knowledge base of print and electronic resources, while Primo and SFX have long ensured easy, seamless access. We understand that their journey doesn’t always begin at the library, though. As users’ expectations, research patterns and experiences have continued to evolve, we can no longer rely on them to find the library within their workflow, which causes frustrations for users and librarians alike. This change in behavior forces libraries to adapt and start meeting users as they conduct their research. In this session, we will investigate how Lean Library, in addition to your Ex Libris systems, can elevate library services to create additional value for you and your users and overcome these frustrations without too much effort.

Gold Sponsor

Beginner

As part of our move to Charles Library in 2019, Temple University loaded the majority of our circulating collections (over 1.2 million items) into an Automated Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS). The ASRS relies on a separate inventory system that communicates with the Dematic hardware and with Alma to facilitate storage and request. Presenters will discuss how we integrated the ASRS software with Alma in order to use both tools to circulate collections in the new library. The move and the software integration also provided an opportunity for collection inventory and significant post-migration metadata cleanup. We will share details of our software configurations and strategies for using the ASRS implementation and collection inventory as a tool for catalog maintenance.

Practical Applications

Alma

Intermediate

Are you finding it hard to keep up with new releases or difficult to find the right time to implement new functionality? This session will demonstrate things you may not know you can do in Leganto:

• Submit purchase requests from reading lists
• Add required question and answers during the add item process
• Set up automated purchase request workflows from tags 
• Cleaning up old and unused courses via course loader
• Assign instructor role automatically to all faculty
• and many more!

Demonstrations

Leganto

None — General Audience

This session will discuss why and how the University of Arizona Libraries has chosen to use work orders for several internal processes, such as damage review and searches on missing items. We will discuss how we have used work orders along with Analytics to manage related processes such as withdrawals. This session will also include information about how to configure, create, and clear work orders, will provide tips for managing the process when it goes astray.

Practical Applications

Alma

We undertook a study to evaluate full text linking for OA articles within the library’s local instance of Primo. Though the OA movement promises to simplify access to scholarly literature, librarians may find that current library systems are often unable to successfully deliver OA content. New tools and services, such as 1findr (a subscription database that allows users to identify OA resources), have emerged to connect library users with OA full text, but these present their own challenges and remain untested in many cases. We conducted an availability study, searching Primo and documenting whether we were able to successfully reach full text both through traditional resolver links and through direct links from OA record collections. This research has implications for librarians who work with link resolvers and discovery tools as well as systems providers and other stakeholders in the scholarly publishing supply chain. 

Content

Intermediate

Purging user records is an important data clean-up project, particularly if records from previous integrated library systems are involved. In this presentation, I will emphasize that user record purging should be a regular process, with clearly defined and standardized criteria. Regular purging offers the benefits of both ongoing data cleanup and privacy protection, and it can also provide an opportunity for public/access services staff to be involved in the process. The presentation will include a description of why we should care about regularly purging user records, questions and elements to consider as part of purging, and a comprehensive case study of purging at Loyola University Chicago.

Practical Applications

Alma

The ELUNA Steering Committee is looking for interested members who license the RapidILL product to meet to bring together a product working group.  At the presentation, users will find out what is involved in being a chair, an enhancement coordinator, a communications coordinator and a conference track coordinator (the four offices needed in order to start a working group).  The goal is to find out if there is enough interest in this product or ELUNA to sponsor a product working group.

Strategy

Rapid ILL

The University of Minnesota Libraries recently underwent an audit that tested procedures and controls for the Libraries' information technology services. The audit's conclusions identified a need to improve processes for provisioning/deprovisioning accounts, ensuring appropriate privileges for library staff, and conducting regular reviews of accounts.

Several challenges occurred while implementing these requirements. A conversation with a supervisor about Alma roles is difficult when the supervisor has never used Alma. An employee may require part of the privileges of a role for their job, but we would not want to allow the employee to have other privileges of that same role. In the case of certain roles, even our system administrators could not fully explain what a particular role could or could not do. 

This session will discuss the various strategies employed by the University of Minnesota in ensuring the correct roles are assigned to the correct individuals.

Strategy

Alma

None — General Audience

Migrating two leanly staffed libraries into Alma/Primo presented challenges for the University of New Hampshire Library and The University of New Hampshire School of Law.

Before migration we identified which decisions needed to be agreed on and where we could intentionally choose to differ. We identified where our overlap allowed a streamlined effort and where we could learn from each other. Staff at times struggled to balance major migration work on top of daily job responsibilities, challenging peace of mind and morale. We prioritized those areas where clean data was essential and intentionally let some problems migrate. Post migration clean-up and integration of library data continued past the initial migration date. After migrating we learned to take advantage of nearby Alma sites, and to reasonably assess the help and limitations of other institutions’ Alma documentation. We still are looking at working together, while not wasting people’s time. 

Migration/Implementation

Alma

Beginner

As many libraries respond to the issue of crowding in the stacks, print journal sets are often identified as a low hanging fruit for off-site storage. Unfortunately, identifying overlap between print and electronic holdings can be a challenging task; title matching is unreliable, some journals lack ISSN data, and merging data across reports can be messy. This presentation will explore collaborative efforts between the Head of Collection Management and the Collections Analyst to develop specific strategies using Alma Analytics and Excel to identify print and electronic journal overlap. Learn how new workflows led to the development of a workable report that could be used by the stacks staff.

Analytics

Alma

Join Ex Libris leaders for a Q&A with questions submitted to the Steering Committee prior to the annual meeting.

Plenary

None - General

None — General Audience

In 2019, the University of Minnesota Libraries conducted an audit of their vendor-supplied usage statistics. The project included a review of usage statistics collected and stored in Alma, development of a Tableau visualization for gap analysis, and a strategy for ongoing management. This session will demonstrate the rationale and processes behind the assessment as well as discuss the outcomes and benefits.

Practical Applications

Alma

None — General Audience

Reminders functionality in Alma allows staff to make notes of future actions to be taken on a specific title within Alma. This session is intended to guide Alma users through the configuration, uses, and maintenance of reminders. An overview of the benefits of reminders, possible workflows, and a variety of real life examples of different uses for library staff both in public and technical service work areas will be demonstrated.

Practical Applications

Alma

None — General Audience

Beginning with ELUNA membership renewals for 2021 the ELUNA membership database, invoicing and payment system, and institutional contact management will move from our current paper based system to an online membership management system. Information will be shared throughout the year, but this session will offer the rational for the change and provide a sneak preview to using the new system.

Demonstrations

None - General

None — General Audience

We frequently combine Alma data with additional sources, such as legacy Voyager data or vendor reports, in order to conduct collection assessment at Georgia State University. OpenRefine is an open-source, user-friendly data manipulation application that has been an invaluable tool for cleaning and connecting our Alma data during these assessment projects. Part one of this session will provide a brief introduction to OpenRefine which will include general navigation, specialized facets, and built-in transformations. The second part of this session will discuss additional concepts using practical examples taken from our data. These will include clustering, GREL (Google Regular Expression Language) transformations, and using the BIB-Bits plugin to connect data across projects. Examples will focus on Alma data; however, this session is also applicable to data extracted from other Ex Libris systems (Voyager, Primo Analytics, etc.).

Demonstrations

California State University (CSU) librarians have capitalized on a natural experiment that arose when the CSU consortia implemented an opt in newspaper search interface. Five CSU libraries that implemented the newspaper search have been paired with five CSU libraries of similar size and demographic profile that did not implement the new search scope. We calculated the effects on usage and user behavior tied to introducing a specialized Primo newspaper scope by analyzing Primo Analytics data, COUNTER data, and A-Z database list click-through data collected during academic years 2018-2019 (pre-deployment) and 2019-2020 (post-deployment). Presenters will also explain how libraries can set up their own natural experiments as an alternative to A/B testing in Primo. This quasi-experimental panel study, with a treatment group paired with pseudo-control libraries, will help Discovery and Collection Development librarians begin to understand the effects that the newspapers search interface has on their collection use.

Content

None — General Audience

In December 2019, the University of Guelph Library migrated to Alma/Primo as part of the Omni collaboration between 14 Ontario Universities. This how-to session focuses on the staff training portion of the migration. It will outline Guelph's training approach, including creating a training plan, developing a local training working group, and conducting training sessions. It will also discuss successes, challenge, and the importance of communication and collaboration. 

Migration/Implementation

None — General Audience

Learn how some of the more advanced features in Leganto work, including recommendations and suggestions for action, and get some ideas for how you can optimize your Leganto.

2020 Vision for the Future of Libraries

Leganto

None — General Audience

As a repository of knowledge, Libraries maintain a wealth of information throughout its collections. They are a cornerstone of research and learning. Technological advancements with discovery services are improving access to knowledge, and information reach is improving. Yet, you still find information silos that are independent of each other and create artificial boundaries of its own. Patrons often struggled with the concept of silos created by individual systems and the logical separation among them.

This presentation will examine the development of a unified search experience using a bento box approach, that brought these information silos under one roof. We will examine the concept of a patrons’ journey of information discovery, and how we led them in multiple roads bringing down the walls of individual platforms.

Discovery

Primo

Mercer University migrated from three separate Sierra installations into a single institution in Alma, which merged the main University Library, the School of Medicine Library, and the School of Law Library into one ILS. The transition required some tricky navigation as we untangled the various knots of institution level settings versus library level customizations in order to provide a high level of service for our unique patron groups. We will discuss some of the general issues as well as some of the specific challenges we encountered - OpenAthens implementation and integration, cataloging conflicts, and configuration compromises - and explain the solutions we developed.

Migration/Implementation

None — General Audience

With the release of the new printing options in Alma, I completed thorough testing to understand exactly what printing occurred based on the configuration options. As printing has evolved in Alma, I have continued my testing.

Practical Applications

Alma

None — General Audience

Join us for a lively discussion on what the future of selection could be for academic librarians. Share your ideas and review input on roadmap for ProQuest Rialto.

Platinum Sponsor

Alma

None — General Audience

The University of Iowa's adventure in Esploro began in 2017 when we signed on as a development partner, and we've been working live in our production environment for 10 months. Our immediate objective? To build a comprehensive catalog of publications created by UI scholars and researchers that can serve as an authoritative data source for other systems. In this session, you'll receive a sneak peek at how Esploro looks and functions at Iowa from a variety of perspectives: campus users of our Primo catalog; external users of the Research Portal; researchers looking to deposit publications and create a profile; and our staff (regularly or sporadically) working on the back-end in Alma. We'll also talk about next steps as we develop services and workflows. Iowa anticipates a summer rollout to campus and deprecating our legacy institutional repository by year's end.

Migration/Implementation

Esploro

None — General Audience

Institutional efforts to centralize student financial obligations, Georgia State University implemented three export only bursar integration profiles at the start of fall semester 2019, two years post-migration. The integration profiles include overdue fines, lost fees, and credits. This session addresses fine and fee cleanup tasks, lost loan profile changes, letter configurations, and integration profile testing to prepare for implementation as well as post implementation tasks including analytics reporting, converting xml data, and closing lost loans.

Practical Applications

Alma

None — General Audience

Media records in Primo seldom have their covers displayed, however this is something we've always wanted to be able to add.  After we implemented Primo VE, we were able to make use of the improved functionality to add cover pictures not only to our media records, but to bibliographic records of any type.  I will show how we set it up and the ongoing processes that we use.  I will also demonstrate how we added other note fields to the default bibliographic display in order to enhance media records by displaying the cast and awards fields.

Demonstrations

None — General Audience

Alma includes the ability to publish incrementally your holdings or bibs to OCLC on a regular basis. This is great for automation and syncing our system with OCLC. However, when discrepancy arises, it becomes extremely difficult to figure out why. One reason is that Ex Libris does not record anywhere what they have sent to OCLC and there is nothing recorded in the record nor is OCLC able to provide a timestamp of when something has happened. This became very problematic for us so we created a work around whereby we publish to our local FTP server, grab statistics from the LDR and other fields, and then send that file on to OCLC. This is all done automatically each morning so it makes troubleshooting a little easier.

Demonstrations

Alma

Intermediate

This presentation details our library’s efforts to improve the sustainability of our technology lending service without placing undue monetary burdens on students.  Our library’s circulating laptops are in high demand.  In fall 2019, we eliminated fines for our laptops, and created a laptop-specific TOU that waived the lost item bill if and when it was returned.  While popular, the new policy resulted in an increase in overdue laptops.  Rather than reintroduce fines, we opted instead to think creatively about other ways to encourage responsible usage.  We analyzed usage patterns to reconsider loan periods, and conducted a technology survey to gather opinions about fines and fees.  Working with customized Alma letters, updated terms of use, a new set of blocks, and software installed on laptops that can shut it down after the grace period, we have implemented measures that we believe will discourage late returns without relying on fines.

Practical Applications

Alma

None — General Audience

The Ex Libris Higher-ed cloud platform enables academic organizations to move fast. With its layered approach, unified data management, end-to-end workflows, and powerful big data analytics, libraries can now turn their attention to providing users with new services and become more involved with teaching, learning and research initiatives.

Strategy

None - General

None — General Audience

With the advancement of search technologies, discovery services have moved beyond the role of a traditional search catalog to incorporate techniques such as networking of associative objects, stemming-based exploration, and relevance based ranking of results. All of these concepts rely on a fundamental concept of rich metadata. Quality metadata is the foundation of any advanced discovery system. Automated generation of technical metadata has been in operation for a long time, but descriptive metadata always rely on manual labor. These are the most resource-intensive and expensive steps of the process. Together we will examine the advancements of neural networks and machine learning, and how they can be used in automatic generation of descriptive metadata for various objects. We will talk about the benefits, as well as the drawback of current platforms and frameworks that are used in libraries and archives.

2020 Vision for the Future of Libraries

None - General

None — General Audience

In July 2019, Colorado State University Libraries migrated the library discovery system from Exlibris’ Primo New UI to Primo VE. Despite the promised seamless migration, we had many unwelcomed surprises while we appreciate other enhancements.

This presentation gives an overview of our migration processes; discusses new features we like, major problems encountered and why we think these are created by communication issues between sales, developers and librarians; provides our recommended solutions and enhancements for some problems; presents how the migration affect patrons, librarians’ daily job, and member libraries’ decision. Last it lists recommendations we have for Exlibris.

Discovery

None — General Audience

In 2018, this group presented on the foundations of OCUL's Collaborative Futures Project, which sought to realize the vision of a provincial-wide library collection and common shared services. In 2019, the team returned to share the challenges, strategies and lessons learned while building a provincial consortium from scratch. Now, in 2020, our intrepid group completes the trilogy (or is that odyssey!) with real-life tales of implementing Alma and Primo VE, including the thrills of victory (and a few agonies of defeat) as well the collaborative opportunities Alma/PrimoVE will enable in the future.

This presentation will applying 20/20 hindsight to OCUL's implementation of Alma/PrimoVE, emphasizing successful strategies, while recognizing the challenges (and opportunities) presented by the unexpected. The focus will then switch to the future, and how OCUL can leverage Alma in its efforts to advance OCUL's future-focused vision of digital transformation, enhanced workflows, and enriched access to services and resources.

Migration/Implementation

None — General Audience

Built on the Alma platform, Rialto offers an integrated content marketplace that leverages your Alma holdings, circulation data, and offers an integrated, tunable recommendation engine that helps selectors identify potential items for purchase (in print or electronic) as you use it. This session will provide perspectives from three development partner libraries that worked with ProQuest to provide ideas and feedback over the past year.

Platinum Sponsor

Alma

None — General Audience

The chain of data exchange between a database record, the Alma link resolver, and your Interlibrary Loan form is complex and prone to breakage. Are you mystified by errors or missing data in your ILLiad user requests? This presentation will review where those errors can creep into the data chain and what you can do to address them. Special attention will be given to databases hosted on the EBSCOhost platform.

Practical Applications

In 1988, Robert Fulghum's published a book called All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. He maintained that everything he needed to know about how to live, what to do, and how to be, was learned in kindergarten. I never went to kindergarten, which may explain a few things, but found I did need to apply some of those life principles again and again in my years of involvement with Ex Libris products and the people in our Ex Libris community. After working with Ex Libris systems for nearly two decades, and holding community leadership roles for most of that time, including 7 years as chair of the Alma Working Group, my tenure is coming to an end. This presentation will apply the lessons most people learned in kindergarten to what I learned from working with Ex Libris products, Ex Libris staff and the incredible user community.

Plenary

None - General

None — General Audience

Ex Libris leadership will provide a short wrap-up of their thoughts on ELUNA 2020 and the vision for libraries of the future.

Members of the Steering Committee will present budget updates, offer final commentary, and announce the location of the 2021 Annual Meeting.

Plenary

None - General

None — General Audience