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2019 Annual Meeting

du 30 April au 3 May 2019

Hilton Atlanta, Atlanta, Georgia

Data as Technical Debt: Managing the Challenges of Legacy Data During a System Migration

vendredi 3 mai 2019 à 09:00–09:45 EDT
Room 208/209
Session Abstract

Software developers use the term “technical debt” to refer to elements of software that, while effective in the short term, prove expensive or unsustainable in the long run, requiring a special effort to upgrade, migrate, and/or maintain. Adapting the term to the management of integrated library systems, this presentation uses “technical debt” to describe challenges posed by legacy data upon migration to a new system. In our case, migration from Voyager to Alma exposed various forms of this debt: incurred as the result of constraints built into the Voyager environment; as a by-product of workflows geared toward transactional uses of the data but that prove ill-suited to needs for data in the aggregate; or because of a lack of continuity in processes and procedures over time. Alma's bulk jobs and API's present opportunities to manage this debt in a more holistic and efficient way, although other elements of Alma's design and of the migration process itself generate their own forms of technical debt (e.g., the impact on e-resource orders of the p2e process). This presentation will discuss concrete examples drawn from multiple functional areas, including acquisitions and e-resources, as well as strategies for correcting these problems (and their associated benefits and costs). By highlighting the ways in which technical debt creeps into our library systems, we hope to promote a focus on workflows that can reduce such debt in the future, ensuring the long-term sustainability of our data.

Program Track

Alma

Target Audience Skill Level

None — General Audience

Keywords
Consortia
Data All Around Us
Implementation/Migration

Presenters

Dolsy Smith, The George Washington University

Panel Moderator

Chargement en cours …