This week’s project update contains information about the following:
- CO staff out next week
- Test load status
- COLD meeting April 28-29
- Serial Solutions ERM developer partnership
- Ex Libris Executive meeting
- Functional training scheduled August 8-10
==ELUNA next week==
Much of the Chancellor's Office ULMS Team will be out of the office over the next several weeks as we attend the COLD meeting and ELUNA Conference. We'll be online that whole time, but may be a bit delayed in getting back to you. Bear with us!
==Test load has begun==
Ex Libris has now started loading records into the new Alma environment as part of the test load phase of the project. You may be hearing from Ex Libris if they run into any issues with your data. We expect that the loading and testing of data by Ex Libris will continue well into May, with the Alma instances made available for testing in June. A special thanks to everyone who had played a role in data clean-up, form configuration, and other tasks in preparation for the test load. You've done a great job!
The project now moves away from our data and towards how each instance of Alma should be initially configured. Ex Libris has made available the Alma configuration form to all campuses. Sarina recently sent out an annotated version of that form and the Vanguard campuses held a webinar last week to discuss their experience in filling out the forms last winter. An Ex Libris-led review of the form is scheduled for tomorrow, April 27, with a Vanguard-led follow-up Q&A session to be held on Friday, April 29.
==COLD meeting this week==
The ULMS project figures prominently on the COLD agenda this week in San Francisco, with resource sharing, in-person training, and the go-live schedule up for discussion. Look for more on these discussions in the next project update.
==Serials Solutions ERM data to Alma==
San Luis Obispo and San Diego will be serving as development partners with Ex Libris in the creation of a new, automated process to migrate Serials Solutions ERM data from 360 Resource Manager into Alma. This project will be taking place in parallel to the test load, with initial planning starting soon and testing later in the Summer and Fall.
This is one of several development partnerships Ex Libris has undertaken at our request. We have also worked with them over the past few months on an improved process for migrating consortial SFX data to Alma, which we will be part of the test load. They have also deployed a streamlined process for setting up Shibboleth authentication with Primo. We've been quite happy with Ex Libris' flexibility and responsiveness in these areas.
==Meeting with Ex Libris executives==
Some of you have noted that ELUNA has opened up voting on enhancement requests for Alma and other Ex Libris products for this year. Although any CSU with its own ELUNA institutional membership may vote in this process, we’ve started putting together a plan for a more formal, systemwide approach to enhancement gathering and voting starting next year, when all of us will have a better idea of what enhancements we’d like to see in Alma and Primo. We’ll be bringing a proposal to the Council of Library Deans (COLD) along those lines in the Fall.
In the meantime, we have been pushing specific enhancement requests – mostly related to the migration and implementation process as mentioned above –- directly to Ex Libris. We will be meeting with Ex Libris executives in mid-June to get a status update on development work specifically mentioned in our contract.
We’re also meeting with representatives from Orbis Cascade, the University of Wisconsin system, and the University System of Georgia at ELUNA in a couple weeks to determine how best we can leverage our collective clout to press Ex Libris for enhancements on consortial feature and functionality specifically.
We’ll be bringing you news on all of those fronts in the coming months, most likely through email updates and Office Hours webinars.
==In-person workshops August 8-10==
The first of two in-person workshops related to fulfillment, acquisitions and resource management will be held August 8-10. The location and participants are yet to be determined, but you may want to block out those dates now in anticipation of attending.
All -
This latest project update contains information about the following:
- Test Phase project status & upcoming milestones
- SFX migration status
- Primo Central/Xerxes changes
Test Phase Update
Since the last project update, the CSU libraries have participated in many webinar sessions led by the Vanguard campuses as well as attending a two-day in-person session on March 21-22 that acted both as a project kickoff meeting and as a change for members of the working groups (and project managers) to get together and plan their goals for the next few months of activity.
On March 21, Ex Libris project staff provided a look at the remaining milestones and deliverables for the ULMS project as well as provided a review of migration forms and associated documentation. The next day’s agenda provided time for the working group chairs to share what they have been working on to date and a look ahead at their priorities for the summer and beyond. We are grateful to those who participated in all these discussions and especially to Dean Peter McDonald and the Fresno faculty and staff for being wonderful hosts! Video recordings and slides of the kick-off meeting are available on the ULMS site.
Since Fresno, the project managers have been busy with completing Ex Libris' data migration forms. Draft versions have been submitted to Ex Libris last Wednesday, with feedback from Ex Libris migration staff to be forthcoming. Final versions of these forms as well as data exports from all campus ILS will be due by the end of next week.
Attention will then turn towards completing the Alma Configuration forms, due on May 11. Webinars from Ex Libris are planned to cover these forms, and we plan for the Vanguard campuses to also provide their observations about the Alma Configuration form prior to these dates.
SFX Migration
Jessica has extracted and uploaded data from all of the local SFX instances to Ex Libris servers over the past two weeks. Her next step is to complete Ex Libris’ forms regarding SFX data migration all with an eye towards SFX data being reflected in the Alma test environments upon release in early June.
Primo Central and Xerxes Update
On March 18th, we hosted an introductory webinar on Xerxes and Primo Central, in preparation for the early use of Primo Central by the CSU this summer. We also sent campus-specific links to the Primo Central management interface and to a test instance of Xerxes configured for Primo Central to each of the campus project managers. So, if you're interested in getting started configuring Primo Central with Xerxes, please check with your PM.
We also have a follow-up webinar set for this Friday, April 8, at 1:00 PM to go over some of the configuration options in Xerxes and discuss any issues people are running into on the Primo Central side. Meeting request for that have already been sent to the LIB-IT and Discovery listservs. If you can't make it, don't worry, it'll be recorded.
Thanks,
Brandon