Blog from March, 2021

March 2021 ULMS Update
brandon dudley posted on Mar 19, 2021

Project Management

  • Working through the top issues reported by each functional area in the Satisfaction Survey with ex Libris product management. Analytics just finished up, ERM will be next with the other committees going through in turn.

  • Primo VE evaluation continues through the spring. The configuration step will be largely completed by the end of March. Testing will then begin and is planned to last into May.

Analytics

  • Working Group

    • We met this morning with the Ex Libris team regarding our priority issues for Analytics. There is some improvement in Network Zone Analytics performance and we learned some best practices for creating reports that help. Christina shared those best practices with the listserv and on Slack today. Ex Libris is doing some additional investigation of the other two issues we raised.

    • We have received 16 responses to our usage data survey. We're hoping for a few more responses before we wrap up, and then Heather Cribbs will be putting together a report and we'll talk about next steps.

    • As I noted at the last steering committee meeting, we received the report from the data visualization task force, and that task force's work is now considered complete. Their recommendation was to create a CSU-wide data lake or data repository and they concluded that Tableau may not have the features we need at this time. There are some possibilities that working with the APIs might improve the functionality of Tableau, but we would need to identify resources to support that development work. I'm attaching the report from the task force here. 

Resource Management

  • Working Group

    • VE Configuration: Some members of the Task Force are monitoring or involved in the efforts to Configure Primo VE

    • The TF completed revision of the NO DEDUP Policy, and will post this to Confluence

    • Ideas continue about Content Notes where material has aspects that are seen as sensitive to those researching in OneSearch


Acquisitions

  • Chancellor’s Office

    • Updating ProQuest NZ licenses with the latest subscription renewal information.  Sending out updates in the ERM & CDI weekly updates with the specific licenses have been updated and the e-collections have been updated with the latest subscriptions. 

    • Updating NZ licenses for subscriptions to single resources. 

  • Working Group

    • Discussed the future ExLibris meeting to discuss program issues.  

    • Discussed problems with our campuses contingency plans for the Fall.  

    • Discussed budget calendars and preparing for the fall budget.

ERM


Resource Sharing

  • Chancellor’s Office

    • Investigating Resource Sharing partnerships and reciprocal agreements with SUNY.

    • Discussing ways of adding Unity stops for more UC’s without large budget impacts.

    • Access and gather system wide statistics for Resource Sharing functions outside of Alma. 

    • Communicating with Unity to resume shipments at Dominguez Hills, San Bernardino, San Jose, Moss Landing, and Northridge. 

    • Investigating web APIs to allow walk in patrons to use CSU+.(Joint Fulfillment and Resource Sharing project.)

  • Working Group

    • The CONTU Guidelines and ILLiad Updates task forces have both had their first meetings. A lot of interest in both task forces.

    • Working on building evidence for a satisfaction survey meeting with ExLibris. The RSFC will be hosting breakout rooms during this week’s I-SPIE TV in order to gather feedback and examples from our community of practice on top issues identified by the RSFC in the satisfaction survey.

    • Working with the FFC on exploring how we can use Alma’s resource sharing request API to accommodate CSU+ requesting for CalState Walkin users.

    • Met with ILL coordinator at UCSD and chair of UC courier team to discuss their interest in an ILL/resource sharing reciprocal agreement with the CSUs. Learned a little bit about how the UC courier contract is structured.

    • Drafted a systemwide resource sharing reciprocal agreement. Would like to seek COLDs approval to establish systemwide resource sharing reciprocal agreements with the UC libraries.

    • Planning to test CSU+ requesting in Primo VE. Chris is in the process of setting our campuses up.

Fulfillment

  • Chancellor’s Office

    • Coordinate testing of Fulfillment functions in Primo VE.

    • Selecting and preparing to discuss our top three issues in Alma and how we would like them improved through enhancements. 

    • Investigating web APIs to allow walk in patrons to use CSU+.(Joint Fulfillment and Resource Sharing project.)

  • Working Group

    • Continued working with the RSFC to recommend options for Walk-in User CSU+ requests.

    • Began working on organizing and providing documentation to the fulfillment top 3 issues for our meeting with ExLibris.

    • Began preliminary Primo VE testing for fulfillment functions.

    • The next Fulfillment Open Forum will be Thursday, March 25th at 11am. We will demo Digitization and Walk-in User workflows.


Discovery

  • Working Group

    • Campuses are advised to note the VE evaluation schedule available at Primo VE Evaluation Schedule . We anticipate Ex Libris involvement and attention time to decrease significantly after March 23rd so everyone with Basecamp access should submit any questions they have related to the Go VE process on that platform a.s.a.p. 

    • Our normal cmte. meeting happened, the minutes for which are here: 2021-02-19 Functional Committee Meeting notes Out of that meeting arose 2 forms related to drools for Primo VE. 

      • First, courtesy of Mark Braden: a form where you may submit drools you have created in your library to work with Primo VE metadata. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1t3Gl11zE50saDkg_k_ThpcCMA8YjjbgNmLvL3Wh__co Use this to share your contributions, drools will be made public on the confluence/wiki. 

      • Second: a form where you may request drool creation in order to rectify full record display problems that are impeding your ability to judge VE. VE - drool Creation Request Use this to make the drool experts aware of issues – though be mindful that there is a relatively small group of people working on this.

    • We held two VE Forums, one on 2/26 and one on 3/5. The recordings and topic notes for these forums are available here: VE Forums

    • We had an authentication troubleshooting call on 3/9, the recording of which is linked from the VE Forums page on the wiki. 

The February release of Primo has been installed on the sandbox and will be installed on production on March 14th. Campus Primo admins will want to review the release notes and test/implement new features. https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Primo/Release_Notes/Primo/2021/001Primo_2021_Release_Notes?mon=202102BASE