Project Update 07/29/15

Created by David Walker
Last updated: May 24, 2018
3 min read

Posting this on behalf of brandon dudley (Unlicensed).

Colleagues -

I wanted to update you on recent happenings in the ULMS project. As you will see, we are still in the beginning stages, but are poised to get things running in earnest over the next two weeks at a pace that will likely be sustained throughout the rest of the project. We have been receiving many questions from your staff, which show their level of excitement is running high and engagement in campus planning runs deep.

Beginning in early August, we will be providing regular scheduled project updates to the collective staff, faculty and library administrators of the CSU libraries as well as getting the working groups up and running. More details below.


Introducing the CSU Implementation Team

The team responsible for managing systemwide project tasks has been formed and consists of the following individuals:

  • David Walker, Director of Systemwide Digital Library Services
  • Brandon Dudley, ULMS Project Director
  • Alice Kawakami, Director, Strategic Library Initiatives
  • Rae Ann Stahl, Associate Dean, SJSU
  • Patrick Newell, AUL, Fresno

The Implementation Team will interface directly with Ex Libris on all systemwide project communications and help identify implementation issues to be discussed by the working groups and strategic issues to be brought to COLD, as well as other project management tasks.

The Team met with Ex Libris Wednesday morning for the first of many biweekly calls. As this was an introductory call, the agenda was light but helpful, involving questions we had concerning initial documentation and discussing creation of future agendas. We also agreed to the initial project kickoff meeting taking place at the CO in October – date and agenda to be set during future conference calls. We plan on sharing the contents of our calls with all and sundry on a regular basis.

Thanks to Rae Ann and Patrick for their interest in contributing to the success of the project and to Ruth and Peter for supporting their participation in this important team. 


Working Group Lead names finalized

Thank you all for your nominations of staff and faculty to help lead the Working Groups in development of best practices and working through issues as they come up during the migration and implementation. We feel that each of these groups is incredibly strong and look forward to working with these groups over the next 18 months. 


The names and campus affiliation for each working group are listed in the attached document. We will be  contacting them directly over the new few days and hope to invite them to an one day, in-person meeting to deliver their charge and discuss management of their working group and processes in general. This meeting is currently planned to take place in early September - more information will be forthcoming. 


Confluence website and Working Group mailing lists

We are currently setting up Confluence, a team collaboration software package recommended by Anna Gold, as the main website and communication portal for the project. Once installed and configured, we feel that it may be able to support COLD’s needs as well as the needs of the project – more details are to come in the near future.

We’ve also created the working group mailing lists and will send out information regarding how to subscribe and participate on these lists in the next week. Membership to these lists will be open to anyone who wishes to participate in discussions relating to the functional area in question. There is also an ULMS announcement list that will be announced at the same time – this will be used for all project communications between the project team and CSU library staff and faculty.


Communications Plan

David, Alice and I are currently drafting a communications plan for the ULMS project that we will share with you in early August. This plan will cover communications mechanisms, set expectations for the frequency and content of project updates, set “ground rules” for working group communications workflow, and identify project stakeholders. You will get a first peek at this plan once finalized, with a more general release to follow soon after.

Please let me know if you have any questions regarding anything related to the ULMS!