Alma at the University of Salford (by Angela Walker)
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The University of Salford implemented the Alma library management system (LMS) to replace its aging Talis system. This was part of a larger digital library plan and aimed to reduce costs through consolidating systems and improve user experience. The implementation involved extensive data cleanup, process mapping, configuration, integration testing and training. While change was challenging, Alma has streamlined workflows and the library is continuing to optimize usage and integrate additional services.
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Alma at the University of Salford (by Angela Walker)
- 1. Alma at the University of Salford (Angela Walker)
- 2. City of Salford •North West of England – next door neighbours to Manchester
- 3. University of Salford • 20,000 students • 3,000 international students • 2,500 staff • 4 Colleges & 9 schools
- 4. • 4 sites • 500,000 books • 2,500 Physical Journal Titles • 17,000 e-journals • 300,000 e-books Library
- 5. Digital Library Plan: • Media City Campus (new home of the BBC) • Review of systems − RFID – completed 2010 − PRIMO – implemented 2011 − Consolidation of business systems & implementation of URM Background to the Project
- 6. • UK based LMS: Talis • Talis Prism catalogue • SFX • Metalib • In-house Electronic Resource Management System Systems Review
- 7. • Talis since 1996 • Very little change • Electronic resource management • Prism Catalogue – only displayed print • Work arounds in place • Reliance upon IT department • Bulk changes • Financial year rollover • Expensive • Staff comfortable with system Talis LMS
- 8. • Increase in e-resources • Reduction in Total Cost of Ownership − Fewer Systems • Financial savings • Meeting strategic objectives • Benefits to users • Analytics Business Case
- 10. E-book and E-Journal usage
- 11. Spend
- 12. • Fewer systems to maintain • SFX • Prism • Electronic Resource Management system • Talis • Maintained in the cloud by ExLibris Reduction in Total Cost of Ownership ALMA & Primo
- 13. • Talis didn’t integrate easily with external systems – additional costs • Licences to connect to systems – Self issue machines – Primo – Student information system Financial Savings
- 14. • Alignment to University Goals – Transforming Infrastructure and Services • Streamlining Processes • Managing and enhancing access to our resources • Ensure an outstanding student experience Strategic Objectives
- 15. • Understanding our collections • Prescriptive management information • Developing Services Analytics
- 16. • Changing Library Environment • Roadmap with future developments • Early Adopter • Strong user community – sharing of expertise • 24 hour – 7 days a week support • Amsterdam Data Centre Why Alma?
- 17. • Non ex-libris system • Cohort 3 of EA programme • Purchasing a system we couldn’t see – development partners but no one in production • European Tender Early Adopter programme
- 18. Timescales 15th July 27th November 11th March 10th April 12th April 30th April 27th June 27th June
- 19. • Data • Configuration • Process Mapping • Training • System Integration Preparing for Alma
- 21. • Old sites • Messages attached to items • Repairs • User records • Users with old department codes Data Clean Up
- 22. • P2E process (identify print and electronic) • Data which couldn’t be migrated • Migration Form • Historic data • Fines data Data Migration
- 23. • Important to understand our workflows • Processes which mapped across different areas of the library • Catalogue of 74 processes where LMS was involved Process Reviews
- 24. Tutors ASLs Collections LaSU list updated Shelf ready? Updates listed in Alerts Customer Services Digitisation Requests – (See 1.9) New items checked to establish if on other LaSU lists Check module student numbers Check purchasing formula Calculate total number of Items required SOLAR checked for Library holdings Supplier websites checked for latest edition and e-book availability Orders placed See 1.3.1 Update LaSU Re-link ISBN/ SN’s. Add OOP notes Items arrive from supplier Item queries n Item receipted and processed (1.3.12) y Added to Library shelves Items receipted and added to Library shelves (2.27) Tutors updated on query/delay Tutors contacted - student number/ formula queries ASLs copied Into query emails Tutors provide required information Supplier queries and Delays etc Item identified as Out of Print OOP OOP query sent to tutors. Purchase OOP copy? y n Latest edition found to be In stock ASLs cc’d
- 25. • ExLibris Spreadsheet • Configuration had been in place for so long and never changed • Simplify locations • Circulation Review Configuration
- 26. • Self check kiosks • LDAP – staff authentication • Student information system • British Library • Primo • Book suppliers • Printing • Easy to set up by the library and ITS Integrations
- 27. • Bibliotheca • STunnel • Off Line Mode Self Service
- 28. • Work carried out by ExLibris • Real Time Availability • Must log in to see loan periods Primo
- 29. • API • Patron Loader • Add external users to University systems • Issues with internal systems Student Information
- 30. • Engage with suppliers • 2 main suppliers • EDI set up by supplier in previous system • Different approach in Alma – Inventory information in marc record – Previously EDI message Book Suppliers
- 31. • Print to e-mail • Letter schedule – Quite Rigid – Customise letters in XSLT Printing
- 32. • Premium Sandbox • Test Plans • Test all scenarios Testing
- 33. • Alma Academy • Web ex • Functional workshop • Wider library team • Alma Certification Training
- 34. • Defining User Roles • Unexpected e-mails • Staff knowledge Go Live
- 35. /www.freeimages.com/photo/1435014 Change the perfect storm at Salford
- 36. • Refurbished a library • Closed a library • Restructured all the staffing AND • Alma Change
- 37. • Good vendor project management • Monthly releases • Top 5 calls ExLibris & Salford
- 38. • Alma PWG • Alma Mail List • Alma UK – local support Collaboration
- 39. • New ways of working • Language of ‘Alma’ • Fewer systems to maintain • Fine tuning configuration • Review Workflows • Ongoing training Current Position
- 40. • Alma / Agresso Integration (finance system) • Online Fine Payments • Improve quality of data from internal systems • Get our staff to ‘Challenge Alma’ Going Forward
- 41. • E-mail: a.d.walker@salford.ac.uk Thank you & Questions
Notes de l'éditeur
- In 2009, the University approved a Digital library Plan A driver for this was the building of our Media City Campus which The Digital Library Plan involved several key phases and the review of key business systems: Move to RFID and becoming 100% self service – freeing up staff to focus on user engagement Implementation of a Discovery Solution – promoting the discovery of resources anytime - anywhere The Consolidation of business systems, to be achieved by the implementation of a new Unified Resource Management System
- The main concerns were around our LMS. The system had been in place since 1996, and during that time, hadn’t adapted to the changing library environment Talis was built to manage print collections – there was no functionality to manage any of our electronic resources, and there was no roadmap for it to ever manage electronic collections. Similarly, the library catalogue – Prism only allowed our users to search physical collections and any e-books which we had catalogued Due to the lack of change, staff had implemented work-arounds to deal with issues and problems, many of these were quite clunky and involved manual processes, spreadsheets etc Internally, the library systems team were unable to access the servers and make changes to the system. Any changes had to go through a prolonged IT process which wasn’t particularly responsive – so the library had very little control over the system. So for example any bulk withdrawals had to be made by IT – the financial year rollover had to be carried out by IT and planned weeks in advance It was becoming increasingly expensive to maintain – as we looked to new ways of integrating with other systems and the reliance on IT staff to maintain the system Due to the lack of change, our staff had become quite comfortable with the system – they knew it inside out, it’s capabilities
- In order to secure support and funding from the University to replace Talis, we had to present a strong business case. In particular we had to get support from our IT department who had concerns with us taking a system out of the University and placing it in the cloud Our business case focused on several key areas: The increase in electronic resources across the library Reduction in the number of systems that the library had to maintain Financial savings that we would be able to make including the reduction in the number of systems, and manual labour required to maintain these systems How the system aligned to the University’s strategic plan and objectives How the system would benefit our users And the need for clear management information which would enable us to make decisions about our collections and services
- The growing trend for e-book and e-journal usage by our users
- This slide shows how our budgetary spend has shifted from print to electronic
- By moving to a new system, we can see that there would be fewer systems to maintain. SFX, Prism Catalogue, LMS and our in-house Electronic Resource Management system would all be merged so that all these functions would be managed by Alma And the maintenance of the system by ExLibris in the cloud would see the reliance on ITs and the number of internal servers reduced
- Other financial savings around the replacement of Talis could be realised due to costly integration work with any University systems Every self check machine required annual connector licences An annual connector licence was required for Primo And a connection to our student information system also required an anuual licences On top of this, and external integration work required consultancy costs by Talis, so a consultant had to come in to connect us to our RFID kiosks. We were looking for a solutions were we had more control over these integrations
- One of the key objectives form the University was to Transform Infrastructure and Services. By implementing Alma we could demonstrate that we would be streamling our processes, managing and enhancing access to our resources, and therefor contributing to an outstanding student experience
- In order to drive our collections and ensure that we are meeting student demands, analytics are key to our service developments. As well as understanding what we have, we are also looking at predictive patterns to identify future trends, and allow us to plan effectively, so analytics featured strongly in the business case.
- In addition to all the benefits outlined in the previous slides, there were other key reasons for selecting Alma Our old system had become a dinosaur, and we needed change. We needed to streamline, and become responsive to changing demands of today’s library – and these changes needed to be continuous The fact that Alma had a clear Roadmap outlining developments showed ExLibris to be a future facing company that understood these changing demands As an Early Adopter we could work with ExLibris and other libraries in ensuring that the system was meeting the demands of the library community We already knew from our experience with Primo that ExLibris products have a vocal and experienced user community who are keen to develop and help
- We were one of 9 European Early Adopters, And as a non-ExLibris LMS, we were part of cohort 3 – the final early adopter group to Go Live. In the group were also Manchester, Sheffield and Imperial. Manchester and Sheffield also had Talis, so there were plenty of opportunities to work together and support each other through the process It was quite a leap of faith for us. At the time of signing the agreement, no one was in production with Alma. There were development partners in the US and Leuven in Belgium, but we couldn’t see the system – so this was quite a challenge to get staff to buy in to the new system that they couldn’t use or try
- There were many milestones throughout the Alma Project, but our major ones were: Access to the Alma Sandbox – we got this in November 2012 – this was our first opportunity to start looking and using the system By the 11th March we had to have completed and returned our configuration form which informed ExLibris on the way that we wanted Alma to work for us We sent our test load of data on the 10th April, which was then loaded into our Alma production environment – giving us access to ‘our’ Alma on the 12th April On the 30th April ExLibris came on site for a 4 day functional workshop –in this workshop we were covered the different functional areas of Alma, and were able to discuss our workflows On 27th June we entered the cutover period – all acquisitions and cataloguing functions were frozen at this point until after Go Live. We continued circulation activities – so our students didn’t see any interruption in service The final full data extract took place on the 27th June – we did then migrate the circulation data on the 12th July . And our Go Live date was 1th July 2013 – almost 1 year ago
- As well as the key project milestones we also had to carry out a great deal of preparatory work: Data Clean Up and mapping Process Review Training System Integration Processes to be put in place during Go Live
- Sub groups were established to deal with specific areas. Some of these groups were only in operation for short periods of time, while others ran for the duration of the project
- One of the biggets areas that we had to deal with was a massive data clean up exercise. Bad habits had crept in over 17 years resulting in lots of old and incorrect data in Talis. Just a small amount of the data clean-up is listed below: Items being listed at sites which no longer existed Hundreds of messages attached to items from previous projects, and that had never been cleared off Items which were showing as in repair – these all had to be cleared and put back into circulation – Alma dealt with repairs differently, in Talis we had a site as Repair We had never cleared out our borrower data and were breaking the data protection act – we did this, and ensured that a process was put in place to deal with this in Alma. There were lots of old messages which had never been removed from user records. We also had users with old department codes
- Our data was migrated using a series of scripts that another Early Adopter - University of Sheffield had provided As well as the main data extracts, there were other issues to consider: Identifying from the extract which items were electronic so that they would be correctly managed in Alma – this was called the P 2 E process Some data couldn’t be migrated – orders ExLibris provided us with a migration form. On this we had to map all our data – sites codes, user groups etc. We were able to merge groups were codes were duplicated or out of dates etc We couldn’t take over historic data such as loan details, so we had to carefully decide what we needed to keep for future information. This data then had to be extracted and stored so that we would be able to carry out future analysis and decision making
- In Talis there was a tendency to add in workaround for problems with processes, rather than look at the problem and re-examine the process. In order to streamline processes and eliminate manual interventions, we needed to understand our current processes. Although individual areas knew their processes, they hadn’t always been mapped to understand how effectively the processes were working, and identify inefficiencies. We also need to identify processes that mapped across different departments. Did they join up, or were gaps evident We also needed to identify how would our existing processes would map over to Alma to understand changes that would be required in order to offer a functioning service to our customers. In total we identified 74 processes where the LMS was involved
- Here is an example of a process map – identifying the area that was dealing with the elements of the process. The boxes with the red dots show where the LMS was involved in the process
- ExLibris provided us with a spreadsheet called the configuration form. This was a huge form with 11 tabs In this form we gave ExLibris information about Opening hours, our libraries, our policies, our circulation rules, and it informed ExLibris how we would want Alma to work It really made us reflect our existing service Alma calculated loans quite differently – and as a result we had to look at how we could simplify our locations and loan periods – and this all tied in with the data clean up exercise that we were running Identifying exceptions and documenting them was important, as we had mixed loan periods in single locations. It was quite difficult for our staff to complete the form without a functioning system, and the ability to carry out any configurations. Luckily it was configured fairly well, with minimal changes post Go Live Moving forward we are taking advantage of the flexibility which Alma can offer, and are carrying out a review of our circulation policies across the library, and the outcomes of this review should be implemented later this year.
- We had several integrations which we needed to address. Our self service kiosks How our staff would authenticate to the LMS – using LDAP How we would bring our student data into Alma How we would integrate with the British Library to manage our Resource Sharing Requests Integration with Primo and how we would manage the student authentication Book suppliers Printing – One key difference between Alma and our previous LMS is the ease at which external integrations can be established – they can be managed from within the Alma interface, so we were able to do much of the configuration from within Alma
- We are 100% Self service so it was imperative that this was functioning from day 1. We have 9 self service kiosks and a 5 bin book sorter. We were the first Bibliotheca customer to move to Alma, and therefore we encountered a few issues in the initial setup. Moving the LMS to cloud meant that we had to ensure that the data transferring from the self check machines to Alma was secure. In order to achieve this, a local server had to be installed which has Stunnel software – providing security around the message before transferring to Alma. We had internal issues with our firewalls, and this took a while to resolve, and there was a glitch with our sorter, when one of the returns units was still connecting to the Talis. We soon discovered that the books were still showing on loan on Alma and had to bring our RFID supplier in to rectify the issue. Another development which happened post Go Live was the ability to transfer data from the kiosks directly to Alma should the kiosks have gone off line. At the point of Go Live we had to carry out this process manually.
- Already having Primo in the cloud, meant that the inetgartion work was fairly straight forward and was carried out by ExLibris. For our users it mean the ability to see the Real Time Availability of items from the Primo native interface One change we made was changing the view in Primo which was showing that all items were available – this was misleading to users – changed itto show that users have to sign in to see the policy of the resources
- For our integration with our SIS, we decided to make use of the Alma API. This means that users are automatically added to Alma as soon as they have an identity badge created in Alma. The borrowers were loaded initially through the patron loader. We discovered that Users are being added, but there is an issue with our internal university systems, which means that if a student has an update to their account, the change isn’t made in Alma – we are currently working with our internal IT services division to resolve this, and it has raised several questions about the student data that we have
- We work with 2 main supplies for our book supplies With our previous system, we didn’t have to touch the EDI process, this was set up between the Talis and the book supplier. It was an education for us – Alma had a different workflow to that which we used in the previous LMS – Talis imported inventory details such as barcode and loan type through EDI message in Alma these details are added to the marc records. The process had to be set up with close negotiation between ourselves and the book supplier. We are still not fully operational with one of the suppliers, and it’s something that we are still trying to work with them on.
- Alma doesn’t print automatically – the documents get sent to an e-mail address and then printed from there. Luckily this was something which we had already set up , so it wasn’t a big change for our staff
- We found having a premium sandbox to be invaluable for testing – It had our data in and we were able to run tests feeling confident that they were going to show us the outcome that we would have on the Alma test environment Each team developed test plans with pass and fail criteria – this enabled us to keep check of all the issues, and quickly feedback to ExLibris, issues that we had encountered. Printing was difficult on the sandbox, and we had to agree ‘allowed’ e-mail accounts that we could send e-mails to – we didn’t want to start e-mailing students from a test system. Also – testing all letters was difficult due to time constraints – we couldn’t replicate every scenario within the test period i.e. when a book is overdue by x number of days the following letter will be printed.
- Prior to getting access to the sandbox there were frustrations amongst the staff that they couldn’t work with the system. In order to bridge the gap before getting access to the Sandbox – ExLibris delivered Alma Academy sessions These sessions focused on the functional areas of the system and it gave the staff an opportunity to see the system in action and then send questions in for a follow up session the following week. Once we had access to the sandbox and on the run up to Go Live, many of the training sessions for staff were delivered by web ex. Ensuring staff had time to attend these sessions was key. We booked PC rooms for teams so that they could follow the sessions and also try out some of the functionality on the Alma sandbox during the sessions In April prior to Go Live, ExLibris came on site for 4 days, we had a chance to look at how Alma was going to fit with our processes. It was a really good opportunity to explore issues and opportunities, and staff were able to rethink many of the processes Individual service owners were responsible for devising training for their individual teams. This varied from team to team. We had undergone a major restructure and it was very difficult to coordinate training. We had staff changing roles and so didn’t know existing library processes around that role so to implement Alma in this environment was very difficult Following Go Live the systems team underwent Alma Certification training – this allowed us to make changes to the Alma configuration. This was really important early on, as we were ironing out issues from the migration were the configuration wasn’t quite right.
- Alma does bring about change – moving from an LMS which hadn’t changed for 17 years, rethinking workflows, processes and policies is really challenging
- In addition to Alma we: Refurbished one library and closed another. In order to accommodate these changes, we had to withdraw physical stock which hadn’t been used in 5 years. We collected the data from Talis and then created sets in Alma to withdraw the items at a later date. In Talis we could only make changes to 3,000 items a day so it would have taken us months to do. In Alma we could make the changes almost instantly on large data sets 80,000 books removed from Allerton library and resited at our main campus This all had to be planned before Go Live – while having to maintain confidentiality internally. All staff had some changes to their roles – many had to reapply for their jobs So as well as having to help our staff through the change to Alma – we had to help them with the other changes which were going on around them. This wasn’t the best environment to run a project in