ALA MidWinter - Ex Libris - Verde

Greetings from Seattle.

I was really excited to see a program entitled "Ex Libris Verde Seminar: Case Studies: Managing Electronic Resources with Verde: Customers Speak Out" because of the recent announcement from Ex Libris that Meridian - the electronic resource management (ERM) tool we were almost ready to implement - will not be supported beyond 2008.  So, what's a library to do: hear what Verde (Ex Libris' ERM) customers think of the product, of course!

Unfortunately, the session was not appropriately named in the ALA event planner.  It turned out to be a session about consortial interoperability using various Ex Libris products and services

Presenters:

U of GA system (uses Voyager – Merryl Penson
Cal State Univ sys – Marvin Pollard
Ex Libris  – Dave Stout & someone else!

Dave's topic was Digital Libraries Solutions for Consortia and Beyond, an overview of  current Ex Libris  products

• Managing evolving digital resources as well as traditional
• 4000 institutions worldwide in 63 countries (2000 institutions in North America – includes former Endeavor users)
• 50% are on shared systems; 94 are ARL (i.e., 76% of ARL)

Dave reviews trends in libraries (more w/less; shrinking budg; competing for students/researches)

• ExL must balance collaborate and desire to differentiate: systems must be flexible
• Consortia parameters: technical infras, info environment, business considerations
• Info resources in the consortial environment: Shared resources? Local autonomy of shared resources? Local resources?
• Branding: local auto demanded? Or shared look and feel?

Dave shows an SFX install that is locally branded to North Park Univ in Chicao: many local services are being maintained and control by the Univ’; some of the targets on the screen are managed centrally by the consortia so these also show on the SFX screens

Dave reviewed Metalib look and feel: research portal/federated searching: U of MD did have a central look and feel for 16 campuses (but they are transitioning to more local autonomy)

Verde: not interface driven but can be shared amongst libraries; holdings screen shows which libraries hold what

Primo – due to be launched soon: enables custom config of user interface and scope of search; harvest multiple repos into a single shared instance

Software development:

Business considerations
How does consortia operate? Central funding? Consortium as re-seller (ei.g., OCLC networks)?
Members contributing?

Technical infra considerations
Central hosting possible? Local hosting preferred? ExL hosted? Shared tech resources are generally a key!

Merryl Penson was 2^nd speaker – U of GA Galileo
Voyager used by 35 public colleges and univ, 2 spec libraries, 1 tech college (GIL): union catalog & universal borrowing

Central and local hosting of collections
Galileo and SFX – in beta

- serves academics and public library, public schools and private K-12

- 100+ dbs licensed (for all or some

- 50 locally hosted dbs

- Access & mgm menu + Local resources tool

- Help desk, training

Pilot implementation of SFX
Larger institutions needed their own instance of SFX; smaller guys didn’t seem to
Larger: collaborative implementation and learning/local management: libraries liked this

Identified what technologies Galileo needed for the 21^st century: “upgrade” is understood by policy makers for funding

- have an upgrade site with goals and features for new stuff such as WebFeat, SFX, MetaLibr and EZ Proxy – rolled out quickly: can’t wait for perfection - we’re in a 2.0 world now – learn as we go, do customizing later

Galileos central sys manages profiles for 400 including IP, contact info, passwords, resources

Fall 2006: metalib and WebFeat –

Biggest issue for SFX: what to put on the button & what color

FindIt@GALILEO
http://www.usg.edu/GALILEO/about/planning/projexts/upgrade
project site

Marvin Pollard (Cal State Univ consortia)

23 libraries
450,000 students & fac served

Challenge: quick & easy access, and more effic use of, $10million worth of e-content

2001 – serials linking task force – fall 2001

SFX implementation summer 2002 (trained all libraries within 9 mos)

MetaLib implem summer 2003

Small staff centrally mngs knowledgebase and communicatess with campuses, including providing some local customizations for them.

Interoperability with local ILSs, individual campus proxy servers, campus directory services (ID mngmt), multiple content/service providers, and ERMs (under investigation for central) though some are local implementation.

Goal: manage e content

- have core collection + locally licensed content

- integration of individual lib content in course mng systems

- integration of IRs with traditional content

Marvin shows their SFX Metalib implementation

SFX very customizable for local instances

Metalib also customizable with local branding and services though much more complex in decision making on how to present the information

- CSU developing API, applets to do additional customization for indivi schools including TOC services, RSS feeds, etc. to be used with CMSs and other services that might vary from campus to campus

Questions

Major issues, challenges with products:
Programmers would say that patches & waiting, working with multiple vendors & their unique systems

GALILEO has mirror site

Statistics – GA has some reporting capabilities but not where they’d like it to be ; some of that goes to individual db providers who don’t provide consistent data

 CS system gets some data individually from SFX and Metalib

Staffing: CSU has 1 person centrally maintaining SFX knowledgebase and fielding user questions

Some institutions do the server hosting

GA – on SFX – 1 person on setting up; another on development side (with servers); separate tech staff working with campuses staffs