Ex Libris Update
Matti Shem Tov, President and CEO, Ex Libris Group
Carl Grant, President, Ex Libris North America
Worldwide update from Matti Shem Tov:
Ex Libris by the numbers:
-74 million in revenue
-4600 institutions
-76 countries
-37 national libraries
-8 products
-460 employees
Changes to Global Support in 2008:
-Reduced hierarchical levels
-Combined support teams of Europe and Israel
-Relocated KB teams from Development to Support
-Published escalation processes and procedures for each product
The Products:
URM - progressing:
-3 development partners, Boston College, Princeton University, Catholic University Leuven (the combination gives them an Aleph site, a Voyager site, a European site, and a consortium).
-The initial product requirement documents are ready as a baseline for work with development partners and focus groups.
-The number of Primo customers (Primo will be the URM public interface) has doubled in 2008.
-Emphasized that they will continue development of Aleph and Voyager.
-ERM portion of URM 1 is upcoming in 2010; beta version of URM 1 (for work with all formats) is upcoming second half of 2011, with a general release in 2012
Voyager: 1360 institutions; versions and development plans currently in place for 7.1 through 9.0 (more about the versions in the Voyager Product Update)
MetaLib: upcoming (2010) phased delivery of Primo MetaSearch - the Primo user interface + MetaLib enhanced search engine.
SFX: 1840 institutions; version 4 is in the pipeline for 2010 (more in the SFX Product Update).
Verde: 205 institutions; introducing support for COUNTER JR1 in July; in the pipeline for 2010 is ERM function as part of URM 1. Based on feedback from last year's ELUNA, the beta version of URM 1 (2011) will support both electronic and print formats. Verde customers will get the ERM part of URM 1 as part of ongoing product updates.
New Products:
Rosetta (new December 2008) - digital preservation product; next version of DigiTool will be integration with Rosetta.
bX (new April 2009) - scholarly recommender service for articles, delivered through the SFX Services menu or an API (more in the bX post and the SFX Product Update).
In consideration of the economy:
-Offering more Web-based courses and videoconferences
-Offering special promotions
-Being flexible on terms and payment
-Keeping maintenance increases below the CPI (Consumer Price Index) rate
EL Commons (the customer wiki):
-Usage is increasing
-More information from customers about all products is available
North American update from Carl Grant:
Some serious snark at competitors coming out in recent ads (see Carl Grant's recent blog post for an example).
In June 2009, Monthly Status Reports will be released for all active projects.
Carl wants to provoke some thought about the future of librarianship - he used another recent blog post as a launch pad to prod attendees into thinking about what libraries and librarians should be working on now to prepare for the future.
He also pointed out that OCLC's return to the ILS market needs some critical examination by libraries (naturally he'd do this - he's the competition - but he raised some good questions):
-OCLC's record use policy; will it extend to data about patrons, holdings, items, acquisitions?
-Is OCLC planning any openness in the development or software? Any APIs?
-OCLC's offering is not necessarily free; it will require interfacing with existing systems
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