Bar Veinstein, Ex Libris Vice President of Resource Management
Alma facilitates unified management of all resource types, drives collaboration across institutions, and accelerates the delivery of new value-added services.
Consolidate the frameworks:
Unified management of all resource types
Optimize workflows and data sharing - not just bringing workflows together; also making them efficient
Optimize through collaboration:
cloud services
collaboration between libraries and users
analytics-driven - library automation is done; need to shift to optimization to gain efficiency. Analytics isn't necessarily data, it's knowledge to make better decisions
Extend the range of services: Open-service oriented, extensible; enables libraries to offer new services
Development partners - Princeton, Purdue, Boston College, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Under rapid deployment practices, can deliver working software quickly and keep developing during/after partner work.
1st partner release delivered June 2010
Partner release 3 includes dashboard view as front-end or lobby (notification mode; push rather than search) with notifications, decision relevant data - let the system drive the work you need to do and help you make necessary decisions
PR 4 and 5 coming up, but need to get away from idea of version numbering; cloud services are all about ongoing improvement (what version of Gmail are you using?) rather than static releases
Oct 2011: North American Early Adopters program kickoff
(7 collaborative partners in Australia/New Zealand - getting a diversity of institutions and the systems they have in place; have Ex Libris products, homegrown systems, 3rd party and other vendor products - important to get this information early so are rewarded later on by interoperability). With Alma,
data migration is happening all along, not just at the end - not testing on demo or "perfect" data - testing on real data migrated from customers.
Boston University is the first North American Early Adopter partner. Formal program kicks off Sept-Oct 2011. Implementation of Early Adopters will take place in 3 cohort groups: July-Dec 2012, Jan-June 2013, July-Dec 2013.
General Release is still scheduled for 2012 - commitment to time schedule has not changed.
What happens after General Release?
--Agile release cycle: benefits of the cloud; less to do locally (hello, updating Voyager clients...)
--Frequent, small updates: bug fixes, minor enhancements; automatic and transparent for all customers, no impact on daily activity. Less control over adopting these updates requires some trust. Ex Libris is working to be more trustworthy (again the example of Gmail - control? no. trust? yes.).
--Periodic releases: 3 times a year; new features, user requests and needs addressed in weeks/months rather than years - Will have more control over adopting these releases; able to opt-in to new features and have time to train staff.
--Lower TCO: No server or client upgrades, no data migration, always on the latest release
What's on the radar?
Near Term horizon:
Emerging ebook models
Purchase on demand: from just in case to just in time.
Predictive analytics: has become trend in business intelligence world - used to be statistics. Real power of analytics is not about looking at the past, but the future. So evolving to analyze the past to predict the future. Ability to answer "what if?" questions - what are future consequences of decisions? Use these as decision factors.
Long term horizon:
Social collaboration - screenshot of sample community collaboration options
Research data
Linked data
Why should move to Alma?
TCO / ROI / DIV (demonstrated institutional value)
Reduced TCO alone can't justify radical changes involved in Alma, but is important - a direct benefit (efficiency)
ROI not a traditional factor for libraries but is becoming more and more important - a direct benefit (effectiveness)
DIV - improved engagement with teaching and learning processes; increased faculty research productivity, etc (demonstrable value)
How is Alma unique?
Unified by design
Open Data policy
Rich workflows
Analytics-driven
Shared and unique data
Task-oriented
Multi-format support
Open platform
Flexible consortia
Active roadmaps for Aleph and Voyager are existing and ongoing - not just updates but active development.
Support roadmaps for Verde 2 and DigiTool3 are ongoing as promised.
Get ready for Alma, even if not ready to be an early adopter:
1) Move to the cloud / hosted (cites Total Care, VoyagerPlus, AlephPlus as options)
2) Focus on end-user services, deploy advanced discovery
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