maribeth manoff monica ihli joe ferguson mike rogers eluna 2015 minneapolis, mn implementing alma in...

Maribeth Manoff Monica Ihli Joe Ferguson Mike Rogers ELUNA 2015 Minneapolis, MN Implementing Alma in Six Months

Who We Are and What Well Talk About Maribeth Manoff Head, Discovery & Technical Services (D&TS) Background and Introduction - Why Alma? Why Now? Six Month Alma Implementation Timeline Monica Ihli IT Administrator in D&TS (as of April 2014 quite a year!) Rethinking and Learning Curves Communication Considerations Joe Ferguson IT Administrator in D&TS (as of October 2014 quite a six months!) Dealing With Configuration Some Set-Up Tips Mike Rogers IT Analyst in D&TS Reports, Analytics, and Certification Trainings Primo Considerations Other, Etc (including Third Party Integrations)

UT Libraries By The Numbers Serving 20,000 undergraduate students; 6,000 graduate students; 9,000 faculty and staff $12 million annual materials budget; 3.3 million volumes; 358,000 electronic books; 61,000 electronic serials 150 library faculty and staff, including 48 librarians. John C. Hodges Library Main Library Acquisitions, Cataloging, Serials and Electronic Resources functions centralized here Three branch libraries Pendergrass Agriculture & Veterinary Medicine Library; George F. DeVine Music Library; Social Work Library in Nashville, TN Preston Medical Library holdings represented in UTs catalog

Technology Infrastructure Integrated Library System = Aleph From 2003 (version 15) to Go Live w/ Alma + 3 months (version 20) Still working in Aleph due to encumbrances migration issue Link Resolver = SFX First Ex Libris product, purchased with MetaLib, in 2002 Switched to Ex Libris hosted in 2012 Discovery System = Primo Went live with Version 2 in 2009 Switched to Ex Libris hosted (Direct model) in 2012-13 Implemented Primo Central One Search tab in August 2014 Interlibrary Loan System = ILLiad One of Atlass first customers pre-2000

Heading Toward Alma 2013 March Library-wide restructuring included new department Discovery and Technical Services 3 units Cataloging, Acquisitions, Enterprise Systems Department Head tasked with keeping an eye on the Integrated Library System landscape April A day with Carl Grant Focus on discovery and on Make Primo better Consider workflows for back-end work May ELUNA Why not Alma? Why not soon? July & August Alma and WorldShare demos September through December RFP

The Year of Alma 2014 Early January RFP Evaluation complete and intent to award contract to Ex Libris for Alma Late January Meeting with Ex Libris Sales and Professional Services at ALA Midwinter Review of the Getting Ready for Alma Implementation document April Pre-Kickoff meeting Filled out the Alma Implementation form which included appointing the UTK team Worried (a lot!) about not having enough information June 12 Kickoff meeting December 18 Go Live!!!

What About Those Six Months? Weekly schedule for prerecorded trainings and Q&A Access to sandbox provided along with trainings Migration Form, P2E file and first Auto Extract of Aleph data due July 18 Onsite configuration meeting July 21-22 Configuration Form due August 8 Test load / production environment delivered August 18 -> Data testing and feedback Primo / Alma Delivery for Testing on September 15 Cutover Activity December 8-17 Go Live December 18 Switch-To-Support Planned for February 2015 (actual date March 11)

Thoughts About the Timeline Tell Ex Libris that you really do need more information as soon as possible In depth review of migration documentation to plan for source system cleanup projects Explanation of configuration to effectively prepare for fulfillment policies Prerecorded trainings ahead of kickoff to prepare staff for the paradigm shift to a workflow-based system For systems experts at UTK, certification training much earlier in the process Understand discovery implications, i.e. have access to Primo and be working on setup, early in the process

Rethinking the Systems Work individually with staff to document their existing workflows High Level: Mapping out general workflows How is work divided? Who is currently responsible for what major tasks? When do materials change hands? Example: Checking physical materials in at a circ desk before putting them on the shelf Detailed Level: Be on the lookout for any creative uses of data fields or elements in the old system that might not translate well to Alma Identifying cases where staff configured Aleph to their unique workflows Example: Additional order # 2

Learning Curves & Surprises Alma as a Location-Centric System: Scoping job permissions to locations. Item statuses in the context of work orders & work order departments. Alma as a Workflow-oriented program: Often makes decisions about what to do next with a record, based on where it is in a workflow. Example: Receiving workflows or items put into a work order: Cant send a book back out to the shelf from a workflow until: (A) You specifically say you are DONE working on this item. (B) Check it back in at a circulation desk scoped to that items location. When learning workflows for the first time, it is challenging to understand if what you are experiencing is the result of the workflow or if something is happening differently because of how data was migrated.

Learning Curves & Surprises Migrated Data Surprises: Items Not Received in Aleph: Were populated with a default receiving date when they got to Alma This interfered with the ability to initiate the receiving workflow Clearing the receiving dates of migrated items solved this problem Items Migrated from Aleph While In a Status: Migrated into a default Technical Migration status These needed to be checked in

Learning Curves & Surprises Troubleshooting & Data-Checking Tips: Master & document creating orders and putting them through complete workflows in Alma Compare this to processing migrated orders Focus on learning how Libraries & Locations impact other functions within the system, including the scoping of roles

Communication Engage in technical services workflow training for both groups and individuals Where will you put documentation as you develop it? How will staff know when documentation is updated? What channels will exist for communication to flow in from outside of the implementation team?

Configuration Form The Configuration Form is not your friend, but it will not hurt you. DO NOT get stressed out by filling out this form. Alma is MUCH more configurable than the Configuration Form leads you to believe. The Configuration Form allows ExLibris to do your initial setup with SOME very basic settings. You can go in after setup and make whatever changes you need.

Configuration Tips Do not try to convert your legacy system loan rules into Alma rules Start fresh! What User Groups do you REALLY need? Consolidate similar loan types. Default Institutional Loan Policy We set our default loan policy as NO CIRCULATION so in case anything slipped through the cracks it would not circulate. We would rather something NOT circulate that should instead of allowing something TO circulate that should not Think about Day 1 priorities Make sure what needs to loan can loan (even if for the wrong loan period) Make sure what does not loan will not loan Make sure blocks can be overridden to account for configuration mishaps Elevated Role Permissions; many people need to be able to override for Day 1 that might not usually need to override +2 months Post-Go Live (like student workers)

Configuring Hours Be patient grasping the concepts of both Hours Management and Printing in Alma. Hours Set up regular open hours first (i.e. 7:30 23:59) Exceptions are the complicated part. If you shorten your operating day you would expect to adjust your days hours like such: If you have an exception like this then you actually have to add two exceptions for one day to show the CLOSED times that you would normally be open; like this: 10:00 18:0010:00 18:00 X WRONG! 7:30 10:00 18:00 23:59

Multiple Time Zones? A unique issue for us is that we have a branch library in another time zone from our main campus. The main University of Tennessee campus is in Knoxville, TN which is in the Eastern Time Zone. We have a Social Work Library in Nashville, TN which is in the Central Time Zone. There is not currently any feature in Alma to support multiple Time Zones per institution. When setting up hours for another time zone be sure to translate that time into your institutions time zone when setting up your hours.

Configuring Printing Say Good-bye to printing as you know it: Receipt Printers are obsolete in Alma Printing is handled as emails. Must have email enabled printers or setup intermediate facilitator to handle printing i.e. Microsoft Outlook with rules One printer per circulation desk Causes issues when multiple workstations are not immediately located to shared printer You may have to rethink your current setup and workflows to account for the way Alma handles printing

Configuration in General Alma Configuration will continue past Go-Live for +6 Months (if not longer) yes, we are still adjusting our configuration 5 months out!

Alma Reports & Analytics Training WebEx Training Session (not on-site) UT had multiple attendees ExLibris trainer was excellent, with very relevant material 2 days: Day 1 Strategies and techniques for using Alma to perform record batch work, data cleanup, etc Day 2 Analytics reporting Training occurred in the 3 rd month of our Implementation

Alma Certification In-depth online training for Alma administrators UT had four staff receive training 4-weeks: Week 1 User management (~3 hours videos) Week 2 Fulfillment (~10+ hours of videos) Week 3 Resource Management (~6+ hours videos) Week 4 Review & Exam Training occurs near the end of 6-month implementation Once certified, staff are allowed access to Alma configuration

Thoughts On Alma Certification Training is very in-depth, very helpful Primary trainer in the videos (Shmuel Moss) was excellent Overall we learned a LOT but. Strong consensus was that we should have received this training much earlier in process Would have greatly benefited our understanding of migration process, configuration setup, etc.

Implementing Primo: Considerations Primo is the only discovery interface to work with Alma Primo implementation part of the 6-month Alma implementation (seriously!) No required Primo Certification training An ExLibris Primo expert/consultant works closely with site

Implementing Primo: Considerations Advantages Familiarity with system If the site prefers, can do much of the setup work themselves Better grasp of identifying problems during data checking Steep learning curve Lack of familiarity may be harder for identifying problems w/ data checking Already using Primo: New to Primo: Disadvantages New to Primo: Already using Primo: No capability to copy normalization rule sets into Alma (This was a BIG problem for us!) The more customizations you have, the more work to set them all back up May be easier to do setup from scratch ExLibris may be able to do a default out- of-box setup, thus saving the site much effort/time

The Alma Last Minute Scramble Patron loading Ongoing record loading EDI invoice loading Self-check machines Spine label printing Budget setup User accounts Notices/letters Work order departments Requests Delivery skin for Requests Initial Analytics reports Final Primo tweaks

Third-party integrations Unless you have staff devoted 100% to this, there is very little time built in to the 6-month implementation window for setting up 3 rd -party integrations We continue setting ours up, including: Alma SAP integration (transferring invoices, returning vouchers) Alma Banner integration (sending holds & fines to Bursar) Alma ABLE integration (Binding system) Alma ILLiad Alma Registrars Office system (for closing out graduating students and updating due dates of checked-out items)

Alma Three Implementations in One? Must consider that implementing Alma is almost a 3-in-1 process: ILS system (Alma) Link Resolving (Alma Link Resolver) Discovery Layer (Primo) It is a LOT of work, but we feel well worth the effort!

Thanks for your attention! Any Questions? Maribeth Manoff [email protected]@utk.edu Monica Ihli [email protected]@utk.edu Joe Ferguson [email protected]@utk.edu Mike Rogers [email protected]@utk.edu

maribeth manoff monica ihli joe ferguson mike rogers eluna 2015 minneapolis, mn implementing alma in...

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