Colorado School of Mines Surviving Almanado Tips for a Successful Pre-implementation Laura Guy Colorado School of Mines

What this session is Who we are Scope of project Things you might hear How is Alma different? How is this migration different? What is pre-implementation? What resources are available? Things you can do Data cleanup What matters? What we did What we didn’t Rules to live by Meanwhile Things you can think about, things you can do, to maximize your chance of a successful migration.

What this session is not Not about Change Management Not about Significant Emotional Events Not about marketing or P.R. Not about evaluating services Not Alma instruction All these are reasonable things to think about.

Who we are Engineering, applied sciences university CARL  Voyager  Alma One campus One library 20 staff 7000 patrons 600,000 Voyager bibs 39 Library “Locations” Go Live June 4 Undergraduate and graduate programs. Archives, map collection, government publications.

Scope of project ILS (Voyager; incl ACQ), SFX migration Libraries, Locations, Policies configuration External system integration (SIS/SSO etc.) Already familiar with Cloud approach Reserves, ILLiad, RAPID EDI, Worldcat, Connexion Primo It is really important to clearly define the scope of your project ahead of time. Initially: Print and electronic shared same ILS record. Like many libraries, we’d fallen down in several areas. We’d gotten very comfortable with Voyager over 15 years. P2E Job converts holdings from old ILS that looked like print to new E-resource model where they are REAL ELECTRONIC Holdings. Lots of integration is mandated by the unification of external and internal services (SIS, AD, EDI, OPAC via Primo, etc)

Things you might hear “Took me by surprise.” “I didn’t expect this.” I thought I’d retire, first…” “Is my job going to change?” “Will I have a job?” “What should we do NOW?!?!”

How is Alma different? Unification, Simplification, Consolidation New concepts, terminology, approaches Exception-based workflows (automation) Unified metadata & services management External and internal services E-resources design from ground up A uniform and consolidated environment Alma designed from ground up for eResources Offers new approaches to fulfillment, resource management, ILL, etc. It unifies metadata and services management It manages internal and external services all in one place It will influence the services you provide And should help eliminate wasteful or unnecessarily resource-intensive practices – optimization of workflows (exception-based workflows)

How is this migration different? Because Alma is different Your library is different Your campus is different Ex Libris Project Management P2E conversion Test migration before final migration We’d become very un-unified. Lots of disparate products. A very complicated topography. Lots of redundant work. Dark spreadsheets. Duplication of effort. Wasted time. Too many things to juggle. The Library and the tools we use grew far more complex since our last migration. The campus is asking for us to prove our relevance and our buy-in to the campus strategic plan. Our ILS (replacing Voyager) Our ERM (Goldrush/whatever else) Our Resources Index (Primo Central) Our Link Resolver (SFX) Our Reporting System (Access & Analyzer) Discovery tool will remain Primo Reserves will be Alma/Primo ILL (ILLiad/RAPID?) Digitool (eventually Alma?) Anything not mapped as part of the P2E process will go into Alma as print and can't then be changed to electronic. It needs to be deleted and created anew as electronic. It needs to be right.

What is pre-implementation? Depends on your library “Getting ready” Organizational setup Preparation of data Learning Grounding of staff Setting goals and expectations What is your goal? Most perfect migration ever? Redefined roles and workflows? Just survive? Everyone still talking to each other?

What resources are available? Alma Documentation Alma-L Listserv Online Trainings Limited “live” help from Ex Libris Your current ILS This presentation & related materials Alma documentation is updated monthly. Don’t print it. Important for pre-implementation: “Getting Ready for Alma and Primo Implementation” “Technical Requirements for Alma and Primo Implementation” “Alma Integrations with External Systems” “Electronic Resource Handling in Alma Migration” And don’t forget your current ILS. You may be doing a lot of work – report generation, data cleanup.

Getting Ready for Implementation.

Getting Ready for Implementation.

Things you can do Get your team(s) in place* Start reading the documentation Learning Center online trainings ELUNA/IGELU sites for presentations Evaluate workflows, practices… …and core business functions Get data ready Set priorities/goals, stay focused UStat Get all involved identified and together ASAP. Project Manager, functional experts, data experts, external IT/etc. Be clear on assigning roles and responsibilities. *This includes IT/ES. Remember different people learn in different ways Figure out project communications. Discuss potential show-stoppers early on. Data Cleanup plan Implement UStat if you have not already.

Keep in mind It takes time to understand new concepts Takes time to adjust to semantics changes Beware “I did it this way in Voyager” Adopt a solution-oriented, pragmatic approach Scrutinize your existing practices and workflows; identify areas to improve We live in a time where we are all ADHD and expecting instant gratification. Remember this process takes time. Use your pre-implementation period wisely. Things will only get crazier.

Data cleanup Keep focused on what is migration related Consult the Implementation Guide Use Alma-L Define your scope: ILS, SFX, PCI, ERM How’s your patron data? Got missing/lost/stolen materials? Find “problem” areas like OTF/etc. Vendor cleanup Again, much of this is Library dependent. This list could be huge. Important things are missing like getting rid of duplicate Bibs, duplicate Barcodes, holdings consolidating, prep for P2E. Use the Getting Ready for Implementation guide as your starting point.

What matters? Locations and Location Types Patron Groups and Group Types Item/Material Types P2E Preparation: separate Bibs Print: Bib/MFHD/Item rec requirement Policy Simplification UStat (did I mention that already?) Surprise! Re-Authorization project Spend time on these things: -- Physical and electronic material types (organize electronic records by location or some other uniquely distinguishable manner) -- Temp versus permanent location data -- Obsolete libraries, locations, item types and vendors -- Most importantly focus on e-resources to avoid duplication after migration We went from five Voyager databases to one. We went from almost 100 Item Types to 20 (9 of them are Course Reserves) We went from 70 locations to 39 You’ll need to put your locations into no more than five location “types” You’ll need to put your patron groups into no more than four patron “categories” Surprise Authority Work: Getting ready guide mentions local authority records. We just deleted ours prior to migration

What we did Reports! Lots of Reports! Duplicate barcodes/Duplicate OCLC Bibs with mixed print/electronic holdings Delete expired patrons/purge old fines Cleanup reserves SFX Duplicates Bad PO cleanup OTF cleanup Missing from this was our dealing with multiple Voyager databases. It became very clear that we should only migrate one database, not five! Delete all the patrons that you can. Incorrect or duplicate item barcodes Cleanup, consolidate, rename, and retire locations Delete local authority records Cleanup Item Types/Material Types Make sure Holdings and Item locations sync. Remove local authority records.

What we didn’t Missing item records Enum/Chron Lost Books ACQ Reserves still a mess We didn’t ask enough questions We didn’t realize that for Primo display it is important for print materials to have item records. We didn’t realize that the use of the bindery module in Voyager could cause display issues in Primo. We’d fallen down on Lost Books processing. We didn’t do much in the way of ACQ cleanup. We did not understand the recommendation in the Implementation Guide to cleanup Enum/Chron

Rules to live by KISS Keep Calm And Carry On Beware the weeds Prioritize (you can’t do it all) No migration is perfect No data are perfect RTFM (& understand what you read) Be kind and grateful “Could we go live tomorrow?” Define your scope and stick with it Define your goals and stick with them Try to keep Alma and Primo separate in your thinking. This is one of the most stressful events you will go through as an organization.

Meanwhile Library services continue People still have other jobs besides Alma Keep your old ILS going Other change is inevitably occurring Life goes on It is true that managing this is a full-time job.

Thank you! http://hdl.handle.net/11124/17090. On our I.R. you’ll find this presentation plus an associated zip file of “accompanying materials.” These include Access and SQL queries for record cleanup and our pre-implementation data cleanup project spreadsheet.