Alma 2 years on Assessing the impact of Alma at The University of Manchester Ciaran Talbot Library Systems Manager

Challenges faced Changes in workflows Workarounds Use of Analytics Use of APIs Questions

The University of Manchester 40,000 students 10,000 staff Largest single-site university in the UK Faculties Engineering and Physical Sciences Humanities Life Sciences Medical & Human Sciences

The University of Manchester Library 11 library sites Main Library visits ~1million/year Is one of the UK’s National Research Libraries Large Special Collections at the John Rylands Library

July 2013 Talis Alto (LMS) Talis Prism (Catalogue) Primo (Vertical search) SFX (link resolver) Alma Primo

July 2013 Talis Alto (LMS) Talis Prism (Catalogue) Primo (Vertical search) SFX (link resolver) Alma Primo

Primo challenges The Researcher Experience Study “…as a matter of urgency, seek to resolve the problems that have arisen relating to the performance of its Library search service…” “…failure to find books, journal articles and other material known to be in the collection…” Ouch!

Primo challenges What did we do to fix it? Boost items from our physical collection Removed duplicate e-resources Fixed parent/child linking Removed 856 field links from physical records Improved metadata to ensure e and p records merged correctly

Primo challenges Did it have an effect?

Primo challenges Impact on usage Primo becomes primary search tool

Primo challenges What are we doing next? Begin iterative usability testing Further look and feel changes Bring Library Chat box into Primo Enhance personalisation Enhance discoverability via other search interfaces

Change to fulfillment

Simplify! 1 night 2 night 4 week End of day 3 hour12 week weekend 1 week Standard High Demand

Loans by month per year

Volume of returns Lending Team actually hidden by book mountains at this point

What do staff think? “Configuration was challenging and progress was slow in delivering adequate fulfilment functionality but two years down the line most elements of fulfilment operate adequately and we are beginning to see some interesting developments on the road map.” Sarah - Customer Services Co-ordinator (Lending Support)

Improved user management Staff system Student system Integration Hub Alma Access Control System (turnstiles) Central IT Services Library Single Point of Truth Create/update user API

What do staff think? “The move to Alma provided us with the opportunity to streamline our library membership processes resulting in staff time spent on data input being almost halved. It also prompted the University’s Systems Integration team to increase the efficiency of customer data feeds to Alma resulting in almost real time updates to library user accounts.” Natalie - Customer Services Co-ordinator

Impact on workflows eBooks move to Collection Management Import process PDAs (Patron Driven Acquisition cycles) But it is a workaround Because we’re not using the CZ (Community Zone)

What do staff think? “Alma has allowed us to expand our areas of responsibility, moving into e-book activation, set manipulation, importing metadata, creating Normalization rules, indeed, taking more of a proactive approach to Metadata Management without having to rely so heavily on our Digital Systems team.” Andrew - Metadata Management and Discovery Team Leader

What do staff think? “It is particularly useful to have order information and material detail in the same system, and connected by a single click. It is also a huge advantage to have print and electronic content together in the same system, which allows for sophisticated reporting on all the Library’s collections using Alma’s powerful Analytics tool.” Tim - Electronic Resources Co-ordinator

Life with Alma – 2 years on Devolution and ‘shift left’ Collection Management IT Support Lending Teams Finance Team Stock moves Importing e-resources Self-service support Reporting Year end rollover

What do staff think? “The invoice process has been well received by the Purchasing team and is seen as being easier than on our previous system. […] The system isn’t perfect and there are still areas where we would like to have enhancements/refinements.” Louise (Finance Office Team Manager)

“But it isn’t perfect” Resource Sharing Lending workflow not used

“But it isn’t perfect” Resource Sharing Lending workflow not used Physical item requests Issues with queues How it alerts patrons to curtailed loans Took longer than anticipated to setup the bibliographic/holding data exports to external aggregators in place Recent Analytics availability

Analytics Collection development and profiling project

Analytics Collection development and profiling project Collection profiling Next step is to feed Alma data into the University’s data warehouse

Alma (LMS after July 2013) Talis (LMS before July 2013) Sentry Access Control System UoM Data Warehouse NSS ScoresDegree results

APIs Academic adds record to institutional repository (‘eScholar’) eScholar creates a Purchase Order in Alma

Governance LMSA (Library Management System Advisory Group) Distribute responsibility for release notes Acquisitions Finance Resource Sharing Collection Management Lending

What we learned? “Free your mind” Simplify your processes The move to Primo had a bigger impact than anticipated Systems team are no longer the gatekeepers of change Embracing new skillsets

What next? Move to data driven decisions Focus on Primo Automate away the repetitive tasks It’s all about the integrations (APIs)

What next? Continue to collaborate and push development We are working on mobile apps which integrate with Alma Facilitate increased streamlining of workflows

Thank you!