1. The University of Sheffield data migration
Andy Bussey Library Systems Manager

2. Our migration Sheffield was also a Talis ILS institution
We were the first Talis institution to migrate to Alma
Some other institutions had migrated from Talis to Aleph in the past
We had a lot of experience getting data out of the Talis database and processing it
Like Manchester, Sheffield was also a Talis ILS institution.
We were the first Talis ILS customer to migrate to Alma, which meant we found many of the problems.
It did help that other Talis customers had migrated to Aleph in the past, which meant that Ex Libris were familiar with some of the data structures – but not all.
We did have a lot of experience using SQL and Perl to process data from the Talis database which helped. It gave us the option to do some of the extract ourselves.
30/11/2018
© The University of Sheffield

3. Time It takes time to understand new concepts
It takes time for Ex Libris to understand your data
We struggled for time.
Lot of new concepts for you and Ex Libris to learn.
Time is really tight at first load to cutover load, so try to do more in advance.
Although the migration team started looking at our data before our project, we were still working on concepts up to and beyond our first test load.
If you write your own extract:
Try to do as much in advance. I wrote our extract a long way in advance and tried to make it as automated and easy to alter as possible, so I could make last-minute amendments and re-run it quickly when time was really tight later.
30/11/2018
© The University of Sheffield

4. Who will do the work?
Do you have access to your data? Will you or your vendor extract the data? Is payment required?
Can you easily extract your data?
At Sheffield, we needed to use a vendor-provided program to extract bibliographic records. We were already using that script for another extract and adapted the parameters for the Alma extract, so there was no consultancy charge.
For non-bibliographic data, we had SQL access to the database and Perl tools, so we were able to write the extract scripts ourselves. But don’t under-estimate the cost of doing that.
Will you need to pay any consultancy or development charges to your current ILS vendor? It is better to find out sooner rather than later…
30/11/2018
© The University of Sheffield

5. What will you migrate? DATA
Everything you migrate has to be tested More migrated data means more fixes
DATA
You probably have a mountain of data. How much really needs to migrate?
Everything you migrate has requires:
Extraction (that maybe you have to develop)
To be understood and mapped by Ex Libris
Importing by Ex Libris
Testing by your staff
Maybe fixing by your staff once in Alma
We didn’t really need old monograph orders so we didn’t migrate. No problem. We did need continuous orders, but they have been a huge amount of work to migrate and we will be fixing them for the next 12 months. We cancelled reservations and remade them in Alma. We had a fines amnesty (and haven’t turned them back on yet…)
Our old ILS system had a management information server (equivalent to Analytics) and we have kept that for one year.
30/11/2018
© The University of Sheffield

6. Print / electronic
The P2E job converts holdings from your old ILS that looked like print into real electronic holdings
But how do you identify them?
One reason you probably want to migrate to Alma is to handle electronic material properly in a fully integrated way. Most ILS could only handle print and you had to “fake” electronic material (at Sheffield we had a library site “Internet”).
The P2E job in the migration allows you to supply a list of bibliographic ids that will get converted to proper Alma electronic records.
It may be a problem to identify them. Unfortunately our journal records had both print and electronic holdings on the same record and we did not have the time and resources to fix this before migration. We decided to convert them to electronic. It was the right decision, but it is still a lot of work to clean up.
In general, try to do as much data cleanup as possible before you enter the migration process.
30/11/2018
© The University of Sheffield