Dear colleagues,
Last Friday, July 31, the six SILS vanguard institutions completed their test data migration to Alma, Ex Libris’ library software system.
As the name implies, the vanguard is an early phase of migration for Ex Libris consortia, executed as a proof of concept. With this ingestion of acquisition, cataloging and patron information from UC Berkeley (including Northern Regional Library Facility), UCLA (including Southern Regional Library Facility), UC San Diego, UC San Francisco, UC Santa Barbara and the California Digital Library (CDL), Ex Libris will spend the next five weeks preparing an Alma environment for each of these institutions with their test data.
The SILS Implementation Coordinators group, co-chaired by Tom Bustos (UC Merced) and Carlo Medina (UCLA), are stewarding local SILS teams through the vanguard phase. We would like to acknowledge the tremendous efforts of these vanguard institutions, led by implementation coordinators Susan Boone (UCSF), Greg Ferguson (UCSD), Lynne Grigsby (UC Berkeley), Jeremy Hobbs (UCSB), Carlo Medina (UCLA) and Alison Ray (CDL).
The vanguard Alma institution zones (one per participating campus) and a shared network zone (coordinated by CDL) will be delivered to vanguard campuses on September 4, with a first look at ExLibris’ Primo VE discovery platform scheduled for Sept. 17. Product testing will take place through October in both local institutional zones and the network zone.
The decisions made during the vanguard test phase will not be carried into production without input from all UC campuses. Lessons learned from this phase will be shared broadly and the experience will inform the implementation decisions made as a system. The SILS implementation phase is scheduled to take place between November 2020 and July 2021.
While a subset of campuses are participating in the vanguard, work is occurring throughout each phase of the migration by all campuses, including policy and practice coordination, and training and outreach activities.
If you have any questions or comments, please contact AskSILS-L@listserv.ucop.edu.
Best,
Ben Alkaly & Adrian Petrisor
SILS Communication Operation Leads