Abstract
The Orbis Cascade Alliance is a consortium of thirty-seven public and private academic institutions in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. In January 2012, the Alliance began a two-year process of migrating all thirty-seven institutions to a single, shared integrated library system. The speaker describes the migration from the perspective of a large academic library that was in the first of four migration cohorts. Topics covered include the motivations for migrating to Alma/Primo as a consortium, the implementation process, key post-migration wins, lessons learned, and migration tips and tricks.
INTRODUCTION
Steve Shadle, Serials Access Librarian at the University of Washington Libraries, shared the experiences of the Orbis Cascade Alliance consortium’s migration to a new integrated library system (ILS) and a single, shared catalog. His presentation focused on the consortium’s migration process and not the specifics of the new system.
CONSORTIA OVERVIEW
The Orbis Cascade Alliance is comprised of thirty-seven members, both public and private, in Washington (State), Oregon, and Idaho. The Alliance is a non-profit corporation with ten staff whose funding is provided by the thirty-seven library members. Shadle pointed out the extent of diversity among the Alliance members in terms of size and mission. The University of Washington (UW) has the largest student full-time equivalent (FTE), over 40,000, followed by the University of Oregon at about 25,000. At the other end of the spectrum, a majority of members have fewer than 5,000 FTE. The concerns and priorities of a large research institution such as UW are different than institutions whose primary mission is teaching. In response to a question from the audience, Shadle noted that before the migration thirty-six of the thirty-seven members used the same ILS from Innovative Interfaces Inc, and a mix of discovery and electronic resource management (ERM) systems or none.
Shadle reviewed the various Alliance programs to demonstrate the group’s prior experiences with collaboration:
Shared Alliance Collection
Direct Patron Borrowing (anytime, anywhere pickup)
Electronic Resources Purchasing
Courier Service (to support delivery of materials)
Northwest Digital Archives & Digital Services (supporting 280 colleges, universities, archives, and museums in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Alaska, and Hawaii)
Collaborative Collection Development (including last copy guidelines)
Collaborative Technical Services (they hope the new shared system will foster more efforts in this area) left align bullets
The Alliance’s strategic agenda of working smart, designing for engagement, and innovating to transform provided the motivation and confidence to move ahead with a shared integrated library system environment.
SHARED INTEGRATED LIBRARY SYSTEM
Shadle described the major changes that occurred when the Alliance migrated thirty-seven colleges, universities, and community colleges to Ex Libris Alma (ILS) and Primo (discovery). All members were required to move to the Alma ILS, but implementation of the Primo discovery system was optional. At the time of the migration, only the largest libraries were using a discovery service. The implementation of a discovery service was new for the majority of libraries, adding even more complexities to the migration. In addition to the ILS and various discovery systems, ERMs, link resolvers, and knowledgebases were replaced.
Why did the Alliance decide to undertake such a massive project?Footnote1 The overall cost of ownership and hardware maintenance would be reduced. Some local servers tied to the previous ILS were decommissioned. There were several reasons related to using an aging system with a lack of standards, lagging functionality, servers reaching the end of their lifespan, and lack of integration with newer tools. Working in an older system also made it hard for the Alliance members to innovate, integrate, and extract data. The group was keen to improve resource sharing and services, and excited at the prospect of achieving the “one collection” vision and implementing collaborative technical services. The best chance to attain these goals was to move to a next generation library management system.
IMPLEMENTATION
As can be imagined, the migration was a massive undertaking with essentially four large simultaneous projects: the move from a legacy ILS to a next generation library management system, merging thirty-seven individual library “catalogs” into one, implementation of a shared discovery service, and coordination of shared technical service processes. Shadle shared some of the strategies the Alliance used to achieve success.
Once the contract with Ex Libris was signed in 2012, four cohorts were established so that the conversions could be phased in over the next two years because the entire group was too large to migrate at one time. Each cohort was roughly the same size in terms of collections. Cohort 1 included a diverse set of members to try to catch as many snags in the process as possible and improve the migration experience for subsequent cohorts. This first cohort included the University of Washington, Western Washington University, and four of the smaller member libraries (Linfield College, Marylhurst University, Pacific University, and Willamette University).
Project management responsibilities were divided between Ex Libris and the Alliance; as the implementation progressed, the Alliance assumed an increasing level of responsibility for later cohorts. Ex Libris handled the overall project management, training and consulting support, created the initial system configurations, and performed data migration work. The Alliance was responsible for Alliance-level project management, configuration decisions, data extracts from non–Ex Libris systems, reviewing data and configurations, as well as providing training support.
A team structure was used to manage the implementation. Working groups of six to ten were created consisting of members from across cohorts with one Alliance staff member. In addition, a designated institutional contact from each library was added to the e-mail distribution list to ensure transparent communication. The staggered migration schedule meant not all working group members were at the same stage of implementation. In the early stages, the later cohorts would see and hear reports about problems and other issues that they could not fully understand because they had not yet been exposed to the new system. However, on the plus side, some of the initial problems and concerns were resolved or improved by the time the later cohorts began migration.
TRAINING
Good training was strategically critical to the migration project’s success, especially given the lack of experience with Ex Libris systems among Alliance members. Initially, Ex Libris staff led the training. Using a “train the trainer” model for future training needs, the first cohort was trained to obtain Alma and Primo certification. Alliance trainers led most of the training for the last two cohorts. Training sessions were recorded to provide members with a consistent experience and could be viewed at any time.
LESSONS LEARNED
Shadle concluded the program by sharing some of the lessons the Alliance learned over the course of this migration. One not very surprising conclusion is that consortia work is hard! Alliance members learned their needs and priorities were not as similar as had been previously assumed. It was quite a challenge for the consortium to reach agreement on policies.
The cohort model used by the Alliance was not ideal, but necessary due to the size of the group and system limitations. There was a heavier burden on the early cohorts who were very much pioneers blazing the trail for subsequent cohorts. The early cohorts were working with a much less mature product, aspects of which were still in development, and helped improve functionality for later groups. The length of the transition required extra effort on everyone’s part. The working groups experienced burnout and turnover. It felt like the process was more a marathon than a sprint.
Nonetheless, there were positive outcomes. The collaboration needed for a successful migration helped the group develop a better shared understanding of the new system. Members collaborated in new ways to support training and developed new strategies to build expertise by sponsoring events such as a hackfest and an unconference. Having one unified voice put the Alliance in a better negotiating position with Ex Libris. The members came to realize that Alliance work is part of the job, not an extra assignment. Support from the library members was necessary to allow those with Alliance responsibilities, such as chairing a working group, to meet those obligations. They also discovered that distributed work is possible and represents an area they plan to do more with in the future.
One of the other interesting lessons was how hard it was to “think” in the new system. Many of the members had used Innovative Interfaces Millennium for a very long time, and used that experience to set up the working groups. Along the way, they realized that they had too many working groups organized along the Millennium functional structure (e.g., cataloging, acquisitions, serials), which did not fit well with Alma’s workflow-based structure. Since migration the Alliance has formed new teams, such as Shared Content, Content Creation, and Discovery & Delivery, which align better with Alma. They have also set up a process to deal with new Alma releases where an established group handles the testing and rollout. On the user side, the transition from a different discovery service to Primo has generally not been difficult for most members.
As with any migration, a great deal of data cleanup was needed.Footnote2 The list of projects the Alliance received from Ex Libris was quite daunting! Therefore, Shadle recommends libraries start working on the cleanup well ahead of time. It will pay dividends down the line.
FINAL THOUGHTS
In conclusion Shadle offered this advice—to let the past and old ways of doing things go and move forward by embracing change and ambiguity.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Shadle acknowledged the assistance of Alliance colleagues Jennifer Ward, Megan Drake, Al Cornish, and John Helmer with the preparation of his presentation slides.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Steve Shadle
Steve Shadle is Serials Access Librarian, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington.
Susan Davis
Susan Davis is Acquisitions Librarian for Continuing Resources, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, Buffalo, New York.
Notes
1. Alan Cornish, Richard Jost, and Xan Arch, “Selecting a Shared 21st Century Management System,” Collaborative Librarianship 5, no. 1 (2013): 16–28, http://collaborativelibrarianship.org/index.php/jocl/article/view/232/180 (accessed July 21, 2015).
2. Richard Sapon-White, Know Your Data: A Structured Approach to Migration Preparation, Post-Migration Clean-Up, and Ongoing Metadata Maintenance. ELUNA 2015 presentation. http://documents.el-una.org/1288/ (accessed February 25, 2016)