Urm partner paneligeluseptember.2009gerrity

1© Ex Libris, Ltd., 2009. Proprietary and confidential.© Ex Libris, Ltd., 2009. Proprietary and confidential.

About Boston College

• Private, Jesuit university• 14,000 students• 900 faculty• 200 library staff• 2.6 million volumes• $8M acquisitions budget

• 60% on e-resources• Many Ex Libris products

• Aleph, MetaLib, SFX, Primo, bX• [ARC, Verde]

2© Ex Libris, Ltd., 2009. Proprietary and confidential.

Academic libraries at a crossroads



• External factors• Google• Web (2.0, 3.0, …)• Mass digitization

• Local realities• Static or reduced budgets• Static or reduced staffing• Changing user expectations



1.Complete the migration from print to electronic collections.

2. Retire legacy print collections.

3. Redevelop the library space.

4. Reposition library and information tools, resources, and expertise, and

5. Migrate the focus of collections from purchasing materials to curating content.

1.Complete the migration from print to electronic collections.

2. Retire legacy print collections.

3. Redevelop the library space.

4. Reposition library and information tools, resources, and expertise, and

5. Migrate the focus of collections from purchasing materials to curating content.


Challenges as opportunities

• Enormity of challenges allows us to

• Think big

• Think outside the box

• Do things differently

• Stop doing things that no longer make sense

• Focus on services of value to users


• Get rid of silos• Eliminate redundancies• Re-design library processes (e.g., course

reserves)• Reduce complexity

• Or, if not, retain it where it’s really necessary

• Reduce TCO of library systems

Opportunities presented by URM


Why be a development partner?

• Need for new systems to support the kind of library we think we need to become

• Find Ex Libris’ vision of URM compelling• Believe that solutions developed via

partnerships rather than is silos are better• Believe that we can provide useful perspective

and input into the process• Expectation that URM development

partnership will facilitate much-needed internal change, e.g., …


Need for transformational change


Our expectations

• For development-partner process• Open, honest dialogue• Partners will bring differing perspectives• Obstacles along the way• Opportunity to re-think the way we do things• No status-quo


Our expectations

• For URM• Framework that facilitates creation of services

useful to users, in support of teaching, learning, and research

• Reduced TCO• Reduced complexity, where appropriate


Key areas of collaboration

• Cataloging/metadata services• Focus on end-user input and feedback

• Course reading• Reporting and analysis tools


Experience so far

• Process is open to change (in a good way)• Often difficult to force ourselves to re-think our

processes/workflows• when talking about required functionality for

different components of URM, first reaction is often to restate current functionality as starting point

• New appreciation of the enormity of the challenge


So what do we actually do?


Emerging services and opportunities

• BC Libraries currently working on suite of user-context-aware, web-based library services that pull data from or interact with a variety of library and university sources (ALEPH, MetaLib, SFX, Blackboard, campus data warehouse, etc.)• Examples:

• course reading lists, pushed to user based on what coursed he/she is currently enrolled in

• recommended databases, based on student’s major/minor

• “new books” RSS feeds, based on major/minor, or user-specified preference





Emerging services and opportunities

• Our hope and expectation for URM is that we will be able to develop many more services to meet new and changing user expectations

• Other areas of focus in our URM partnership agreement:• reporting• metadata services (including user-supplied

metadata)

Education

Urm partner paneligeluseptember.2009gerrity