During the visit to check the upcoming conference venue and city, the IGeLU Steering Committee has traditionally used the opportunity to have internal meetings, meetings with the local conference organizing committee and a meeting with Ex Libris senior executives.
Topics we discussed in our meetings:
IGeLU membership fee and benefits
The SC discussed ideas about adding a tiered membership for consortia, since more and more institutions will form consortia to collaborate and share application instances. IGeLU should cater for them and offer added value for consortia to register as IGeLU member. At the same time individual institutions should not be neglected or feel underprivileged.
The current fee structure will remain in effect for 2016. Any new changes arising from the consortia discussion will be applicable in the following years.
For ProQuest customers, they will be offered free membership for this year 2016.
Reduced membership fee for all new members for the first year starting from next year. The exact reduced fee is yet to be determined.
Any changes in membership fees will be subject to confirmation by the General Assembly at the upcoming conference in Trondheim, Norway.
New PWG/SIWG initiatives
There are important and very attractive initiatives for new PWGs and SIWG –
Summon; Several people are willing to invest in starting up the PWG on the short term. The PWG will start on a short term..
Leganto; Although the number of customers for this product is still small, there are volunteers to start a PWG and Sue Harmer from University of New South Wales (Australia) is willing to coordinate the group.
Analytics: IGeLU is happy to announce that the new Analytics SIWG is operational now. There were even more candidates than seats for the group!
ProQuest merger and impact on IGeLU
Of course we discussed the latest developments and events, both internally and with Ex Libris.
For Summon, IGeLU and ELUNA are starting up a joint PWG. Ex Libris will grant 150 development points starting 2017.
Ex Libris informed us about their plans to integrate all former ProQuest application products and the customers into their company, systems and workflows. All products and customers will be integrated into Salesforce, Knowledge Center etc.
New KB and roadmap for implementation in Alma,
Ex Libris informed us about their plans to at first implement the new KB into ALMA, planned for by the end of 2016.
Idea Exchange and NERS
The SC asked Ex Libris for an export function in Ideas Exchange to better evaluate Ideas and NERS requests. It helps deduplication and eases the PWG efforts. Ex Libris has no principle objection but needs to check the options in the product.
The SC asked Ex Libris for a better exposure of the NERS voting result in release notes and Ideas Exchange whenever an enhancement is implemented in a new version. Ex Libris agreed on this.
The SC discussed with Ex Libris the idea of adding a time 6-12-18 months period to enhancements in Idea Exchange with the status ‘Planned’ as the expected date of implementation. But Ex Libris only adds a timeline there is a definite one. However, this cannot always be the case. Ex Libris claims flexibility about when such ideas actually get slotted into the roadmap.
Alma UX process
The SC did raise the concerns, remarks and proposals as discussed with the Alma PWG to Ex Libris. Their response was positive in the way that the process will be transformed to a bigger and more holistic UX program across the system, using internal and external UX experts.
Primo Cloud transition and local developments
The SC expressed to Ex Libris the concerns of the PWG about the current outlook of the proposed local development facilities.
Ex Libris responded that as part of the May and August releases new UI customization packages and tools will offer the customization needs of the majority of customers. The most advanced developers community will receive in the November release a development framework which provides the ability to develop their own advanced capabilities, also for the SaaS environment.
Knowledge Center, evaluation and progress
The SC has the impression, based on feedback from active members, that from the customer perspective the openness of the Knowledge Center, including the training material is highly appreciated and that the Knowledge Center has a good reception under customers.
Ex Libris confirmed this. Currently still more articles are being added to the Center and one of the integration jobs that comes with the former ProQuest merger is to add all documentation and information for the former ProQuest products into the Knowledge Center.
Conference affairs
The SC discussed several conference affairs internally and with the local organizers committee.
Based on the budget we received from the committee we decided on a conference fee of € 250 for members and € 500 for non-members.
CampusM will be used as conference App. Ex Libris has granted a license for free to IGeLU.
The maximum number of seats for the Developers Day will be 150.