The Orbis Cascade Alliance is a consortium of 37 public and private academic institutions in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. In January 2012, the Alliance began a two-year process of migrating all 37 institutions to a single, shared ILS. Migrating in four cohorts every six months, the first cohort of six institutions went live with Alma and Primo in July 2013 with the final cohort migrating in December 2014. A representative from one of the six pioneering libraries will discuss the motivations for migrating to Alma/Primo as a consortium, the implementation process, key post-migration wins, lessons learned, and migration tips and tricks. Steve Shadle University of Washington Serials Access Librarian Seattle, WA Steve's primary responsibility at the University of Washington Libraries is to manage the library linking systems that provide access to journal full-text. In addition, he catalogs eSerials selected and licensed by the UW Libraries. Steve's background in serial standards began with his work as an ISSN Cataloger at the Library of Congress and currently includes serving on the NISO Standing Committee for Presentation and Identification of Electronic Journals (PIE-J). Steve is an accomplished cataloging trainer and gives regular presentations on library cataloging and metadata and the role library systems play in providing access to content.

1. Wrangling Cats: A Case
Study of a Library
Consortium Migration
NASIG
May 28, 2015
Steve Shadle
University of Washington Libraries

2. Outline
Consortia Overview
Shared ILS Rationale
Implementation
Lessons Learned
Next Steps

3. http://blog.karmona.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/herding-cats.jpg

4. 37 Members
Private & Public
Colleges, Universities,
Community Colleges in
Oregon, Washington,
and Idaho
275,000 Students
Supports 280
Colleges, universities,
archives, museums in
Oregon, Washington,
Idaho, Montana, Alaska,
Hawaii, and Utah
Non-profit corporation
10 staff
No central funding

5. Diversity!
Student FTE

6. Alliance Programs
• Shared Alliance Collection
• Direct Patron Borrowing
• Electronic Resources Purchasing
• Courier Service
• Northwest Digital Archives & Digital Services
• Collaborative Collection Development
• Collaborative Technical Services

7. C to C
Collaborate
to
Customize
Do things together where we are
substantially the same
Free up resources so members can fully
realize their unique qualities
=
=

8. Work Smart
Work and partner at the appropriate scale: local, regional, national,
international
…
Design for Engagement
Collect wisely, share freely, and enhance the teaching, learning, and
research environment
…
Innovate to Transform
Push boundaries, change the landscape, and inspire the profession
…
Strategic Agenda
Do things once
Do things the same
Do things together
Unique collections
Reduce barriers to access
New models of publication,
data curation, & pedagogy
Develop new services
Reimagine shared systems
Advocate for change

9. Shared Integrated
Library System

10. Migrated 37 colleges, universities, and community
colleges to Ex Libris Alma (ILS) and Primo (discovery).
Along the way, replaced
• Integrated library systems
• Discovery systems
• Electronic resource management systems
• Link resolvers/knowledgebases
• Standalone proxy servers
• Local servers … going to the cloud
What We Did

11. Why Did We Do This?
… because of the past
Old systems
Based on limited bandwidth, storage, lack of standards
Lagging functionality
Hard to
• Innovate
• Integrate
• Extract data
Total cost of ownership: Maintenance, Servers, Discovery, ERM, open
URL resolvers, etc. etc.

12. Why Did We Do This?
… because of the future
Better services for students, faculty, staff
Improved resource sharing … a better Summit
Improved staff tools
Enabling
• Collaborative Technical Services
• Vision of “one collection”
New vendor options
Alma, Intota, Sierra, WMS, etc.

13. Legacy  Next Generation
37  1
Shared Discovery
Collaborative Technical Services
Four Big Projects at Once!

14. Timeline
2008-10 Investigating options and models
2010 Total cost of operation study
2011 Request for Information, writing RFP
2012 Jan – July RFP, demos, negotiation, cost models, council vote
2012 Aug – Dec Contract with Ex Libris signed, cohorts finalized,
temporary project manager hired
2013 January Kick Off Meeting
2013 June Project Manager hired
2013 July Cohort 1 went live! 6 members … including our largest
2014 January Cohort 2 went live! 11 members
2014 July Cohort 3 went live! 10 members
2015 January Cohort 4 went live! 10 members
New Summit went live! All 37 members!
We are done!

16. Project Management
• Divided between Ex Libris and the Alliance
• Alliance taking increasing responsibility in
later cohorts

17. Selected Ex Libris Responsibilities
• Overall project management
• Training and consulting support
• Create initial system configurations
• Perform data migration work

18. Selected Alliance Responsibilities
• Alliance-level project management
• Configuration decisions
• Data extracts from non-ExL systems
• Review configuration and data
• Training support

19. I Team
Discovery
Working Group
Normalization
Rules Working
Group
User Experience
Working Gorup
Cataloging WG
Circulation &
Resource
Sharing WG
Training WG Systems WG Acquisitions WG Serials/ERM WG
https://www.orbiscascade.org/shared-ils-committee/
Team Structure

20. Implementation Team
• 8 members consisting of working group chairs and
Alliance project manager
• Met weekly with ExLibris
• Coordinated overall operation and implementation

21. Working Groups
• 6-10 members from across cohorts + 1 Alliance staff
member
• Met weekly/biweekly using web conference service
• Designated institutional contact was on email
distribution
• As migration proceeded, contacts attended meetings

22. Focus on Training
• Strategically critical to project success
• Context: Very modest ExL product use
• ExL-led training: Alma and Primo
certification

23. Focus on Training
• Alma Functional Workshop: Workflow-
specific instruction in use of Alma
• Alliance trainers led most of this training in
last two cohorts
• Sessions were recorded

25. Lessons Learned
• Cohort based migration not ideal
• Required due to system limitations and development
• Burden on earlier cohorts
• Extra effort to support longer transition
• Too many working groups
• Communication/coordination issues
• Burnout and turnover
• Understand the underlying data structures and
dependencies
• Let it go!
• Embrace change and ambiguity

26. Lessons Learned
• Start data cleanup NOW!

27. Lessons Learned
• Collaboration results in good things
• Better shared understanding (training, hackfest,
unconference, customizations)
• Unified voice in working with ExLibris
• Understanding that Alliance work is part of someone’s job,
not an extra assignment
• Distributed work is possible
• Consortial work is hard
• Consortial vs. Institutional (policies)
• Installation vs. Institutional (system)
• We’re not as similar as we thought

28. Next Steps

29. Thanks and References
Thanks to Alliance Colleagues
Jennifer Ward
Megan Drake
Al Cornish
John Helmer
For more information
Orbis Cascade Alliance Shared ILS Program
https://www.orbiscascade.org/shared-ils-1
Cornish, Alan, Jost, Richard, & Arch, Xan. (2013). Selecting a shared 21st
century management system. Collaborative Librarianship, 5(1), 16.
Sapon-White, Richard. Know Your Data: A Structured Approach to
Migration Preparation, Post-Migration Clean-up, and Ongoing
Metadata Maintenance. ELUNA 2015 presentation. Forthcoming.