Moving to Next-Gen in 6 Months: A Journey to Alma after 15 Years with Voyager

Abstract

A panel of presenters from Loyola University Chicago will share their experience with implementing Alma and Primo in 6 months, and benefits/drawbacks for taking only this amount of time. By choosing to leave the past behind and changing all systems at once we were able to shift staff and public expectations and skillsets radically. The presentation will cover the overall implementation plan, as well as implementation details for fulfillment, acquisitions, resource management, and the discovery layer. The project was well-planned and implemented in a collaborative and a decentralized model that was still highly user-centered. Such a move comes with many challenges, which the panel will also share, including working with multiple campuses and library types within a one-institution Alma/Primo instance, and dealing with electronic access issues.