Difficult Transitions: Migrating from OCLC WorldShare Management Services (WMS) to Alma at UNC Charlotte

Abstract

J. Murrey Atkins Library at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte is the first institution to migrate to Ex Libris’s Alma from OCLC WorldShare Management Services (WMS), a system that differs markedly in design and in its configuration of library data from other common ILS products. Compounding the challenge of moving data from a system unfamiliar to Ex Libris staff and developers to Alma were certain data irregularities that resulted from Atkins Library’s previous migration from Millennium to WMS four years previously, particularly where enumeration and chronology data, holdings records, and bound-withs were concerned. Focusing predominantly on bibliographic and holdings data, this presentation will describe the challenges that Atkins staff confronted during its migration, not the least of which was communicating the intricacies of their source system to Ex Libris staff who were conducting their maiden migration to Alma from WMS. The presentation will also address lessons that Atkins staff learned during the migration process, what they wish they had known before and during it, and post-migration cleanup activities.