Reboot Your Practices and Policies by Using More of Alma

Abstract

Alma provides a number of features that allow libraries to improve efficiency, but because many of these features rely on re-working legacy practices, anything that is not mission-critical for migration tends to be left for later. This was the case for Loyola University Chicago, which was finally able to address some of its legacy practices over two years after migrating to Alma. Part of the impetus for this project was a renewed effort to ensure patron privacy through a privacy audit, as well as a general recognition that some of our current practices do not preserve user privacy.

In this presentation, we will present how we created a new policy and workflow for purging patrons without losing valuable data. Despite purging tens of thousands of expired user records prior to migration, there were still a significant number of records for us to remove, with no clear path forward. Using community-provided workflows as a basis, we developed a method for purging users based on user groups, establishing concrete procedures that allow us to clearly communicate our practices with patrons. We will describe our workflow and detail some lessons that we learned in the process. This is just one manner in which utilizing more features of Alma can provide new ways to “reboot” practices, but it also may necessitate venturing into the unknown. We will provide some tips for working with staff and with the Ex Libris community to mitigate some of the fear and uncertainty that this can create.