Alright, I'm gonna go ahead and get started. We've got a lot of things to get through so I'm sure we'll take the majority of the hour,
so feel free to ask questions throughout. we will be happy to take them as, as they come up, or we can you know come back to them at the end as well.
So I wanted to address this I've received a lot of questions.
Over the last couple of days there was a message that was sent out from the Vice Chancellor for procurement Tom hip Shin that went out to a lot of the purchasing list serves that,
you know, a lot of the people in the business offices and CMOS are on and then they forwarded it to the libraries and, you know, just some general confusion on that.
So I just wanted to explain it a little bit and then let you know what this means and why we sent the memo and no apologies that we really, we were having a lot of discussions about this so it wasn't like I could really send out a pre message before the
memo on this.
So some of you might be aware of this but he was a procurement officers are definitely aware of it.
There was a recent SUNY policy and this policy has been sent to administrators presidents CEOs etc that if there's a central SUNY system agreement, then campuses must use it or they must submit an exemption request that exemption request is form, 15,
and you know it, it asks that you provide a reason, and that you indicate that your CFO, or VP level person supports you.
So, as many of you also know we have been working for several months trying to finish up six contracts. There are some others to that were struggling to meet deadlines on.
So, even though it wasn't explicitly in the, in the policies. A lot of the business offices were interpreting that if a Sunni agreement was in development that that they couldn't, or they shouldn't develop their own individual agreement.
So this was causing a lot of problems with,
with some of the contracts related to the ISP such as West, a lot of people are moving to West because of some lower pricing and New York Times and a few others.
So it was becoming a problem because we're late on these contracts and the campuses wanted to get them started before the beginning of the semester. So we had to get this moving forward and we didn't want to force a lot of exemptions to needlessly go
through, just because we were late so it was all focused on these if these but it also left it open that if we're late on contracts and you need to do business and want to do business, that we can provide that on a reasonable level so let's say we, you
know, to use the spring or nature agreement as an example, there's 10 campuses who need to renew spring or nature. If we're not.
If we're not going to meet that deadline, then you don't need to go through a complicated process involving your VP or CFO you can work directly with all this.
So, what, what I think will have an impact, especially if your business office is monitoring and auditing, your purchase requests for for looking for Sunni or other agreements to use.
Is that next year on RIFD or other contracts. If you chose not to use a central agreement you you will likely have to submit form 15 so there's no immediately immediate tomorrow impact but I think there will be next year impact for many of you, and you
know we know that you have good reasons that you could have that you've likely got a better deal by committing to different terms, or our contract just didn't work for you.
So it's not that exemptions not there to deny it, but it's mostly there as a prompt to say you know just let us know why you weren't using or why you're not going to use our contract.
So, you know, I've responded to almost everyone some people sent me really complex emails that are going to take me a little bit to read through and respond to a couple pages of questions, but I think I've gotten back to everybody, and any questions on
that.
And, and sorry that that memo came out and came to you indirectly.
This is just how these things are and, you know, sorry for that.
I just wanted to ask a question because it my campus that that memo didn't filter down to me through to the whatever campus context.
And I see somebody else says the same thing.
But nonetheless, what I wanted to, to ask though, are you going to do like an FAQ, I mean you said you got lots of questions from people but it would be nice if we could all share the answers unless there's something so secret that can't be shared.
I think would be helpful to everybody.
Yeah I posted it in workplace but I'll work on putting together an FAQ and I've already sent in multiple, multiple emails into our ticketing system so I can create an FAQ from all of my responses but but yes yeah, great, great because I mean I did other
things that that I might want to ask you I will, I will do that offline. Thanks. Yeah, yeah. I'm Shannon This is Elaine from optometry, you just mentioned, Springer nature, and I just had a conversation with
our journals renewal person about, you know, renewing. Can you just, you know, boil it down the spring or nature or week, is that going forward now, should we not renew through.
Yeah, I'm sorry I was gonna, you know, there's other things on the slide that I was going to talk about that short answer is, we now have done a full back and forth red line between both attorneys, Springer nature was really really slow and getting it
back to us because they the attorney who they've assigned three different attorneys to it and one of them left the company so there were some delays.
But, you know, to be honest this is a great example of what that memo is meant to do is, We're trying to work on a central agreement and it's hard. There's lots of, lots of reasons why delays happen.
But if you want to, and you choose to. If we don't, you know, to go on your own and renew that you don't need that form 15 exemption, I can just send you a note to say yes please go ahead.
We're not sure whether we will be on time for this agreement. And then you know you can post my, you can put my email and make it as a writer into your business office if they're.
If they're auditing, you that much.
But that's a perfect example of. Yes, we are working on it. We hope it will be done by November December, but I also know enough about these types of things to know that they're not auditing you that much.
Yeah, does that. Does that answer your question so short answer. We're working on it, but if you need to proceed and do business. Okay, while we are developing the central agreement, go for it.
And I can help you provide that documentation Okay, and we could join up later if yes. Okay, thank you. that helps. And that was the problem we're running into over and over again, dozens and dozens of times with the ISP contracts and that's why that
came up as examples, just like this. Okay, thank you.
All right.
Um, any any more questions on that.
So just general procurement updates so lots on here.
You know I get a lot of a lot of questions on this, we are, we're trying to do this as quickly as we can with OCLC. So the Attorney General's Office approved the contract.
And now, last week, it went to the Office of the State Comptroller my experience the last six or seven contracts I've worked on the OSC usually.
As long as we have all the insurance forms, etc. They usually just ask about pricing things like that so I'm not expecting a large delay on OCLC.
Lots of people have been asking me Should I do my own contract OCLC has said no late fees no no disruption of service. As long as we get it done by end of September, and I'm sure as long as we are taking good faith efforts to continue with the agreement
that they will extend that so I would just sit tight on those renewals.
If, if you can, and wait for us to get that contract finalized so shouldn't take too much longer, and really sorry for the delay. We thought we were ahead of the game OCLC has been really responsive with us.
But we met some delays that we just didn't anticipate from any of us.
A third iron we have finally finalized the contract.
That's in contract the contract reporter. So, you know, thanks for everybody who got those pih back. Still waiting for three of them in the negotiations, but we're paying a vendor and then we'll look back and, hopefully, pay for the other three when we
can get responses from campuses.
And we've sent this out to the people who are affected but the secret researcher contractor was also contract was also finalized.
So sorry for the delay on that one as well.
So Springer nature so this is nature and all of the nature subtitles.
You know, this is one where next year likely you're going to need a form 15. If you are going through neural etc so that's really not the question your choice here, but you know the compliance at the at the procurement level.
So, we've started to give them more aggressive deadlines to say you have to have this back to us in seven working days to try to get through the second round of reviewing of red lines but, you know, it's the typical thing that you go through where if
vendors are trying to red line Exhibit A and some of the standard agreements, you have to set some, you know, you have to just go through this a little bit.
I'm really hoping that we get this going.
And are finalizing it before. Those renewals happen but if you do need to and want to renew on your own with nature.
Go for it.
We understand you need to you need to continue.
So Sunni finally executed the six contracts related to the ISP so they are, they are now sitting with the Attorney General.
Sorry for the delay on that.
And, and I think the, the ones that are the most affected our New York Times and Westlaw because some campuses wanted to pick that up. And those vendors won't allow you to start the agreement or to start using the service without a signed agreement either
by you or by Sunni.
The rest of them, you know, I think we're at a good place where it's either the vendors a little bit more flexible or we're doing central invoicing so we're doing that back end negotiation with them.
The other thing that we're spending a lot of time on in procurement is working with ogs to review and try to expand as much as possible the scope and the offerings, on, on the different contracts related to library materials and services are not services
but content.
And, you know, thanks to everybody from the University Centers who's working with us on that think we're, you know, good, making some good progress. And, you know, hopefully we will see the benefit of that in, you know, another another year or so.
But we're also making short term improvements working with vendors to, and then also putting in the request on their behalf, with ogs to get more things on the contract.
So, I think, Esther has the exact numbers but we got 100 between 115 hundred and 75 new products added by pro quest. We met multiple times with ABS go to say, Can you look at adding some other products that we've heard that there's interest or people
are considering an RFP. So things like open Athens, and some of their other services as well.
Just a quick note. We did submit on time, you know, thanks for all of the back and forth with campuses on this and I'm hoping that even if we aren't going to pull your data moving forward, that you at least appreciated the dashboard that you could use
and that you copy that and made it your own or, you know, you're going to use that to streamline it going forward.
So, we left it open ended with some campuses because they weren't ready to commit to either. I absolutely know that I want to submit this myself, or I want Sunni or SLS to submit it on my behalf so we send something out to the directors listserv are the
directors workplace group to say, you know, please take a look. Let us know if, if, if you want to change something, or confirm that, you know, confirm one way or another for some campuses whether you want us to pull your data, or you're going to submit
it yourself, we only receive one response. We're going to do the individual follow up, only with the campuses where that's still an open question, and the rest will just assume, one way or another.
Based on our conversations that you'll be submitting or will be submitting going forward.
Also a note and several people have taken up on this I, it's been a good experience from our perspective, both, you know I've been involved in some of them.
Many of the staff have has been as well. You know if you if you have the benefit of hiring a new person.
And you want some help with onboarding, especially related to the shared services that we have with LS p, or anything else that you know just let us know and we can we can help with that.
And we're happy to do that doesn't require any sort of extra agreement or support.
You know, I think, I think that's went well for the people who have gone through it,
a note on the whole ebook I ll update and just trying to kind of bring everybody up to speed.
So, we had sent out some messaging to the people who were to the campuses who were interested in this, that we thought we were not going to be able to use on Primo so we we had sent some messaging, in cooperation with the Cal State system was also on
on Primo and Alma indicating we were disappointed that we couldn't make this work and Oman Primo. So there was some responses and we met with product managers to, you know, it looks like we can make this work and all mine Primo in the pilot at least,
so we're just waiting on some prima customization and a community zone collection to, to be created for us. And then we should be able to make this work and Alma Primo, and then expect this to be a live service the pro quest is going to be offering in
2022 and when I say live service you understand what I mean and the pro quest and next leaders context that all of the edges might not be refined down.
So once we're through this ebook pilot update, we always get a lot of interest about, you know, why can't we share ebooks.
And in whole. We're going to use the different advisory groups like the MSP advisory board the SRS group and potentially the SLC board to say, you know, would you like us to pursue trying to adopt this long term live in our environments, so that we can
do whole ebook, I ll lending through ebook Central, you know not to say that we wouldn't explore other doing that and other channels, but that would be a completely separate project where we're assuming that ebook central will have this, and then it will
be integrated into rapid oh and and Alma in, you know, in 2022.
So we also have almost 30 people involved in di initiatives with a overarching Task Force and then some subgroups. Lauren from Potsdam is is sharing this and doing a lot of work to help us to coordinate and advise what's going on.
The sub groups that we formed professionals aren't professional development collections. Teaching outreach info lit, and then policies. So look for some communication and activities and resources coming from these different subgroups in the, in the near
future, including webinars and other types of professional development activities, and this was made possible by funds provided to us from from Cisco.
So this is a little outside of the SLS but just wanted to remind, many of you because there.
I'm sorry, I forgot. I knew I was going to forget one buildings and spaces is another the subgroups. Thank you, Lauren.
So dq University is a is an online portal with a lot of different courses both general courses on accessibility so accessibility and services. And then also a lot of technical courses on accessibility like how to create accessible documents how to, you
know, fix different things in web accessibility etc.
So, we lost access to that. We had a year subscription that was subsidized by Sunni, and then that lapsed, and now we have another year of it, I believe, and that's available to everyone in Sunni and your EIT accessibility officer should be the primary
contact. And that person should know how, how to get access or how to give you access. If that person says that they don't know how to get access, and you want it for your library.
Then you can contact SLS and we can we can make the connection for you.
So, the accessibility cohort we we we've asked them in, you know, we'll start working on this, to provide some suggested trainings within the Q university that we think would be good for different functional areas or positions.
One of the things that naturally kerchief, who's the DI and or the DI and accessibility coordinator at SUNY did was put, put together a document that had suggested trainings and courses for different functional areas across the institution, but there
wasn't anything for library so we're going to fill in that, that part of it in the very near future. But, you know, by all means feel free to get started and at least start working on the fundamentals courses or whatever, whatever other course that you
think is relevant to you.
Just a reminder that it's okay to ask for help, because this can be really really frustrating and take a long time if you don't work with it a lot.
And now's the time where I'm guessing you're doing sis loading, much, much more frequently than you, perhaps do normally.
So, we heard, and we've definitely experienced that the new application that Seacrest created and supports called sorry arm that takes banner data and puts it into Alma compliant XML, that they expanded that it will pull more data but some of that data
may need to be mapped so it's creating a lot more failed user loads. And, you know, we, I can't fix the mapping for you either your IT department would have to fix it or work with seekers, but I can at least fix that.
Or we can fix the files for you, so that you can load, load the file and, you know, load the file, a couple of times if needed. While you're it is working on fixing that and, you know, just let us know and we can we can help you with that.
If you're using our FTP server we can get the file from there and fix it and just put it back up there and we can reload it or you can reload it depending on what your preferences, turn it over to Michelle.
Hey, thanks Shannon. Everybody got
a couple things about discovery that the September release will be for maintenance only which is good. No functionality changes are coming this month from the August release I think I did post about this and workplace but in case you missed it, there
is a new pagination method in primo, which was designed to improve accessibility instead of just constantly loading new content in the bottom of the page, it will display chunks of 1025 or 50 results per page, and the top results load first and the bottom
results render as you scroll on pay well PDFs, if you have on payroll setup you should be now seeing PDFs in your search results, kind of like if you have lived key or, you know, frozen or whatever, you'll see the PDFs right and the results you don't
to open up the full record so that is a cool thing. There's a new role for discovery, there are a couple new roles view management and discovery operator limited and these are designed so that if you want some of your staff to have certain privileges
but not all of the privileges for discovery maintenance you can set up these new roles for them.
And also you can add a copyright statement to your request forms like your researcher in form or if you have article hold requests that kind of thing, right on the form itself instead of making that open in a new page which is a good thing and then I
have the link there to the release notes from August, you can go ahead Shannon.
And then he resources.
There's been a lot of things happening with the resources.
I'm trying to keep up with it and workplace but if you want hot off the press news, you know when things stop working or finding out what's going on I would encourage you to sign up for the listserv IL, and you can just google on my L and it'll give you
information about how to sign up for that. There were some problems with Jason linking that is fixed, there was also problems with Springer and linking that should also be fixed.
The, the community's own team says that they're working hard to fix these problems they have started sending out reports about why they've been happening so that was, that's a step in the right direction.
But do submit a ticket to excellent verse if you have outstanding issues or you know again post on workplace or let us know because usually if you're having the problem it's probably widespread across to me.
The harvest timeframe for counter five sushi reports you used to be all or nothing and now you can limit to a particular month or you know a particular timeframe so that's a good thing that came out in August, and I have the link to the release notes
for August. Thanks,
everyone. Shannon, you can go to the next slide.
I'm going to start with an update on the Sunni Connect task force. So, as you might have heard our Sunni Connect package of obscure databases are coming up for renewal next June at the end of June 2022.
So we formed a task force the shirt collections committee formed a task force to review strategies and sort of recommend a course of action to the board.
We are currently serving you all the libraries for feedback on that current package of databases which databases in that package are useful.
You know, things like we presented a few options for that we are we're considering a strategies moving forward so we're asking for feedback on that we're asking for just general feedback on on the program.
So we've received about 25 responses to that survey so far. We're asking you to respond by the end of this month.
And I'm going to put that survey link in the chat.
The other thing we're doing is we're starting to gather usage data and talk about other metrics that we might consider in our analysis of the current package as well as considering other options.
And if you want to stay up to date on what the task force is doing see or minutes from our meetings and things like that.
You can visit our live guide page which I'm also sharing the link to in the chat.
Okay. Next slide.
Alright, so I want to talk a little bit about the science and direct journal package renewal.
So our current Science Direct contract runs through December 31 2022, which feels like a really long time away.
But knowing how lengthy the procurement process has been for us in the past for the Sunni contracts, as well as, you know, the complexities involved in negotiating this contract and Elsevier is history of kind of dragging out negotiations.
We are starting to get ahead of that and thinking about the strategy that we're going to use for this. This renewal. So we started reaching out to stakeholders, including the shared collections committee and campuses and sectors.
And we're going to be in having those initial discussions to help us, and the shirt collections committee kind of guide strategy on that. So, we will establish a live guide page to keep you updated once we have something more formal ready to go on.
Next slide.
So just a few other quick updates.
If you are campus is receiving j store and SJ store and voice.
But you were expecting to pay for Jay store via the recharge via our central agreement.
Please let us know.
You shouldn't be and we're working with the vendor to get those corrected so just send a ticket in or shoot, shoot me an email.
Some of you, it gets a little complex because some of you are getting few packages off of the central deal and a few others.
Direct so it's it's a complex thing and we're happy to help sort of sort that out with you.
We are working through the final one year contract extension for our Sunni white art store contract.
This is one that we had a central contract for. And we, we don't pay this fear recharge.
You get a direct invoice from, from Africa from art store.
But we do need to get the pricing from the vendor and have that included when we do the contract extension. So, we found out and you've probably already heard at this point that the vendors implemented a new fee structure.
So everyone's getting a nice reduction and their subscription fee this year, which is great.
And we have started submitting, we're ready to submit the procurement forums we've been asked to hold off until the contracts the IP contracts or through.
So we'll be getting those in very soon, and hoping to get that contract extension approved by the end of the year.
Last year, you probably remember we had several delays getting that going part of that was us getting started a little late and part of it was just slow being slow during that time period.
so we're starting early and hoping to avoid having having you all have to wait on that one.
And then the other renewal that's going to be coming up soon as the New England Journal of Medicine.
This is a handshake pricing agreement, we don't have a central contract, we don't do central billing.
But we do need to work with the vendor because their consortia pricing is complex and, as you know, last year we kind of. We had access for all of SUNY but we were sort of forced to break that up.
Due to the vendors difficulties I guess handling that invoicing.
So we are hoping, and we're apologies that, for those of you that got kicked off of that unknowingly or missed that deadline, not our intention but. So we're hoping to again give a lot of lead time to that renewal and make sure that everyone who wants
to join in on has an opportunity to do that.
Here I think that's all that I have already Maggie.
Thanks so Hi everyone.
So the first thing I want to talk about is removing the foreign language and past have detailed initiatives, it's completed, I began implementing this initiative in May 2021 and completed in July.
That includes network zones and everybody's IDs. So anything that is an MSP 59 that we have decided to retain and our mark records are there and everything that's been removed has been removed, and of course I've worked individually with different campuses,
based on the requirements for their iz only records, but they want to retain.
Next place.
The next initiative that is up, are the brief level rules initiative. I was hoping to get started. This month, and it's going to be starting out start implementing next month.
As a result, there's always a snag when I start doing work I'm like oh she goes smoothly and then I find you know the CZ brief levels have different roles so I'm trying to make the math.
So with this brief level rule will update the encoding levels coming from the leader 17 of the mark record.
They just tell you what level of cataloging whether it's a brief level, or if it's a full level and in between.
And we're OCLC started to convert these records in January 2021 with encoding levels of K to level seven and they'll be doing that with a few other so they'll be removing some and merging them into different levels.
And the changes are going to be applied to the network zone, and to your iz only records, so anything that's gets applied at the network zone level will be applied to your iz linked records to network zone.
But then I will need to apply them individually to each of your eyes ease.
I will make sure I will communicate with all cataloging leads prior to making these changes so you're aware of that I'm in your system doing some work and when they're completed.
We have updated the MSP 42, it will be updated again because this is updated prior to like looking at the CZ brief levels don't align to OCLC standards.
So I'm trying to make them fall within our four criteria, we're going to have full exceeds minimum minimum and brief levels, and they're going to display as words instead of numbers so that people can have a glance understand what those brief levels meet.
Next please.
Starting around August 4.
We started getting these really weird corrupted diet critics in our big records, primarily for brackets are displayed and strangely.
I opened a case with OCLC to find out what was going on. I had identified that they're coming in from our OCLC girls share collection, and is only impacting anything coming through our OCLC daily important for new updates and merge records.
Only when I say only that's could be thousands and thousands of records a day. So, you know, opened up a case with x sleepers, and they're not finding anything on their on their side but they did discover looking in like Notepad, that they could find
the corrupted diet critics of characters being corrupted.
diet critics the characters being corrupted. From the OCLC file because I gave them a file that's coming from the FTP server so now I'm in communication with OCLC their development is looking at this, I've been in communication with them today so hopefully this will
this will move forward and we can get this resolved. So what I'm doing right now is I am working every day, I have a file, I have run a report to find weird diet critics, it will include the ones that are being corrupted by the world share collection
anything else maybe from people who are using OCLC connection web version because it does not allow for selecting ut f8, it will catch everything and so what I do is I run this report.
I grab all the OCLC numbers I batch import them into OCLC. Then I batch export them into a file and then re import them into almost to resolve this. So, some days it's a few hundred some days it's a few thousand all depends on what work was done the previous
day coming into the OCLC daily imports. So hopefully we can get this resolved, but I'm trying to stay on top of it so it stays a lower low number as possible.
Next please.
as Michelle stated, We are not having any major changes it's just a maintenance update for September, which is great gives us all breathing room but come October 2021 release, we have the exclusive use of the new Metadata Editor, the classic version is
no longer going to be available.
We did lots of training over the past year and hopefully most people using the new MD editor or using the Metadata Editor are starting to use that I really highly suggest if you haven't to start doing it so that it's not such a shock when it does become
the exclusive use.
Next place
last session last time we met last month, I talked about with TLC connection three point O coming and I posted into workplace. It is coming, it has not been released it was supposed to come in like, July, August of this year.
It's been delayed, they do not have a date. I am on the OCLC Let's serve so I'm paying attention, try to keep up to date on this, but as soon as it is, is available, I'm going to start testing, I just want to make sure that nothing changes with our exports
or how to configure it. And then once I've done the testing, I will make sure I communicate with everybody. Through workplace and again fine with that.
The next monthly update after it's happened so that you all will be on the same page because you will want to for the client to download the newest version.
Once I vetted it to make sure that there's nothing that will cause any issues to connect with Obama.
But until I don't know the current clients going to remain till sometime in 2022. I know it's vague, but that's really what they said all they said was, until sometime in 2022 and we will let you know with about three months advance notice when the other.
When the older version is no longer going to be available.
Next slide please.
And finally, I'm going to be posting to workplace and sending this to cataloguing leads, which I hope can I will ask him I mean leads to make sure anybody.
They work with that does cataloging is a catalog or it's part of their duties that they can take the survey we're looking for calendars with foreign language skills that go beyond like the typical languages like Spanish, French, German, because we want
to try to meet these needs within Sunni of their other bloggers who have these skills so that we have a list of calendars and those that are willing know these variety of languages, to help catalog and help other bloggers with their materials.
So as I said I'll be posting it to workplace and sending it to cataloging leads and it is for anybody who is a catalog or end or does cataloging as part of any other job duties.
Thank you.
Alright so Tim's on vacation so I'm going to fill in for resource sharing for him.
So we wanted to share this and just have a little, you know, a little longer range conversation about this. So, we've seen our overall fill rates for books.
Just continue to improve.
So when we, when we first implemented Alma prima, it was about 50%. Tim has worked with x Libra to continually improve that with in improvements to the locate process and a variety of other things so that you know we're, we're in the high 60s low 70s
now and we think we will stay in that general range, and then continue to increase as we add outside Sunni libraries to our road as well.
So, books are still taking a little while, mostly because of delivery days and other things with el de. And, you know, everybody's still getting back to full operations.
So we we've seen a steady high percentage of Article fill rates and we have
about a little bit less than 20 of our campuses that are using.
Almost Alma to fill articles, we, we haven't reached out to higher volume campuses because we're still waiting for some improvements on the copyright clearance reviewing for some of the larger campuses, but our understanding is that should be fixed in
the next couple of months.
So really what we're getting at with this is that we're seeing percentages and we're seeing the functionality use to probably prompt conversations about the future of resource sharing, not forcing anyone to do anything but to at least acknowledge what's
changed look at the data, to say what type of premium external to SUNY system do we want to look at, and who wants to be to continue to be involved.
Right now, the majority of you have both world chair, and Iliad and some of you have world chair Elliot rapid I ll, and maybe some other things too. And just to, you know, take a look at it, refresh the conversation with what's been happening.
And the last piece of context here is that those 70%. That's also, in the context of most libraries, except for a few also still subscribe to world world cat discovery.
And many of you have it really have world cat discovery heavily embedded into your discovery solutions. So, you know, this, this percentage is in the context of a lot of requests coming into Alma are coming out of world cat, which has a different index
than just the Sunni scope. So, you know, nobody's forcing anyone to do anything but I think it's a time where we probably have some conversations to look at the data, look at everything from a business perspective and a service perspective and say like,
Is there anything we can do differently.
Maybe we don't want to do anything short term, maybe long term there's a lot of things going on and resource sharing.
So some of these improvements that we're making are now starting to come into fruition, where we're getting all my libraries to be added to our Rodas Nazareth, which is a long time resource sharing partner with many and Sunni via it's participation in
the IDS project in other initiatives as well.
They've been added into our Rota, and we we assumed that, You know, if you were interested in Ithaca College you would be interested in Nazareth, so we implemented Nazareth, as a, as a borrower for many of the libraries.
We didn't do for everybody but if you are don't have Nazareth on your rota you're not in this list and you want to be added just reach out to Tim, just a reminder, a reminder that Nazareth, is on el de so there's no additional shipping costs.
So, this is a, you know, just trying to look at the effect of some of the things that we are doing.
And, you know as we can add libraries to the, to the road as the improvements that we're seeing in the fill rates and they're usually pretty fast as well so we we implemented resource sharing with Brandeis University.
So, we saw a one and a half, almost one and a half percent increase in our fill rate by adding them to a Rota, we think that you know Nazareth will have a similar effect maybe a little bit better.
And we continue to have conversations with other on the libraries like st john Fisher and others to hope that we can continue to expand as well.
So, you know, it didn't take very long for us to see some improvements, those 30 items that we borrowed would have been something that we would have sent out to world share or Iliad that's not to say that they wouldn't been filled, but just that those
stayed in Alma, and were delivered a little bit faster as well.
And additionally, we are trying to work with other Consortium, to get resource sharing partnerships with Alma Alma as well.
One of them that recently went live with a small group of Sunni's was with the Cal State system or different libraries in the Cal State system.
So, this was one where we're shipping it from California to New York or vice versa so there was an extra day of shipping but it wasn't something that was, you know, completely unmanageable.
And we're going to take a look at took it Take a look at this and see what makes sense for us to continue to do long term with CSU and prompt at the end of the spring 2022 semester.
So just some, some things and believe me I know that Alma can be, you know, challenging system as well so we're not saying that Alma is better than Iliad or anything like that but just trying to put some context of what we're seeing as far as service
levels.
And, you know, Alma with its automatic located on both ends, does tend to produce lower.
Fill rates as well or not lower fill rates but lower turnaround times. Then, if you're going out to Iliad and world share as well.
Yes, he's on I think they're. I think they're calendar days. So just total days as well so you know put that in context of, you know, 8.2 days, that's, that's a little bit more than a week as well.
So, you know, it's not, it's not just looking at business days.
So, we're also looking at other ways where we can increase our network within all looking at partners that don't use Alma as well and trying to be strategic about that because we've been in discussions with Chris and others about ISO based resource sharing
with other external systems like Iliad, or even reshare so that we can keep a lot in Alma and expand our network in native Alma as well.
So one thing that we, I, you know, Tim and I kind of kicked ourselves for not thinking about it but sometimes when you try to think of problems, it's hard to think creatively about problems.
And we did analysis to see what our duplication of barcodes was across the entire system, and the bar code duplication was statistically insignificant.
we're talking like fractions of a percent.
And we didn't think that we would have this issue but what we did find is if a campus who's using Ansip integration with Iliad and all of you, or almost all of you, we've set that up for you.
It's a good thing for your for your users and allows them to manage at one place and you know just fewer fewer systems to look at. So if you're doing any integration, and you would have a bar code that is your transaction number.
So that works fine. If you scan it in once, but how Ansip created temp items work, is it takes that barcode out. Once you've scanned it in once, and what we're finding is that libraries are scanning in Iliad transactions created the end sip, a second
time.
And that's creating some problems with the Alma return anywhere functionality. So we're not suggesting that you stop.
Stop this as a practice we're just trying to do an analysis here.
And we looked at everybody's transaction numbers in Iliad and where the range was and then looked at our bar codes across the system and there's one institution that has about a half a million bar codes that are in the range of numbers.
So that doesn't mean that it's going to always match.
But it does have the potential to match to Elliot transaction numbers that are scanned in twice.
So you're probably thinking like how often is that happening and is it really happening that often. It's happening on a, you know, not, not dozens and dozens of day but it's happening with some frequency, where that one library.
Those barcodes are getting triggered on the second scan in. So we can make some changes in the return everywhere fun, or the return anywhere functionality to to mitigate this but we're, we're, you know that will involve some change and we know that changes
in processes that libraries don't like to adopt that after they just adopted a new way to approach it and the return anywhere functionalities working well outside of this, it's, it's an improvement on our processes and that it takes it off the patrons
record immediately so there's no questions by the patron of like well when's that going to get back I returned it 10 days ago.
x y and z.
So, we're going to work with that campus. To delete a lot of the barcodes that are erroneous and then to analyze the ones that, you know, might need to be retained to see what we can do to further mitigate it and there's about 65 70% of those problem
bar codes that we know right now that we can just wipe out and make this problem even less.
You know, even even less common. But the problem is is unless we develop an application or a script to do it using an API there's no way to batch update.
So we're engaging with ex leaders to see if they will help us to batch update or delete several hundred thousand records, several hundred thousand barcodes So Tim is fixing these on a daily basis.
And many of you probably aren't seeing it but a few times people have said why is this thing in transit to this library.
I don't understand and that's that's the reason, and you know if we can't make this problem go away or make it so infrequent that it's not an issue we will start to make adjustments on the return anywhere functionality.
Right.
Thanks. Any questions.
Sorry to end on a complicated circulation.
Explanation it's, it's an interesting thing with the return anywhere barcode issue,
think this is the most time we've ever left for questions on one of these webinars So feel free.
As Shannon. Did you talk faster today is that, is that what was going on.
Yeah, I don't know I guess I guess I'm just, I don't know, I don't know why.
dog days of summer heat advisory around this area so I don't know what it's like right elsewhere but we're all put to sleep by all those statistics, right.
Not really, but it's. It is interesting to see the, the increase in fill rates that you've analyzed so bits or attempts to analyze that's very, very interesting.
Yeah, and we're trying to get strategic partners that we can add into our Rodas to get that in the 80% range is really the goal that we're looking at.
And we've had some initial conversations with.
We started with a comprehensive directors, last week and Tim and I are on the docket for the community college directors just to start the conversation to say, here's what's happened in the last two years, here's what's happening in the, in the technology
environment related around resource sharing.
What do we need to do as a next step, or, you know, do we want to continue running parallel Alma and parallel.