Maureen Clements (SUNY): And I also
Maureen Clements (SUNY): just wanted to mention that this session will be recorded. So Hi, everyone, thank you so much for coming to today's session, innovation and AI product developments for online primo.
Maureen Clements (SUNY): I'm Maureen Clements. I'm the associate director for suny library services.
Maureen Clements (SUNY): I'm joined today by Asaf Klein, the Vice president for product management at X libraries, and Israel Kuchar, the senior director of product management at X Libris.
Maureen Clements (SUNY): You may already both know Asaf and Israel as they worked with Suny throughout the implementation those 5 long years ago. So we're happy to have them join us today. And we're also joined by Claudia Balbie, who many of you also know. She's our customer success manager.
Maureen Clements (SUNY): She helped us organize this session, and so thank you so much, Claudia. And finally, I want to thank Michelle Eichelberger. She's the suny Olis zoom person. She's going to be helping monitor the chat.
Maureen Clements (SUNY): So so before we start, I just wanna take a couple of moments to celebrate our 5 year anniversary of going live with Alma and Primo. Ve it's this month in June, I believe it was 2020, 19 0, the so long ago. And even though I wasn't really here during that time, I do know how hard everyone worked to get to the point that we are today.
Maureen Clements (SUNY): and I do believe it remains it it was, and it still is just a huge accomplishment.
Maureen Clements (SUNY): And I want to thank everyone who came before me, the team that worked on the implementation, the Sls team ex libris. And of course, all of you, for all of the effort and the dedication that you've put into this project.
Maureen Clements (SUNY): So we spent the 1st part of 2024. Looking back, reflecting, we have the benchmarking. We're doing reviews of our policies, and we're surveying our schools and different functionalities. But I think that this is a great demarcation time to think about looking to the future. When you think about an anniversary, you do lots of reflection, but you're also thinking about what the future holds.
Maureen Clements (SUNY): So what are ways that we can use the system more efficiently and more effectively. And how do we highlight features and tools that can make the user experience better, not only for our patrons, but also for our users. So there's lots of really exciting developments happening at X Libris. And that's why I'm happy to turn it over right now to Asaf and user to talk more about those. So thanks so much.
Asaf Kline: Thank you very much, Maureen. Very glad to be here with Israel.
Asaf Kline: We're gonna split this into like 2 parts. I'll start, and then we show we'll
Asaf Kline: finish. And I also would like to acknowledge and say, Thank you
Asaf Kline: to Suny. We do have a long history of collaboration, even
Asaf Kline: I'm old enough to remember the days on Olive, who were, which I was also involved into certain degree. So really good.
Asaf Kline: Be working with Suny
Asaf Kline: the membership and also
Asaf Kline: to acknowledge Sunny's participation in all our different user community activities, focus groups and working group and and things of that sort. It really is
Asaf Kline: beneficial for us.
Asaf Kline: So let me
Asaf Kline: dive in
Asaf Kline: work.
Asaf Kline: See how this goes.
Asaf Kline: All right.
Asaf Kline: Okay, so
Asaf Kline: like, I said, I'm gonna start and
Asaf Kline: a little bit of a reflection just looking back at the last year year and a half.
Asaf Kline: there was a lot really a lot going on in the product
Asaf Kline: collapse out a little bit.
Asaf Kline: And you know there's things that we were working on
Asaf Kline: together with the community, as I mentioned
Asaf Kline: through Nares and idea exchange. Just as an example. Just within Alma we had over 45 ideas from Idea Exchange included in the roadmap.
Asaf Kline: We continue to provide new capabilities on a monthly and quarterly basis. We invested a lot a lot in the staff user experience
Asaf Kline: rolling out things and analytics and acquisition and and more coming. I'll talk about that
Asaf Kline: improving the management of Alma for things like item templates or
Asaf Kline: auto holdings.
Asaf Kline: integrations with different vendors really to save time
Asaf Kline: and be more efficient.
Asaf Kline: worked a lot on a
Asaf Kline: new dashboards with
Asaf Kline: with our data visualization tool. So
Asaf Kline: out of the box dashboards.
Asaf Kline: and we continue to invest in our infrastructure in the open platforms.
Asaf Kline: With Apis and web hooks, and also in our premium sandbox environment, to make sure that it continues to support you.
Asaf Kline: Well
Asaf Kline: out.
Asaf Kline: we're not stopping or continuing forcing ahead.
Asaf Kline: I mentioned the
Asaf Kline: the Ux projects this year. You'll see later this year. We're coming out
Asaf Kline: with 2 main areas of redesign really revamped
Asaf Kline: interfaces, the staff search titles and and other areas. The patron services really a heavily use part of the system.
Asaf Kline: We continue to put a lot of work in our e-resource management. So work on open access, better open access support, and to connect, continue to work with additional vendors on the automation of the electronic holdings.
Asaf Kline: Metadata is an important area for this. I'll also talk about this more in the presentation. But we're working with the authority.
Asaf Kline: He.
Asaf Kline: the a authority control focus group
Asaf Kline: on some really good features around authority control.
Asaf Kline: And we continue with
Asaf Kline: the dashboards more out of the out of the box. Dashboards
Asaf Kline: for to better understand and and get data and insights out of the system.
Asaf Kline: It's sort of looking back and a little bit into the future. But I really want to focus on
Asaf Kline: some of the there's
Asaf Kline: big things, those main initiative that we're working on
Asaf Kline: within the platform, within the product
Asaf Kline: that I think we'll have real
Asaf Kline: impact
Asaf Kline: on on how you work and and and make it better, more efficient
Asaf Kline: and as
Asaf Kline: as needed, automated as possible. So
Asaf Kline: I'm talking about
Asaf Kline: these 4 areas. And I go through them one by one collection development
Asaf Kline: open platform.
Asaf Kline: Some things we're doing on Metadata.
Asaf Kline: including AI. And I'll finish up with resource sharing, and then I'll hand it over to.
Asaf Kline: He's thrown out.
Asaf Kline: So when I thought, when we're talking about collection development.
Asaf Kline: this is really complex multi faceted area. You know, you have to take into account a lot of data
Asaf Kline: a lot of elements in order to make the right decisions.
Asaf Kline: And you know, we've been working on
Asaf Kline: of course, what we're calling the operational analytics. These are the things that you need to be able to report on on a day by day basis and all the libraries
Asaf Kline: using Alma and our other products use analytics
Asaf Kline: to a Ha to a very high degree, meaning these dashboards widgets, they create their own. They run schedule reports. Over 17 million will run just in 2023,
Asaf Kline: which is
Asaf Kline: a 28% increase from the previous year. So really.
Asaf Kline: the usage of analytics is is massive.
Asaf Kline: Last year we launched a focus group focus on collection development. And we have 33 members in that.
Asaf Kline: We actually delivered the 1st dashboards as part of that collaboration earlier this year.
Asaf Kline: And what we're focusing on with them
Asaf Kline: is
Asaf Kline: true
Asaf Kline: cross institution analytics meaning not as part, not necessarily. If you're part of a network like sooning where you have those capabilities, but rather rather
Asaf Kline: any institution that would like to be able to do comparative analysis of their collections
Asaf Kline: will be able to do
Asaf Kline: this. This is a big
Asaf Kline: it's a big initiative with him.
Asaf Kline: the platform.
Asaf Kline: and like I said, we already
Asaf Kline: started delivering dashboards. On the left. You see one that we already released in earlier this year, which is focused on
Asaf Kline: institution level, meaning how I, as a certain institution, a library, can understand what I have for purposes of either retention or or deselection, it's available. And in it
Asaf Kline: this is again, as a result of that collabor collaboration with focus group
Asaf Kline: on the right hand side. This is something that's
Asaf Kline: with a focus group meaning they're evaluating this in in in a test environment using their
Asaf Kline: production data.
Asaf Kline: And it allows them to really get a view across multiple institutions again, irrespective of if you're in a network
Asaf Kline: or not in a network.
Asaf Kline: And you can see here.
Asaf Kline: this is not a mockup. This is actually taken. It's a screenshot of that test environment where we can see
Asaf Kline: a very wide geographic dispersion
Asaf Kline: of collections. You can see it here in the middle.
Asaf Kline: Allowing one way to view
Asaf Kline: where collections are and how they're managed in order to make those right decisions and
Asaf Kline: these dashboards. This is not the only part of it meaning you do have that high level view
Asaf Kline: where we provide through them these high level insights you can can and will be able to drill down into the details to see
Asaf Kline: what is, what is, what are the titles that are behind those
Asaf Kline: visualizations behind those insights with all the necessary information in order, we're gonna make
Asaf Kline: the right decisions.
Asaf Kline: But, interestingly enough, as we work with a group, and as we work with more, more and more libraries.
Asaf Kline: it really became clear to us that this
Asaf Kline: you know, the Cross Institution Analytics is
Asaf Kline: an important piece of that.
Asaf Kline: but
Asaf Kline: it's a very difficult and complicated and complex activity for the library.
Asaf Kline: They have to take information from many different
Asaf Kline: sources.
Asaf Kline: and they need to integrate that data together and through that get the insights that they need in order to make
Asaf Kline: the right decisions around their collection.
Asaf Kline: And many, many cases that libraries do that across multiple systems
Asaf Kline: and different products.
Asaf Kline: a different solution.
Asaf Kline: So it's it's complicated. And
Asaf Kline: because of that, we came to the decision
Asaf Kline: to put focus on this area. And for this purpose
Asaf Kline: we're launching a
Asaf Kline: a product
Asaf Kline: which will be integrated into the platform
Asaf Kline: into Alma.
Asaf Kline: which we call collecto.
Asaf Kline: And the purpose of this is really
Asaf Kline: a multi
Asaf Kline: and sort of multifaceted in the sunset.
Asaf Kline: Bring all the data that exist within the platform together.
Asaf Kline: So you don't have to work hard in order to try and connect them.
Asaf Kline: Support through the Cross Institution analytics, bringing that data, that cross institution analytics.
Asaf Kline: data into your decision making
Asaf Kline: not have to go into multiple systems in order to do that
Asaf Kline: and to drive
Asaf Kline: from that data
Asaf Kline: recommendations
Asaf Kline: and into workflows. So make them very, very
Asaf Kline: actionable.
Asaf Kline: Oh, sorry about that.
Asaf Kline: And it
Asaf Kline: and
Asaf Kline: the the planning for this is really to do it, based on
Asaf Kline: use cases right
Asaf Kline: in to have a workflow that
Asaf Kline: will support retention.
Asaf Kline: Related use cases, take the relevant data.
Asaf Kline: provide you with the insights, and also drive recommendations, things that you might want to mark a set of items as under a retention agreement.
Asaf Kline: or mark a set of items that you want to. Perhaps we weed or deselect
Asaf Kline: and the same goes for if you for various purpose, you want to expand.
Asaf Kline: you want to, you know.
Asaf Kline: 8
Asaf Kline: increase or enhance certain disciplines, or you want to focus on. You know, curriculum.
Asaf Kline: a related
Asaf Kline: expansion of your of your collection
Asaf Kline: space optimization and shared print activities. So these are all use cases that we're taking into account and
Asaf Kline: based on the data that you have available.
Asaf Kline: So if you have Alma, of course, if you have.
Asaf Kline: Logano, then will have additional data related to courses and so forth. So these are all things that will.
Asaf Kline: the more data that you have.
Asaf Kline: the the richer the set of use cases, and the richer the insights and recommendations that the system
Asaf Kline: can provide.
Asaf Kline: And, like, I said, it will be part of your environment
Asaf Kline: meaning.
Asaf Kline: This is. This is not the final design. Don't worry.
Asaf Kline: but it it sort of shows you what we're thinking, meaning from within the menu
Asaf Kline: for the relevant people that have the relevant roles within your library. They'll have access to a new set of tools that will help them
Asaf Kline: analyze
Asaf Kline: and take action related to collection development this
Asaf Kline: this, or at least some of the use cases here will be
Asaf Kline: part of Palma, meaning it'll be included in your subscription.
Asaf Kline: And but there will be additional things that if you need
Asaf Kline: some
Asaf Kline: premium services, consultancy, those will be available. But definitely.
Asaf Kline: You know, you already have an all the subscription. You'll get access to
Asaf Kline: many of these use cases as we start to roll it out within the product. So stay tuned.
Asaf Kline: We're now in the phase of recruiting development partners
Asaf Kline: so this is something. If you wanna let me know a
Asaf Kline: I'd be more than happy to connect you with product manager and see if you know you want to take that forward and become a development partner for this as well
Asaf Kline: with the open platform.
Asaf Kline: I want to shift gears here and really think about
Asaf Kline: what a library needs going, you know, into the future, not next year, but on 2 years and 3 years and 5 years
Asaf Kline: down the road.
Asaf Kline: So
Asaf Kline: some of you might be aware or work with these we, the current situation within the platform within our open platform is
Asaf Kline: a lot. A lot of activity is not through. The Ui is rather done through extensions or external applications.
Asaf Kline: It we.
Asaf Kline: we achieved a significant milestone meaning 4 billion Api calls on the platform in the last 12 months.
Asaf Kline: And it was a significant growth over the last 2 years, almost 50% more.
Asaf Kline: So really a lot of of work has been and continues to be done as part of the open platform. Apis web hooks
Asaf Kline: continue to support
Asaf Kline: standards and emerging standards as well as cloud apps.
Asaf Kline: That being said, we did, and have been hearing with libraries that we're working on.
Asaf Kline: that there are some challenges meaning, you know, cloud apps is great, but there's a learning curve around them, and they're only for ui integration.
Asaf Kline: Some libraries say, you know.
Asaf Kline: I can do a lot of things with Apis. But I'm missing an environment. I need to be able to run
Asaf Kline: scripts and jobs that I write for myself
Asaf Kline: and schedule them so they'll run daily or weekly. I don't really have an environment for that. Or
Asaf Kline: so AI is is booming. How can I integrate AI
Asaf Kline: into things that I'm doing easily right? So these are just some examples
Asaf Kline: in
Asaf Kline: when we came to
Asaf Kline: to think about, what can we do?
Asaf Kline: So what what can we do in order to make it easier to lower the technical barriers
Asaf Kline: and allow
Asaf Kline: staff that maybe they're not full-time programmers. They're technically savvy, and they can do things. But you don't have developers on staff, or it's you know, it's hard to
Asaf Kline: get their time. So to be able to do more complicated things. So on the left hand side of this graph
Asaf Kline: to sort of hit the the top area do
Asaf Kline: complex things, but not have to work
Asaf Kline: very hard, or
Asaf Kline: in order to create those and maintain those. So the sweet spot would be here. This is where we want to be
Asaf Kline: and make it as easy as possible where you don't have to really think about
Asaf Kline: you know, or as much as possible. And I think about the coding and do things that you couldn't do such as writing your own batch jobs and really to integrate
Asaf Kline: your
Asaf Kline: enterprise ecosystem into the open platform.
Asaf Kline: Ken.
Asaf Kline: we've just. We just announced this. We have
Asaf Kline: a new. We're launching a new
Asaf Kline: capability. We're calling the open workflows.
Asaf Kline: Really, this is something that will be
Asaf Kline: seamlessly integrated into all into the platform.
Asaf Kline: It's a no code or low code
Asaf Kline: automation platform where visually you can take components again without actually having to code them
Asaf Kline: and put them together, such that they will create
Asaf Kline: your own workflow. And what you can see here, these are actual examples that we created
Asaf Kline: that do this meaning
Asaf Kline: if you want to be able to send an SMS a text message when a checkout takes place.
Asaf Kline: This is done, and this is the thing that you see on the left
Asaf Kline: it responds to an event from the system. A web hook. It grabs the information through Apis.
Asaf Kline: It parses it, puts it into
Asaf Kline: a simple text message and send it out through
Asaf Kline: an SMS. You know a text message provider which is already integrated into the platform. You don't have to work hard to do that
Asaf Kline: on the right. It's some on another thing that we wrote just as an example.
Asaf Kline: Take in a report
Asaf Kline: out of the analytics.
Asaf Kline: and insert it in into. For example, if your institution
Asaf Kline: organization uses Google the Google Suite, it can stick it into the Google sheets
Asaf Kline: under the relevant account and send an email to those who are interested in and actually looking at it. Right? Just really 2
Asaf Kline: simple examples.
Asaf Kline: no coding involved using pre-existing components within this platform.
Asaf Kline: Sorry about that again.
Asaf Kline: And so really, this is something which will
Asaf Kline: and provide you an environment where
Asaf Kline: you can much more easily leverage all those Apis, all those web hooks, even cloud apps
Asaf Kline: and connect them
Asaf Kline: to either external systems or create your own workflows, create your own processes, create your own scripts, and within an environment that we're providing that we're hosting. That seems really seamlessly integrated within.
Asaf Kline: The experience, the staff experience
Asaf Kline: having a problem with the
Asaf Kline: moving. This, the slides. I apologize. I'm gonna talk a little bit now, switching gears again to talk about metadata. And I'll talk about 2 things.
Asaf Kline: how we're looking
Asaf Kline: and doing around metadata.
Asaf Kline: One is with link data.
Asaf Kline: So linked open data, a lot of activity going on within
Asaf Kline: and see
Asaf Kline: our environment within the market.
Asaf Kline: And we have been working with
Asaf Kline: the community.
Asaf Kline: Think a
Asaf Kline: to
Asaf Kline: integrate.
Asaf Kline: on the one hand, synopia, which is an open source community created
Asaf Kline: editor and repository for bitframe.
Asaf Kline: and be, have that be able to integrate into Alma and within Alma, be able to take all the output of that and use it within the system, meaning.
Asaf Kline: You'll have a record in the system, you'll be able to add holdings to it. You'll be able to loan items out. Patrons will be able to see it in primal
Asaf Kline: and and requested so really fully support Bidframe within
Asaf Kline: Alma. It is production ready. Not only is it production ready. We already have
Asaf Kline: libraries that have started to use this in production meaning they're not testing it around.
Asaf Kline: They're actually creating resources, cataloging resources, using bitspring or loading them in
Asaf Kline: through the import process. Okay.
Asaf Kline: and we continue to work with the linked data focus group.
Asaf Kline: This is not the end. This is actually just the start.
Asaf Kline: There's additional things in order to refine
Asaf Kline: and improve the existing capabilities within Alma.
Asaf Kline: But we're not. We're not stopping there. We're actually
Asaf Kline: sorry about that.
Asaf Kline: He
Asaf Kline: were. Now.
Asaf Kline: what we're focusing on. This will be through the next year year and a half is we have that integration with synoptia which is fantastic. I'm sure
Asaf Kline: the community will continue to use that. But we also want to be able that even if you
Asaf Kline: you, for instance, you don't
Asaf Kline: want to use synoptia or you don't. You don't think it's necessary, or for various reasons you want. Just want to be able to work within Alma and create new resources, using biffring or other
Asaf Kline: other formats, if eventually. So, this is what we're doing now.
Asaf Kline: We are working on creating a a editing capability.
Asaf Kline: using
Asaf Kline: the newest set of ui infrastructure that we have in order to create a true.
Asaf Kline: seamless, unified experience for
Asaf Kline: an end to end workflow, creating, editing, managing
Asaf Kline: works, instances on Vivframe and
Asaf Kline: in the future, other
Asaf Kline: other standards
Asaf Kline: without the need for
Asaf Kline: that external tool.
Asaf Kline: So you'll hear more about this.
Asaf Kline: The other thing that we're doing with metadata
Asaf Kline: is
Asaf Kline: A. I.
Asaf Kline: And here
Asaf Kline: we think that this can be used
Asaf Kline: as a tool to help
Asaf Kline: catalogers assist them, make it easier to do things.
Asaf Kline: And the idea. Here, this is just a prototype. It'll actually look at a little bit different.
Asaf Kline: I want to release it
Asaf Kline: is that
Asaf Kline: you can take. And we've we've been working on this, you can take
Asaf Kline: pictures of the front cover
Asaf Kline: or this, you know the
Asaf Kline: the back cover.
Asaf Kline: or the things where where the cover has information about
Asaf Kline: the book. If you take that.
Asaf Kline: take those images
Asaf Kline: AI can actually generate, use that information within the images in order to generate. Do a lot of like the ropes
Asaf Kline: typing of this and translation of this and summarization of it into a into mark.
Asaf Kline: And so that's that's what we're working on meaning.
Asaf Kline: If you have a book, take images, one or 2 of them.
Asaf Kline: and the system will either create a new record or enrich
Asaf Kline: an existing record. What you see here is is an actual example, meaning.
Asaf Kline: We took that image. Yes, I know it's a fiction.
Asaf Kline: but it also applies to nonfiction.
Asaf Kline: We use that image in order to generate what you see here
Asaf Kline: on the right, all those different
Asaf Kline: all those different fields, obviously the author and the title and and some summaries abstracts of it. It also
Asaf Kline: subject headings
Asaf Kline: which are validated against Library of Congress, subject headings.
Asaf Kline: And this is something that
Asaf Kline: we plan
Asaf Kline: to work with
Asaf Kline: a R.
Asaf Kline: Our community.
Asaf Kline: The current plan is to have a small group and early access
Asaf Kline: group start working with this in September
Asaf Kline: with the intention, and you know, based on the results of that early access testing
Asaf Kline: that if it's positive, then we would like to release this capability already in November.
Asaf Kline: but it depends a little bit on the feedback if
Asaf Kline: we need to work on it a little bit more, and will be delayed
Asaf Kline: at the late, but it will be deferred until it's enough quality. But we're cautiously optimistic that already. November, we'll be able to release this for you to give it like
Asaf Kline: spin around the block and see
Asaf Kline: how it can help you.
Asaf Kline: Finally, I'll just wrap up my part almost done, and I want to talk about resource sharing.
Asaf Kline: And 1st of all.
Asaf Kline: to acknowledge that you know the resource sharing community.
Asaf Kline: And really it doesn't matter which
Asaf Kline: system they're using. You know, you could have Alma and be using Illiad.
Asaf Kline: or you can be doing peer to peer, requesting, you know, without using external broker or rappy dough, or you're doing
Asaf Kline: document a delivery through
Asaf Kline: rapid dial. Really, the the workflow solution
Asaf Kline: is an important what I want to point out here is that within the platform.
Asaf Kline: through the different ways for interoperability. Different standards peer to peer and our solutions. We have over 1,500 active library
Asaf Kline: that just in 2023
Asaf Kline: fulfilled 2.6 million requests. It's a really, really
Asaf Kline: the
Asaf Kline: huge volume
Asaf Kline: and the fill rates are are
Asaf Kline: really good. And I know Suny
Asaf Kline: invest a lot in
Asaf Kline: making sure that their
Asaf Kline: that you're
Asaf Kline: a service here
Asaf Kline: will not only be done within suny network, but beyond using these capabilities, you know, connecting libraries together in order to get the best service
Asaf Kline: for your patrons. So these are just some
Asaf Kline: of the numbers around this really
Asaf Kline: extensive and and pretty robust parallel network.
Asaf Kline: We a we are
Asaf Kline: working intensively in order to expand
Asaf Kline: the capabilities, meaning.
Asaf Kline: if you have, Alma.
Asaf Kline: and you're using our
Asaf Kline: the A,
Asaf Kline: the capabilities, the peer to peer capabilities within Alma. That's great.
Asaf Kline: If if you have rapid Alma, it's totally seamless, and it it provides really great end, user and patron experience.
Asaf Kline: And we've recently
Asaf Kline: and starting last year. And also this year, we started working on providing reputable for any Ios using
Asaf Kline: all those type of open protocols that I talked about those standards, Oipmh
Asaf Kline: and and the nsip, protocol, etc, etc.
Asaf Kline: Well, good. Too much details. The idea here is that really Rapido is expanding to
Asaf Kline: different systems. Obviously it works with Alma. We certified it for Sierra. We actually
Asaf Kline: have certified it. This is, says Summer 2024. I'm happy to announce
Asaf Kline: that jury university
Asaf Kline: who is using folio with live yesterday
Asaf Kline: with Rapido. So very happy about that, and we continue to expand a Rapido to other
Asaf Kline: systems.
Asaf Kline: And I'll really just finish up. I thought this would be of interest to Suny.
Asaf Kline: Is that you know, we've we're expanding the network. There is the network, and we continue to expand it and connect it. And there are the workflow solutions. We've recently launched a a partnership
Asaf Kline: with 2 networks. So Ohio link, which is the academic network in Ohio and search Ohio, which is the public network in Ohio
Asaf Kline: to provide them a new consortial resource, sharing experience, using our products, Rapido and Vega.
Asaf Kline: we're very excited about this meaning.
Asaf Kline: It's a solution that we think can connect
Asaf Kline: different networks and different libraries together to really provide
Asaf Kline: a transformative experience
Asaf Kline: both for staff
Asaf Kline: and patron. And so this is something that we just announced.
Asaf Kline: And a. So basically.
Asaf Kline: all the public and academic libraries in Ohio will be connected
Asaf Kline: through the network, using Rapido in order to provide their users with a great
Asaf Kline: resource sharing experience.
Asaf Kline: Okay? So I'll just sort of wrap it up. Summarize. My part of it is, you know, we've talked about collecto, which is, you know, about collection development helping libraries to really manage their collection, develop their collection in ways that, is are either difficult
Asaf Kline: are really impossible to do today.
Asaf Kline: And it's bringing that data together. It's unifying it within the environment, within the
Asaf Kline: interface that are are using
Asaf Kline: to make things that were impossible possible and things that were difficult easy.
Asaf Kline: The open library workflows again. It's about
Asaf Kline: creating new capabilities, things that were very difficult to do or you didn't have resources to do. You didn't have the developer. Time is to lower those barriers, make them easier to do
Asaf Kline: and open up new possibilities
Asaf Kline: for bespoke
Asaf Kline: scripts, workflows, integrations
Asaf Kline: with the metadata. You saw focus really on new technologies linked data.
Asaf Kline: We see that expanding more and more within our
Asaf Kline: within our
Asaf Kline: customer base and
Asaf Kline: starting to roll out this year.
Asaf Kline: And as we go forward also next year.
Asaf Kline: AI based
Asaf Kline: tools that will assist
Asaf Kline: staff in doing their job and starting 1st with cataloging with metadata.
Asaf Kline: And finally, as you saw working
Asaf Kline: to continue to
Asaf Kline: enhance that Ilo network
Asaf Kline: for all the libraries, using our products
Asaf Kline: and to expand it also beyond meaning.
Asaf Kline: not having to, you know, not
Asaf Kline: using Alma, but using a different Ios also be part of that
Asaf Kline: Ilo network
Asaf Kline: a soap.
Asaf Kline: That's what I had for you sort of what we've been doing in the last year year and a half
Asaf Kline: and a peek into some of those
Asaf Kline: interesting, I think things that we're working on
Asaf Kline: going into the next year, 2, 3, and more.
Asaf Kline: It's Ralph.
Yisrael Kuchar: Thank you, Asaph. So, switching now to discovery. Let's let's talk a bit about change. Some people hate it or fear it, and others are very excited by it.
Yisrael Kuchar: Sometimes change around us is is subtle. Sometimes it's major and got a major impact on us or in our users. In our areas around, discovery change usually happens either because of technology advancements.
Yisrael Kuchar: So allowing things that we couldn't do before, but also because of our users' expectations. They change their environment, changes their digital habit changes their experience around social media e-commerce just out there on the web. All these things impact our users.
Yisrael Kuchar: And we really need to continue and look around
Yisrael Kuchar: as we plan for these changes. The growing amount of data breakthroughs around generative AI and the users experience
Yisrael Kuchar: anywhere out there on the web. Really they they mean we have to look out for this change.
Yisrael Kuchar: So in the next 20 min or so we'll talk a bit about the path to the next discovery experience towards the change, and and namely, we'll answer these 4 questions slide.
Yisrael Kuchar: So we'll talk about?
Yisrael Kuchar: Sorry. My
Yisrael Kuchar: here. So how does primo a meet the new user experience? And how can primo, how can our users use link data in in discovery. And how can you better understand what our users are doing or not managing to do in our systems? And and lastly, is, when can you start using generative AI within primo.
Yisrael Kuchar: Okay, next slide is off.
Yisrael Kuchar: So we'll start with the Ui, and we announced this last illuna. So over the last years, really, since we we launched the last ui that we had, we've been collecting feedback. We've been getting feedback from institutions from users. And more recently, we've been doing usability tests and interviews to really understand better what our patrons are finding useful.
Yisrael Kuchar: And next slide.
Yisrael Kuchar: So we started developing the the next ui, and this is roughly what it looks like, or at least the the results page of it. So it's a new technical stack. And again, with accessibility in mind from day one as part of the design we're involving consulting company to talk specifically about that.
Yisrael Kuchar: It's a clean and simple intuitive interface and really helping users to find the resources most relevant to them at a glance, with a clear call to action. So just looking at the results, page. So, looking at, you see exactly what record is available online kind of combining together all the online options into one. You can see all the others. But really, the user typically only wants one.
Yisrael Kuchar: If there's more information such as
Yisrael Kuchar: a citation counts, such as whether it's peer reviewed so different information that will help the users, and to really decide. So get the results and then decide between the results which one is is best for them.
Yisrael Kuchar: Next slide, please, Usaf.
Yisrael Kuchar: I'm looking, for example, at the full record. So a clear call for action. So we're looking at the request area as opposed to today, where you might show requests, or you might sometimes show multiple requests. But the user might not really understand what the difference is. So now, giving it a much, much more prominent area and really trying to explain to the user whether information the system can give or just even labels that you can give. But now you have room for
Yisrael Kuchar: to actually explain to the user what the difference is between the different options and that he might choose.
Yisrael Kuchar: We're actively working with a customer focus group and consulting with them, hearing their thoughts about our designs, fine tuning designs that we that we already have
Yisrael Kuchar: stuff you can click. So we're looking at exposing the 1st pages if we're testing in later this year.
Yisrael Kuchar: And so sites, it's not production ready. We're not ready to go live with this yet. But yes, we wanna allow people to start looking at it and give feedback. See how it meets them! See how the look and feel meets their and their institutional design, and and again. And
Yisrael Kuchar: so they can start planning for this, for later on, the general lease is going to be in mid 2025, and then institutions can actually start looking at it, fine-tuning it and getting ready, for whenever they are ready to go, live again. Sites can opt in to go live once they're ready
Yisrael Kuchar: next slide. Please.
Yisrael Kuchar: Next, let's talk about the link data. So Saf talked about the management of link data and bibframe and a lot of things happening there. But we were looking at allowing our end users to explore relationships using link data. And we really were looking for different scenarios over the years and discussed it with a lot of institutions. And we're missing a functionality that again, that institutions found useful for their users.
Yisrael Kuchar: What we launched now is the 1st phase of our link data functionality in discovery.
Yisrael Kuchar: and this includes a brand new person entity that was made available in May. I believe some of you may have already activated this or started looking at it, and but what it does is is really connect different relationships and connect them to your catalog. Next slide, please, Usaf.
Yisrael Kuchar: So this is what the person Page looks like, and that was launched in in May. So based on Library Congress, wikidata and Wikipedia. We built relationships. We we got information about the person and link them to your catalog. So information, so books or works in your catalog
Yisrael Kuchar: and that were written by this person, books that were written and about, and this person and other people based on your catalog that are associated with person and as well.
Yisrael Kuchar: I'm a soft click a couple times, please.
Yisrael Kuchar: We can see here that the person area, and next we see books that were written and about and by, and we see other people and as well. And we can actually see there were 3 Alexandra Duma. And
Yisrael Kuchar: and again we're looking at one of them, but we can see there were other related persons based on this as well.
Yisrael Kuchar: and next slide, please
Yisrael Kuchar: on. So that is the person page and looking at the results page, we also actually have the person and info card. And using this and link data info card. So looking at record stuff. One click, please.
Yisrael Kuchar: We can see again. This is a book by a Creator, and Andrei Murray, and he wrote about the 3 Alexander Dumas in the family.
Yisrael Kuchar: and you can see that for each of these persons, based on the connections to their authorities in Alma we can bring out this info card. So each of these people have an info card clicking on the info card will show you a bit of information about them, and you can then link him out to this person. Page
Yisrael Kuchar: so this is the 1st phase that was released in in May. We're looking at the future phases are going to be connecting additional authorities. To allow sites that don't necessarily use Library of Congress as well. So
Yisrael Kuchar: a lot of Europe waiting for that piece, we're looking at potential additional language as well. And again, we're looking at other areas. The next phase, whether to keep going in depth with this feature, or perhaps look at other things, such as a subject which is obviously an interesting but more complex candidate, and also perhaps things on Cvi as well.
Yisrael Kuchar: Next slide
Yisrael Kuchar: aim.
Yisrael Kuchar: user engagement and analytics. So we've always had analytics.
Yisrael Kuchar: And as I've talked all about analytics and people using analytics and analytics for
Yisrael Kuchar: for understanding what is used in the system, and what was clicked in in discovery. Our analytics has been aggregate of actions, so we understand how many people searched, how many people searched this year versus last year or this month versus the same month last year. But what are the users really going through when they go into the system. That is something that we don't really know. If we define a success criteria, we want all our users to get to a
Yisrael Kuchar: link to full text or link to full text or a quest. How many users are managing to that or not managing to that? And and why
Yisrael Kuchar: next slide is up.
Yisrael Kuchar: So with the new engagement analytics, we're looking at actions as before, so we'll still be able to aggregate actions. And but we want to go beyond that, and really understand what our people, what what the users are doing. So, for example, in looking at the the graph stuff, one click, please.
Yisrael Kuchar: The the user journey. So again, this is just a a schematic, not a not live with all the actions. But we understand that all our users started the search, the session. And then we see here in this diagram that 75% of them almost. And their next action was a search.
Yisrael Kuchar: And then what they did is 35 of them went into the full display. And we can actually understand exactly what's happening in the flow. How many got distracted. How many went to different places? And this is real time. So you'll be able to, for example, if you're trying to get people to go and click on the view online
Yisrael Kuchar: action, perhaps coloring it bright red or moving it to a more prominent place. Will that do the trick? You can do that. See what it looks like and see the impact immediately. If you decide to activate a new feature, you might see a lot of people using that feature. But does that take away from another feature that you define as the goal? So really understanding more and more about what our users are doing.
Yisrael Kuchar: that we want to give. So in the past few months, we started working with an engagement analytics focus group looking at the data. We haven't defined all the actions yet, but we've defined kind of some core actions to be able to start telling the story. We're working with them to define out-of-the-box dashboards and reports. And in Q. 4, we plan to onboard additional early adopters.
Yisrael Kuchar: The new analytics platform will be available to all institutions as part of the new ui that we just mentioned before, and mid next year.
Yisrael Kuchar: Next slide, please.
Yisrael Kuchar: Okay.
Yisrael Kuchar: last. But probably you know. Very important in this day's, discussion is generative. AI, the fact is, it's available to your users today. They're using search engines, and you know they they see it out there in different places, whether academic or or not academic. They. They see it. They're beginning to use it for different things, and
Yisrael Kuchar: and they likely will be continuing to do this in the future with the amount of data, the data types, and really their expectations that are shaped by what's happening out there. The next generation of library users probably will have different expectations of their search and discovery process in the years to come.
Yisrael Kuchar: It's not. Instead of everything that we know, especially I don't think in the near future. But yes, it's. It's something that we need to to look at. And as part of the change that that is, that is happening
Yisrael Kuchar: next slide, please.
Yisrael Kuchar: So to build a responsible and trusted application. We've defined these key, these key values. So unlike general generative AI tools like Chatgpt and others.
Yisrael Kuchar: We provide users with trusted content that's based on curated academic content. So it's not just asking Chatgpt for an answer, but really grounding it back to the academic material. Whatever it is. We're starting off with CDI. We'll talk about that in a second.
Yisrael Kuchar: We ensure proper attribution and citations of the work. So the user can explore, and the full, you know, and access the full text. So again, everything is grounded to the sources. The academic sources.
Yisrael Kuchar: We make sure that the institutions can best benefit their content subscriptions. So again, you subscribe to different materials, make sure that we can cover those, and link out to your subscriptions. We collaborate with the different providers, and we have a clear definition of again respecting intellectual property. So, again, if a provider does not want to their materials to be in here, then it won't be in here.
Yisrael Kuchar: And really, we're working with the community to continue and and develop and really define these next steps as well.
Yisrael Kuchar: Next slide.
Yisrael Kuchar: And so we've actually started our better test program with 18 institutions around the world. Including some Sunni representatives. And we're planning to to make the prima research assistant a public. Later, the year someone the summon anyone a bit later on, and one more click assess.
Yisrael Kuchar: And really it's going to be on trusted content. No hallucinations with the links and references to the scholarly material. So again, you'll know exactly what's coming from where and why such an answer came
Yisrael Kuchar: next slide.
Yisrael Kuchar: So what is the primo research assistant? So this is the 1st phase that's coming out next year? Oh, sorry coming out later this year. And we're now testing with the Beta partners so semantic search or natural language query. So the user can type in similar to they do in Chatgpt, an answer with references.
Yisrael Kuchar: with references to the answers. You understand exactly what's coming from, where links directly to the full text links to the full results page to continue your research within primo. And all of this is based on academic, scholarly material of CDI, the central discovery Index. So everything is grounded to the materials from CDI
Yisrael Kuchar: next slide. So I'll show you what it looks like. And again we I saw that in the chat someone wrote who the testers are. So this is roughly what they're testing. So this is an institution's primo we can see there's the stars. Which we're probably going to be moving somewhere else
Yisrael Kuchar: to indicate that you can go to something. AI, and we also have this widget allowing the user to to go and prompting him to go and try the research assistant. And one more click, assaf
Yisrael Kuchar: and click through.
Yisrael Kuchar: Okay, and this opens up the research assistant. Which is very
Yisrael Kuchar: simple interface, very familiar to those using chat, Gpt style, and and the other types of of a of systems. One more click stuff.
Yisrael Kuchar: Okay? And if we type in a search about the impact of mobile devices on reading literacy developments, click.
Yisrael Kuchar: the system is going out to A to the Llm. The large language model, translating that query and then going to Cdi and using that query, one more click usf
Yisrael Kuchar: and bringing us an answer. So we see the answer, and every sentence of the answer gives us the exact citation of where it came from. So each one of those numbers correlates to the sources that were found
Yisrael Kuchar: so really as opposed to you know the the Llms and chat tpts that really write the paper for the user, which is something that we have a bit of an issue with from the pedagogic and perspective. What we're doing is is allowing the user to search in a much, much more in natural natural language, and a more similar, perhaps, to to what they're used to, and bring back the results.
Yisrael Kuchar: Within this interface and click
Yisrael Kuchar: Asaf please.
Yisrael Kuchar: So if I'm looking at one of the citations and open it up.
Yisrael Kuchar: You can see we get the the information. We're actually getting the abstract here from the metadata itself. This is not generated abstract.
Yisrael Kuchar: and a link directly to the full text. In this case it's a quick link. So to PDF or HTML. And you can also see this record specifically and within primo with primo as well.
Yisrael Kuchar: You can also go and find all the results that answer this query, in primo and as well.
Yisrael Kuchar: So we started the beta testing. We're very excited to hear the feedback. Our beta testers are giving us feedback also about the general look and feel, but also about the results in general, and also about each one of these articles. You see, a little thumbs up and thumbs down. So all this information we're getting from these 18 institutions.
Yisrael Kuchar: And they started a few weeks ago. We're going to be doing this for a probably for another month or so, with these institutions? And again, take this feedback back. Do quite a bit of fine tuning based on the feedbacks. And then later this year we'll be ready and for institutions to start testing. And again, it's going to be opt in for the institutions to
Yisrael Kuchar: to activate this, and I assume most will activate this and test it out 1st and then expose it to the users once they are ready as well.
Yisrael Kuchar: And next slide, let's have.
Yisrael Kuchar: Okay. So just to to sum up, and the 4 areas that we're we talked about towards the next discovery experience and really our our users and their expectations is changing. Whether again changing now and definitely changing over the next few years. And these are the the areas that we're looking at really to to meet them at the other end, based on what they're used to and what they're going to expect.
Yisrael Kuchar: and with that I believe we might have time for a few questions.
Yisrael Kuchar: If there are any.
Yisrael Kuchar: Michelle Maureen.
Maureen Clements (SUNY): There is a question in the chat. I'm happy to read that out for you. Will the cataloger assistant work for foreign language materials with non Latin characters? Will it link to the 2 45 to 60 fields.
Yisrael Kuchar: Stuff you're muted if you're talking.
Asaf Kline: Thank you.
Asaf Kline: I thought I unmuted myself.
Asaf Kline: So great question. The initial version of this is focused on books
Asaf Kline: in English language, Library of Congress subject headings wanted to create something that
Asaf Kline: could be used widely, but it won't support everything from the start.
Asaf Kline: but if if the results of that are good, then the plan is to expand it and into other types of
Asaf Kline: Authorities, and to expand it to additional languages.
Asaf Kline: The first, st the 1st version of it
Asaf Kline: will be focused on the English language.
Maureen Clements (SUNY): I actually myself had a question. But so the collecto product, which seems to be really pretty fantastic. This wondering if that works in an Nz environment.
Asaf Kline: Yet
Asaf Kline: it does. It does. Yes, it definitely does, meaning
Asaf Kline: things you can do already a lot
Asaf Kline: using the network
Asaf Kline: capabilities. So with from the network. You can create reports and analyze the entire
Asaf Kline: membership.
Asaf Kline: So with collecto. And I'm sort of implicit in what I showed.
Asaf Kline: It actually allows
Asaf Kline: a a member view meaning the member can then also
Asaf Kline: compare and see how their collection is compared to others.
Asaf Kline: So it's also it's not just
Asaf Kline: top down. It's also sort of a
Asaf Kline: a bottom up view of things, so to speak. So yes, it it definitely available to networks. And we'll provide an an additional
Asaf Kline: perspective which today actually and is harder to
Asaf Kline: harder to view without the central team creating reports and distributing information to the members.
Maureen Clements (SUNY): Thank you.
Asaf Kline: Yep.
Maureen Clements (SUNY): Any other questions.
Asaf Kline: We'll, of course, share this presentation. You'll have access to this. Not just the recording. Okay.
Maureen Clements (SUNY): Great. Well, I just wanna say, Wow, there's I'm really kind of blown away by how much incredible work has been going into Alma and Primo V really, really excited about some of these new developments. It's kind of like taking a step into the future. And you know, the cataloging assistant collecto, the research assistant, you know there's a lot on the horizon, so
Maureen Clements (SUNY): be working closely together. I'm sure.
Asaf Kline: Sure. And again, I'd like to thank you
Asaf Kline: for the opportunity to present and to share what we're doing.
Asaf Kline: And if there are, follow up questions, you know you can send them through.
Asaf Kline: and we'll be glad to respond to them.
Maureen Clements (SUNY): Great.
Maureen Clements (SUNY): Alright! Alright!
Maureen Clements (SUNY): Okay.
Asaf Kline: Have a great anniversary.
Asaf Kline: and a good day, and a good week.
Yisrael Kuchar: Thanks. Everyone.
Maureen Clements (SUNY): Thank you.