In October, Catherine Grove (Northwestern) and Amelia Rowe (RMIT) stepped up to the Co-Coordinator roles following the retirement of long-serving Alma WG Coordinator Betsy Friesen. Betsy served as the Alma WG leader since the group’s inception and has been a voice for the Alma community for over eight years. Her humor, warmth, and formidable leadership will be missed. We wish Betsy all the best.
Amelia and Catherine are excited about this opportunity and look forward to collaborating with the Alma community. They’ve been meeting with the Alma WG members, meeting monthly with ExLibris representatives, getting oriented to the variety of Alma-related groups, and generally learning the ropes.
NERS update:
2020 Enhancement cycle is complete. The Alma WG is now working with ExLibris on the design and development of successful enhancement request items.
A draft schedule for the 2021 enhancement cycle is in progress.
Functional Sub-Groups update:
Functional Sub-Groups update
Alma WG functional sub-groups were formed early this year in order to provide the different areas of Alma with more focus and attention. In addition to being involved in the enhancement process, these groups will be identifying areas in need of improvement, advising on priorities, monitoring product development, and providing feedback from the Alma user community to the Working Group. As you can imagine, COVID-19 caused some delays in helping these groups take to the ground running this year, and next steps include refining sub-group responsibilities and developing ideas for projects.
Over the fall, the Acquisitions sub-group worked with members of the Content WG on needed functionality of the Overlap and Collection Analysis tool in Alma. They developed a proposal that included a prioritized list of improvements and specific use cases, and they presented the recommendations to Ex Libris. We hope to see even more of this type of collaboration across groups to represent and communicate the needs of the Alma community.