IGeLU Chair’s Report

IGeLU Chair’s Report 18th January 2020

Welcome to the New Year! We finished off last year with the news that ProQuest has acquired Innovative Interfaces Incorporated (III). The acquisition process is now complete and III is now a business unit within Ex Libris. Ex Libris will now support the following Integrated Library Management Systems – Alma, Aleph, Voyager, Polaris and Sierra as well as the other products making the Ex Libris technology stack the largest in our marketplace. The ongoing contraction of the library technology sector has been a series of mergers and acquisitions over the last 40 years. Marshall Breeding has produced an excellent graphic illustrating the history and mergers and acquisitions in the library technology sector and is well worth viewing (https://librarytechnology.org/mergers/index.pl?fbclid=IwAR2nyvD-SrMsKiPezR_gI2BWyr7c0XQPi2wUBu7_zkAVf9DyIqVcpSHOLGE).

IGeLU, working with ELUNA, has an ambitious program of activities for this calendar year. Some of these activities are underway or will be commencing shortly. Some of IGeLU Steering Committee activities (other than our normal IGeLU responsibilities) for this year are as follows

  1. Cardiff 2020 Conference (underway)
  2. Creation of a GDPR Task Force (underway)
  3. Creation of a Non-academic task Force to compile shortcomings in the Ex Libris products to meet the requirements of this sector (planned)
  4. Review of the internal IGeLU organisational structure to better support the product working groups (underway)
  5. Increase involvement of other regions in IGeLU. These regions include South America, Asia and Africa (underway)
  6. Creation of an IGeLU RapidILL product working group (planned)
  7. Creation of an IGeLU Esploro product working group (planned)
  8. Review the existing development agreement that is in place between IGeLU, ELUNA and Ex Libris to incorporate new products and the allocation of development points to better meet the needs of the community and the Ex Libris product / service life cycle (underway)
  9. Redevelop the website so that you can find things easier. (underway)
  10. Review of IGeLU Steering Committee internal processes (planned)
  11. Member survey of IGeLU and its activities (planned)
  12. Determine how the III User Group (IUG) will interact / interface with IGeLU and ELUNA (planned)
  13. Expanding our offerings to National and Regional groups including web hosting and discussion list hosting. (underway)

Finally, please contact me (chair@igelu.org or dave.allen@slq.qld.gov.au if there are things that:

  1. IGeLU could be doing better or is not doing something that we should be doing
  2. You would like IGeLU to follow up on with Ex Libris
  3. You would like more information on

Dave Allen
IGeLU Chair