The IGeLU Primo/Metalib Working Group was happy to welcome a new member last autumn, Amin Hussain from University of Manchester, bringing the number of participants to 11. (See https://igelu.org/products/primo for the full list of names.) Amin enriched the group with Primo VE experience, and very timely too, as one of the group’s main activities this year was the Primo VE summit in Jerusalem in October. Five WG members (Amin, Bettina, Stacey, Ulrich, and Knut) spent four days with colleagues from ELUNA and with ExLibris Product management to discuss this new flavor of Primo. The ensuing report was recently published, and is available here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MbiDQSO8_V3E7ATbVPRP1pGuNlU9A0SwFhNFW54if8I/edit?usp=sharing
A second focus point has been to work towards improved accessibility for the Primo New UI. A number of customers have reported issues, and Lee Houghton and other group members have been very active in collecting information and participating in talks with ExLibris to make certain the high priorities on this important area are delivered. An ExLibris Accessibility Roadmap for Primo is forthcoming at the time of writing.
The Primo Studio has won more traction over the last year as a tool for low-threshold customization of the Primo UI. Improvements have been made from Ex Libris’ side, but also from the community side with an increasing amount of add-ons. There is a joint ELUNA/IGeLU review process for publication of community add-ons through Primo Studio, and IGeLU WG representatives are Ulrich Leodolter and Wei Xuan. New this year is also the active invitation of third-party vendors like Springshare and Stackmap to produce plug-and-play integration add-ons for their products.
In January, Knut Anton Bøckman was elected coordinator of the group, with Bettina Kaldenberg as deputy coordinator.
Spring staples for the WG are some of our major tasks, Conference planning and Primo Enhancements. Annette Schryver and Stacey van Groll are reviewing proposals for the upcoming IGeLU in Singapore, where we hope to see many of you. Based on preparations so far, it looks to be a great event. The Primo Enhancements process is well underway, and at the time of writing the voting among more than 60 requests is ongoing. Bettina Kaldenberg is leading a joint ELUNA/IGeLU team that have reviewed, deduplicated, and prepared the requests for the ballot – something that is always a laborious task. Added complexity comes this year, as there is the question of handling both Primo and Primo VE – a challenge with many sides to it that we’re sure to discuss further in the next year. In this as in other questions the WG’s work has been strengthened by close cooperation with the Alma WG and the ELUNA Primo WG, and I’d like to extend our thanks to them for this.