System Seminar 2014
After discussions about the pros and cons the Steering Committee accepted the suggestion of Ex Libris to hold the next system seminar in 2014 in conjunction with the IGeLU meeting. As in Haifa, the two events will start with the 3 days IGeLU meeting followed by a two days system seminar. The location of the next IGeLU meeting will be announced at the Berlin conference – so be sure you will be there!
Jirka Kende, IGeLU Chair
Improvement of the Development Cooperation
During the very fruitful and constructive discussions with Ex Libris management in Berlin the Steering Committee raised the issue of further improvement of the development cooperation for the non Aleph products. The huge effort being done here by the user community doesn’t always seem to be reflected in the results.
The Steering Committee felt that the time has come for an evaluation of the enhancement processes as agreed in the development agreement. The aim is to achieve for all other products a similar clear commitment from Ex Libris as for Aleph (except for Alma at this stage).
Ex Libris management’s reaction was very constructive and it was agreed that this issue needs an intensive discussion within Ex Libris and that a feedback to the Steering Committee will follow within the next few weeks.
Ex Libris understands very well the value of the user input for the company and this was again clearly documented by establishing new enhancement processes for Primo central and MetaLib+ just as well with the planned participation of the user community in the further design of the Alma community zone which was also agreed on (see the report from the Alma product working group).
All in all we were very happy about the responsiveness of Ex Libris management towards the needs of the user community shown – not only but especially – during our meeting in Berlin.
Jirka Kende, IGeLU Chair
Budget
The Steering Committee devoted some time in Berlin for a deep evaluation of the budget situation. The conferences are more expensive than in the past, the meetings of the PWG are very useful but their costs are going higher.
Since we can afford it, thanks to the balance brought forward from the previous years, the SC evaluated the opportunity to raise either the conference fee, the membership fee, or both of them. The SC decided out to avoid raising both fees in order not to stop the Institutions from becoming members or attending the conferences.
The result was the decision to reduce some expenses (looking for instance to a new a platform for the conference calls) and to urge all the Institutions to pay the annual fee in time.
An important contribution came from Ex Libris that decided, after the SC meeting in Berlin, to increase their annual sponsorship by 11%.
Guido Badalamenti, IGeLU Treasurer
New Enhancement Processes for Primo Central and Metalib+
During the meeting of the Steering Committee with Ex Libris management in March it was agreed that two new enhancement processes will start:
- Enhancement process for Primo central where users will be able to collect and vote on resources to be added to Primo central.
Here – similar to the CKB enhancement processes – especially regional resources will have a better chance to be considered. - Enhancement process for MetaLib+ where features and functionalities for MetaLib via Primo can be requested and voted on by the user community in order to make MetaLib+ a real alternative to the traditional MetaLib.
Jirka Kende, IGeLU Chair
Cloud Services Status and Support
Ex Libris introduced Yaniv Avni, Chief Operating Officer responsible for both Cloud Services, Data Services and Global Support. Yaniv presented the structure and vision of Ex Libris on Cloud Services and new objectives in support. These are partly based on customer feedback from a phone survey started by the end of August 2012. The top complaints from customers were:
- Resolution takes too long
- Frequency of Communication: “Keep me updated continuously!”
- The CRM (Pivotal) is challenging to use
On all three complaints projects have been started.
- An ambitious “Incident Management Restructuring” project has been started, aiming to move from ‘time to react’ to ‘time to solve’.
- The Cloud services status page was introduced in February 2013 as one of the ongoing communication channels with customers. RSS feed functionality is being monitored as an add-on to this new status page, thus relieving customers to frequently visit the page. IGeLU and ELUNA have collaborated in the implementation of the new Cloud services status page, see: https://igelu.org/archives/3956
- The Pivotal CRM is being replaced by the new SalesForce Q2 of 2013, using also IGeLU and ELUNA input during the implementation.
Theo Engelman, IGeLU Steering Committee