Dave and Brandon meet at least once a year with Ex Libris Management for North America. 3 topics for last week's meeting:
ER Management: We are asking for several improvements to consortial and Network Zone ER management in Alma. Dave shared a list of priorities with the steering committee. Dave was pleased with the EL meeting. It seems that they are taking our priorities seriously and are working on them.
Primo VE – Per Dave, Primo VE has advantages for us. It simplifies Primo Management by combining the Primo back office with Alma. It allows for changes made to Alma records to be immediately visible in Primo. But VE currently has limitations for us. 1) it doesn't allow us to configure our own normalization rules. 2) it limits our flexibility with display logic and some other things ... Dave expects that it will be a year or two before VE is ready for us.
Support – Brandon meets monthly with EL support. He used this meeting as an opportunity to give an overview of some of the CSU concerns with support;
average support case is open for 35 days
average of two weeks before the first substantial notes are added to a support case.
EL response: they are hiring and re-orging to deploy more resources to support. Brandon reminded them of the contract renewal. Also, he explained that it would be helpful for us to see updates when internal work is done on a case so that we can see that progress is being made even if we don't have the final solution.
Brandon shared a summary of the responses to his survey. Generally, the 2nd day was better than the 1st day. The EL Trainer was not fully prepared for analytics training. Most attendees would go again next year. They prefer in person meetings if possible.
Functional Committee Chairs confirmed the findings from Brandon's survey:
Nikki – trainer's confusion regarding NZ analytics demonstrated that it is a hard topic. Better for the CSU to develop our own training.
Ian – Strong presentations regarding Discovery
Cathe – Good opportunity to meet her committee face to face. Impressed by knowledge shared by CSU staff.
Chris – Some new ideas about what to work on in Resource Sharing. Joe and Jesse gave the most entertaining presentation that he has ever seen.
Action
Carlos & John will advocate for COLD funding support for continued in person meetings. Brandon thinks that 140 would be a good attendance figure. A regional ELUNA may offer similar opportunities for information sharing.
Reminder from Carlos that functional committee members are expected to attend regularly. Let Carlos and John know if a committee member is not participating.
3 of the functional committee vice-chair positions are not filled. Carlos asked to have them filled by October. He shared a link to the duties of the vice chairs with the group
We should fill the vacant position in fulfillment with someone who volunteered but wasn't chosen.