Library Technology Guides

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Statistical Report for Alma

1 Responses for Alma in 2011

0 Responses for Alma in 2010

0 Responses for Alma in 2009

0 Responses for Alma in 2008

0 Responses for Alma in 2007

2022 : gen: 7.02 company 6.52 loyalty 6.87 support 6.02

2021 : gen: 6.83 company 6.55 loyalty 6.76 support 6.14

2020 : gen: 7.06 company 6.79 loyalty 7.11 support 6.23

2019 : gen: 6.70 company 6.38 loyalty 6.60 support 5.86

2018 : gen: 6.55 company 6.33 loyalty 6.58 support 5.87

2017 : gen: 6.58 company 6.50 loyalty 6.72 support 6.04

2016 : gen: 6.53 company 6.48 loyalty 6.88 support 6.27

2015 : gen: 6.37 company 6.61 loyalty 6.94 support 6.26

2014 : gen: 6.43 company 6.67 loyalty 6.96 support 6.33

2013 : gen: 6.20 company 6.80 loyalty 7.31 support 6.73

2012 : gen: 4.86 company 7.14 loyalty 6.43 support 6.14

Comments

We are actually only migrating to Alma/Primo now. [...] Our experience with Ex Libris so far is hard to gauge as we were a III customer for 19 years and are only now since June or so really working directly with Ex Libris. So there are pros and cons I can say about both companies. One from a long association, one I am just starting to learn. I will say I will miss working with people who are mostly in the same time zone I am in. I will say both are quality companies. But there are some very real differences. I have been happy and frustrated with them both. I will say that III has been, at least for us, very prompt and attentive in supporting us as we migrate. [...] they could have been less helpful. But the change in leadership of III likely has a lot to do with it. I never could understand how in a business relationship, personal feelings were allowed to creep in to a business relationship. [...] I the future if anyone asks my opinion of either company, I would say that they are good companies and have strong products. But each institution should really look closely at is to see if either III or Ex Libris or yet another company will be the right fit for them. My 2 cents. (Type: Academic)

While we are currently not that satisfied with Alma, we are part of a consortium of [...] libraries all working together to implement it. We knew going in that things were going to be rough. We expect that it will only get better and have great hope for the future. (Type: Academic)

If it's not clear from the above response, Ex-Libris' support of Primo has gone from bad to just plain very bad. They've reorganized and made some efforts to hire new staff but in reality it's not working. (Type: Academic)

Migrated to Alma as an early adopter. This required monthly updates with new features and fixes which will continue through 2015. (Type: Academic)

We've been implementing Alma for several months and are final approach to move to production. So far all expectations are being met and the implementation team has been top-notch. As with all major migrations, Dec/Jan will be critical in our perceptions of the system. (Type: Academic)

We have just migrated to this vendor in July and do not at this time have a lot of experience to judge it. We are still adjusting. (Type: Academic)

Currently implementing alma so some responses are early impressions (Type: Academic)

We are migrating to Alma and go live tomorrow, so our comments relate to our experiences relate purely to what we are experiencing in setup. We have only experienced Ex Libris's migration support, which is excellent, and have not yet transitioned to the regular support environment. (Type: Academic)

My consortium has worked in a development relationship with Ex Libris with the Alma product (consortium functionality), and has also implemented Primo for discovery support.

The baseline for operations for most of my consortium's institutions is an integrated library system in which the functionality for managing the print collection has been built out over more than two decades. In this context, the move to the emerging Alma product has been a radical adjustment for frontline staff. ExL has, in some cases, responded to institution pressure to improve functionality for the print collection (for example, predictive check-in support scheduled for the first half of 2015) while resisting changes in other areas (for example, notices produced by Alma – functionality guided by ExL’s work with its Alma development partners and depicted by ExL as set).

In terms of electronic content management: It’s really too early to judge. But given that my consortium is using Alma in production, I can say that significant pain points have been reported. Several institutions in the consortium that used SFX prior to the migration to Alma have identified functionality gaps between SFX and Alma’s Uresolver (with Uresolver providing inferior functionality in 2014). Cited problems include A-Z list support and research article access.

With Primo discovery, there have been significant benefits (tight tie with electronic content information in Alma) and significant problems (tool requires too much staff time to manage; poor interoperability with OCLC WorldCat; EBSCO refusal to allow its metadata to be indexed in Primo). This implementation has, in fact, been more challenging for my consortium than the implementation of the recently-released Alma service. My take is that Ex Libris is very strong technically, though has in some cases it has continued to embrace legacy standards (example, ISO ILL). In my view, for a library technology vendor, ExL is very savvy.

Generally speaking., Ex Libris staff and leaders are both skilled and dedicated. I have a lot of confidence in the ExL team and I believe this is shared by most of my colleagues in the consortium.

Communication issue has been an ongoing challenge – ExL is a global company based in Israel. There have been too many cases in the past year in which poor communication skills or technology failures have reduced the effectiveness of web-based meetings. (Type: Consortium)

About the question "How complete is the functionality of this ILS relative to the needs of this library?" --> Alma is still in developpment, so some features aren't workly correctly for the moment, but there are improvements every month. It's difficult to answer the question in this situation. (Type: Government Agency)

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