A Retrospective of the 2018 ELUNA Conference

 

The Ex Libris Users of North America (ELUNA) hold an annual meeting for the regional user group of Ex Libris in the United States and Canada. Steelsen Smith, Technical Lead for Client Services and IT Operations, attended the conference this past in May and has written about the sessions and news from the conference.

Continue Reading A Retrospective of the 2018 ELUNA Conference

December Tech Talks

Come listen to your fellow Library IT colleagues and partners present tech-related projects from around the Library. Tech Talks this month will be heavily focused on Voyager, as the Voyager 10 upgrade will take place over the winter recess.

This month’s Tech Talks will be Wednesday, December 13th from 3pm-4pm in Bass L01 AB.
The agenda includes:

  • Tableau [Sarah Tudesco]
  • Voyager [Steelsen Smith]
  • Voyager [Patricia Thurston]
  • Voyager 

For those who cannot join us in person, the session will be streamed via Zoom (note the new URL):

https://yalelibrary.zoom.us/j/491153111

Slides and recordings of the Tech Talk sessions will be archived in https://yale.box.com/LITTechTalkArchives.

All Library staff are welcome to present at the Tech Talks!  Please send topic suggestions to Lise Gazzillo at lise.gazzillo@yale.edu.

See you there!

Library IT Presents at the IGeLU Conference

This past September, Cindy Greenspun, Chairperson of the Voyager Product Working Group for Ex Libris Users of North America (ELUNA), presented at the International Group of Ex Libris Users (IGeLU) conference held in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The conference was hosted by the National Library of Russia. The IGeLU conference is a venue for users of Ex Libris products to come together collectively to learn from other institutions as well as advocate for changes.  The IGeLU conference draws a wide representation from over 350 institutions worldwide, with user groups in over 40 countries participating.

ELUNA is the regional user group for Ex Libris in the United States and Canada.  The ELUNA /IGeLU Voyager Product Working Group meets monthly to discuss product upgrades and enhancements.  Ex-Libris works with the user groups to gather important input on their products. The Voyager Product Working Group leadership is comprised of both ELUNA and IGeLU members. Not all regional or national user groups sit together with their international counterparts in IGeLU on product working groups, but others are starting to follow this model for increased communication.

National Library of Russia

Cindy Greenspun, Business Systems Analyst in Library IT, gave two presentations; her first presentation was to discuss the  ELUNA /IGeLU Voyager Product Working Group accomplishments for 2017 and the goals for the upcoming year — a requirement as Chairperson. The highlight of the presentation was moving the Voyager User Group to use the Ex Libris Development Network, a forum created by Ex Libris for users to communicate with one another and share ideas.

In Cindy’s second presentation, she partnered with Aleph Chairperson Allen Jones from The New School. Jones and Greenspun gave presentations on how each of  their institutions made the transition from Oracle to Workday. Cindy’s focus was on the Workday and Voyager integration.

This was Cindy’s second attendance at a IGeLU Conference and she commented “It is beneficial to see how other organizations are using the same product and learn about innovative workflows. . . . “I learn something new every year.”

The 2018 ELUNA Conference will be held in Spokane, Washington, from May 1-5th. For more information on how to register see their site. Ex Libris announced it will be offering attendance grants for first-time attendees at ELUNA meetings, including the upcoming 2018 meeting in Spokane, Washington.

For more information about the Voyager Product Working Group, ELUNA and IGeLU, contact Cindy Greenspun at cindy.greenspun@yale.edu.

Ex Libris news

Early October, ProQuest has announced that they’ve entered an agreement to acquire Ex Libris.  Among some of the products offered by Ex Libris, is Voyager, the library management system currently in use by YUL.  For more information about ProQuest’s acquisition of ExLibris, please visit: http://goo.gl/hJVlnM.

Through Ex Libris, there are several working groups and committees that endeavor to better serve their customers, such as organizing local and annual conferences, serving on committees or product working groups.  Recently, an opportunity to serve as Chair Elect of the Voyager (Joint Eluna-IgeLU) Product Working Group (VPWG), has been extended to Cindy Greenspun of Enterprise Systems & Services, LIT.  In this role, the Chair convenes monthly meetings with the VPWG members, coordinates and liaises with Ex Libris product management on development and enhancements of the Voyager product and communicates news or developments with Voyager users.  If you’d like more information about this group, feel free to reach out to Cindy at cindy.greenspun@yale.edu or visit: http://el-una.org/product-groups/voyager/voyager-product-group-leaders/

 

The Library Prepares for Workday Testing with University ITS

Yale University is planning a migration to a new tool called Workday. Workday is platform to manage enterprise level data and services, including payroll, Human Resources and Talent Management/Recruitment. The first phase of the University’s transition to Workday will focus on the “people” data within Human Resources. As a downstream user of  “people” data, specifically for populating the Voyager patron database, the library has been coordinating with University ITS since early September to ensure all critical operations that depend on this data continue to work seamlessly.

Despite the significant changes that the Workday platform will bring to staff workflow and interfaces in Human Resources, not much will change for the library. This is good news. The data the library extracts from University data sources, including Banner and Datawarehouse, will remain unchanged. From our technical end, the procedure to query and extract data will also remain unchanged. The Workday platform is providing a new data input interface for University staff, however, that same data will continue to be fed to Banner and Datawarehouse sources.

All change is worth examining though, and so the library will be coordinating with Sterling Library Access Services staff to test the patron data extract process during the first three weeks of February 2015. If any issues arise during this window, University ITS staff are available to address them with us. Once this testing period is complete, the next step will be waiting for a cut over to Workday. University ITS is anticipating early April 2015 for this production cut over.