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Working Groups

PALNI is leveraging its community of experts to discuss, research, test, and determine the ideal systems solution for its future. View below for information and updates from PALNI groups on this process. To become involved in the investigation process, fill out the Future Systems Investigation Participation Form at the bottom of the home page.

Analytics
Led by:
  • Heather Loehr

December 2023 

The team has been attending workshops and conference sessions and having conversations with implementers and system users.

  • ER&L (March); EBSCO User Group (June)
  • WOLFCon (August)
  • Conversation with Five Colleges (October)
  • SpringShare demo of LibInsight (December)

Upcoming: We will continue to investigate primary system and potential add-on products for analytics and reports, including Panorama and LibInsight. Heather is investigating Power BI as a potential future system add-on, as well as preparing for the WMS transition to the Power BI platform. 

  • Request demo with Clarivate for Alma Starter analytics
  • Updated demos of Koha and Evergreen 

February 2023

The team has completed and analyzed two surveys of PALNI member librarians to assess current work practices with reports and analytics, current system satisfaction, and expectations of future needs:

Heather is in the process of drafting a current systems landscape of available commercial and open source products for library analytics, including both system-integrated options (FOLIO, Evergreen, Koha) and add-on products (such as EBSCO Panorama).

We have had some conversations with current system users (such as College of the Holy Cross/FOLIO) with more to come.

Cataloging/Metadata Ad Hoc Committee
Members:
  • Christa Welty
  • Lisa Bennett
  • Charlotte Peterson (acquisitions)
Electronic Resource Management
Members:
  • Lisa Gonzalez
  • Caitlin Balgeman
  • Cale Erwin
  • Edward Mandity
October 2023
 
We have started adding knowledge base data into our trial instances into EBSCO’s full text finder and are noting when it behaves differently than expected (better or worse). We are still working on getting the data from the trial to feed into a discovery layer instance to test.
 
We are still in communication with Clarivate regarding the Alma for E product and investigating whether that is a viable option.
 

February 2023

Knowledge base: We have collected survey results from the PALNI Community site to get a better understanding of functionality priorities.  We are primarily investigating commercial knowledge base options at this time.  We have an initial meeting with Ex Libris (Clarivate/ProQuest/Serial Solutions) scheduled today (2/3/2023) with the ERM Steering Committee to get an introduction to their knowledge base products.  We have a similar meeting scheduled with EBSCO for next week.  We plan to ask these providers for a demo at a later date for the larger PALNI Community.

License Manager/SUSHI Harvestor:  We have collected survey results from the PALNI Community regarding what they need in a license storage option as well as SUSHI harvesting.  We need to dig into the results of the survey more before proceeding to the next steps but our initial thoughts include CORAL as a possible open source option for license storage. Possibly LibInsights for SUSHI harvesting.  We will need to collaborate with the Data Analytics group regarding SUSHI harvesting in particular to make sure harvested usage data can be utilized in any future data analysis tools.

Discovery:  We are discussing how to best proceed with E-Resource Discovery tool investigation.  We anticipate collaborating with the Discovery/RIO group to build a PALNI community priorities survey that incorporates specific E-Resource needs (how the access button appears, and is there a “report a broken link” feature, for example) into an overall OPAC/Discovery layer survey.

Fulfillment

Chair: Laura Vogler

Steering:

  • Barb Chen
  • Sarah Damery
  • Lisa Karle
  • Roger Peters
  • Kim Wenning
Reference, Instruction, and Outreach

Led by:

  • Eric Bradley
  • Ruth Szpunar

Future Systems Investigation Updates:

February 2024

Eric and Ruth released two reports with thoughts on the feasibility of Primo VE and VuFind for PALNI.  

December 2023

Eric and Ruth continue to work to learn more about potentially configuring VuFind for PALNI schools. The interface is available at https://vufind.palni.org.

November 2023

RIO’s fall meeting: Question Everything was a fantastic time for librarians to question LibGuides and discovery layers and what they should look like in the future.

April 2023

Eric and Ruth released a report about round two of usability testing on discovery layers and OPACs at Goshen College. Round 3 will be held at Indiana Wesleyan University in 2024.

March 2023

Eric and Ruth have finished their deeper dive into feasible options from the discovery layers included in the systems landscape.

January 2023

Eric and Ruth have conducted one round of usability testing on discovery layers and OPACs at St. Mary-of-the-Woods College. Round 2 will be held at Goshen College in March of 2023. 

Eric and Ruth have written reports covering the systems landscape for discovery and open link resolvers.

Currently in progress is a report examining the feasibility of the discovery layers included in the systems landscape. 

RIO has had several discussions about the needs of RIO librarians in regards to discovery with more to come.

Workflows Task Force

Chair: Roger Peters

Steering:

  • Eric Bradley
  • Ruth Szpunar
  • Caitlin Balgeman
  • Christa Welty
  • Lisa Gonzalez
  • Heather Loehr
  • Laura Vogler
  • Barb Chen
  • Charlotte Peterson
  • Lisa Bennett