Learning from our Customers: Lessons from the Library

Here at Ex Libris we’re particularly proud of our customer community, and it’s our good fortune to always have something to learn from our customers. Here is some food for thought from recent testimonials.

Consortia and Collaboration

Anya Arnold of Orbis Cascade Alliance notes that for a consortium “it’s not about the system – it’s about the policies and procedures and how you work together, and the building of trust among your libraries.” In Anya’s opinion, the goal for consortia is expanding “depth of collaboration”: not just resource sharing, but also collection development, technical services, and leveraging expertise at each library to serve the consortium as a whole.

Engaging Both Students and Faculty

Carl Grant of the University of Oklahoma sees the search interface as a means of engaging with students and faculty. The University of Oklahoma uses both curated content and meetings with the student advisory group to engage with students, but Carl emphasizes the need to provide students with the electronic materials they demand through Primo Central. For university faculty, who prefer print, “in-house” items, the library created a “local search” option within the Primo interface.

Enhancing Blended Search

Mike Rogers of the University of Tennessee explains how the University of Tennessee library enhanced their blended search in Primo through the customizable discovery skin, stack mapping, and remapping resource types.

Pushing library resources to faculty and students

Mary Ellen Spencer of the University of Oklahoma chose the Leganto reading list solution to “push” library resources to students and faculty. She explains how the library recruited faculty as beta-testers of Leganto and ensured faculty buy-in through posts and face-to-face meetings and demos.

The Same, But Different

Mehmet Cehlik of KU Leuven provides a developer’s view of the new Primo user interface and talks about the customizable aspect of Primo as a “toolbox.” Quotable quote: “Everyone wants to have the same, different Primo.”

Stay True to Your Expertise and Resources

Laura Guy of the Colorado School of Mines emphasizes their preference for an out-of-the-box implementation, while Allie Verbovetskaya of the City University of New York talks about the importance of the Developer Network.

Want more? Visit our customer testimonial page, and explore testimonials for every product in the Ex Libris family.

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