The Ex Libris Users of North America (ELUNA) has an agreement with Ex Libris whereby the user group will identify enhancements to certain major products and the vendor will agree to implement them. These products include Alma and Primo, both of which FLVC currently has licensed on behalf of all 40 institutions. Because of this agreement, ELUNA has developed a process that allows members to recommend enhancements throughout the year and then annually vote on which enhancements should be implemented.
Only Institutional and Consortial members of ELUNA are allowed to directly vote on enhancements. Institutional members are libraries who pay an annual fee (currently $380) to become voting members of the user group. Consortial members (such as FLVC) pay an annual fee (currently $815) and are also a voting member. Consortial members represent all libraries affiliated with their consortium.
The Enhancement process begins in January and continues until the summer. It typically follows the timeline below:
Note: There is a separate process for Alma and Primo, but both follow a similar timeline. There is also an enhancement process for RapidILL and the Central Discovery Index (CDI), but they typically have a different timeline.
Both rounds of voting are done using Ex Libris' New Enhancement Request System (NERS). The URL for this system is https://ners.igelu.org/. Only consortial members and Institutional members have access to NERS. A contact person for the institution is given an 8-digit username and password when you join ELUNA. If you do not have your username and/or password, send a message to ners@igelu.org.
Each voting member is given 100 points to place on any enhancement for each product. Libraries can put all of their votes on one enhancement or split up their vote on several. It is not recommended to spread your votes on many enhancements as it "waters down" the library's vote. Most members vote on 3-5 enhancements, splitting the points evenly between them.
As of 4/4/2024, there are 20 Institution members (10 SUS, 10 FCS), one Consortal member (FLVC), and 20 Consortium Only members. (Consortium Only members are NOT permitted to vote.)
| Institution | ILS Coordinator (ELUNA Representative) | Membership Status |
|---|---|---|
|
Broward College |
Craig Amos | Consortium Member Only |
|
Chipola College |
Jane Stephens | Consortium Member Only |
|
College of Central Florida |
Carole Thompson | Consortium Member Only |
|
College of the Florida Keys |
Marcos Gonzalez | Consortium Member Only |
|
Daytona State College |
Anibal Delgado Gonzalez | Consortium Member Only |
|
Eastern Florida State College |
Ashley Olund | Consortium Member Only |
|
Florida A&M University |
Ernestine Holmes | Consortium Member Only |
|
Florida Atlantic University |
Hansy Ambroise (???) | Individual Institution |
|
Florida Gateway College |
Christine Boatright |
Consortium Member Only |
|
Florida Gulf Coast University |
Danielle Rosenthal (Same) | Individual Institution |
|
Florida International University |
Jacqueline Radebaugh (Dalvys Perez) | Individual Institution |
|
Florida Polytechnic University |
Kathyrn Miller | Consortium Member Only |
|
Florida SouthWestern State College |
Richard Hodges (Same) | Individual Institution |
|
Florida State College at Jacksonville |
Madeline Sims | Consortium Member Only |
|
Florida State University |
Valerie Boulos (Same) | Individual Institution |
|
Gulf Coast State College |
David Russell | Consortium Member Only |
|
Hillsborough Community College |
Adonis Amparo (Lei Steelman) | Individual Institution |
|
Indian River State College |
Alexis Carlson | Consortium Member Only |
|
Lake-Sumter State College |
Kevin Arms (Katie Sacco) | Individual Institution |
|
Miami Dade College |
Angel Hernandez | Individual Institution |
|
New College of Florida |
Jeff Thompson | Individual Institution |
|
North Florida College |
Ellie Morgan | Consortium Member Only |
|
Northwest Florida State College |
Tasha McClain | Consortium Member Only |
|
Palm Beach State College |
Robbie Allen | Consortium Member Only |
|
Pasco-Hernando State College |
Kayla Kuni (Ingrid Purrenhage) | Individual Institution |
|
Pensacola State College |
Maria Goodspeed | Consortium Member Only |
|
Polk State College |
Shannon Schane (Christina Fullerton) | Individual Institution |
|
St. Johns River State College |
Ann Spinler | Consortium Member Only |
|
St. Petersburg College |
Josh Brown (Marina Coelho) | Individual Institution |
|
Santa Fe College |
Jenna Miller (Same) | Individual Institution |
|
Seminole State College |
Morgan Tracy | Consortium Member Only |
|
South Florida State College |
Lena Phelps | Consortium Member Only |
|
State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota |
Theresa Smith-Ennis (Meg Hawkins) | Individual Institution |
|
Tallahassee Community College |
Sila Lott | Consortium Member Only |
|
University of Central Florida |
Ying Zhang (Same) | Individual Institution |
|
University of Florida |
Todd Digby (Same) | Individual Institution |
|
University of North Florida |
Jennifer Murray (Same) | Individual Institution |
|
University of South Florida |
Bonita Pollock (Same) | Individual Institution |
|
University of West Florida |
Liza Campbell (Stephanie Clark) | Individual Institution |
|
Valencia College |
Ruth Smith (same) | Individual Institution |
|
Florida Virtual Campus |
Wendy Ellis | Consortium (26 to 50) |
Remember, only libraries that are institutional members of ELUNA are entitled to vote on enhancements for the products that have ongoing licenses. For most FLVC libraries, that will be Alma and Primo. Information on how to join ELUNA as an institutional member can be found on their website at https://el-una.org/.
Voting is done using the New Enhancements Request System, or NERS, which is a website operated by the International Group of Ex Libris Users (IGELU). The URL for the site is https://ners.igelu.org/. All institutional members should have a username and password to access the site. If you do not have a username and password, contact ners@igelu.org to get your credentials or reset your password. [Note: This process usually takes a few days, so please do not wait until the end of the voting window to request this information.]
If you have your institution's credentials, follow the steps below:
Libraries are allowed to change their vote anytime before the end of the voting period.
2024 Alma Enhancement Timeline
New for 2024, a range of CDI enhancements have been proposed to allow for increased competition with Discovery user interface and configuration enhancements. Any active member institution that licenses CDI via Primo or Summon can participate in the vote. 100 points will go to CDI, reallocated from Primo/Summon.
Here is a link to the 2024 CDI Enhancements Ballot. The enhancements recommended by the UISC are noted on the spreadsheet.
The first round of voting for Alma Enhancements are completed. ELUNA's Alma Working Group have decided to take the top 25 enhancements from this round and asked Ex Libris to evaluate and "point" each request on how easy or difficult it will be to implement. The vendor is committed to develop 200 points worth of enhancements this year. Once the evaluation is completed in late May, the working group will have a second round of voting starting on June 10th.
Below is a list of the top 25 enhancements. The requests recommended by FLVC are noted in red while the requests FLVC considered but didn't recommend are noted in blue.
| Rank | Req. ID | Votes | Module | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 8734 | 2943 | Fulfillment | Waive Fines/Fees in Bulk by Set |
| 2 | 8918 | 2186 | Fulfillment | Enable the ability to make an item missing that has a process type |
| 3 | 8182 | 1880 | Resource Man. | Automatically suppress bibliographic records- inactive portfolios |
| 4 | 8998 | 1823 | Resource Man. | Special Characters option in Metadata Editor |
| 5 | 8861 | 1792 | Acquisitions | Changing POL type after POL is sent |
| 6 | 8974 | 1632 | E-Resources | Prevent and flag deletion of portfolios with access type perpetual or current + perpetual |
| 7 | 8825 | 1598 | Resource Man. | Version history for Normalization Rules, Merge Rules, etc. |
| 8 | 8819 | 1331 | Resource Man. | Linking to authority via drop down menu in MDE |
| 9 | 8817 | 1217 | Acquisitions | Alma overlap analysis tool to include different identifiers in one comparison |
| 10 | 8777 | 1200 | Fulfillment | New institutional number sequence, or reset Additional ID, to shorten hold shelf pickup number |
| 11 | 7785 | 1199 | Acquisitions | Link an order to existing inventory directly from a POL |
| 12 | 8914 | 1186 | Administration | In List Configuration Option in Request TOU Pickup Locations Policy |
| 13 | 9024 | 1133 | E-Resources | Accessibility indicators on package/collection-level records |
| 14 | 8384 | 1082 | Fulfillment | make maximum renewal date explicit |
| 15 | 8729 | 1074 | Resource Man. | Add option to Print bib record from MDE |
| 16 | 8883 | 1069 | Analytics | Cost Per Use E-Inventory Analysis in Alma Analytics |
| 17 | 8949 | 1069 | Fulfillment | Add a tab "re-loan" to Patron Services to return and re-loan items in one step |
| 18 | 8845 | 1037 | Acquisitions | Update license terms in bulk |
| 19 | 8763 | 1035 | Administration | Improve the consistency/relevancy of letter names/descriptions for library staff editors |
| 20 | 6907 | 1031 | Resource Man. | Enable to upload controlled vocabulary lists in Excel format |
| 21 | 8837 | 1003 | All | Merge Users API |
| 22 | 8929 | 936 | E-Resources | Update URL in porfolio when attached bib record's 856 is updated |
| 23 | 7306 | 916 | Fulfillment | Send Courtesy Notices when Patron Loans are Auto-Renewed |
| 24 | 8947 | 895 | Fulfillment | Show Pickup location in the tables "Requests" and "Loans" in Patron Services |
| 25 | 8936 | 815 | Acquisitions | Copies of claim letters sent to sender e-mail and PO line reference and vendor code added to the claim report events |
The first round of voting for Alma Enhancements opened on Monday, March 4, 2024 and will close on Friday, March 29, 2024. ELUNA's Alma Working Group released 213 enhancement requests for Alma that can receive votes. This first round of voting is designed to narrow the list of enhancements down to about 25-30 requests. A link to an Excel spreadsheet with a detailed description of each request is listed below.
Libraries who have an Institutional Membership with ELUNA are able to vote on enhancements. FLVC is a Consortial Member and will also cast a vote on behalf of the organization. FLVC staff will share with all the libraries which enhancements they support by March 18th. Typically, FLVC chooses 4-5 enhancement requests from the list. That list will be posted here.
After careful consideration and with input from the User Interface Standing Committee(UISC), FLVC would like to recommend the following four (5) Alma enhancements for the first round of voting:
| Request ID | Module | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 8839 | Acquisitions | Overview of order templates |
| 8914 | Administration | In List Configuration Option in Request TOU Pickup Locations Policy |
| 8991 | Analytics | Ability to report on additional historical events |
| 8999 | Fulfillment | Resource Sharing - Add block for Ship from Scan-in items |
| 8940 | Res. Management | Implementation of a new parameter in the NZ institution (Identifies orphan bibs) |
Since each ballot is allotted 100 points, FLVC will put 20 points on each request. Remember, institutional members of ELUNA can also vote and they have the same number of points.
Below is a list of other Alma enhancement requests that were also considered by FLVC:
| Request ID | Module | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 7785 | Acquisitions | Link an order to existing inventory directly from a POL |
| 8348 | Acquisitions | Make improvements to the Acquisitions Renewals task list and workflow |
| 8861 | Acquisitions | Changing POL type after POL is sent |
| 8945 | Acquisitions | Ability to Change POLs at the Item Level |
| 8844 | Administration | Library opening hours for more than three (3) years |
| 8853 | Administration | Remove user notes via process job |
| 8771 | Fulfillment | E-Resources in the Network Zone and Course Reserve linking in the Institution Zone |
| 8984 | Fulfillment | Resource Sharing - Lending Ship item physically check item barcode matches title |
| 9005 | Fulfillment | Resource Sharing - Physical journal coverage should be considered for Resource sharing ILL request display. |
| 6666 | Res. Management | More mapping options for Import Profiles |
| 7768 | Res. Management | Remove set from collection |
| 8741 | Res. Management | Improve Shelf Report functionality and responsiveness |
| 8998 | Res. Management | Special Characters option in Metadata Editor |
The first round of voting for Primo Enhancements have been completed. 391 ELUNA and IGeLU members voted. ELUNA's Primo Working Group have decided to take the top 20 enhancements from this round and asked Ex Libris to evaluate and "point" each request on how easy or difficult it will be to implement. The vendor is committed to develop 150 points worth of enhancements this year. Once the evaluation is completed in late May, the working group will either recommend that the top 5-10 enhancements be implemented (up to 150 points) or that a second round of voting is needed. If a second round is done, it will be done in mid-June.
Below is a list of the top 20 enhancements. The requests recommended by FLVC are noted in red.
| Rank | Request ID | Votes | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 9021 | 3283 | A better DEI Term Tool |
| 2 | 8756 | 3064 | Primo VE Facet for physical availability, configurable for locations / policy |
| 3 | 8871 | 2953 | Primo VE Advanced search - Exact - Title: $a alone must find results |
| 4 | 8959 | 2791 | Combine two or more recent or saved searches |
| 5 | 8760 | 2763 | Add A-Z to database and journal search in Primo VE |
| 6 | 8816 | 2140 | Improve search in other languages |
| 7 | 9000 | 1940 | Edit the out-of-the-box search and facet rules in Primo VE |
| 8 | 7799 | 1758 | Add facets to Collection Discovery |
| 9 | 8810 | 1333 | Add the ability for patrons to change the default sort |
| 10 | 8720 | 1298 | "Begins with" and "exact phrase" searching against any search field |
| 11 | 9019 | 1283 | Network Zone DEI term tool |
| 12 | 8870 | 1241 | Advanced search: turn off FRBR for the results |
| 13 | 9020 | 1195 | Add DEI icon and/or information popup |
| 14 | 8804 | 1178 | E-resources in results when narrowing search down to Institution Zone (IZ) or library |
| 15 | 8814 | 1120 | User-defined favorite libraries that get preferential ranking in the Get It section and Libraries facet |
| 16 | 8788 | 1097 | Add configuration ability to discover selected CDI Newspaper Articles in main results |
| 17 | 8961 | 1097 | Enable greater granularity in display logic for Full Text services within the same interface |
| 18 | 8868 | 1045 | Resource Type Filter Ribbon: after a search, distinguish between resource types with and without results |
| 19 | 8970 | 1040 | Consolidate My Library Card display of loans/requests from all institutions in the network |
| 20 | 8812 | 1022 | Change handling of MARC fields 100 and 700 in citation styles in Primo VE |
The first round of voting for Primo Enhancements opened on Monday, March 4, 2024 and will close on Friday, March 29, 2024. ELUNA's Primo Working Group released 99 enhancement requests for Primo that can receive votes. A link to an Excel spreadsheet with a detailed description of each request is listed below.
Libraries who have an Institutional Membership with ELUNA are able to vote on enhancements. FLVC is a Consortial Member and will also cast a vote on behalf of the organization. FLVC staff will share with all the libraries which enhancements they support by March 18th. Typically, FLVC chooses 4-5 enhancement requests from the list. That list will be posted here.
After careful consideration and with input from the User Interface Standing Committee(UISC), FLVC would like to recommend the following four (4) Primo enhancements for the first round of voting:
| Request ID | Title |
|---|---|
| 7799 | Add Facets to Collection Discovery |
| 8756 | Primo VE Facet for Physical Availability, Configurable for Locations/Policy |
| 8788 | Add Configuration Ability to Discover Selected CDI Newspaper Articles in Main Results, Not Only in Newspaper Search |
| 8805 | Add Ability to Specify Which 856 Fields Are Used to Generate Primo VE Service Links |
Since each ballot is allotted 100 points, FLVC will put 25 points on each request. Remember, institutional members of ELUNA can also vote, and they have the same number of points.
Below is a list of other Primo enhancement requests that were also considered by FLVC or the UISC:
| Request ID | Title |
|---|---|
| 8252 | Improve the title display configuration to allow statement of responsibility in Primo VE display |
| 8759 | Improving Journal Search with facets |
| 8770 | Add Uniform Title as a Search Index option for Hypertext Linking in Primo VE |
| 8796 | Add option to generate multiple Citations at once and export to text file |
| 8797 | Retain checkbox selection of records in brief results |
| 8800 | Add a proximity search operator |
| 8964 | Show journal coverage dates in brief results and journal search for physically held materials |
| 8971 | Add “read-only” option to the “Display to Public” setting for the display of personal delivery locations in Primo VE request forms |
The first round of voting for ELUNA/IGELU NERS Rapido/RapidILL Enhancements ended on October 17th. You can download the list of enhancement submissions here.
Note: Your institution must be an ELUNA member to vote & all voting institutions must have a signed Rapido or RapidILL contract with ExLibris.
The following four enhancements have been included in the 2024 Roadmaps. ExLibris will have one year to complete the developments.
| Request Title | Description | Proposed Solution | Product | Req. ID |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Add “Conditional” to RapidILL |
Sometimes libraries need to communicate things to each other that aren't citation issues. For instance, if a library has an HTML version of an article instead of a PDF with page numbers or a different edition of a book than the one listed in the request, that library might want to ask the borrower if that's an okay version for the patron. Right now the only way to communicate between libraries is through Bad Citation, and that doesn't allow libraries to respond to such queries. Adding a "Conditional" status that allows libraries to ask and answer questions that aren't citation problems would help patrons get the items they need instead of requiring libraries to guess at whether what they have is sufficient.
|
We can create a new Rapido action which will provide the ability to send an email to a partner library directly from within Rapido. The email will then be stored in the Rapido borrowing/lending request for later reference. | RapidILL/Rapido | 8558 |
| Configuration option for mandatory fields in the Rapido request form | Currently, there is no option for customers to set fields in the Rapido request form as mandatory (mark them with a red asterix, form can only be sent when field is not empty). However, it is not possible for libraries to fulfill requests where certain information is missing (e.g., no page numbers in digitization requests). We would appreciate if customers would become able to set any field in the form as mandatory such as it is already the case in the GetIt request forms in Primo VE. | Rapido | 8484 | |
| Prevent multiple requests from a same borrowing library within a short period of time |
Within a same day, we sometimes receive (in Alma) several RapidILL requests coming from a same institution for a same book or journal issue (native electronic materials or scans from physical materials): usually one request per book chapter, one request per article, etc., but sometimes, some of these requests are for multiple chapters or significant portions of a work. We assume that in most cases, these multiple requests come from a same requester, associated to the borrowing library. In addition to copyright issues that multiple request raise, it is unreasonable to expect a lending library to expend spending a lot of time to scan significant portions of a work. We don't expect any systematic mediation from borrowing libraries. This would increase the turnaround time, make the process heavier and slower for end-users and be in contradiction with encouraged integrations like Alma/RapidILL and Alma/Rapido. Instead, we would like lending libraries to have the possibility to limit the number of requests they receive from a same borrowing library for a same book or journal issue within a given (short) period of time. Example of configuration: "Maximum XX requests in YY hours for a same book or journal issue from a same borrowing library", where 'XX' and 'YY' would be numeric values to select from a drop-down list. Possible values for XX and YY should be defined in collaboration with the RapidILL and Rapido WGs. |
Development is for point one only: 1) Any new request matching the limits should be assigned to another lending institution that owns the requested material. We can develop lender configurations to support this. |
RapidILL | 8530 |
| Ability to query RapidILL lending library from Alma |
Sometimes we need to contact the library that supplied a RapidILL request to query the copy they provided. For example, supplementary material that was requested was not included, or the incorrect article/chapter was uploaded and sent to our user. At the moment, we need to find out the institution and send them an email. It would be much more efficient if we could query the 'completed' request via Alma to the Library. This functionality should update the request status and record the communication with the request. There is a Resupply request feature included in Rapido but is not currently possible within Alma Resource Sharing, so a similar solution would be useful. |
RapidILL/Alma | 8487 |