5. • Leuven Integrated (B)Library and Information System
• Part of KU Leuven responsible for central library
automation
• Since early 70’s
• Service offer for external organisations
• Staff of 20 persons
7. LIBISNet
• A Library network
• Since 1977
• Different types of libraries
–
–
–
–
–
KU Leuven university
College libraries
Government libraries
Documentation Centers
Company library
• 33 institutions, 85 libraries
8. Software
• Aleph:
– 1 bibliographic, 1 administrative database
– Cataloguing (33), circulation, acquisitions, ILL
– Shared catalogue, no other functions like acquisitions in
consortium
– Ca 6.000.000 records
– Ca 6.800.000 items
– Configuration (tables) by LIBIS
9. Software
• SFX & MetaLib
–
–
–
–
Used by KU Leuven and colleges (KU Leuven Association)
Content managed by E-resources department of KU Leuven
SFX: 1 instance, 13 institutes
MetaLib: 1 instance, 13 user groups
• (Verde
– Used by KU Leuven)
10. Content
•
•
•
•
•
•
KU Leuven, LIBIS & LIBISnet
Setup & design of Limo
Customizations
Issues
Organisational & technical management
Limo for Alma
11.
12. • Phased roll-out:
– 2010 KU Leuven
– 2012 Colleges (Association KU Leuven)
– 2013 all LIBISnet partners
• Every LIBISnet partner has it’s own primo-institution
and view
13. Content of Limo
•
•
•
•
•
LIBISnet Catalogue
Primo Central (KU Leuven Association, +1 partner)
SFX-records (KU Leuven Association, +1 partner)
ML-records (KU Leuven Association)
Institutional repository of KU Leuven
Association : Lirias
• Reference database of persons and
organisations in Flanders : ODIS
15. Visibility of physical items from (own) library ?
• Usability study: was insufficient in first
design with one search tab in simple
search to search all data.
• Library facets not satisfactory
– Not always displayed (not if only one facet,
if all results have the facet)
– Long list
16. Visibility of physical items from (own) library ?
Solutions:
• “Forced blending”
• Boosting local records from
own institution
• Additional search tab for
library items
17. Search tabs in simple search
• Google-like search
box to search all
content (blended
search)
• Search tab for
(physical) items
within the institution
/ campus
23. Content
•
•
•
•
•
•
KU Leuven, LIBIS & LIBISnet
Setup & design of Limo
Customizations
Issues
Organisational & technical management
Limo for Alma
24. Some customizations
Relevant in a consortium environment:
• To meet user requirements
– Library info
– Off campus access
• To keep maintenance managable
– Helpdesk & configuration: extra debugging info from
session data via restfull API
– Use of local tiles
26. Library info: also from search results
Link to location map for some
libraries
27. Restful API
Data of the session are extracted e.g.:
• View , based on session
• Institution code (based on session, IP & View)
• PdsUserInfo userinfo ;
• Interface language ;
• SfxInstitutionCode,..
These data are directly accessed from the Web browser to
display debug info for views: show institution, view, IP
address, Front End
28. Debug info in UI
Combination of keystrokes **d invokes debug information
29. Use of local tiles
• Local header , footer with reference to customized js
and jsp pages.
• Based on the combination of the institution code ,
session , view & language (data extracted from
restfull API), web pages are built as a combination of
standard files (used for all institutions) and
information specific to the institution
=> no need to maintain separate CSS files for each
institution & language.
30. Use of local tiles
• Examples:
–
–
–
–
–
–
hiding features such as signing in for certain institutions,
offering various help files for different groups of settings,
logos,
information on the home page,
a message about use of the proxy.
by using a "content file" based on language, we can avoid
maintaining different views per language.
31. Popup message for off campus users
Off campus
- Some Primo Central collections not available
- No access to licensed full text
Based on session data: message
invites off campus user to login to
proxy server
32. Content
•
•
•
•
•
•
KU Leuven, LIBIS & LIBISnet
Setup & design of Limo
Customizations
Issues for the consortium
Organisational & technical management
Limo for Alma
34. Issues with activating resources in PC
• Activation forms for all institutions available on one
site, no restriction per institution
–> activations are done centrally at this moment.
• Resources need to be activated per institution
• No possibility to export all resources
–> how to communicate with consortium partners
about resources to be activated ?
36. Issues : local subjects
• Each institution can use it’s own local subjects in Aleph.
• The institutional OPAC’s only displayed the local subjects
of the own institution for a record.
• To make this work in Primo, we need to add 33 local fields.
Only 50 local fields can be defined in Limo.
We decided not to display local fields in the Limo
record but show all subjects in the facets
Opportunity to rationalize keywords within the
network …
38. Our Limo team
• 4 persons
• Technical : +- 1 FTE (1,5 currently : preparation for Alma)
System management, normalization, configuration
of tables & views, projects
• Functional: 0,5 FTE
Communication, planning, helpdesk, projects
39. Further development of Limo
• All major changes that impact end users are discussed
and decided on in a Working Group with experts and
representatives of KU Leuven & the LIBISnet-partners
• In releases, min. 2/year
– Changes in configuration
– Software upgrades
40. Collaborative testing
• Before each (major) release
• To enhance efficiency:
– Detailed test scenario needed
– Status of tests, and feedback on tests should be available in
real time to all testers
Testscenario created in issue tracker (Youtrack), each
test is an issue
– On site testing in group
42. Content
•
•
•
•
•
•
KU Leuven, LIBIS & LIBISnet
Setup & design of Limo
Customizations
Issues
Organisational & technical management
Limo for Alma
43. Alma: impact on Limo,
related to the consortium
•
•
•
•
Publishing
Locations tab
My Account
Library info & location map
44. Current publishing
Aleph – Shared catalogue
Library 1 (Institution A)
Library 2 (Institution A)
Library 3 (Institution B)
SFX
Institute A
Institute B
ML
Usergroup A
Usergroup B
48. Publishing from Alma
?
Publishing from Network Zone, 1 pipe
From Primo Service Pack 4.5.1
Institution Zone
Inventory
Institution
A
Institution
B
Collecting holdings & local records
Network Zone
Community Zone
Shared
catalogue
CKB records
Activating e-resources
50. Limo for Alma: Tab Locations
User sees only items of his own institution in the first place
Can check the location of items in other institutions by clicking the link
More.
51. My Account
?
User with accounts in several institutions can see his accounts in
other institutions from within the view of an institution
52. Library info
•
•
•
•
and location map
Very limited possibilities to customize Locations (Get It ) tab
Our own link to library info is not feasible anymore
We will use the Alma functionality to link to a location map
No API available yet to get library info (addresses, opening hours)
from Alma.
54. Lessons learned
• Be careful with customizations
• Collaborative testing pays if well prepared and
organised
• Switch to Alma is also a Primo project
Editor's Notes
Ouruniversity has a narrow cooperation withseveral schools forhighereducation, all over Flanders.InOctober last year, the master programs mergedwith KU Leuven. So these departments have becomecampuseswithstudents of KU Leuven. The colleges didnotmergecompletelyinto the KU Leuven: they keep their bachelor programs.It was andstill is quitechallengingtoorganise access tolibrary resources on these locations: the libraries server college students as well as universitystudentsandeachgroup has access to different online resources.
Who is LIBIS ? We are a department of KU Leuven, responsibleforlibraryautomationandthissince the early seventies. LIBIS was the name of a library system that was made in KU Leuven, in the time of the mainframes.We don’tonlyworkfor the KU Leuven libraries, but also have a service offer toexternalorganisations.
Our service offer has grown in time. Nowadays, we don’tonly have a service offer forlibraries, but we alsooffferautomationandarchivalsolutionsfor museums andarchives.We also run the library system for the public libraries in the province Vlaams Brabant (you can compare it with a department in France). The system serves 60 libraries in 31 cities. Also for the public library sector, we run a background catalogue for the public libraries. Further, we participate in projects. One of them is the creation of an e-books platform, a cooperation between libraries and publishers. Here, we are one of the development partners.Also for the public library sector, we run PBS Vlaams-BrabantSince 2006Replacing local systemsFocus on patrons and circulationOne patron31 cities – 60 Librariesca 6 900 000 records / ca 2 000 000 itemsOpen VlaccSince 2007Focus on cataloguingServes as a background catalogca 6 500 000 recordsComplete service offer
The librarynetwork iscreated in the 70’s already, ofcourseitgrowed in time, andnowconsists of 33 institutions of which KU Leuven is by far the biggest. KU Leuven has 11 libraries of 85 in total in the network. But the network is quite divers with college librariesGovernmentlibraries (BelgianandFlemishparliament), Documentation Centers, and a company library.
Thelibrary system is Aleph foralllibrariesand we share a bibliographic as wel as oneadministrative database. The basis of the consortium is the shared cataloguing. The other modules likecirculation, acsuisitionsand are notusedbyallinstitutions.All system librarytasks, the configuration of the tables, is doneby LIBIS.
Further we use SFX andMetaLibtogive access toourelectronic resources and manage them.At this moment, the KU Leuven Associationmakesuse of SFX andMetaLib in oneinstance
Limo is the name of ourimplementation of Primo in the LIBISnetwork. We askedour partners for a suitable name, and Limo this was the suggestionthat won It sounds like a mix of LIBIS and Primo, italso sounds exclusive
Only.. ifyou type in http://www.limo.be you get this site. It’s a pittythat we didnot register it.I must say that, when we were promoting Limo to the librariesit has happenedthatsomeonefrom LIBIS sent by error thisurl in a mail to the network partnersYoucanimagineitcausedsomehilarity
These are just a few views togiveyouanidea. This last view is the LIBISnetgeneralnetwork view, thatonlycontains the catalogue data and has limitedfunctionality. 7 views for colleges, but behindsome links are two or three views withexactly the samelayoutand look and feel, but other data. Based on your IP address, you are taken to of these views andifyou off campus, you are askedtochooseforone of the institutions.The design of the user interface has already had somemodificationssince we startedwith Limo.From the beginning, we wantedoneblended search tofindall data, Primo Central records, catalogue, otherlocal records. Just like in Google, straightforwardandsimple.Users canalwayseasily limit their search resultsby the facets, likeforexample “fysical items” at the left hand side of the screen.
However, itappearedthatour users found itdifficulttofindlocal records especiallyknownphysical items from the library. From a usabilitystudyand a libqualstudy, we learnedthat a number of users wereoverwhelmedby the manyresults op Primo Central. What we heard was: I finditdifficulttofind out if a thisbook is in mylibrary. Also, patronsdidn’t get used (at that time) to the faceted search soeasily, Especially the library facet wasn’tthat user friendly.Ofcourse in a consortium context as hours, the list of libraries is long. Youcouldgroup the librariessothat the libraries of the view of the user are displayed first in a group, andthenall the otherlibraries, but the problem is thatifthere is onlyonelibrary in thatgroup, itwillnotbedisplayed. So we chooseforonealphabetic list of the libraries.However, Primo offers someotherinteresting features to make local data more visible, and we made use of them.
We use the forcededblending: Ifthere are relevant local records in the search results, alwaystwo of themwillbeshown on the first page, and we configuredthattheyshouldappear on to of the page.What the colleges found veryinteresting was the possibilityto boost the local records from the owninstitution in relationtolocal records fromotherinstitutions. We set the parameters sothatall or allmostall records from the owninstitution are displayed, before the records fromotherinstitutions. And we alsointroduced a search tab for items in the owninstitution.
For the institutionsthat have Primo Central, a the second tab searchesonly the physical in the libraries of the institution. Thissummer, we alsoadded scopes to limit the search on campus. Thiswhasmainlybecause of the merge of the colleges into the KU Leuven. KU Leuven libraries are now spread over the wholeFlanders as I saidandthenitcanbe relevant toeasily limit justtoyourown campus.For the institutionsthat have no Primo Central, the second tab searches in theircollection, withphysical as wel as online items from the catalogue.
We are service oriented, want to make the users and the librarians happy. There a considerablenumber of configuration options in the Primo software andthat is goodto meet to meet user requirements. Also, we have at LIBIS verygoodandknowledgabletechnicalguyswhocanwritesome javascript, adaptjsp-pages, the CSS thus do somecustomizationstoadapt Primo even more. However, on the other hand, we also have to take the managabilityandthus the totalcost of ownership of the system into account. Ifeveryinstitution wants a very different view, otherfacets, andso on, that has it’sprice. Sowhen we rolled out Limo to the Associationandto the otherLIBISnet partners, we first thoughtaboutwhatconfiguration options couldbe relevant tochoose on for the different partners, andtriedtofind a balancebetween the management side and flexibility.
These are the configuration options we offer for the partners:
Somethingabout the technicalinfrastructure.
We didsomecustomizations, but I won’t talk aboutall of them, I want to focus on A few customizationsthat I think are especially relevant in an consortium environment.On the one hand customizationsto meet user requirementscustomizations we didto keep the maintenance forall these institutionsmanagable.These are the display of library info anddevelopments we didfor off campus access. We
Inoneinstitutionthis is notreally relevant, but it is in a network of 85 libraries: a utilityto search for a librarytofind the addressand check opening hours. The info is taken from Aleph withan API.
REST stands for Representational State Transfer, and it was proposed in a doctorate dissertation. It uses the four HTTP methods GET, POST, PUT and DELETE to execute different operations. This in contrast to SOAP for example, which creates new arbitrary commands (verbs) like getAccounts() or applyDiscount()A REST API is a set of operations that can be invoked by means of any the four verbs, using the actual URI as parameters for your operations. For example you may have a method to query all your accounts which can be called from /accounts/all/ this invokes a HTTP GET and the 'all' parameter tells your application that it shall return all accounts.
Thisdebug info has proven tobeveryusefulfor the testing, andalsofor the helpdesk. Often we get an error feedback : it is notworking, andthen is is practical thatyoucan say : usethiskeycombinationandsendus the screenshot.
Language education, languagedevelopment, dutch,
You can define a maximum of 50 local fields in the Display, Links, Search, Facets and Enrichment sections of the PNX record.
We workwith releases, this means that we prepareeverything on the staging server, do the testing on the staging server andthen copy the configurationto the production server. We do thistypically in September before the new academicyearand in February, with the start of the new semester. Howeverwhen we go to Alma, we want to make the releases smootherbyworkingwithtwo equivalent servers thatcontainall data. Witheach release, the staging server at that time willbecome the production server. We thencanprepareeverything on the server and go live byjustingswitching the Limo urltothat server. Ofcourse we must take care that the My Account data are syncronised, but I ‘ve been toldthatthatshouldbefeasable.In the years I workwith Primo, I have experiencedthatii’sworthpayingenough attention totestingbeforegoing live with the release. It is alwayspossiblethat we forgetsomething in the configuration, make an error. Alsowitheach primo release it is neededto check ifourcustomizationsstillworkandso on. Also, becauseour policy is notto make only updates on the staging server, it has tobe right at once. A configuration change or correction, even a small one, has towait a few monthsuntil the next release. It is a hell of a job to test 30 views andwith Primo software upgrades, it is best to test allfunctionality, andthat’ s a lot. Anotheradvantages is thateverybody has the opportunity to look at the changes andcannot say afterwards: whydidthis or this change, I didn’tknow..Therefor, it is interestingtoorganisecollaborativetestingwithin the network. I learnedthat in order to have resultsfromtesting, it is goodto have a veryclearandstructured test scenario. I experiencedthat the librarians in the network are preparedto test, but ifthere is no test scenario, testing is oftenlimitedto a few searchable, andmaybeeverybody is testing the samething. SoI’ve been lookingfor a way to make the testingreallycollaborative, sothat we candivide the workandnotevery body has to test the samefunctionality, andsothateverybodycansee the feedback of everybody. AndI’valso been lookingforanefficient way toprocessall the feedback.
Wenowuse the issue trackerthat we useto register and follow up issues, alsofor the testing.Each issue is a test, everybodycanseeeachother feedback on the issue, cansee the status of the issues, seeifanother tester had alreadytestedit, read the feedback. And we at libis, caneasily follow up on them, without copy and paste of the feedback toour issue tracker.Anotherconstation is that as said, we do have volunteersto test, but often, othertasks have the priority and at the end itappearsthattherewas’ntmuch time leftfor the testing. That’swhy we startedorganizing on site test sessions. It’s more stimulatingandpeoplecanreallyconcentrate on the testing.
