Sent on behalf of Dean German:
Dear Colleagues,
I’m pleased to provide an update on Alma from Ex Libris, the new library service platform for University of Houston Libraries, the UH Law Library, UH Clear Lake, and UH Downtown.
On Thursday, November 29th, members of the Alma Steering Committee held a conference call with Tony Gibbons, our Ex Libris customer onboarding representative, to kick off our Alma implementation! Tony provided a high-level overview of the next 6-7 months of the implementation project. The first phase is onboarding, starting now through January 2019, where we will review the project schedule and high-level milestones, and begin preparing our Sierra ILS (and other systems’) data for migration to the Alma test environment. We will also gain access to the Alma sandbox server so that library staff may begin exploring the Alma environment.
Weekly conference calls between Ex Libris representatives and the Libraries’ project managers (Richard Guajardo and Lee Hilyer) will begin the first week of December to continue the conversation and prepare for the second phase (project implementation) which begins in January and concludes in July 2019. Other project team members and key stakeholders will be included as needed. The final phase is known as “Switch to Support,” when the Ex Libris project team concludes its work, the system is live, and support needs are handled through regular channels.
Our current go-live date is scheduled for July 23, 2019. More information, a detailed schedule, and links to further training opportunities will be provided soon at sites.lib.uh.edu/alma.
Lisa German
Dean of University Libraries and Elizabeth D. Rockwell Chair
University of Houston Libraries
4333 University Dr.
Houston TX 77204-2000
Ph. 713-743-9795
Lagerman@central.uh.edu