Libraries

Harvard Library Rolls Out Technology to Enhance Collaboration and Streamline Operations

• By Sri Ravipati
• 12/14/16

Harvard Library has selected a new library management platform in an effort to foster collaboration and streamline operations across more than 70 Harvard Library units. The library selected Alma from Ex Libris, an Israel-based provider of higher education cloud solutions owned by ProQuest, which is used by 32 other members of the Association of Research Libraries.

Alma is designed to handle all resource types (electronic, print and digital), which will come in handy for Harvard Library’s 56 million archived web pages, 21 volumes and 10 million photographs. In addition, the service helps support library collaboration with “unified resource management capabilities, advanced workflows and robust infrastructure.” Analytics track the use of collections and more, to help with evidence-based decision-making. Finally, Alma’s cloud-based, multi-tenant design “provides significant savings in maintenance and IT support costs,” according to the Ex Libris website.

A long-standing partner with Ex Libris, Harvard Library previously ran the company’s Aleph product between 2000–2014 and Primo since 2014. According to a press release, Alma will help the library “in achieving its goal of actively managing print and online collections within a single framework throughout the entire library network.”

"One of the strategic objectives we have at Harvard Library is to enable effective access to the world of knowledge and data through intuitive discovery, networks of expertise and global collaborations," said Sarah Thomas, vice president for the library, and Roy Larsen, a librarian for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, in a joint statement. "Alma is a robust platform that brings us the functionality, ease-of-use and cloud services that will help us reach our immediate objectives and our long-term goals."

Further information is available on the Ex Libris site.