Library Notes

On Friday, November 13, 2020, six librarians from the Missouri State University Libraries met online via Zoom with several librarians from CalTech (California Institute of Technology), a major private research university located in Pasadena, to discuss the challenges and benefits of undergoing a systems migration.  Representatives from CalTech had reached out to Brooks Travis, the head of Library Information Technology at the MSU Libraries, requesting an online group conversation and sharing of ideas and experiences, because of our recently launched…

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Before each quarterly release of FOLIO, the growing global group of FOLIO users conducts a community testing program, known as “Bug Fest”. The Bug Fest for the Q2 2020 release of FOLIO, a.k.a Goldenrod, was held from approximately June 22-26, 2020, and featured 946 test cases, covering nearly every corner of FOLIO functionality.   A team of nine (out of 60 total community testers) faculty and staff from Missouri State Libraries led the way among participating libraries, completing 153 test…

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Next Monday will be a red letter day for the Missouri State University Libraries. If all goes as planned several important things will happen: New Systems Go Live: The Missouri State University Libraries, in partnership with EBSCO, one of the leading providers of research databases, e-journals, e-books, and discovery services to libraries, has undertaken a major project to upgrade its fundamental information systems.  Because the foundation of this project will be a new open-source software platform called FOLIO (the Future…

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The Missouri State University Libraries will be migrating to new systems in early June. Here is the basic information that users need to know:   At approximately 6:00 p.m. CDT on Thursday, June 4, 2020, MSU faculty, staff, students, and other community members will no longer be able to renew or request items via the SWAN or MOBIUS catalogs. (MOBIUS requests, as well as requests from other SWAN libraries. have been unavailable since March, and will remain so through June.) However,…

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On Monday, March 30, 2020, the Missouri State University Libraries began transitioning to OpenAthens to manage remote access to electronic resources (online journals, databases, e-books, etc.) from the previous proxy server system used.   One effect of this change was that users accessing EBSCOhost systems (e.g., Academic Search Complete, Business Source Complete, EBSCO Discovery Service, and more) had a My EBSCOhost account created for them. Among other functionality, this account provides persistent access to a My EBSCOhost folder, giving users…

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Developers of FOLIO, the new, collaborative, open-source LSP (Library Services Platform) that the Missouri State University Libraries is implementing, along with many other peer and aspirational universities in North America and Europe, have been giving flower names of various versions of the software, in alphabetical order. The Fameflower version, following the Edelweiss release (now you’ll have that song in mind for the rest of the day), which will be our initial production software, will be available very soon, perhaps as…

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On January 22nd through the 24, a contingent from the MSU Libraries, consisting of Brooks Travis (LIT Coordinator), Mark Arnold (Library Systems and Support Specialist), and Joshua Lambert (Head of Access Services), attended the 2020 World Open Library Foundation Conference (WOLFcon) on the campus of Texas A&M University in College Station, TX. The three-day conference featured over 50 sessions on FOLIO, the new library services platform (LSP) the MSU Libraries are going live with in June 2020, and provided an opportunity to…

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EDS Discovery Layer: The Discovery Layer Implementation Advisory Working Group is very close to finalizing the initial configuration of MSU’s new EDS Discovery Layer. The new link will “go live” early in January, as the first step in a phased implementation. Crystal Dicke will be giving demonstrations of the new discovery layer soon, and she will continue to gather feedback and suggestions. Project ReShare: The Open Library Foundation (OLF) has been working on a collaborative project to develop and deploy…

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A schematic drawing (conceptual map infographic) of the entire project has been produced, to help everyone better understand how the various pieces of this massive project will communicate, share data and metadata, and work together to better serve the information needs of library users.  The faculty and staff of the MSU Libraries are testing and tweaking the EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS), the discovery layer that will be implemented early in 2020. Initially, only selected e-resources will be discoverable through the…

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Next Thursday several members of the First FOLIO Project Steering Committee will travel to West Plains to meet with staff members of Garnett Library on the campus of Missouri State University – West Plains about the upcoming implementation.  On Tuesday the first meeting of the EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) Implementation Advisory Working Group was held. A test version is up and running and all of the configurable parameters are being reviewed. Soon we will have a link available for broader…

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