FOLIO detailed countdown timeline

The Five College Libraries will migrate back-end system operations from the current library system (ALEPH) to FOLIO at the end of June 2022. FOLIO (The Future Of Libraries Is Open) is a collaboration of libraries, developers and vendors building an open source library services platform that supports traditional resource management functionality while also opening the door for innovation in an increasingly digital world. We are excited about the opportunities this future-looking system will provide.

This transition will temporarily affect a number of library services. Please see transition timeline below:

  • June 14: Last day to edit records in ALEPH
  • June 21: Last day to request physical items from any of the Five College Libraries for pickup at your own institution before requesting is paused across the consortium. Requests will resume on July 5.
  • June 26: Last day to use self-checkout kiosks, the Smith Libraries Self Checkout app, renew materials, and to make patron record changes in ALEPH; We will resume on July 5. Some libraries will offer offline circulation between June 27 – July 3. Please note that library item available statuses will not be updated in Discover during this time.
  • June 30: Migration from ALEPH to FOLIO is complete. Final systems checks performed.
  • June 30: last day the Five College Catalog will be searchable.
  • June 30: First day for Discovery as the primary research interface. There could be intermittent outages.
  • July 5: Circulation of physical materials, requests, and patron record changes resume. Records are editable in FOLIO.
  • Week of July 11th: Order processing resumes in FOLIO.

In the process of adopting FOLIO, the Five Colleges Libraries will be retiring the separate Five Colleges Libraries Catalog search interface. The Five College Libraries will be consolidating the discovery and access of library materials in our Discover catalog search. Discover is a reliable interface that has been in use at the Five Colleges since 2012, and it will continue to include all of the records held in the retiring Five Colleges Libraries catalog as well as from most of our subject-specific databases. Additional tools that enable users to request items and manage their accounts within Discover will also be implemented at the time of migration, streamlining the request process and allowing for increased functionality (you’ll be able to see where you are in the request queue for an item!).

Library Databases, Publication Finder, streaming video and ebooks will remain available throughout the migration. We anticipate that Discover will also continue to be available, but there may be brief periods of downtime. Permalinks from the Five College Catalog and Discover Advanced Search may no longer work after the transition.

Staff across the consortia will be working to make this as smooth a transition as possible. Keep an eye on FCLIB FOLIO emails, Five College FOLIO Slack announcements, and your local institutions websites for the most up to date information.

More details about the FOLIO transition can be found in:

FOLIO Fridays

FOLIO is coming in only 6 months and we are getting really excited to share it with everyone. We’ve adapted an approach used at Cornell that we hope will start to introduce FOLIO to library staff who haven’t had the opportunity to spend much time with it yet. FOLIO Fridays will provide a chance for EVERYONE across the Five College Libraries to become familiar with our new library services platform. The goal is to incorporate FOLIO into your routine at a modest pace. By spending a little time each week, you will become acquainted with the user interface, navigation, and terminology. By springtime, those who will use FOLIO regularly will be ready to start more formal training specific to your work.

What are FOLIO Fridays?

Each week, we’ll focus on a short, single activity, designed by one of the FOLIO Working Groups. We will kick off the day with a brief Zoom call for everyone to see the activity and ask questions. Instructions will be provided for staff to perform the activity on their own or in small groups at their institution. Local FOLIO folks will be available to answer questions. In the afternoon, staff can join a second Zoom call to share their experience and ask additional questions.

What aren’t FOLIO Fridays?

FOLIO Fridays are NOT formal training, nor are they a substitute for formal training which will come later in the spring.

 

What is the Friday schedule?

9:30-10am – Introductory Zoom Call

Whenever works for you – work on FOLIO Friday activity

Additional local drop-in times may be available

3:30-4pm – Sharing Experiences Zoom Call

I’m very busy. How long will this take?

Everyone is super busy right now and we’ve designed the activities with that in mind. Weekly activities are intended to take 20 minutes or less. The morning Zoom call will only be about 15 minutes plus time for questions.

What if I don’t work on Fridays?

We understand that no weekday works for everyone. With that in mind, all Zoom calls will be recorded and made available for later viewing. Likewise, all activities will be documented so they can be done at a later time.

 

Who should participate in FOLIO Fridays?

EVERYONE! While not all FOLIO Friday activities will be part of your regular work once we go live this summer, we expect everyone will take advantage of this opportunity to play around in the FOLIO sandbox to see what all the fuss is about.

When does this start?

FOLIO Fridays will begin Friday, January 14th.

How will we get support during FOLIO Fridays?

In addition to support at your local campus, you can join the FOLIO Friday channel on the Five College FOLIO Slack workspace. FIT and Leads members will be monitoring the channel and answering questions in real time. New to Slack and want to join? Request an account.

 

We can’t wait to share all the cool things about FOLIO with you. Stay tuned for more information early next week.

 

Sent on behalf of the FOLIO Implementation Team (FIT) and Working Group Leads

FOLIO Implementation Team (FIT)

Aaron Neslin, Five College Library Services Platform Coordinator

Steve Bischof, Project Manager

Anya Arnold, Implementation Coordinator, EBSCO

Kat Berry, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Rob O’Connell, Smith College

Janet Ewing, Mount Holyoke College

Jen Bolmarcich, Hampshire College

Susan Kimball, Amherst College

 

FOLIO Working Group Leads

Aaron Neslin, Five College Library Services Platform Coordinator

Lucinda Williams, Co-Lead, FOLIO Acquisitions WG (FAWG)

Kathleen Norton, Co-Lead, FOLIO Acquisitions WG (FAWG)

Jack Mulvaney, Lead, FOLIO Electronic Resources Management WG (FERM)

Colin Van Alstine, Metadata Management Committee (MM)

Susan Kimball, Lead, Circulation/Users for FOLIO WG (CUFF)

 

Chalmers University is up and running on FOLIO!

A message From FOLIO Product Manager Harry Kaplanian of EBSCO Information Services:

As of Monday, Chalmers University is up and running on FOLIO!

Thank you all in the FOLIO community for all your hard work and effort over the last 3 (or more) years to make FOLIO real. You have volunteered your knowledge and experience of libraries, workflows and defined the key problems that needed to be solved in order to make FOLIO viable.   This first “go live” milestone is the result of all your hard work, and the entire community has participated in this achievement.

Chalmers University is actively fulfilling loans, requests, adding and updating users while maintaining physical inventory and maintaining e-resources with the following applications:

FOLIO applications running at Chalmers FOLIO integrations to
Check in, Check out & Requests EBSCO Holdings IQ
Users OpenAthens
Orders GOBI
Inventory Bibliotheca selfcheck machines
Orders The union catalog of Sweden
Organizations EBSCO Discovery Service
Agreements
Licenses
eholdings
SIP2

In return, this has provided the community valuable feedback for FOLIO which will make FOLIO substantially better for the next round of early adopters in the following areas:

  • Critical performance & reliability issues
  • UI concerns and improvements
  • Critical security defects
  • General defects and feature “misses”

I would also like to specifically call out and thank:

  • The FOLIO POs and UI designers who ensured that FOLIO features were prioritized, defined and ready for development and tested
  • The hours of testing from staff librarians from the community libraries and at Chalmers
  • Special thanks to Holly for her tireless efforts in helping organize priorities to get FOLIO into a usable state

I would also like to thank the community developers for helping to accelerate FOLIO feature development by:

  • Being active participants in the community with quality code
  • By adapting industry standard best practices
  • For unblocking releases in a timely manner so that the release timeline was not impacted
  • For being on call when needed to investigate and fix problems often going above and beyond in solving key performance, security and stability issues

I would also like to thank the PC for it’s hard work in providing oversight in community process, roadmap alignment and organization of SIG structures and governance to define the requirements critical for FOLIO and the community developers to build the features needed by the greater FOLIO community.

Everyone who worked on this project in big and small ways please take a moment and celebrate, you are a part of academic library automation history.

For a bit fun, Chalmers took some time this weekend and created this fun video https://chalmersuniversity.box.com/s/rhjyvoci0up40kxfcqgltccbm68wy4z2.

If I’ve missed anyone, please forward.

Thank you!

Harry Kaplanian

 

Records Merge Working Group Invites you to 2 Open Discussions

The last records merge open discussion focused on special collections, analyzed sets, bound-with, and  electronic resources. A recording, summary, and images of notes can be found in the FIT Documents folder for the Record Merge Working Group. A word of warning about the recording – we broke out into groups which didn’t translate to the recording. The beginning and end was captured. If you were unable to attend or have more you’d like to contribute, post your comments to this form which is anonymous and only for internal use.

We are in the process of scheduling two additional open discussions. Save the date for these upcoming events:

  • April 30, 2019, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm, The Annex: Open Discussion on (Not) Merging Suppressed Records
  • May 10, 2019, 9:30 am – 11:00 am, Mt. Holyoke: Open Discussion on Merging and What steps should be taken to prepare to Merge (or Not) on: Special Collections, Analyzed/Bound-withs/Cat Seps/etc., a third topic to be announced

We encourage everyone to continue the discussions on merging and how to prepare for the merge with their colleagues. If you have a group and a topic for the May 10th discussion that isn’t special collections or the analyzed/etc, let us know via the form, by email (jeustis@umass.edu) or Slack #5crmwg.