Ex Libris products chosen by Western Michigan University

Western Michigan University has selected Ex Libris' Alma library management service and the Primo discovery and delivery solution to provide unified resource management and resource discovery.

Alma and Primo replace multiple homegrown and commercial systems including the ProQuest Summon discovery service.

The company says Alma will enable the university libraries to manage and deliver a single, cloud-based platform for all its information resources, regardless of physical format or how the items were acquired.

'Currently the library uses different systems with add-ons and custom coding to manage and deliver information to our users,' said Joseph Reish, dean of university libraries at WMU.

'By consolidating our systems into Alma and Primo, the library will adopt simplified and streamlined workflows, which will also enable us to offer the appropriate discovery approach to different users: one-stop searching for undergraduates and sophisticated discovery for advanced researchers.'

Reish continued: 'It’s time for us to move to a system that is able to respond to our current operations. We look forward to a cloud-based system that frees us from in-house server maintenance, that offers simpler integration between information management and user-facing functions, easier and more insightful reporting, more powerful evaluation tools, and efficient integration with other WMU systems.

'All of this will provide more time for our staff to focus on the end-user experience. Ex Libris has the technology, support teams, and track-record showing that it can successfully deliver what we are looking for.'

Eric Hines, president of Ex Libris North America, added: 'Western Michigan University joins more than 370 institutions worldwide that have chosen to revitalise their library operations by moving to the cloud-based Alma service, and over 2,100 that have adopted Primo.

'With its decision to adopt Ex Libris solutions for both resource management and resource discovery, the university is positioning its library to make a greater contribution to the success of students, faculty, and researchers in its learning community.'