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Audience: the OCLS newsletter is distributed to library staff and directors across the system, so this piece should be accessible to college library staff who are not directly involved in CLSP implementation
Length: ~200-250 words
Due: Monday, November 8, 2021
Liana said she would provide you with communications material from the PMO, so I’m sure you’ll have lots of material. If If you do want to take a look at some examples, you can find past newsletters in the OCLS newsletter archive (go here: https://www.ocls.ca/news/newsletter-archive ). Cynthia Mckeich and Marnie Seal wrote a piece for the June 2021 newsletter, so that should also give you a sense of the tone and language used around CLSP in past issues.
If you have any questions: Rebecca
Hello everyone,
Thank you for agreeing to write the OCLS Newsletter article on the CLSP project to date. ____________
We have a very nice summary of the project on our CLSP site that you can use as inspiration: https://clo-collaboration-spaces.atlassian.net/l/c/1B1wPacY
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Positions college libraries to meet the requirements of the increasingly digital and sophisticated college curriculum.
Offers seamless, consistent, and equitable access to digital library resources and services to all students across the province.
● Increases system-wide capacity for resource sharing and other operational efficiencies.
Transformation of the colleges’ library infrastructure supports the requirements of the dynamic, digital, and sophisticated college curriculum and the delivery of quality online education to students.
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Collaborative Library Systems Platform (CLSP) Project Update |
By Natalie Colaiacovo, Alexandra Ross, Jane Burpee |
Planning is now underway for the 18 colleges who have been working closely with OCLS to implement ALMA, a next generation, cloud-based Library Services Platform (LSP).
As the project will impact many facets of college library work, the Implementation Steering Committee (ISC) assembled a veritable Avengers roster of 50+ experts from across the 18 schools to populate five specialized subcommittees tasked with thinking through key project details in the areas of:
metadata & cataloguing;
e-resources & acquisitions;
systems, analytics & data;
discovery & customer service; and,
training, communications & public relations.
To support the five subcommittees and oversee overall management of the project, the ISC hired Liana Giovando as Implementation Project Manager and Aura Hill as Implementation Project & Communications Administrator (our Nick Fury and Agent Phil Coulson, respectively). Both Liana and Aura have been instrumental in ensuring all 18 colleges are working in tandem to meet project milestones.
Having participated in project onboarding, which included a series of vendor-led webinars to support data migration readiness, the subcommittees are now engaged in the project’s “Define” phase, which will run from mid-November 2021 to January 2022. As part of this phase, colleges will participate in a data migration test load, which will greatly impact future testing and deployment of the ALMA platform.
While ALMA implementation is an immense undertaking, thanks to the shared hard work and expertise of staff from all colleges, as well as centralized support from OCLS and the project management office, the CLSP project remains on track to go live by July 2022.
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DRAFT NOTES
We are pleased to provide a progress update on the Collaborative Library Services Platform (CLSP) project undertaken by OCLS on behalf of College Libraries Ontario (CLO), the collaborative body of 24 college libraries that advocates on behalf of students for the best college library services and resources.
OCLS, in collaboration with the college libraries, proposes to replace ageing library software in 18 colleges with a next generation, cloud-based Library Services Platform (LSP). LSPs are enterprise software that students and faculty interact with to access and use library resources, tools, and services. A province-wide LSP will support equitable access to digital resources, wrap-around supports, and services for students across the province as envisioned in the Virtual Learning Strategy.
This spade-ready, collective initiative to transform the colleges’ library infrastructure:
● Positions college libraries to meet the requirements of the increasingly digital and sophisticated college curriculum.
Offers seamless, consistent, and equitable access to digital library resources and services to all students across the province.
● Increases system-wide capacity for resource sharing and other operational efficiencies.
The CLSP project has made tremendous progress and achieved significant milestones. Most notably, OCLS has executed the final Agreement with Ex Libris for a Software as a Service subscription and implementation services.
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Initiated the Onboarding phase of the implementation, including early learning, data planning and information gathering.
Conducted needs assessment interviews with individual college libraries to determine the level of support required for successful migration and implementation.
Assigned decision-making power to expert committees, drawn from library staff across the system, that will focus on system-wide implementation decisions.
Strengthened the Project Management Office with professional staff to support the Implementation Steering Committee (ISC), the sub-committees and the college libraries.
Initiated a series of vendor-hosted webinars for libraries to begin local planning.
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The Onboarding phase complete, the Define phase will run from mid-November until January 2022. The Test Load will kick off our Build phase, which also involves completing testing and a Go-Live readiness checklist.
The new system launches July 2022 with one month of additional support from the Ex Libris Implementation team to finalize supplementary details.
In the new year,