As mentioned on my 24 May post, yesterday was a significant day for the LMS project!! Right on schedule we completed our Vendor Demonstrations on 10 June. And what a marathon it was. Over 60 people from a range of libraries committed all or part of 6 days to sit and analyse various LMS offerings. Hundreds of questions were asked, hundreds of cups of coffee were consumed, hundreds of animated conversations occurred whilst consuming the coffee, cakes & lunches. And all up there was a real buzz in the air.
The level of engagement by library staff as they poured over cataloguing, circulation, serials modules etc, or attempted to grasp the complexity which sits behind the powerful “discovery layers” of the products was great to see. I am feeling very optimistic about what we have seen. I am now very confident that whatever the final decision, all libraries are in line for a real treat – with improvements for our customers, which will wow them.
For those of you who were there – wasn’t it great? And for those of you who supported your colleagues by doing their desk shifts or other duties while they were hard at work with us – thanks for your support in this way.
The next stage of the process is that the hard working Subject Matter Expert groups now have to consolidate their assessments and have their reports in to the Evaluation Team by next Friday the 17th. This will allow the ET to meet on the 22nd to consider the shortlisting of the current vendors into a smaller group or only 1 or 2 to then undertake some “hands on” bench testing of the vendor/s’ software in a test environment.
I can’t wait for the next stage to commence.
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