Note: Information below is subject to change
Jump to:
- Session 1– Thursday October 16th- 10:30am
- Session 2– Thursday October 16th- 1:30pm
- Session 3– Thursday October 16th- 2:45pm
- Session 4– Friday October 17th- 9:00am
- Session 5– Friday October 17th- 10:00am
- Session 6– Friday October 17th- 11:00am
Session 1- Thursday October 16th, 10:30am
Breaking Up Is Hard to Do… But Easier with Rapido 
Nici Allen and Brianne Dort
Susquehanna University
The Highs, Lows, and Lessons of Leaving OCLC – A small, private university’s experience with leaving the OCLC ILL stratosphere.
How Brief Level Rules Can Streamline and Enhance Copy Cataloging Processes 
Fernando Aguirre
New York University
Our migration to Alma disrupted NYU’s Copy Cataloging process. Rather than simply rebuilding it, we reimagined it. Learn how NYU’s innovative “Brief Level Rules” empower non-traditional catalogers and student assistants to confidently handle complex materials—including DVDs, CDs, music scores, and monographs—while ensuring both efficiency and high-quality metadata. Join us to see how this approach can be applied in your library!
While Alma provides bibliographic ranks to assess record quality, it lacks tools to flag missing fields or critical errors for staff without cataloging training. This is ideal for units that care about metadata quality but lack the training or manpower to manage it effectively. This approach provides a system for assessing bibliographic record completeness, enabling non-catalogers to identify missing metadata—such as call numbers or subject headings—before records are accessioned into the collection.
To address this, NYU Libraries implemented Brief Level rules as a replacement framework. These rules guide Acquisitions staff in recognizing acceptable bibliographic records while flagging critical missing MARC fields in accordance with NYU’s metadata policies.
Keeping Collections Discoverable During a Large Move
Matt Gallagher, Ben Coury, and Erica Mosher
Binghamton University
Recently, the Binghamton University Libraries reopened the Bartle’s third floor after a five-year renovation project. To occupy the new shelving, ~450,000 books were moved across multiple floors and locations in four phases across a 11-week period to fulfill the long-term vision of the physical collections footprint. During that process, Binghamton was able to keep all affected items discoverable and requestable by users, while dissuading users to find the items themselves. This presentation will discuss the move in greater detail along with some Alma/Primo configurations that allowed the books to remain visible throughout the process.
Session 2- Thursday October 16th, 1:30pm
Cleaning Your Digital Room
Patrick Cassidy
Union College
This presentation is on the topic of reviewing the various outstanding Alma services that tend to float around in our environments, and how to handle resolving these requests. Topics would include the various DARA recommendations, items that are in Claims, items that are marked as “In Process”, as well as other digital messes that Alma users may get comfortable overlooking. Once the information is cleaned up, I would highlight how each of these tools work and how libraries can use them in the future to better help track their resources and outstanding orders.
Exploring Interfaces in Alma Electronic Collections 
Elizabeth York
Rutgers University
The Interface name field in Electronic Collections in Alma has surprising uses and connections to other Alma fields and functionality. This presentation will share some uses of this field, discuss how it interacts with other areas of Alma, and suggest potential improvements. It will cover advanced searching in Alma on Interface name and using the results to review all the collections we activated for that platform or to create a set we can modify using the Change Electronic Collection Information job. We will also discuss how Interface name can link to the vendor record with the matching Vendor Interface value, where we can enter into subfields a variety of details about the interface, including administrative credentials, usage statistics information, and more. Many of these fields are also reportable in Analytics. We will also discuss how Interface name relates to the COUNTER Platform derived from interface field in Electronic Collections. Some of the potential improvements to be discussed include more consistent values in Community Zone collections, greater reportability in Analytics, and customizable subfield options.
Rialto: Transforming Collection Development with Informed Fulfillment 
Amy Copland
ExLibris, Rialto Product Manager
The new Rialto addresses the complex task of Collection Development with an informed fulfillment approach. Balancing acquisitions with research needs, space, inventory, and budget constraints, Rialto considers all options, including open access and resource sharing, in its recommendations. Its collection development workflows are designed for efficiency and institutional collaboration. Rialto, as its name implies, acts as a bridge across library disciplines, optimizing collection management and development. In this session, we will present some of the new workflows and features planned, focusing on collection development and informed fulfillment in the new Rialto, available for all Alma users.
Session 3- Thursday October 16th, 2:45pm
From Vision to Version 1.0: Implementing Esploro as Our First Institutional Repository 
Katherine Polley and Matthew Sylvain
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
In the fall of 2024, UMass Dartmouth’s Claire T. Carney Library began implementation of its first ever institutional repository. In this presentation, we will discuss our collaboration with faculty and university administrators as well as our approach to developing a showcase for university research. Our presentation will highlight key customization decisions, show how we made use of Esploro’s functionality, and reflect on the challenges we encountered along the way. We will also share researchers’ feedback and our plans for future development.
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up Alma
Kristen Fredericksen
CUNY Office of Library Services
Is your Alma environment a cluttered attic of outdated records, lingering POLs, and expired patrons? At CUNY, large-scale cleanup is essential for improving discoverability, ensuring accurate analytics, streamlining workflows, and even reducing costs across a shared network zone. This session shares the CUNY Office of Library Service’s strategies for identifying and cleaning up bibliographic, holdings, and item records, as well as purchase orders, electronic resources, loans, and user accounts. We’ll explore essential tools—from advanced searches and Analytics to APIs, normalization rules, and DARA—plus tips for avoiding common pitfalls like untested changes or poor interdepartmental coordination. Whether your goal is better OneSearch results, more reliable reporting, or a smoother daily workflow, you’ll leave with actionable methods to declutter Alma and keep it organized for the long term.
Alma/Rapido “Dark Mode”: Unofficial Options 
Dev Singer
Brandeis University
Ex Libris has been offering a Dark Mode for Alma since the end of 2020, but none has materialized. This presentation will go over various methods of achieving a dark mode effect when using Rapido/Alma Resource Sharing utilizing Windows and Mac built-in features as well as the browser plug-in Ex Libris recommended as a fix during the last CERV process.
Session 4- Friday October 17th, 9:00am
Usage for Package Orders in Analytics
Bridgett Bonar
Dartmouth College
As COUNTER reports do not include any acquisition information, one of the major problems with the increase in package ordering is dynamically summarizing the usage data, without having to create and manage individual reports for each package.
Many of our institutions have created Usage Dashboards in Alma Analytics to display our COUNTER usage data in a way that is adaptable to the user’s needs. I created such a dashboard for Dartmouth Libraries in 2022 (following two wonderful presentations here at ENUG), which relied solely on the Usage Data (COUNTER) subject area. This is sufficient for individual orders or packages which include all of our holdings on a platform, but it is not built to summarize the information in a meaningful way.
As packages are among our higher ticket items, determining the total usage is important for justifying our continued expenditure. Therefore, I have created a page that summarizes and displays usage based on portfolios under a collection with a PO Line.
This presentation will cover the process of creating this dashboard page, what it does well, what it can’t do, and how it might improve in the future.
Smarter Searches, Deeper Discovery: Integrating Natural Language Search in Primo
Matt Hartman and Tim Kohn
Stony Brook University
At Stony Brook University Libraries, we are committed to integrating emerging technologies into our workflows and user experience. While AI has rapidly changed the way people seek information, this technology has not yet been fully adopted into our discovery interfaces. After analyzing user search patterns, we saw an opportunity to enhance the discovery process by incorporating natural language processing directly into Primo.
In this session, we’ll survey the current landscape and share how our back-end evolved from direct generative AI prompts to agentic workflows capable of facet-aware responses and optimized boolean queries. On the front-end, we’ll discuss the embedding of this functionality in different environments, from standalone sites to the Primo interface. We’ll demo our implementation, share our open-source codebase so you can replicate it, and discuss what we learned along with implications, challenges, and possibilities for the future.
Using Alma to Make Resource Sharing More Efficient and Cost-Effective
Timothy Jackson
SUNY Library Services
The SUNY system migrated to Alma and implemented Alma peer-to-peer resource sharing in the summer of 2019. In this presentation, I will discuss the thinking behind that implementation, how Alma has helped SUNY libraries improve the resource sharing services they provide to their users, and how Alma has helped make resource sharing more cost-effective. I will also discuss SUNY’s involvement in multiple efforts to create cross-consortial Alma resource sharing networks.
Session 5- Friday October 17th, 10:00am
CrossLink: A Network Solution for Library Resource Sharing
Mark Sullivan
IDS Network
Libraries face growing financial and staffing challenges, compounded by the high costs and siloed nature of proprietary systems. As options for affordable, interoperable resource sharing shrink, many institutions can no longer support multiple ILL systems or build their own solutions. CrossLink was created in response to this crisis as a community-owned, standards-based network that bridges disparate library systems. It enables discovery, availability lookups, and mediated borrowing across different systems, allowing libraries to continue sharing materials despite vendor siloes or reduced budgets. Built on ISO 18626 and developed with IMLS grant support, CrossLink represents a scalable, interoperable infrastructure designed and governed by the library community.
Evaluating and implementing Primo Research Assistant at UMass Boston
Eunkyung(E.K.) Lee, Yueqing Chen, and Louisa Choy
UMass Boston
UMass Boston launched Primo Research Assistant in Summer 2025 following a multi-phase evaluation and implementation process. This presentation will share our collaborative approach to thoughtfully evaluating and deploying this AI tool, including who was involved in the effort, how we established evaluation criteria, and how we gathered feedback from library staff and early users to ensure effective implementation. We will discuss how stakeholders’ input shaped our approach to customizing and framing the tool, and the customization limitations we encountered. Attendees will gain insight into the practical process of evaluating and implementing Primo Research Assistant, and how collaboration across departments and campus partners supported a more thoughtful rollout of this AI tool.
Use of Python Script and API Calls to Batch Triage WorldShare Cataloging Partner Files
John Myers
Union College
A weak point in the use of WorldShare Cataloging Partner files is the confirmation of record quality and the identification of details that warrant attention. Historically, this was done on an item-by-item basis. Through a Python script making API calls, the import job outputs can now be run back through Alma to retrieve and assess key elements of record quality. These are then output to an Excel spreadsheet for efficient overview of an entire file’s records and for precise intervention on the specific records of concern. This affords efficiencies and cost savings while sustaining record quality.
Session 6- Friday October 17th, 11:00am
An Initiative to Enhance the Discoverability of Graphic Novels with LGBTQ+ Themes
Madeline Ruggiero and Quintis Pinder
Queensborough Community College
A diversity audit of graphic novels revealed a gap in LGBTQ+ themes in our collection. A grant will be used to purchase 400 graphic novels to help close this gap. Librarians set out to empower our patrons to be self-sufficient in finding materials. To that end the cataloguer will create a curated display of new graphic novels with LGBTQ+ themes. Homosaurus, which uses controlled vocabulary that is more inclusive and up to date for the LGBTQ+ population, will be used to augment existing Library of Congress Subject Headings. Primo’s Discovery Interface allows for a curated display of new books to be exhibited. We will discuss our approach to make these new books discoverable and how you may be able to integrate this functionality in your library to aid students and promote your collection.
Searching by keyword instead of individual title seems a more efficient and effective way to generate lists of graphic novels with LGBTQ+ themes and Alma and Primo can provide the means to both identify and promote publications.This presentation will share lessons learned, successes, and challenges from our experience by demonstrating a more automated and patron-centered approach to highlighting LGBTQ+ themes in the graphic novel collection.
From Requests to Results: Advancements in ILLiad and Alma Integration
Bill Jones, Timothy Jackson, & Angela Persico
SUNY Geneseo, SUNY OLIS, & SUNY Albany
The SUNY system implemented Alma resource sharing in 2019, but some users are still submitting borrowing requests directly to ILLiad. This creates extra work for library staff, results in longer turnaround times for users, and subverts our efforts to lower our resource sharing costs. To help solve this problem, we created an ILLiad addon that can convert an ILLiad borrowing request into either an Alma borrowing request or an Alma hold request depending on whether the requested item is locally available. Since first creating this addon, we have added additional features like retrieving ebook URLs, and we’ve created two additional addons to help further improve Alma/ILLiad integration. This presentation will discuss both the reasons for creating these addons and how they work. We will also discuss the impact these addons have had at the University at Albany.