So it's ready to go whenever you're ready, Jen.
All right, I'll give it another minute to get started.
Make sure you don't start early.
All right.
Good afternoon, everybody.
Thank you for joining us this afternoon.
My name is Jen Mascadrelli.
I'm the Assistant Director of User Services at Carly.
Oh, I can put on my camera too.
Hello.
Welcome to the role of the iShare liaison webinar.
We are recording this session and it will be posted on the Carly website for you to refer to as needed.
And there certainly will be time at the end for Q&A.
So if you have questions as we're going along, please feel free to enter them in the chat box or just raise your hand.
So first, some introductions of our other speakers today.
Besides myself, we have Debbie Campbell and Adrian Redzvickas joining us to share information.
Additionally, I believe I see any other Carly staff sitting in to help answer any questions that may come up.
So just a brief agenda of what we're going to cover today.
Why do we have iShare liaisons, responsibilities of iShare liaisons, resources, and then Q&A.
The information we're presenting today is generally not new, but we have a lot of new iShare liaisons this year, so we thought it was time to hold a webinar.
Just a little vocabulary lesson, what is a liaison?
And most importantly on this list of definitions is a liaison is a person who acts as a link to assist communication or cooperation between groups of people.
And obviously, hopefully, the groups of people are the Carly staff and your employees and folks at your institution and your library.
So why do we need an iShare liaison?
Part of the reason that we still
that we have something called an iShare liaison is pretty historical.
You may know that Carly and iShare's history goes back to 1980, before email, before the web.
And so one of the initial reasons for establishing the role we now call liaison was that we didn't have an easy way
to quickly and easily disseminate announcements to the broad community.
Paper mailings and faxes had to be sent to specific individuals and those individuals needed to be, you know, selected as the contact person.
When
And the library director and dean was sometimes listed as the contact person.
Oftentimes, operational matters of the system were more appropriate for other staff.
So that's why we have this selection of the liaison.
The director and the dean of the library is ultimately responsible for your Carly product choices, payments, policy adherence, but most directors delegate this role of communication, I share liaison, to somebody who is more directly in touch with operational matters and day to day.
If an iShare liaison is temporarily not available, or in any case, the director may always step in and perform any of those liaisons' designated tasks.
So when you're thinking about who should be a liaison or what one should do if they are a liaison,
The liaison role is more about communication than technical skills.
We don't expect liaisons to be the experts at anything other than communicating with their library colleagues.
We want liaisons to be familiar with the roles at your library and the people within them, as well as who you might need to contact at other departments outside the library, like the IT department.
have we want a liaison to have a broad view of the library's operational duties and hopefully some familiarity with Alma and Primo VE and should be able to handle communications effectively and quickly and be aware of what others need to know.
So if it sounds like we expect a lot from iShare liaisons, don't panic.
We're here to help and want your library to have a positive experience with iShare, and we don't expect the liaison to do everything.
A liaison does not make any fiscal or contractual decisions or commitments for your institution.
That's the director's role or a separate director's designate.
We don't expect you to know everything about Alma.
We simply expect you to know who in your library does know, you know, who's the person to contact if there's a question about circulation or that sort of thing.
It can be helpful for the iShare liaison to be one of the Alma and Primo VE certified staff at the library.
And really, don't ever hesitate to ask questions.
There aren't any dumb questions, and we want to hear from you if a piece of information seems missing or is difficult to find.
So in more specific terms, when would an iShare liaison hear from Carly?
You'll hear from us when we're announcing Alma or Carly network downtime.
This is fairly rare, but you will hear from us if there is such a time.
Upcoming meetings, webinars, and trainings, we'll share those announcements with various lists, as well as the iShare liaisons list.
Announcing any new services that may be becoming available.
Announcing iShare member changes, libraries joining or leaving.
and also to discuss any work that may need to be done in your Alma instance, just for that sign-off, that approval, that awareness that you know Carly staff need to do something.
Some of this may be fulfillment changes or an amnesty project for when an iShare library is closing.
Information like this is expected to be shared beyond you as the iShare liaison, but it is
you are the designated person who we would share these important pieces of information with.
To look at the other side of this, when would a liaison want to contact Carly?
You might want to contact us.
In fact, I strongly encourage you to contact us to update the ISHER membership directory on the Carly website.
There is a way to do that through the directory itself, or you can email support.
If you have a big project that you aren't quite sure what the best way to approach is in Alma, a library move, a library closure, a library consolidation, advice on those types of projects to request assistance on implementing a new product, like its self-checkstation, starting Alma acquisitions or other modules, crafting a special report.
I mean, these are all things we get questions on.
frequently.
You may also just have a question about CARLI policies, products, or projects.
Most of these types of requests could be submitted through email to our support at carli.illinois.edu email list.
I'm going to turn the mic over to Debbie, who's going to talk about more detail on iShare Liaison's responsibilities and those best practices.
Thank you, Jen.
Hi, everybody.
Carly expects that iShare liaisons will help to manage the communications between the library and Carly and between Carly and the library staff also.
There is so much information in our day-to-day life and there are so many moving parts and so much involved staff within each library, but the liaison helps to emphasize the important information and tasks
making sure that the messages are brought to the attention of the right people and in a timely manner.
We hope that the liaisons will encourage staff to contact Carly with questions.
when the answers aren't available from a local expert.
It's up to each iShare institution to decide the internal workflow that you will use for this process.
For example, at some iShare libraries, the library staff bring all of their Carly-related questions to the iShare liaison, who is then the person that emails Carly support.
At other ISHER institutions, any staff member is encouraged to contact CARLI support directly whenever a question arises without the liaison acting as the go-between.
In this workflow, oftentimes library staff will add the liaison as a contact to the question, but other times they may not.
Truly, this workflow is up to you all at your institution and how your institution likes to manage the flow of information.
At times, Carly staff may add you as the liaison into a conversation or into a Carly support ticket.
That's when we need to make sure that the broader institution is being informed and considered in a question that is being asked or a decision that is being made.
We'll mention why we're adding you at the time that we bring you into that conversation.
We also expect the liaison to help identify when your library has expertise that could benefit the broader Carly community.
It helps when you encourage your colleagues to participate in a Carly committee or to be a presenter at a continuing education event.
to help answer surveys by Carly staff or by Carly member libraries.
Member library staff involvement helps us improve our collective knowledge, collective memory, and also the service capacity of us as a consortium overall.
After all, to develop best practices, we have to have more than one practice on the table to work between.
In addition to managing communications, we also expect the liaisons to help maintain institutional accountability.
This involves oversight of library staff accounts, along with the regular completion of several routine tasks.
We'll talk more about those two areas on the next slide.
So routine tasks for managing communication, they all tie back to the goals that were on the previous slide.
And so with these, each day, iShare liaisons should check any Carly announced and liaison email list messages and redistribute those to your interested and affected colleagues as needed.
As an example, there might be an email about an upcoming Alma training or a webinar.
You'll want to share that message with your appropriate colleagues who might want to attend.
If they're also on the email list and then you send them a copy, it'll just be extra emphasis that it might be of interest to them.
You'll want to also sign up for any topical area Carly email list that you are interested in and recommend that your colleagues do as well.
For the regular tasks,
You'll want to watch out for those Carly directory updates that Jen mentioned.
This is listed under communication because an updated directory makes it much easier for Carly office staff and the staff at other Carly member libraries to know who at your institution a topical question can be directed towards.
You'll also want to check the Carly news and newsletter, any announcements and committee reports.
Depending on how your library wants to communicate support issues with Carly, with Carly support, this may or may not be integrated into part of your regular workflows as well.
We've linked the problem reporting procedures page here from this link for additional information.
And these slides will be shared as well.
So switching over to additional institutional accountability.
Providing data security is a considerable obligation and one that our profession takes seriously.
Still, in addition to supporting the requirements of FERPA and the Illinois Library Confidentiality Act, your institutions may also impose additional security requirements to prevent the loss of confidential information.
At the same time, you rely on your data to help you demonstrate the value of your library services and collections.
Your needs may range from providing simple counts and volumes or about patrons and transactions to demonstrate the connections between library use and student performance.
To address our more complex present environment, the Carley Board and the University of Illinois revised the Carley iShare Participant Institution Agreement.
This revision went into effect in spring of 2016, which was now a while ago.
But this agreement has been signed by the deans and directors of all iShare institutions.
If you haven't had a chance to take a look at this whole document, I'd recommend the liaisons take a look.
This agreement includes paragraphs detailing the library's obligations for both the use and protection of library data.
Specifically, Section V, Section 5, Paragraph 5 identifies your library's role in managing your data.
Let me emphasize that we're discussing your institution's data, your patrons, your collection metadata, your purchase orders and invoices.
You have the access to collect your data and manage it locally, provided that you observe your own institution's rules for data security, as well as all other local, state, and federal laws.
Please feel free to ask Carly if you have any questions about this language.
So let's look now at some tasks related to institutional accountability.
One sometimes overlooked responsibility is the retrieval and distribution of files placed on the Carly file server, also known as our secure FTP.
You'll receive daily and monthly report files on activities and statistics, which you'll want to be sure you collect and archive in an institutionally data safe way.
Files older than 6060 days are automatically deleted from the file server.
While Carly staff can re-upload some files, some of them are gone for good once they are deleted.
Please check the Carly website for the page What's in my FTP directory.
There is more information there.
Carly will also enable Alma's anonymization of user fulfillment data for all iShare libraries on July 29th of 2024.
This will implement the anonymization of most user data in Alma after a retention period of seven days after the transaction ends, except for fine and fee data for which that is a seven-year period.
As an iShare liaison, you will want to know
If your library is running regular reports to export and retain any of this data before it is anonymized, and make sure that the storage of the information is in compliance with your institution's data storage and retention policies.
Another routine task that is related to Alma is keeping on top of your Alma calendar.
You'll want to do maintenance to record those changes for your library's open hours and open days.
You may not be the one at your institution who makes the edits in Alma configuration, but please make sure you're aware of who has this task on their to-do list.
Alma uses that calendar to calculate due dates and the length of time that things are held on the hold shelf.
And finally here,
You'll notice that the Carly directory updates is listed on this slide too.
I think that's the third time we've mentioned it.
Having that updated directory makes it so much easier for Carly staff and member library staff to know who at your institution a topical question can be directed towards.
This also lets us know who may have permissions to make certain decisions.
Okay, you'll notice that this slide says organize the institutional knowledge of.
So you yourself may not be the person doing the work of these tasks, but as a liaison, you should know who at your institution is responsible for them.
The first and most obvious form of accountability is account and login security.
Your library may need to have only a few staff users, or you may have 100 or more.
we ask that the liaison maintain awareness of who has which login permissions.
This includes the Carly file server and then the Carly box folder.
In addition to being aware of which staff are logged into Alma, also be aware of which staff have the user manager role assigned as well.
That's important because the user manager role in Alma determines who is able to assign themselves
and other library staff the roles that they need to do work within Alma.
Liaisons should work with these staff to ensure that the user accounts for those who are no longer at your institution are removed, and make sure that any generic account passwords are regularly updated.
You should also keep track of those users as well.
The liaison should know that the login or the late sorry let me start that over the liaison should know the login to the armor development network or how to contact Carly to inquire about that.
They can create and distribute API keys to staff or to ask Carly support to assist with that process if needed.
The liaison should also know who has access to the Ex Libris support account and should help keep the institutional email list for Ex Libris Customer Support Center up to date.
And then finally, on this page of things to be aware of, sysloads are included on this list as it's a project that typically takes coordination between the library and the campus IT department.
Knowing who at your institution is involved in the setup and the workflow of your user record sysloads will make it easier for your library to troubleshoot any issues that might arise.
All right.
This non-exhaustive list lists some of the resources that are available to you.
And I'm going to turn this presentation over to my colleague Adrienne Rydz-Vickis to discuss these resources to support your role as liaison.
Hello.
I'm going to talk again about resources that are available to you.
We're not putting you in the middle of nowhere with no resources to access.
We have a lot of resources.
One of them is the liaisons guide, which I'm going to put into the chat right now.
That has a web page that goes to basically what we were discussing in this webinar, but it's useful to have a reminder of what we discussed.
Okay, we're moving on to the next slide.
Okay.
On the previous slide, there's the CARLI website, there's training, mailing lists, Ex Libris Knowledge Center, each other, and CARLI staff.
Next slide, please.
The Carly website is a rich source of information, should be your first stop in seeking resources.
The system status announcement lets you know if there's a known or planned outage.
If you don't see anything posted, but are having issues, please contact the Carly office at support at carly.illinois.edu.
The Carly calendar lists events such as meetings, trainings, webinars, and closures.
Documentation for shared projects such as iShare, ContentDM, and Open Athens are linked under products and services.
I also found there are various training materials and handouts from forums.
If you're unable to attend a meeting in person, handouts could be helpful.
You also can find contact information from fellow members, a link to the iShare catalog, and much more on the Carly website.
Next slide, please.
Throughout the year, various product-related trainings are held online.
If you have new employees in your library or those whose roles have changed, taking advantage of the trainings is to your benefit.
Announcements go out to interested parties as well as liaisons when registration for trainings are available.
For those liaisons who held a position prior to migration to Alma, you will remember a regular in-person training schedule for Voyager.
You would be happy to learn we've been testing online training with the 2024 new iShare libraries and plan to be able to offer regular online trainings going forward.
Next slide, please.
Besides the iShare liaisons mailing list, liaisons are automatically signed up for announced and some interest group mailing lists.
There are a number of other product or interest lists available that might be helpful to you or some of the employees in your institution.
A sign-up and description of the available lists is located at the bottom right of every Curly website webpage.
Next slide, please.
And these email lists are the interest group lists.
Use them to start a discussion with staff from other iShare institutions, which can be very helpful.
These lists probably don't get as much use as they could, and your fellow institutions have, oh, I'm losing my voice.
People at your fellow institutions have a lot of knowledge to share.
Next slide.
ExLibris has open access to the Knowledge Center, knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com.
There you can search for documentation for ExLibris products, including Alma and Primo BE.
You can also find answers to many questions in the Knowledge Center articles.
If you have a question about some functionality or other issues, this is a good place to look.
ExLibris documentation is also indexed by Google, so you can always search for information that way as well, and we do that all the time.
Next slide, please.
One of your best resources, the pool of other iShare liaisons in Carly.
If you're looking for advice for someone who may be in a similar institution as you, membership listing on the Carly website will let you know who the liaison is in a specific institution.
You can also utilize the iShare liaisons mailing list or topical interest group mail list if you have a question or topic that may be of interest to the entire group.
For example, you're implementing a new product such as self checkout and you want to know other's experience installing it, you can use an email list.
Next slide please.
Of course, Cali staff are here to help you.
Sending tickets to support rather than individual employee will ensure the best person to answer your question will see it and respond.
Remember, they were happy to help with any question.
If things are new or new to you, do not hesitate to ask us about it.
As Jen stated earlier, there are no dumb questions.
Next slide.
Speaking of questions, it's time for questions.
If there are any questions, you're welcome to type them in the chat.
You are also welcome to unmute.
Use your audio.
If you've been an iShare liaison for a while and you have any tips you would like to share to those who may be new iShare liaisons, we would love to hear that as well.
I'll add if you're a new iShare liaison and you're wondering what all you've gotten yourself into, you can ask questions about that as well.
We've got a question.
Is there a way to see which email list you are already signed up for?
I believe if you send an email into Carly Support, our webmaster is able to take a look at that.
Am I correct in that?
Yes, that's correct.
It should also be possible.
that when you receive, when you're subscribed to any list of our lists, when you subscribe to a list you receive a welcome email message and that message includes a link to the mail server where you can log in to that account and actually see a list of requests.
I think we can work
put down that we can create a way for people to find out what they're subscribed to easily enough.
Yeah, we can make a note to follow up and make that a little easier to do maybe.
We'll make a note to make that easier.
What other questions do you all have?
We've got a question, how much time per week is usually spent on this?
I think this is a question that I'll ask some of our people on the call who have been iShare liaisons for a while.
How has that experience been for you?
If you'd be able to chime in and help with that.
And there, of course, has been variations on activity amongst Carly activity when we were migrating from Voyager to Alma.
There was a lot happening during that big project, but now that we're in kind of a day-to-day life, how's your day-to-day life as an iShare liaison?
I can speak to that a little bit.
That's okay.
Sure, thanks.
I have been ISHER liaison for a little over a year now, so not too long.
For me, I don't spend a ton on it, like on a day-to-day basis.
It depends on if we have any big projects.
So essentially, like if we have anything that we're working on with all my documentation that I need to reach out to Carly support on,
I check some of our FTP files on a regular basis, only takes me like a couple minutes each day.
And then other than that, just forwarding emails.
So it's, it's pretty hands-off for me.
I update our, all my calendar as well, which is like one big time commitment that is basically once per semester.
but really I would say it kind of ebbs and flows and it depends on how big your library is and how active it is in terms of like doing actual hands-on Alma work.
Thank you so much for that.
We've got one more comment to that on the chat that it depends a lot on the library.
Currently a lot of it is forwarding information to others at my library.
So before we take the next question in the chat, are there any other current ISHER liaisons who would like to comment on how the time commitment is for you and what kind of tasks you do yourself versus which ones you forward to colleagues?
All right, be thinking about if you would feel comfortable sharing that in a few moments.
I'll read the other question from the chat, which is, what sorts of challenges have liaisons faced at multi-campus or multi-library institutions?
So if you are at a multi-library institution, what kinds of challenges have you faced?
No, we only have a few truly multi-campus institutions.
I think that's a valid question.
And if anybody's not feeling comfortable sharing their challenges in front of a group, maybe could reach out to Daniel directly.
Daniel, if you want to put your email address in there, that would be nice.
Yeah, UIC is multi-campus, or multi-library, I guess, but I think CCC is where you have different institutions as part of your institution.
Daniel, if you don't mind putting your email address in there, you can see if anybody is willing to share offline.
And when you're added to the iShare Liaison's email list as well, you'd be welcome to ask that question there too.
Since we have only about 30 people in this call, and some of those are Carly's staff, people who are not in this call might be able to answer by email.
Absolutely.
And you've had some practice being one of the new iShare libraries this year, because as the project manager for that, you've kind of been in that liaison type role.
So when we've asked you questions or asked you to distribute training or information, if you've encountered a challenge trying to gather that information or to get information out to your colleagues across the different institutions,
That may be a precursor or an indicator of future challenges that you might face as well.
Any other comments or questions?
And if you feel comfortable, if you've been in iShare Liaison for a while, again, back to the question, how much time per week do you spend on your liaisoning?
Liaising?
Liaisoning?
Daniel, if you figure out how many reminders to send, um, I think you'd win a prize.
We, we, we struggle with that too.
Um, you know, how to know if somebody has heard your, your need or your, just the sharing of information, um, is, is challenging.
make sure not yelling into a tavern or something.
Well, I can go ahead and stop the recording if someone had a question they wanted to ask, but not on recording.
Sounds good.