CRIV CONNECTION

Author: Syd L. Stephenson, Technical Services & Systems Librarian, Thurgood Marshall State Law Library

A time many librarians dread has arrived: a platform you are using, whether it’s an Integrated Library System (ILS) or an institutional repository, has outlived its usefulness and it’s time to start considering a migration.

No two migrations are alike. An entire ILS migration of hundreds of thousands of library records, for example, will be very different than migrating a smaller scale of collections from one institutional repository to another. Additionally, if you’ve never done any kind of platform migration before, it may feel daunting to even figure out where to start.

Below are some helpful tips to get you through the brainstorming, research, and planning phases of a platform migration. This is by no means a comprehensive list and is meant only to help you get on the right track during the early stages of considering/planning for a migration.

Know What You Don’t Know

To begin with, you must identify your own knowledge gaps on the migration process. It is absolutely 100% normal to not know everything about migrations!

An ILS or repository migration will, more often than not, require involvement from staff who have experience working with metadata management and systems administration. Looping in these staff members early in the planning process and including them in the migration’s project team will leave you better prepared for the actual platform migration.

Staff at other libraries and professional organizations are also an incredible resource for gathering information and connecting with other libraries who have done ILS and repository migrations. AALL’s Law Repository Caucus is an excellent resource for law librarians on all things relating to institutional repositories. Likewise, the AALL Library Systems & Resource Discovery Special Interest Section (LSRD-SIS) is an excellent group to join to connect with librarians who have experience with acquiring a new ILS.

Create a List of Must-Haves

Before you start reaching out to vendors, it’s important to know exactly what you’re looking for in the replacement platform. Work with your project team and your library’s stakeholders to determine what your must-have and would-like-to-have features would be for a new ILS or institutional repository. Keep in mind, your list of must-haves will differ quite significantly depending on whether you are migrating to a new ILS or institutional repository.

If you are migrating to a new ILS, your technical services staff may need specific features for cataloging and metadata management. For example, government law libraries may require any ILS they have to be able to handle the original cataloging of more specialized resources like municipal and county legal documents. A new ILS would also need to be interoperable with any discovery layer your library may be using.

You must also not only consider the actual platform change itself, but the technical requirements such as barcodes, scanners, etc. Do you need new equipment or can you use your existing equipment? Are there any processes that can be modified when you change platforms?

Likewise, your patrons and reference staff may need specific search or results display features to be able to navigate your collections. For instance, an institutional repository at an academic law library may need to have the capability to display faculty publications grouped by author.

Research Vendors and Solutions

It’s important to do your due diligence and research the vendors and potential platforms you are considering migrating to. Just because one platform is particularly popular does not mean that it would best serve the needs of your library. Depending on your library’s needs and collection, what may suit a large institutional library may not be relevant for a smaller, more specialized collection.

Use your must-haves list (along with any information you may have gathered from other librarians/institutions). Once you have identified a vendor, you will want to get insight from other institutions who have migrated to the potential platform. Ask them about their migration experience, support experience, and any lessons learned or potential downfalls.

Set Expectations

The biggest expectation to set for yourself is your budget. Once you have created a list of vendors you’d like to gather information from, compare pricing information provided by vendors to your available or projected project budget. If you don’t know what your budget would be, find out.

You also should determine what you are allowed to do in this stage of planning a potential migration. What rules does your institution have in place about contacting vendors? Some institutions may allow librarians to freely contact vendors to gather information, while others may have more stringent protocols for anything relating to procurement or contracts.

Prepare Your Team

Each platform, particularly each ILS, has their own quirks that might impact how straightforward a migration process will be. Depending on the structure and grouping of your records, the mapping process could require a lot of clean-up during the post-migration stage.

Be realistic with your team members about the potential logistics of migrating metadata. Identify how the team will support metadata cleanup and quality control. Compile checklists for the team to verify information and identify if there are additional clean-up projects that need to be addressed post-migration.