Today’s post was written by Steph Gritz, systems librarian, and Peter Rolla, head of cataloging and systems.
On June 21, 2023 we migrated our online library catalog to a new platform, Alma-Primo, more commonly known to our users as OneSearch. The catalog is the backbone of the vast majority of services at the William H. Hannon Library. It is the primary tool that students and faculty use to discover books, articles, videos, and other library resources, so changing the underlying system was a significant and impactful project. As we near the two-year anniversary of our go-live date with the new system, we want to take some time to reflect on what we have accomplished with this migration and share plans for future improvements to the OneSearch experience.
One primary goal for this project was to improve and enhance the ability of the LMU community to find print and electronic resources at both the William H. Hannon Library at Loyola Marymount University and the William M. Rains Library at Loyola Law School. Alma-Primo was one of several options we considered, and we chose it as our new system in large part because it is highly customizable, which allows us to adapt the search experience to LMU’s specific needs and search patterns.
Under the purview of the newly formed Primo Management Committee, staff and librarians from both campuses have dedicated time and effort to ensuring the OneSearch experience is optimized for our users’ needs. Most of the enhancements we have made are on the back end of the system, so most users may not notice the changes, but we hope they will improve the search and discovery experience.
Enhancements we’ve made include:
- Improving the keyword search index by increasing the types of data it searches, such as notes about donors for special collections materials
- Ranking online service platforms. Many of our e-books and e-journals are available from several providers, and we’ve re-ordered the lists so that the more popular and useful platforms appear first.
- Adding Browse search, so that researchers can find, for example, all the books we own by a specific author or all editions of a title.
- Making specific editions of the Bible more findable. One general feature of OneSearch is that it tries to combine different editions of a title into a single display, which can be very helpful, but not in all situations. For example, we configured the system so that specific editions of the Bible will appear separately and not get combined.
With a system as adaptable and robust as Alma-Primo, there is always room for improvement, especially because it can seamlessly integrate with the other data sources we use to manage library resources. We have a list of future projects that we hope will improve the user experience for OneSearch, including:
- The ability to schedule more frequent retrievals of books from our basement storage. Currently we can only retrieve books from the basement twice a day, but a future project will allow us to page books hourly.
- Integrations with LMU Digital Commons, allowing materials like LMU theses and dissertations to be searched directly from OneSearch.
- The ability to create and present featured collections of library materials, including lists of new books as well as collections celebrating special events or themes (e.g., faculty authors, or heritage months like Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Women’s History Month, etc.)
- Implementing a feedback tool to allow users to directly report concerns or suggestions for improvement.
For more information, contact the authors, Steph Gritz and Peter Rolla.