Soft launch of Primo at Michiana Academic Library Consortium

Colleagues,

We're pleased to let you know that today we are 'soft-launching' our 
consortial Primo interface today, which we are initially calling 
"CatalogPlus," for the five libraries comprising the Michiana Academic 
Library Consortium (MALC).  These include:

     * Hesburgh Libraries, University of Notre Dame (Ex Libris Aleph)
     * Kresge Law Library, University of Notre Dame (III Millennium)
     * Cushwa-Leighton Library, Saint Mary's College (Ex Libris Aleph)
     * Bowen Library, Bethel College (Ex Libris Aleph)
     * McKenna Library, Holy Cross College (Ex Libris Aleph)

We have multiple views set up for each of the participating libraries:

http://ndcatalogplus.library.nd.edu/ (Notre Dame)
http://lawcatalogplus.library.nd.edu/  (Notre Dame Law Library)
http://smccatalogplus.library.nd.edu/ (Saint Mary's College)
http://hcccatalogplus.library.nd.edu/  (Holy Cross College)
http://bccatalogplus.library.nd.edu/  (Bethel College)

CatalogPlus will also be available via the search box on the Hesburgh 
Libraries's website (http://www.library.nd.edu/) after noon Eastern time 
today and the other participating websites after that.

This milestone represents the completion of the first phase of Primo for 
us, providing a union catalog of about 3 million bibliographic records 
offering enhanced usability, search, and services for our community of 
users.  Many people were involved in eight implementation workgroups 
throughout this phase of the project from all five libraries.  The 
'soft-launch' essentially means putting the new CatalogPlus service on 
our website without any formal public announcement to our users, and 
begin to collect usage patterns and feedback.

We will continue to make improvements both to functionality and the user 
interface as we receive comments and feedback, and perform additional 
usability and focus group sessions.

This fall, we will have a public marketing campaign to announce the 
service formally to our community of users, and will be tweaking the 
Primo configuration and adding content throughout the summer.

In the subsequent phases of the project, which begin now, we will be 
adding local digital content to CatalogPlus, including:

     * Encoded Archival Description (EAD) files from Notre Dame's 
Special Collections and Rare Books library, the University Archives and 
Institute for Latino Studies;

     * digital images from the Hesburgh Libraries' Art Image Library, 
Architecture Library and other image collections at Notre Dame;

     * electronic theses and dissertations from the University of Notre 
Dame;

We plan to add other external content as well, including:

     * bibliographic and holdings records from the Center for Research 
Libraries (CRL);

     * bibliographic, authorities and holdings records from the Franklin 
D. Shurtz Library at Indiana University South Bend (IUSB);

     * other abstracting & indexining (A&I) metadata from external 
sources, including vendors

     * full-text from both freely-available repositories and vendors

Any questions you may have regarding the MALC CatalogPlus service can be 
directed to the two co-Project Managers of the project, Pascal Calarco 
<pcalarco_at_nd.edu> and Mark Dehmlow <mdehmlow_at_nd.edu>.

     Best regards,

     - pascal

------------------------------------
Pascal Calarco
Head, Library Information Systems
Hesburgh Libraries of Notre Dame
University of Notre Dame /
Michiana Academic Library Consortium
Notre Dame, IN USA
http://www.library.nd.edu/
-------------------------------------