ALMA

On September 27, the Universities of Valencia, Alicante, University Jaume I and Miguel Hernández signed the joint contract of the ALMA library services platform of the Ex-Libris company.

ALMA is a new generation service platform that represents an evolution towards new forms of management and, above all, to a greater integration of functions. It is specially designed to group resources, electronic and printed, with a guarantee of robustness and efficiency. This allows the Library to offer a better service to the entire university community, without forgetting to offer functionalities from the previous catalog. It will also facilitate the librarians' tasks by improving workflows, since it allows to effectively handle the management of the collections of the University of Valencia, both printed and digital.

In addition, it is the first time that Valencian public university libraries face joint contracting. It is an important fact from the economic and technological point of view, and that will help us strengthen the relationship of collaboration between us. We want it to be the beginning of a consortium of Valencian public university libraries, which allows, among other things, to have their own collective catalog and continue along this path of collaboration in other areas, such as the hiring of bibliographic resources or the training of library staff .

As the UPV already uses the Alma system, throughout 2020 all Valencian public university libraries will work with the same management platform.

In the case of the University of Valencia Alma will replace the Millennium library management software that has served our institution for 15 years. The period of migration and implementation in our institution will go from November 2019 to June / July 2020.