Libraries Always Changing in action
ELUNA 2026 brought the user community together in Los Angeles for a week of learning, collaboration, product conversations, and peer exchange.
Held April 27–May 1 at the Westin Bonaventure in Downtown Los Angeles, this year’s conference centered on the theme Libraries Always Changing. Across Clarivate Knowledge Days, ELUNA Developers Day+, ELUNA Analytics Afternoon, and the ELUNA Annual Meeting, attendees came together to explore how libraries are adapting to changing expectations, evolving workflows, and new opportunities for innovation.
The event welcomed 618 attendees, including 169 first-time attendees, reflecting the continued strength of the Ex Libris community.
A community-led conversation
This year’s program included product conversations, working group discussions, regional user group sessions, Ask Me Anything sessions, and opportunities for attendees to share feedback directly with Clarivate teams.
The onsite Support Center added another way for attendees to connect directly with Ex Libris teams. Located near the main ballroom, it gave attendees a dedicated space to ask questions, get guidance, and continue conversations with product and support colleagues throughout the event.
The questions, ideas, and input shared by the community help inform how products evolve, how priorities are understood, and how future conversations take shape.
Practical innovation across workflows, discovery, and digital collections
The ELUNA 2026 program reflected the wide range of work happening across academic libraries today. Sessions explored topics including digital collections, workflow automation, discovery, resource sharing, metadata, analytics, and accessibility.
Several sessions focused on Library Open Workflows, including how libraries can use workflow tools to support automation and emerging AI-supported workflows. Others looked at Rapido and RapidILL, with sessions around resource sharing, implementation, and service models.
Alma Specto was also a visible part of the program, with sessions focused on digital collections, preservation, and the evolving ways institutions manage and present digital materials. This included a customer session featuring the Corning Museum of Glass, whose story is highlighted later in this recap as a real-world example of digital collections strategy in practice.
Ask Me Anything sessions gave attendees another opportunity to engage directly with product experts and continue open conversations around Alma, Rapido, Rialto, and related workflows.
Together, these sessions showed that innovation in libraries extends beyond new technology. It is also about making daily work more sustainable, improving access to resources, and helping libraries respond to changing user needs.
Recognizing library-led innovation
ELUNA 2026 also offered an opportunity to celebrate innovation across the library community through the Clarivate Library Innovation Awards.
The awards highlighted projects that apply technology, collaboration, and library expertise to real institutional challenges. Finalists included projects from Stony Brook University Libraries, University of Texas at Austin Libraries, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
The ELUNA member category winner, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, was recognized for Project Fox, an initiative designed to help automate and scale the identification and delivery of low- or no-cost course materials to students. The project uses Alma, Leganto, and Rialto to support a workflow that helps identify unlimited-access eResource options, reduce manual effort, and expand the university library’s role in course material affordability.
“Any amount of money that we can save students has a profound effect on their ability to access higher education. I think it’s huge,” said Andrew Pederson, Systems Librarian at University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Project Fox reflected one of the broader themes visible throughout ELUNA 2026: libraries are using technology to make complex work more scalable, surface lower-cost options, and help students access course materials more affordably.
The finalist projects showed that same spirit of practical innovation. Stony Brook University Libraries’ SEARCH AI project explored how AI-enhanced discovery can help users move from natural-language questions to more effective library searches. The University of Texas at Austin Libraries’ AI-Assisted Cataloging for Legacy Music Collections project used AI to support cataloging workflows for a large backlog of legacy sound recordings, helping make previously hidden materials more discoverable.
Real-world perspectives from the community
Beyond formal sessions, ELUNA created space for customer stories and real-world examples of change in practice.
One Alma Specto customer story featured the Corning Museum of Glass and the Rakow Research Library, offering a perspective on how institutions are evolving their digital collections strategies around preservation, system integration, and AI-enriched metadata.
During the session, the Corning Museum of Glass shared how it approaches the management and presentation of special and digital collections, including the importance of making valuable materials more accessible and meaningful to the wider community. The session also included a live demo built around a real-world use case, giving attendees a practical look at how digital collections strategy and Alma Specto can come together in practice.
These examples helped connect product conversations to the everyday work of libraries: managing collections, supporting research, improving discovery, preserving digital materials, and expanding access.
Looking ahead
ELUNA 2026 reinforced the value of bringing the community together: to learn from one another, ask questions, share feedback, and shape what comes next.
Thank you to everyone who participated, presented, asked questions, joined discussions, and shared ideas throughout the week. The conversations from Los Angeles will continue through user groups, product feedback, community collaboration, and future events.
We look forward to continuing the conversation at next year’s ELUNA Conference, taking place May 17–21, 2027, at the Hilton Minneapolis.
