Meet Ex Libris' newest product: Rapido - a revolutionary library resource sharing platform

Sharona Sagi, VP Resource Sharing Solutions

Every new product starts with an idea. This can come from inside the company or from customers – Rapido started from both. We read the big 10 vision for a next generation resource delivery solution, and at the same time we had customers talking to us about the need for something new in the market.

The notion of creating a library resource sharing solution that starts with our users’ needs, and tries to create an experience that they love, was at the heart of our design. We decided to create a new option in the resource sharing market which drove us to the acquisition of RapidILL in July 2019 and followed with the development of Rapido.

This past week we were happy to announce the release of Rapido – a resource sharing platform covering the full process from discovery to delivery for all types of deployments, both on an individual and consortia level. It is now live with our first four customers – 2 in Australia and 2 in the US – with many more planned to go live throughout the year.

If you want to learn more about Rapido – we will be holding a live webinar on June 21st, 2pm EDT. You will have the opportunity to participate in a live Q&A session with 3 of our early customers – Ithaca College, Brandeis University and University of Wisconsin Madison - and the Rapido product team. See more details here

Rapido has been in development with an amazing group of development partners and early adopters in the US and Australia since late 2019. This afforded Ex Libris the opportunity to listen to customer’s voices and adapt the platform to the needs of resource sharing institutions.

In addition to its growing community, Rapido uses RapidILL as the foundation for its document delivery process meaning new customers benefit from the already existing global community of RapidILL. With over 500 libraries around the world, RapidILL can process a high number document delivery requests with an average turnaround time of less than 12 hours.

A few things to know about Rapido

Rapido is focused on making staff and user experience outstanding. Visit our Streamlining Library Workflows page to learn more about how Rapido will save resource sharing staff time. Read more about how Rapido transforms the resource sharing experience for users on our User Empowerment page.

Rapido is built on the Ex Libris integrated library system higher-ed cloud platform – which means it is built on a stable, scalable and resilient platform as a native cloud solution. For Alma customers this means it is fully integrated, but Rapido can work as a standalone resource sharing platform for any ILS leveraging this platform.

All holdings of participating members (Alma library management system, and non-Alma in the future) are stored in a Shared Holdings Index, allowing users to expand their search scope in the discovery so they don’t have to leave their digital ecosystem in order to make a request.