To support these changes, Ex Libris is making a series of services and benefits more widely available to higher education libraries around the world. Offerings are made available at no cost for 3 to 6 months (depending on the offering).
Resource Sharing: RapidILL
With many libraries closed and physical resources no longer accessible, electronic alternatives have become even more important. The RapidILL community of libraries has stepped up to help their colleagues by making their electronic resources more widely and quickly available.
Lending institutions are joining a large RapidILL pod (an opt-in community of libraries for streamlined resource sharing) and accepting requests from other libraries for articles and book chapters in their electronic inventory. To make the process even more efficient, RapidILL is automatically accepting interlibrary loan requests through this dedicated pod for items from electronic collections.
The “COVID-19 pod” is free to join and open to non-RapidILL members in many locations, in an effort to expand collaboration in this time of need.
Mobile Student Engagement: campusM
The campusM Engagement offering allows institutions to quickly go live with a native mobile app on iOS and Android, as well as a matching web interface, ensuring immediate access to communication with students, faculty and staff. It can be implemented quickly and the easy-to-administer interface provides the ability to update key information, add links to useful systems and web pages, and send push notifications with updates.
You can learn more about campusM Engagement at the link below. Click here for the campusM Engagement Use Cases and the campusM Engagement FAQ.
LEARN MORE GET STARTED
Online Course Resource Lists: Leganto
Leganto, the Ex Libris resource list management solution, enables libraries to support the massive transition to online learning. With Leganto, faculty can share resource lists directly through their course page in the learning management system, students can access all course materials in one place and from any device, and librarians can provide electronic resources more efficiently and identify alternatives to physical books.
GET STARTED
Research News: Research Professional
Researchers need to rely on trusted sources in order to stay updated. Ex Libris is focusing on providing researchers with access to relevant, professionally curated information.
Due to the importance of communicating timely information during this crisis, Research Professional News is providing free access to all of its Coronavirus (COVID-19) related research coverage. Please find authoritative news like this and more on the Research Professional News site.
RESEARCH PROFESSIONAL NEWS
Research Funding: Pivot & Research Professional
The Research Professional and Pivot team is making publicly available relevant funding opportunities related to Coronavirus (COVID-19) in a single file.
The content has been exported from the Research Professional and Pivot global funding database and our teams continuously update the information as new funding opportunities becomes available.
COVID-19 FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES
Content Solutions for Discovery and Delivery Products
In light of the current situation many providers are making COVID-19 materials freely available, as well as providing some previously paid content for free to the community.
The Ex Libris Content Operations team is working with these providers to give our community the best and quickest access to these materials. Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for students, researchers and librarians to gain access to these materials on all our indexes and knowledge bases.
The articles tracking our activity and available resources are continuously being updated — see the list of COVID-19 and Temporarily Free Resources, for Alma, SFX, 360KB, Summon and Primo (CDI/PCI).
Requests from the community or providers regarding this content are a top priority for ingestion. All new content and updates will be published in the relevant Release Notes with a COVID-19 indication.
Academic institutions are encouraged to contact us regarding any additional freely available materials through a support ticket. Providers are welcome to contact us by sending an email to Provider.Relations@exlibrisgroup.com.
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Supporting increased collection activation for remote learning and access
Ex Libris has seen a large and understandable spike in all system usage parameters as libraries expand their online services in order to support the university’s distance learning needs. One example of this spike is a 30% increase in discovery searches in the last few months due to COVID-19.
To address this unprecedented situation, we have made a considerable investment to increase our cloud infrastructure capacities beyond our standard built-in latent capacity for all our cloud services.
In the last few weeks we have received many queries from libraries that have been adding and activating a considerable number of e-resources to their Alma, Primo, and Summon systems. Concerns were raised regarding the impact of this large increase in records on current subscription parameters.
We would like to ensure that our community feels comfortable in expanding their collections as needed to support their students. In response to these concerns we have decided to allow all Alma customers to increase the number of records (such as bib records and e-resources) in Alma by 20% over existing subscription parameters at no additional cost. (This increase is also applicable to publishing these records into Primo and Summon discovery.)
There is no need to contact us, as these settings were already applied by Ex Libris for all our Alma, Primo, and Summon customers.
This increase in subscription parameters will be in place until June 30, 2021.
READ THE FAQ
Transitioning to Remote Learning: Ex Libris Webinars
We have created a series of webinars for each of our solutions, discussing best practices for the transition to remote learning and online classes in the higher education sector. The webinars are open to participation by all and are aimed at addressing common issues, as well as responding to questions raised by our global customers. All webinars are recorded and will be available on the Ex Libris website.
WATCH A WEBINAR
Updated Articles and Q&A
We invite all our customers to send in questions, queries, and requests for information regarding any of our products and services, with a focus on issues arising as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ex Libris will respond with a series of focused webinars, recordings, documentation, and articles in the coming days.
On the “Best Practices for the Ex Libris Community During COVID-19” page you can find product-specific sections for Documents and Presentations, Recordings, and Q&As, as well as an upcoming webinar schedule.
SEE EX LIBRIS BEST PRACTICES
Business Continuity: Ongoing Updates
Ex Libris continues to be fully operational, with no disruption to our services and systems. We invite you to follow updates from Ex Libris regarding the actions that we are taking to mitigate the impact of COVID-19. Visit the Trust Center to learn more.
VISIT THE TRUST CENTER
