April 6, 2017
End-to-end workflows, openness, and unified resource management will enable the university to take its support for students and staff to a higher level
Paris, France—April 6, 2017. Ex Libris®, a ProQuest company, is pleased to announce that the Université libre de Bruxelles will be implementing the Ex Libris Alma® library management service, Primo® discovery and delivery solution, and LegantoSM course reading list solution to assist the university libraries in meeting the needs of students and teaching staff, increasing efficiencies, and tightly integrating library systems with campus teaching and learning applications.
Currently, the ULB libraries manage their diverse collections of resources in a number of different systems. The resulting complexity of workflows and manual processes was likely to lead to oversights and increase the burden on library and IT staff. The move to the Ex Libris solutions will enable the university to create simpler workflows with more automation and greater connectivity, thus reducing manual intervention, duplication of effort, and the potential for mistakes.
Muriel Baguet, director of the Department of Libraries and Scientific Information, explained, ”Over the past few years, university libraries have had to increase their investment in innovative front and back office services, such as library and learning centers and other facilities that support research, while taking an increasingly prominent role in teaching and learning. We think that the Ex Libris solutions offer the best guarantees of quality, mature, proven technologies that will take our library services to a higher level and enhance experience of our users. With the efficient Alma and Primo workflows and personalized dashboards, our staff will be performing fewer resource management tasks and thus will be able to devote more time to developing new services, such as research data management and end-user guidance.
”We are also eagerly looking forward to implementing Leganto, which is the only reading list software that tightly integrates library processes with the learning ecosystem of the university. In addition, being able to integrate the new library services platform and processes with our learning management system, Moodle™, will support our role in the teaching and learning experience.”
The university plans to take advantage of the analytics and reporting functions in Alma and Primo to drive evidence-based collection development and strategic planning. In addition, the well-documented open APIs will help the university integrate its library systems with the university’s various information services, such as the finance system, student registration, the virtual learning environment, and web portals.
Ofer Mosseri, corporate vice president and general manager of Ex Libris EMEA, commented, ”This decision by the Université libre de Bruxelles demonstrates that closely integrated products such as Alma, Primo and Leganto are much in demand by libraries that need to increase their profile at the heart of teaching, learning and research while still retaining the openness that allows for close integration with cross-campus third-party software and services.”
About the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB)
The Université libre de Bruxelles teaches over 20,000 students in 12 faculties, in which teaching and research are closely connected. With its 2500 strong staff, the university offers almost 40 undergraduate programs and 151 master’s programs, in addition to partnering with 20 doctoral schools. The main missions of a university are teaching, research, and learning, and the Department of Libraries and Scientific Information at ULB is a fundamental building block in achieving these missions. The libraries provide the ULB community with the resources and services to support excellence in teaching and research and have gradually developed into workplaces for study and teaching. The libraries’ relationship with users is now being strengthened by an expanded service offering that is centered on regularly reevaluated needs. As a result, ULB’s libraries are constantly undergoing an evolution of their spaces, organization, services, and collections, as well as the acquisition of new technology, knowledge, and skills for the staff.
For more information, see www.bib.ulb.ac.be (in French).
About Ex Libris
Ex Libris, a ProQuest company, is a leading global provider of cloud-based solutions for higher education. Offering SaaS solutions for the management and discovery of the full spectrum of library materials, as well as mobile campus solutions for driving student engagement and success, Ex Libris serves thousands of customers in 90 countries. For more information about Ex Libris, see our website, and join us on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
