Ex Libris®, a ProQuest company, has announced that the 400th customer of the Ex Libris Alma® cloud-based resource management solution, Cardiff Metropolitan University, has gone live. Building on the solution's unparalleled success, Ex Libris is now focusing on developing new services to address the next level of library needs and practices.
At this time, approximately 20,000 librarians in 19 countries are using the Alma service daily to manage all activities related to physical, electronic, and digital collections. Among Alma customers are 26 ARL libraries, over 20 consortia, and four national libraries. With its robust, scalable infrastructure and highly efficient professional services and cloud processes, the Alma solution is implemented rapidly and easily; by the end of 2016, over 550 institutions are expected to be live with Alma.
Adhering to the long Ex Libris tradition of openness and collaboration, more than 120 Alma REST APIs are openly available through the Ex Libris Developer Network. The APIs cover major areas of library management, such as acquisitions, user administration, fulfillment, and resource management. Using these APIs, the active Alma developer community creates additional services and automates many routine library tasks. Every day, Alma handles more than one million API transactions from hundreds of institutions.
Collaboration between Ex Libris and the user community takes other forms as well. Besides maintaining a close relationship with the Ex Libris user groups, Ex Libris promotes the exchange of ideas and encourages librarians worldwide to suggest new features for Alma. Almost 200 such suggestions have been posted on the Ex Libris Idea Exchange website since it was launched in September 2015, and many of these ideas are added to the Alma roadmap.
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