Ex Libris®, a ProQuest company, has announced that the Ex Libris Alma® cloud-based library services platform is now the system of choice for one thousand customers. The thousandth institution to select Alma is Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), which, like the 999 other Alma institutions, will benefit from the streamlined workflows of a unified SaaS resource management solution. Alma will be replacing the SirsiDynix Symphony® integrated library system.
Seeking a solution that is a fundamentally new platform rather than an update of an old product, Carnegie Mellon University Libraries selected Alma primarily for its ease of use, its compatibility with other systems, and the flexibility of its analytics and reporting options. Through its user-friendly interface and integration with the university's financial systems, Alma will greatly improve workflow efficiencies in account creation, billing, and other areas.
Alma continues to be the library platform of choice for academic, state, and national libraries and consortia. The robust, scalable Alma infrastructure is currently live at 750 institutions and in use by over 28,000 library staff members daily in 33 countries around the world, managing over 690 million bibliographic records. Since the beginning of 2017, Alma has carried out over 22 million loan transactions.
Alma claims to be the only truly unified resource management platform handling digital, electronic, and physical resources in a single, streamlined system. The open, cloud-based Alma architecture lowers maintenance and operational costs, while Alma analytics provides libraries with industry benchmarks and a deep understanding of their collections' usage and the possibilities for optimisation.
The collaboration of Ex Libris development teams with Alma customers is key to Alma's success and is evident in the strong user involvement in numerous working groups. Over 900 ideas from Alma users have been posted to the Alma Idea Exchange since its inception in September 2015, with many already implemented or added to the Alma roadmap.
CMU looks forward to benefiting from the openness of the Alma platform. More than 140 Alma APIs are available through the Ex Libris Developer Network and are used by the active Alma developer community to create additional services and automated workflows. In 2017 alone, Alma has handled more than 500 million API transactions for the hundreds of institutions that use it daily.
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