Library Consortium Director’s Report

By James Wiser, Consortium Director

The CCLC procurement system has allowed the library consortium to do so much more than it could ever do when our collective subscriptions were managed on spreadsheets. That said, the system hasn’t had a significant upgrade in several years now, and this year our consortium will be moving to a new business system, called ConsortiaManager, developed by a Denmark-based company called SubscriptionPeople. More than 15 other library consortia in the United States and Canada have already or are in the process of migrating to this system, and once deployed, it will dramatically improve what our procurement system will be able to do. For example, instead of logging into the procurement system and seeing merely a listing of invoices, ConsortiaManager will allow you to see all your CCLC subscriptions and their costs and renewal dates on the welcome screen. The system will also allow you to reset your own password, and hopefully it will be much more intuitive and user-friendly.

This spring will be the last renewal we conduct using our current procurement system, and after consulting with the CCL board as well as other librarians in our system, we determined to migrate three years of invoices to the new system once we go live later this year. Practically speaking, what this means for your library is that if you haven’t archived invoices older than 2016 anywhere locally, and you wish to continue to access records of those invoices, you should download and store those invoices now. While CCLC staff will begin using ConsortiaManager this summer, we will introduce the new system to everyone this August and September through a series of webinars and communiques. I know it’s a busy year for all of us with the migration to Alma/Primo, but hopefully this transition will be seamless, intuitive, and librarian-friendly.

Speaking of renewals, your spring renewal forms – for subscriptions that renew on July 1 of each year – should be available for you to download in the CCLC procurement system on Friday, February 22nd. The deadline for returning these forms to the League office is Friday, May 10th. I hope to see many of you at the Dean’s and Directors meeting in Sacramento in March. I wish all of you a great spring semester!

Respectfully submitted,
James