SILS Operations Team – Quarterly Update

Coverage: January 2026–April 2026
Planned Publication: End of April 2026
From: Lakshmi Arunachalam (Chair), Greg Ferguson (Vice Chair), & Caitlin Nelson (SILS Service Manager)

Ex Libris Support, Development Tickets, and Quarterly Reporting

Operations Team (OT) continued using regular Ex Libris support meetings to raise and track issues affecting the UC cohort. This quarter, OT focused on improving visibility into development tickets and reviewing the Ex Libris quarterly support report.

The development ticket spreadsheet helps campuses see planned release timing and development notes that may not appear in individual tickets. OT discussed the importance of campuses reviewing their tickets, adding impact statements when needed, and notifying the SILS Operations Center when an issue should be re-raised with Ex Libris.

OT also reviewed ticket volume, closure trends, and satisfaction data, while noting that a closed ticket does not always mean the issue was resolved to our satisfaction. Topics discussed included CDI matching, local extensions, analytics outages, AFN request behavior, import profile issues, and support responsiveness.

Alma Production and Sandbox Performance

Alma Production and Sandbox performance were recurring OT topics this quarter. Campuses reported slowness with page loading, searches, job status visibility, and basic Sandbox record lookups.

OT emphasized that Ex Libris performance metrics do not always reflect staff experience. OT will continue asking Ex Libris for clearer information on performance monitoring, job status reporting, capacity, and service health.

February Alma and Primo VE Outages

OT held a postmortem on the February Alma and Primo VE outages, including the February 24, 25, and 27 incidents. The discussion focused on internal coordination, outage communication, and follow up questions for Ex Libris.

Overall, OT felt UC communication worked well, especially through OT Slack and SILS Operations Center updates. Areas for improvement included after hours communication, clearer expectations for consortial versus local tickets, and adding the SILS OT listserv to consortial outage tickets so OT members can receive updates directly.

OT also raised questions for Ex Libris about delayed status page updates, whether updates are manual or automated, and the root cause analysis.

Accessibility and UC Library Search

Accessibility remained a high priority for OT this quarter. The SILS Ex Libris Software Accessibility Project Team shared updates on Primo VE accessibility issues and its ongoing communication with Clarivate.

The team reported that Primo VE still falls short of current contract requirements and WCAG 2.1 AA expectations tied to Title II. OT discussed the related legal and service risks, ongoing remediation efforts, and the need to include accessibility as a major consideration in the next Ex Libris contract renewal and negotiation process.

Primo NDE Planning

Primo NDE was a major OT topic this quarter. Discovery OST developed a decision page recommending that the UC cohort move to Primo NDE together, rather than campus by campus. OT discussed the need for central coordination because the migration will affect more than Discovery alone.

OT approved the SILS Operations Center taking on central project coordination for the Primo NDE effort, working with Discovery OST and other stakeholders. The project plan is still being developed, but it is expected to address timeline, testing, campus feedback, stakeholder roles, decision points, and go live criteria.

OT also discussed the relationship between Primo NDE and accessibility. Ex Libris has suggested that some Primo VE accessibility issues may be addressed through Primo NDE, but OT and the Accessibility Project Team emphasized that migration to a new interface cannot be treated as a substitute for validating accessibility and readiness.

Physical Items Search and Editor

Ex Libris provided OT with a demo of the new Physical Items Search and Editor. The new interface combines viewing and editing, adds a table view, improves navigation, expands facets and sorting, and allows work order status updates from the item editor.

Ex Libris noted that existing Analytics reports should not be impacted and role scopes should continue to be respected. OT discussed the need for coordinated testing because physical item workflows affect multiple areas, including fulfillment, resource sharing, and resource management.

Consortial Analytics and Statistics

OT discussed the new Ex Libris Consortial Analytics feature. This feature is separate from Alma Analytics and would allow campuses to view certain cross UC collection comparison reports without requiring direct NZ Analytics access.

OT supported turning this on in the Network Zone so campuses can evaluate whether it is useful. Campuses will still decide locally whether to assign the role, and Ex Libris currently limits the feature to one user per campus. OT also clarified that this feature does not replace direct NZ Analytics access, because it is more limited and relies on prebuilt reports.

Separately, LG accepted the final report from the Alma Analytics Statistics Project Team and approved disbanding that group. The recommendations will move to DOC for next steps, including the possible formation of a standing systemwide statistics group.

HathiTrust ETAS Sandbox Load Test

OT reviewed and approved a proposed HathiTrust ETAS sandbox load test. The goal is to prepare for a future emergency scenario by testing whether UC can load and manage a very large set of HathiTrust related portfolios in Alma.

The test would involve matching HathiTrust digital copies against UC print holdings and creating several million portfolios in the sandbox. This is intended as emergency preparedness and procedure development, not as a production activation.

OT discussed risks related to sandbox performance, the size of the load, and whether the job could affect production. Ex Libris indicated the job could be aborted if needed. OT also confirmed that the test should include the full lifecycle, including removing the records after testing.

AI Features, Privacy, and Vendor Risk

OT discussed the AI Insights feature that rolled out in Alma, including privacy and vendor risk considerations. UCOP has indicated that AI related features may require a Vendor Risk Assessment depending on the use case and where data is processed.

Campuses were encouraged to check with the SILS Operations Center before enabling AI Insights or similar AI features so UCOP contract and risk review needs can be assessed. Separately, OT also noted that the planned Ex Libris Knowledge Portal may include AI assisted answers, but that discussion was part of the Knowledge Portal transition.

RDA Implementation Project Team

OT discussed the proposed Official RDA @UC Implementation Project Team. The latest direction is for DOC to solicit nominations, with RM-OST tracking the work because the project is primarily related to cataloging policy. OT’s discussion focused on awareness and coordination, given that the work may affect multiple SILS areas.

Ex Libris Knowledge Portal

OT discussed the planned Ex Libris Knowledge Portal transition. Ex Libris is consolidating documentation across platforms, but OT expressed concern that Ex Libris currently does not plan to provide redirects from old Knowledge Center links to the new site.

This is a significant concern because campuses and SILS groups have years of documentation, training materials, and wiki pages that link to Ex Libris documentation. OT discussed documenting this concern with Ex Libris and potentially escalating it before the transition moves too far forward.

Ex Libris indicated that documentation will remain open and indexable by Google, and that the old and new sites will coexist for some period, but OT remains concerned about the long term effect of broken documentation links.

Renewal, ILS Landscape Monitoring, and Vendor Risk

LG approved the draft charge for the SILS renewal negotiation project team. The team will provide regular updates as work proceeds.

LG also agreed to move forward with ILS landscape monitoring through vendor and product presentations during designated LG meeting times. This was clearly framed as information gathering only and not as a signal of any migration or product change decision.

OT also discussed operational continuity and vendor risk awareness, including the value of having a concise summary of Ex Libris cloud continuity planning. This topic connects to both the February outage postmortem and broader renewal planning.

Looking Ahead

For the next quarter, OT expects to continue focusing on:

• Follow up with Ex Libris on Production performance, Sandbox performance, and service health transparency

• Primo NDE project planning and stakeholder coordination

• Accessibility escalation and alignment with renewal planning

• HathiTrust ETAS sandbox load testing

• Physical Items Search and Editor testing strategy

• Consortial Analytics evaluation

• AI feature review and vendor risk questions

• Ongoing governance clarification and cross team coordination