Yale Library celebrates launch of new technology platform
A new technology platform supporting all library services and operations was launched on July 9, after more than two years of intense planning and preparation. The upgraded system, called Alma, replaced a 23-year-old system that was approaching the end of its useful life.
“This is a critical step in establishing the flexible, modern infrastructure that will enable future improvements and innovation,” said Barbara Rockenbach, Stephen F. Gates ’68 University Librarian. “I’m grateful for the knowledge, vision, and teamwork of so many library staff who have made it a success.”
The Alma platform combines Yale Library’s online catalog with Morris, the formerly separate catalog of the Lillian Goldman Law Library. The Orbis and Morris discovery tools have been retired and replaced by Quicksearch, Yale Library’s primary discovery tool.
Beginning in late June, many library services were paused to prepare for the massive move of collection records and business data into Alma. As soon as the new platform went live on July 9, staff began bringing systems back online. Later in the day, Lloyd Suttle, vice provost for academic resources, stopped by Sterling Memorial Library, where he was one of the first patrons to check out books—he selected a two-volume history of New Haven—in the new system.
Suttle arrived at Yale as an undergraduate in 1965, when collections were primarily print or on microfilm and the Sterling Nave was crowded by physical card catalogs. In the 1980s, Suttle supported Yale Library’s initial forays into what was then called “library automation.” Yale’s first library management system, in 1989, was accessed on a console, with green font glowing on a black background.
Today, Yale Library’s iconic physical spaces and collections are overlaid by a complex online ecosystem of digital discovery tools, physical and digital content, licensed e-resources, and staff expertise that ranges from subject areas to computational methods and data and the emerging use of AI in research.
Suttle stressed that Yale’s ongoing investments in digital technology and “the staff who develop and maintain these systems and guide readers in their use” are critical to the university. “Nothing is more essential to Yale’s mission to create, disseminate and preserve knowledge,” he said.
—by Patricia Carey
Photos by Dan Renzetti: 1) On the first day of the Alma era, Laura Galas, associate director of Frontline Services, checks out books to Vice Provost Lloyd Suttle. 2) Suttle and University Librarian Barbara Rockenbach pose in the Sterling Memorial Library nave with some members of the Alma project team. 3) When circulation restarted on July 9, Suttle checked out two volumes of “History of the City of New Haven to the Present Time” by Edward Atwater (1887).
