Jul 26, 2021. We are pleased to announce that LTS will be moving to a new integrated library system (ILS) for print and electronic resource management, discovery, access, and reporting. The new system will replace Millennium and provide a new platform for SuperSearch.

Wellesley College Libraries have been on the same integrated library system for more than 30 years. State of the art functionality for the 1980s no longer provides the functionality needed in the 2020s. Over the years, ancillary systems have been added ad hoc. Having one cloud-based system to manage all the necessary functions and not having to maintain different systems and locally maintained servers will better serve the Wellesley community which relies on access to information resources both owned and licensed by the College. In addition, these systems will help LTS staff devote more time to assist the community members instead of the technical infrastructure.

There are few systems now available in the ILS market and it quickly became clear to us that there are even fewer that are appropriate for Wellesley, a small institution with a small staff as well as a large collection of both print and electronic resources. A small group of LTS staff members spent considerable time researching the available systems and identified FOLIO, an open source, web-based system, as the most likely choice for Wellesley. We presented FOLIO and the proprietary system, Alma from Ex Libris, to the members of the ACLTP (Advisory Committee on Library and Technology Policy) and to several students who are familiar with the current system during the spring semester of last academic year. Feedback we received from both faculty in ACLTP and students was uniformly positive. In fact, users will not notice much of a difference when accessing library resources through FOLIO although some enhancements will be noticeable and welcome.

FOLIO will be far easier for LTS staff to maintain and work in which will result in smoother access to resources. We won't be maintaining multiple "add-ons" like we have in the current system to keep it functional. In addition, because this is an open source solution, we won't be paying for a software license. However, we are contracting with EBSCO to implement, host, and support FOLIO. The net effect of this will be financial savings, a welcome change.

Karen Bohrer, Director of Library Collections and Ravi Ravishanker, CIO & Associate Provost