Thank you for being part of ELUNA 2025, our community's largest annual event in North America. This year's event, hosted in Atlanta, Georgia, brought together 712 library professionals, technology leaders, and product experts from around the world to collaborate and explore the future of library innovation. With 248 first-time attendees, this year's conference was defined by a spirit of cooperation, a strong focus on user-centric innovation, and a bold embrace of academic AI-driven transformation.

Attendees were introduced to a sweeping range of innovation that reflects our deep partnership with our community - advancing AI-powered efficiency, open infrastructure, discovery excellence, and next-generation teaching & learning.

During the opening keynote, Yariv Kursh, GM and SVP at Clarivate, outlined our strategy for 2025, highlighted new product and feature launches and re-iterated our support of the community to help lobby for Federal funding. While ELUNA is an annual event, our collaboration and community partnership doesn't stop there. We stay connected and engaged throughout the year!

The keynote was followed by four plenary and thirty-two separate breakout sessions during the next three days presented by users and by Clarivate staff covering everything from roadmap updates to "quick hits" to "how to's" and brainstorming sessions. The level of energy and partnership spirit was extraordinary.

Highlights from the Event

• AI in Action: From Alma's conversational AI and metadata assistants to student coaching tools, Leganto Syllabus Assistant, Discovery Research Assistants and the Unified Knowledge Portal, AI was a central theme - empowering libraries to work smarter, not harder.
• New Tools, Real Impact: Next-generation tools like Vega for Academic, and Alma Specto demonstrated how innovation is reshaping discovery, student engagement, and collection management.
• Community-Driven Progress: The launch of the Known Issues Portal and enhancements to Next Discovery Experience (NDE) reflect the ideas and feedback from our library partners, underscoring our commitment to user group collaboration.
• Focus on Teaching & Learning: A new platform under development for faculty and student success highlights our growing emphasis on bridging content, pedagogy, and technology.
• Collaboration Across the Board: High adoption rates and live implementations showed tangible collaboration across institutions and consortia.
• Summary of Innovation Unveiled at ELUNA 2025
• Alma: Evolving Efficiency
• Boosting staff productivity and decision-making with a smarter UI, AI-powered insights, and streamlined workflows.
• Accelerating operations with automation and generative AI that enrich metadata and handle repetitive tasks.

Alma: The Right Choice

• Enhancing metadata quality and discoverability with AI-assisted cataloguing and integrated Linked Open Data.
• Expanding interoperability through Alma's open architecture and third-party integrations, Library Open Workflows.

Alma Specto

• The next generation digital collection management system. Enabling libraries and academic institutions to provide access to their special collections like never before, on a level that was not possible in the past.
• Leveraging AI for metadata creation, combining the power of AI for time saving and efficiency, but using the unique knowledge of the cataloguers create rich and meaningful metadata.
• Full OCR for both printed and handwritten documents.
• Giving institutions the ability to showcase special collections with ease, not just for the students and patron but for the public to promote both the collection and the institution.
• Make sure to sign up for the Early Adopters Program here!

Primo and Summon Research Assistants

• Enhancing discovery with natural, semantic search that understands everyday language.
• Proven engagement with 674 institutions onboard and ~100,000 searches per week.

Next Discovery Experience UI Begins Here

• Over 230 institutions joined the Early Access and Managed Release phases of the new customizable, richer discovery experience, featuring a modern, user-friendly interface.
• 676 community-driven ideas and feedback implemented in the NDE UI, reflecting user-first design.

Vega for Academic

• Enhancing user engagement with standalone modules from the Vega LX suite, each fully integrated to your ILS:
  • Vega WebBuilder - building library websites made simple – no hassle, less time.
  • Vega Donate - customized donations portal and online drop-ship merchandise store.
  • Vega Program – a library event management and room-bookings portal.
  • Vega Promote - digital marketing designed for libraries.
  • Vega Interact - driving patron and student engagement through automated SMS and voice notifications.

Rapido

eBook lending workflows was introduced in Jan 2025. Rapido now offers workflow functionality to share eBooks between Rapido libraries. Prioritizing e over p: RapidILL now enables the ability to prioritize libraries that have access to an article that is available electronically rather than print first. This saves significant time and resources, reducing the need to scan from print.

From Vision to Reality: Coming Soon - A next-gen teaching and learning platform that simplifies custom course design.

• Faculty Course Design Assistant - streamlined course preparation for all faculty, saving them time creating more impactful teaching
• Personalized AI Student Coach - student 1:1 support for deep reading, writing, and developing critical thinking skills
• Content Affordability & Choice - content-agnostic software aligns quality library and OER resources to learning objectives and student needs.

Known Issues Portal

• Providing real-time insights into known issues through a centralized, AI-powered hub, purposefully designed to help you stay up to date with product and content known issues, track status updates and discover workarounds.
• Developed in close collaboration with our customer community, focusing on customer needs.
• Unified Knowledge Portal
• Consolidating A&G Software knowledge into an intuitive user experience with our AI-powered Knowledge Assistant.
• Boosting service efficiency through advanced content creation and embedded answers within your workflows.

Content Innovation

• We now make e-resource management faster and easier for libraries by activating content directly for the Alma Community Zone (CZ).
• Delivering relevant, high-quality, and up-to-date content at unmatched speed - with smart automation that enables collection creation and updates, all within a single day.
• Supporting libraries to expand access to Open Access and multilingual content - enhancing discovery, equity, and global reach.

These innovations reflect a shared commitment to advancing library excellence through intelligent technology, open collaboration, and user-centric design. Whether streamlining operations with AI, unlocking the potential of special collections, or reimagining teaching and discovery, these updates are built to meet the evolving needs of today's institutions.

More than just product updates, the broad range of innovation represents our bold vision for libraries as dynamic, empowered partners in knowledge creation and access.

By the close of ELUNA 2025, attendees left energized, informed, and inspired - ready to bring the latest innovation home to their libraries.

Ex Libris, from Clarivate – it's worth the trust!

Your account manager and customer support teams are always available to assist you with any questions or support you need. Don't hesitate to reach out! Stay connected and keep an eye out for all the great things we have planned for the rest of 2025 on X, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

ELUNA

You can learn more about membership on the ELUNA website.

ELUNA is an independent not-for-profit organization, fostering an incredible community connection for thousands of Ex Libris users around the world. Clarivate is a sponsor of this annual conference and an enthusiastic supporter and partner of the ELUNA community.