EPUG-UKI Autumn Conference (6th and 7th October 2025) session recordings

The recordings from this year’s Autumn Conference, held remotely via Zoom, are available below and via YouTube.

Day 1: Monday 6th October 2025

EPUG-UKI Welcome and Committee Business

Lee Houghton (EPUG-UKI Chair)
Laurence Lockton (EPUG-UKI Treasurer

United by RapidILL: Sharing Content and Building Community in UK Libraries

Kip Darling (Birmingham City University)

Feedback from Content Day in Salford (20th May)

Lee Houghton (EPUG-UKI Chair)
Tamar Ganor (Content Product Manager, Clarivate)

Alma implementation at the British Library

Chris Martyn (British Library)

LapSafe and Alma integration

Sarah Pumfrey (Liverpool John Moores University)

Day 2: Tuesday 7th October

Ex Libris Clarivate Updates

Alan Oliver (Clarivate)

Customer Care Update

Martin Buescher (Clarivate)

Discussion of INUG Report and Clarivate Q&A

Primo search scopes review: preparing for the NDE

Uchechukwu Aghedo (Birmingham City University)

IGeLU 2025 Siena – conference reflections

Kip Darling (Birmingham City University & RapidILL Working Group)

Requesting for Dummies: better offsite requesting through dummy desks, webhooks and the Alma API

Ben Gable & Duncan Jones (University of Oxford)

Recording now available: Alma acquisitions exchange of experience Sept 2025 (Alma/Oracle Integration from University of Derby)

The recording of the latest Alma acquisitions exchange of experience for EPUG members is now available:

Adam Robinson, who is the head of Academic Services, and Heather Cripps, who is the Content Delivery Officer at Derby, talked to EPUG-UKI about the successful integration between Alma and Oracle.

The Content and Digital Services team within the Library at the University of Derby are one of the first teams within the UK HE sector to implement an integration between the Library Management System (Alma) and the University finance system (Oracle). This innovative piece of work has enabled the team to save valuable staff time on double entry in both systems, minimise reconciliation activity between systems, and enhance accuracy within expenditure tracking and streamline the budgeting reporting process. The Alma-Oracle project involved collaboration across departments at the University, including Finance and I.T teams, and was spearheaded by the Library. This work was challenging and took considerable time and effort to come to fruition. Significant time was spent analysing return on investment, communicating and explaining complex acquisition workflows and financial procedures.

The Library team at Derby have confidence that the financial information within Alma is reflective of the information contained within the University Finance system, and staff are able to focus their efforts in other priority activities.

With thanks to Kevin O’Donovan from LSE for organising the topic and speaker.

EPUG Autumn Conference (6th-7th October 2025): Registration and programme

Dear EPUG-UKI colleagues,

Registration is now open for this year’s Autumn conference event. This year the event will be split across 2 days, Monday 6th October (1.30-4.30pm) & Tuesday 7th October (9.30am-12.30pm), and will take place remotely via Zoom.

See the event programme below (subject to change):

There is an opportunity to submit questions for Ex Libris & Clarivate colleagues. Please do this by Tuesday 30th September either as part of your registration or by emailing epuguki.secretary@gmail.com.

We are again planning to offer an informal networking session at the end of the conference on Tuesday 7th October. Please let us know in your registration if you’d be interested in joining this.

This is an online event, via a Zoom webinar, and joining details will be mailed out after registering. Feel free to share details of this event within your service/institution – being an online event means colleagues can dip in and out of sessions that are of interest to them. The event will also be recorded and made available shortly afterwards.

Amanda Swann
EPUG-UKI Secretary, on behalf of the Committee

EPUG 2025 Autumn Conference: save the date and call for speakers!

Hi all,

We’re pleased to announce the dates for this year’s Autumn conference, which will again take place virtually via Zoom spread over 2 half days:

  • Monday 6th October PM (likely 1-4pm)
  • Tuesday 7th October AM (likely 9.30am-12.30pm)

We’re also looking for potential speakers, so do get in touch if there’s anything you’d like to present on. This can be on anything related to any of the Ex Libris platforms (Alma, Primo, Leganto, RapidILL/Rapido, Rialto). Have you recently implemented a new feature, undertaken a review of a particular system or workflow, or even just figured out how to make a small system change that has had a big impact or you think others might also be struggling with? We’d love to hear about it!

Some suggested areas/topics we’re keen to include sessions on:

  • Primo NDE – experiences of any early access institutions so far with testing etc
  • Alma APIs and data extraction, either to support workflows or reporting
  • Linked data
  • Leganto – impact of new interface

Please contact epuguki.secretary@gmail.com if you’d like to present. 

We hope to open registration with a draft programme in mid-August.

Kind regards,

Amanda

Recording for July 2025 Alma acquisitions exchange of experience

The recording of July’s exchange of experience on Alma acquisitions for EPUG members is now available via YouTube

This session focused on fiscal year rollover, troubleshooting issues in preparation for 2025-2026, and sharing rollover knowledge. There was also some discussion about what everyone is doing in Alma to prepare for potential walkaways from Big 5 deals.

The next session will take place on 11th September at 11am – please contact Leah Emary (Leah.Emary@sunderland.ac.uk) if you’d like the Teams invite to attend. More details on the Acquisitions call are available on the EPUG website and recordings of all past sessions are available on a YouTube playlist

Recording of CERV voting discussion meeting (25th June 2026)

The recording of yesterday’s CERV voting discussion meeting for EPUG members is now available to watch.

The following enhancements were flagged up during the call as being of most interest to attendees:

  • AENH-I-36426 – Display user blocks on request screen (mentioned by Duncan Jones (University of Oxford))
  • AENH-I-36487 – Record all changes to an Electronic Collection in the History tab with meaningful Old Value and New Value information (mentioned by Lee Houghton (Nottingham Trent University))
  • AENH-I-36485 – Improve Alma records with accurate information on staff activity (mentioned by Lee Houghton)
  • AENH-I-36414 – Ability to designate items as “Unavailable” (mentioned by Duncan Jones: was decided against at Institution (currently using Work Order workaround))
  • AENH-I-36405 – Update Due Date When a User Account Expires (mentioned by Melanie Peters-Turner (University of Law))
  • AENH-I-36357 – Improve Alma Job Reports for Failed Records (mentioned by Melanie Peters-Turner, Lee Houghton, Duncan Jones (Institution chose not to vote))
  • AENH-I-36332 – Catalog search – “Did you mean?” to manage situations like “&” vs “and” (mentioned by Melanie Peters-Turner)
  • AENH-I-36297 – Support full SIP2 protocol (mentioned by Lee Houghton)
  • AENH-I-36286 – Ability to Delete Patron/User Account Notes in Batch by Set (mentioned by Lee Houghton)

EPUG-UKI AGM & Spring Conference, 29th-30th April session recordings

The recordings from this year’s Spring Conference, remotely via Zoom on 29-30th May 2025, are available below and via YouTube.

Day 1 – 29th May 2025

EPUG-UKI Welcome and AGM Business

Lee Houghton – EPUG UKI&I Chair
Laurence Lockton – EPUG UKI&I Treasurer

Using Alma-D & Primo to relate our organisation’s data sources and Using Alma APIs for everyday tasks

Alex O’Flynn (Natural History Museum)
Ben Cornish (Natural History Museum)

Export from Alma to the NHS regional hub running on EBSCO EDS

Ian Haydock (Keele)

NTU’s journey with E-Resource Management in Alma

Laura Borcherds (Nottingham Trent University)

Reflections on FIL event in Newcastle and current challenges for Interlending services

Sarah Hornby (Newcastle)
Amanda Foster (Northumbria)

Day 2 – 30th May 2025

Clarivate (Academia & Government) update

Alan Oliver (Ex Libris, Part of Clarivate)

Ex Libris & Clarivate approach to accessibility

Ruth Starr Senior Accessibility Program Manager (Ex Libris, Part of Clarivate)

This session was a rearranged session filmed on the 14th May.

Support update and Q&A

Martin Buescher Director, Customer Care (Ex Libris, Part of Clarivate)

Configuring Alma letters to make them more personalised and consistent

Elly Cope (Leeds)

WHELF+ scheme for Resource Sharing

Jenny McNally (WHELF)
Bronwen Blatchford (Cardiff)
Beth Parry (Leeds)

EPUG E-Resources & Content Day with Tamar Ganor (Content Product Manager, Ex Libris/Clarivate): University of Salford, Tuesday 20th May

EPUG UK&I will be hosting an in-person day focused on E-Resources & Content, hosted by the University of Salford on Tuesday 20th May, 10am-4pm.

Tamar Ganor (Content Product Manager, Clarivate) will be joining us for the day and there will be an opportunity to ask questions and for discussion directly with Tamar. The day is intended to follow up on some of the themes and issues raised during the E-Resources Day held in Leicester in September 2024. 

  • Programme for the day (registration has now closed)

Please contact epuguki.secretary@gmail.com if you require any further information, or have any questions.

Kind regards,

EPUG UK&I Committee

(Lee, Laurence, Amanda, Sally & Scott)