Starting June 1, St. Joe’s library system will migrate to the one currently used by the University of the Sciences.
The university will drop the EBSCO Discovery Service –– its search engine provider –– in favor of Primo. It will also no longer use the cloud service Innovative Interfaces and instead utilize Ex Libris’ cloud service Alma.
The migration is part of the merger between St. Joe’s and USciences, which will become official on June 1.
Anne Krakow, library director of Post Learning Commons and Drexel Library, said St. Joe’s had already been looking for a new library system before the merger was announced.
“A couple of years ago before the pandemic, we were ready to go with a different system, but because the pandemic hit and things are uncertain, we just extended our current contract,” Krakow said.
Krakow said the merged library will be operating with fewer staff members after cuts that were “dictated to me by administration.” But Krakow emphasized this will not hinder library operations.
Krakow said the work to merge the two libraries began as soon as the merger’s formal announcement was made in February 2021. An exploratory committee was set up at that time.
“That’s when we started building working groups made up of librarians and staff at both schools, working together on certain common projects,” Krakow said.
Jen Hasse, student success and outreach librarian and assistant professor of information science at USciences, said the two libraries have worked well together and are excited about the prospects that a merged library might offer.
“We librarians tend to be very collaborative people as a profession, and we are used to working consortially,” Hasse said.
Krakow said both locations will remain open, which adds an extra benefit to the merger.
“What we’re looking for with a combined library system is that it’ll be consistent across campuses,” Krakow said. “So that if you’re at Saint Joseph’s campus, and you need to find a book that is actually at the other campus, it’ll have the same catalog.”
The universities’ respective archives, which tell their schools’ individual stories, are also merging. Lesley Carey, library technician of archives and special collections at St. Joe’s, will be in charge of managing both collections due to the retirement of her counterpart at USciences, Dan Flanagan, serials assistant for technical services.
“With someone retiring, you don’t have anyone to ask questions of,” Carey said. “Another challenge is I’m not familiar with the material. Generally, any new archival situation you go into, it takes a while to look through all the boxes and figure out what’s there. But that is a challenge that I actually really enjoy.”
Carey said USciences’ archives offer unique medical-related materials tied to their history as a science school.
“I know that they have, for example, dissertations going back to the 1800s of pharmacy, which is fascinating to me,” Carey said.
In all, Krakow said she is looking forward to the new opportunities that will come from the library merger.
“I feel very lucky that it is a great group of people, and we have been able to work well with them,” Krakow said. “So I’m feeling very positive about where we’re going to go in the future.”
