Much should improve with Primo's Next Discovery Experience (NDE), but there will undoubtedly be a few unhappy users with the change it brings. Primo administrators should expect and plan for the fact that a handful of their librarian colleagues may be harsh critics. In this presentation I will share UTK's history of moving from the "classic catalog" to a discovery system, and the subsequent fifteen years of developing Primo – first in its early stages in 2009, to incorporating Primo Central Index in 2013 and the new UI in 2017, and finally to Primo VE in the 2020s. We will review many new features added along with third-party tools that improved the overall experience. I will also share our experience with change management and how we learned from mistakes over the years. The goal is that by taking a retrospective look back on the Primo changes, we can better prepare ourselves for a possible move to Primo NDE at some point in the future.
International 4 Ex Libris Knowledge Days and ELUNA Conference 2025 eluna-conf-planning@exlibrisusers.orgMuch should improve with Primo's Next Discovery Experience (NDE), but there will undoubtedly be a few unhappy users with the change it brings. Primo administrators should expect and plan for the fact that a handful of their librarian colleagues may be harsh critics. In this presentation I will share UTK's history of moving from the "classic catalog" to a discovery system, and the subsequent fifteen years of developing Primo – first in its early stages in 2009, to incorporating Primo Central Index in 2013 and the new UI in 2017, and finally to Primo VE in the 2020s. We will review many new features added along with third-party tools that improved the overall experience. I will also share our experience with change management and how we learned from mistakes over the years. The goal is that by taking a retrospective look back on the Primo changes, we can better prepare ourselves for a possible move to Primo NDE at some point in the future.
