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Better Discovery Through Change: Looking Back on Fifteen Years of Primo Development to Help Prepare for the Future

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Session Information

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.

Primo
None - General Audience
Participants will recognize that a changing discovery experience requires communication and preparation from librarians.
Participants will develop skills for diplomatically responding to complaints and criticisms due to a changed discovery experience.
Participants will differentiate between “true problems that need fixing” from “simple vents and rants,” and learn tricks for addressing both.
Jun 19, 2025 09:00 AM - 09:45 AM(America/New_York)
Venue : International 4
20250619T0900 20250619T0945 America/New_York Better Discovery Through Change: Looking Back on Fifteen Years of Primo Development to Help Prepare for the Future

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.org
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Session speakers, moderators & attendees
Director of Discovery & Technology Solutions
,
University Of Tennessee Libraries
 Patrick Cassidy
Systems & Discovery Librarian
,
Union College
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