Abstract
Hesburgh Libraries of Notre Dame established an off-site storage facility in 2015, with only one year to transfer 450,000 items. This necessitated the implementation of an inventory management system (IMS) to track the location of and efficiently retrieve individual items. After conducting an environmental scan of other institutions, the library decided to develop an open source IMS and to contract a developer for the purposes of implementing a working prototype. Working with a contractor required a well-planned development process and a close working relationship. This article describes the project management challenges, development workflow, and lessons learned.
Highlights
The past thirty years have seen a major paradigm shift in academic libraries
This case study documents the rationale, phases of the project, outcomes, and related administrative concerns that the Hesburgh Libraries faced over the course of implementing an inventory management system (IMS) that could be used to facilitate the aforementioned requirements
In bringing this project to a successful conclusion, the IMS implementation team chose to follow management processes that were new to the Libraries, but necessary in order to move the project forward
Summary
The past thirty years have seen a major paradigm shift in academic libraries. In 1986, Harvard University constructed its first off-site storage facility. This case study documents the rationale, phases of the project, outcomes, and related administrative concerns that the Hesburgh Libraries faced over the course of implementing an inventory management system (IMS) that could be used to facilitate the aforementioned requirements In bringing this project to a successful conclusion, the IMS implementation team chose to follow management processes that were new to the Libraries, but necessary in order to move the project forward. The library had not previously engaged in a formal project management process prior to active planning for the annex Another novel approach was the consideration to hire a contractor to work on custom software instead of developing a solution in-house or purchasing a vended solution. The study concludes with a section discussing the lessons learned from this project, both the successful elements employed to bring the project to conclusion, as well as opportunities for improvement
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