What are the steps towards merging Hub instances?
The direction of travel is towards the number of Hub instances reducing. Reductions may come due to Trust mergers or where services are being delivered on a geographic / Integrated Care System basis. Having multiple versions of the Hub for a single organisation is confusing for users and carries significant additional administrative overhead (as well as being a poor use of public funds).
Each merger will be different and the Hub team are here to help. This FAQ covers some of the elements that you will need to consider and decide on. Please raise a ticket using this form to request the Hub merger and to ask for additional help.
Steps for the Hub
- Decide which Hub instance you are going to keep after the merger. Making changes to this instance as you progress the merger will allow for gradual transition to the single Hub and for a smooth final transition. Any unused old instances will be deleted by EBSCO but the URL will offer a route back to your Hub via Find My Organisation.
- Will you need to plug more than one OpenAthens organisation into the Hub instance? If so, which ones?
- Electronic resource collections will need to be aligned. You can have more than one OpenAthens OrgID attached to a Hub but you can only have one version of HLM. Ejournal holdings need to match across the linked OpenAthens OrgIDs coming together on the instance or some users will be guided to non-functioning links.
- Print journal collections in HLM will need to be copied across. If you have print journal collections for the merging organisations, please flag this so that we can ask EBSCO to copy them across.
- Review which Databases are selected for discovery in each Hub instance - check for differences and decide what your final selection will be on the merged Hub Instance. Are there different LMS catalogues to include?
- Decide on where Ask-A-Librarian requests will be routed - this could be an email address, chat box or webpage.
- Decide on which website to point to from the navigation bar, and what name will be displayed - adding more than one can cause display issues and will not be possible in the New User Interface
- Decide on whether you want to include the A-Z journal list as well as Browse Journals
- Decide on which email address should receive ILL requests - the standard ILL form only supports one email address
- Confirm which Third Iron account you will use if there are different accounts for some of the merging instances. Once collections are aligned you will only need one Third Iron account which will need a single email for receipt of INCDocs requests.
- Confirm entries for the bottom branding - this will likely require a review of the Hub instances to be merged and discussion of what you are trying to achieve through these links
- Provide the name of the organisation to be displayed in the footer of the page
- Confirm any widgets to be included on the results page - these will mostly be based on the combined resources collection
- Confirm how the local Library Limiters will need to change. You can either have a single library limiter for all the libraries on the instance or you can maintain separate entries for these. Maintaining separate library entries would allow users to limit to stock in one location if you have an integrated LMS and could allow for different ebook collections if discovered via an integrated LMS
Having thought through each of these steps you should be able to make the changes to settings with assistance from the Service Desk. Please fill in the form to request the changes.
An FAQ on merging OpenAthens OrgIDs is under preparation.