Turning PATRONS into PARTNERS when CHOOSING an INTEGRATED LIBRARY SYSTEM.

The article discusses the importance for libraries to involve its patrons in selecting an appropriate integrated library system at the University of California at Los Angeles library. The Library Executive Committee, made up of the university librarian and the associate university librarians, was committed to seeking input from faculty and students in developing the Request for Proposal and in evaluating competing vendor systems. Asking patrons to identify core functions was unnecessary since all of the vendor systems share the same core functions. The management charged an Overview Team of library staff to review potential systems and report on the key differentiators among them. The committee recruited an advisory group of faculty and students. The faculty members did not feel qualified to answer questions on behalf of all their colleagues. Instead, they could advise how to reach their colleagues, what questions they were likely to answer and how to get the maximum information from them. The Functional Sponsors also showed that it was not enough to ask questions only about the subtle areas of difference between the systems. The final method for gathering user input was holding a series of focus groups to discuss trade-offs among the three systems.