That means members will be able to log into the system using their regular website login information, and Connect will automatically know which ALA groups they are affiliated with (divisions, round tables, sections, and conference registrations). We’ve had high hopes for this all along, but it’s still amazing to see it in action. In the screenshot below, you can see me logged in to view the ALSC community. Because I’m a member of the Association for Library Service to Children, I can see content posted to the group.

However, when I go to the Association for College & Research Libraries group, I’m not a member so I can’t see any content, which means the system is working as it should after the initial import.

There’s still a lot of work to do on the interface, including the creation of help documents and tutorials. All in all, though, we’re still taking 30 seconds to enjoy staring at the screen with huge grins on our faces.

First of all, what is iMIS? If you haven’t heard us throw around this term before, it’s our membership database, and it  tracks all of your dues, committee assignments, round tables and sections memberships, conference registrations, etc. It’s much more than just a database, though, as it’s also the software that lets us update committee rosters each year, send you conference registration info, etc.

We’ve known all along that ALA Connect had to be able to work with iMIS in order for us to be able to tell what your affiliations are within ALA. So it’s with great relief that we can report that last week, our developer – Urban Insight – conducted a successful test that allowed users to log in to ALA Connect (Drupal) using their regular website logins (from iMIS). This is a huge step forward for phase one, as it means you won’t have to memorize yet another login.

Even better, it means we can pre-populate a lot of your profile for you. So if you’re a member of ACRL and you serve on a committee, we’ll fill that in for you ahead of time. As we set up the virtual workspace for your committee, Connect will also give you access to it automatically within the system so that you don’t have to sign up for it manually. Three cheers for saving the user’s time!

This also bodes well for phase two of our project, in which we make all of your data start working hard for you.  We hope to be able to get previous “participations,” as well as current ones, so we should be able to pre-populate your profile with all of the great work you’ve done for ALA in your professional career. That way, if you decide you want to display your profile to colleagues, potential employers, or even publicly, we’ll have created a curriculam vitae of all of your contributions. Pretty cool, right?

But I’m getting ahead of myself, as we have to get phase one out the door first. As work on the iMIS/Drupal module continues, I want to note the great work Urban Insight is doing (go, Ki!), pioneering something I know a lot of other associations are also anxiously awaiting. The folks at RSM McGladrey wrote the original iMIS web service methods (yay, Susan and Bruce!), which are working very well, so we couldn’t have gotten this far without them, either.

It’s exciting to have crossed this bridge, and we should have a new timeline to share soon. Keep watching this site for more updates.

A kickoff meeting for this project was held on Wednesday, May 10th. A test conversion will happen in June. Interviews with key users will be taking place over the next two weeks (late May / early June). Demonstrations for staff will be held after Annual Conference.

Key users were interviewed in late May and the test conversion was performed July 18, 2006. Early indications are that it went well. Web applications that interface to iMIS still need to be tested. Demonstrations for staff will be scheduled in the near future.

The iMIS upgrade is scheduled for the weekend of September 15, 2006. Introductory sessions have been held for staff, with more to come on September 7th. Two-hour training sessions will be held throughout the fall. There will be a slight interruption to iMIS availability during the upgrade, and we will notify users as early as possible. To facilitate the iMIS upgrade, each desktop in the building was visited by ITTS staff on August 26th to install Zen Works software. Zen Works will allow us to automatically update each workstation’s software when the time comes, and will allow us to push out properly configured browsers ahead of the Collage implementation.