12 Dec 08 Where Is ALA Connect?
If you’ve been following along with our work on ALA Connect, you know that we had hoped to be beta testing by now, getting ready to do a soft launch heading into Midwinter. So why haven’t we announced that here?
Well, we ran into a speed bump last month that we’re just now clearing. As previously noted, all of our membership and committee data is in a software program called “iMIS,” and probably the biggest challenge we’ve faced with this project is connecting our complex membership structure to Drupal. Back in September, we excitedly noted our first success in this area (well, Urban Insight’s success, as they wrote the i2d engine that powers this).
So we were well on our way forward and when the connecting module was finished, we anxiously initiated the big import of committee data from iMIS. Which is when I learned that ALA uses the iMIS committee module for a lot more than just “committees.” For example, as our central repository of data, we use iMIS to track libraries participating in the Public Programs Office’s traveling exhibits, our list of past ALA presidents, and more. Once we saw what came over, we also realized that we didn’t really need a community for the 1999 Annual Conference.
It makes sense to keep all of this data in one place, but it quickly became clear that we needed to do some data cleanup in iMIS and find a way to flag those “committees” that aren’t really “committees,” as well as past events. We asked all of ALA’s divisions and units to pitch in and help identify these things, which they did in an amazingly fast turnaround time of one week (thanks, ALA staff!). We’ve done the cleanup in iMIS, added a flag, re-written the i2d engine, and now we’re re-importing the data, which looks a lot better in Connect. Instead of 1900+ “committees,” divisions, sections, round tables, and events, we’re down to 1,354 of them, with the added benefit of more accurate data in iMIS for other purposes, so it was worth the hiccup.
We’re back on track now, planning to start alpha testing next week. We’ve had to push beta testing into mid-January, hopefully with a soft launch in February. If all scales well, look for an official launch in March.
I know others at several associations are watching what we’re doing closely since we’re the first to be at this stage, so let me just note that if you’re one of those folks, you could do far worse than to look at your iMIS data now and check for any cleanup that needs to be done ahead of time so that you don’t run into this type of problem during your implementation.
Tags: ala connect, drupal, iMIS
