Overview

ARLEF (Academic Research Library Exchange on FOLIO) is a subcommunity of North American large research libraries who are invested in making FOLIO a success for the library community and their institutions.

As large research libraries, we have found that information sharing related to infrastructure, feature development, change management, and training has benefited our respective FOLIO planning and implementations.

We have identified an opportunity to enhance and complement the current structures in the FOLIO community by strengthening our connections as a sub-community.

Objectives

Create a sustainable network of similar libraries that can work together to address the needs of complex, large scale, research libraries.

Including joint development / funding / delivery of training

Share creative alternative workflows or innovative permanent solutions to missing features and discuss strategies

Including shared code outside FOLIO (data prep scripts, etc.)

Advocate for common needs

Within the FOLIO community
With 3rd parties (such as library service providers and integrations)

Identify & resource common development priorities
Attract additional large research libraries to FOLIO

And support them before, during and after their entree to the community

Build partnerships with FOLIO libraries and library consortia outside North America

Values

We want to complement, not compete, with SIGs and other FOLIO community structures
We value the multiple perspectives provided by members with different implementation environments/strategies (different hosting vendors, self-hosting, different modules in production, etc.)
We respect the need to maintain a lightweight approach that does not create a lot of new meetings and social overhead
We seek flexibility in our paths to action and not focus solely on issues affecting all members. Smaller groups may coalesce around particular interests and needs.

Membership & Governance

ARLEF is a subcommunity anchored by large, North American research libraries, and focused on their common interests around the FOLIO project.

Membership and participation in this group is concentrated on US R1 libraries and their analogs. We recognize that non-US institutions and non-R1 institutions may have shared concerns, and we anticipate opening ARLEF participation more broadly once it is established.

ARLEF started with organic conversations among the IT Directors of ten US R1 institutions:

University of Alabama
Auburn University
Caltech
University of Chicago
University of Colorado Boulder
Cornell
Duke
Michigan State
Stanford
Texas A&M

This founding group serves as the initial ARLEF steering group.

Organization & Participation

Our institutions have FOLIO experts and stakeholders with wide-ranging and diverse interests and expertise. As a community, we welcome and embrace library professionals from all domains: IT, technical services, public services, collections, resource sharing, and more.

As ARLEF develops, we will organize to have multi-channel communications and versatile forums for letting birds of a feather flock together. We consciously create stronger ties among institutions and individuals that will naturally work together. We also cultivate knowledge bases and shared communication forums–so more people can benefit from exchanges (across institutions and across time). ARLEF institutions are committed to supporting each other regardless of the stage of maturity of their FOLIO implementation.

As a subcommunity of libraries, ARLEF is vendor neutral. We seek a healthy and balanced community, and recognize and value the role of commercial partners.

Activities

We intend to explore and establish the following, given sufficient interest, support and traction:

An ARLEF “unconference”, to promote connections, surface common work, and cultivate collaborative opportunities. (Virtual for 2022)
Collaborative training, and establishing a training / documentation knowledge base.
“FOLIO Days”, a North American Regional conference for FOLIO users, akin to the very successful German FOLIO Days. (Perhaps starting in 2023)
Organize an “ARLEF development contribution” (via a team of ARLEF developers, and/or development by others) to increase the level of development contribution to FOLIO from our subcommunity
Additional opportunities as they arise.

Communication

ARLEF artifacts and communication channels will be open by default
ARLEF communications will happen within FOLIO community channels (Slack, Google Drive, wiki, etc.) by default, in order to leverage existing infrastructure and promote visibility and cross-pollinate.

Revision History

Date	Comment
2022-05-25	Adopted by initial steering group

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