By next year, the Duane G. Meyer library website will be totally transformed and upgraded. Dean of Library Services Thomas Peters recently announced the library is migrating from online service MOBIUS Consortium to four new computer systems.

The MOBIUS Consortium is an online program that links libraries throughout the Midwest and allows them to share resources. Though it was started in Missouri, it now stretches into Oklahoma, Iowa, Kansas and Texas.

Peters said the migration was brought on by the software MOBIUS requires. Missouri State University has used the online catalog for 17 years, and the current version of the software used at MSU is not the one used by MOBIUS.

Peters said students have used MOBIUS less and less in recent years, and costs to maintain the service have increased. The migration will use less money in the long run and give the university more control over providing information to those who need it.

Our out of pocket expenses will go down and we will have more control over the systems, Peters said. One of the challenges is that we dont have all the information people need, so we need to rely on other libraries. MOBIUS was excellent for that, so we are working on other agreements so that our students, faculty and staff can get the stuff they need to do their work.

The main system MSU will use is a new online catalog named FOLIO. Peters said it is an open-source software developed by many major universities, such as Yale and the University of Chicago.

MSU is one of the first universities in the world to implement FOLIO, calling the project to install the software FIRST FOLIO at Missouri State.

The second service will be the EBSCO Discovery Service, a search engine that allows users to access and print online content quickly and easily.

The third will be OpenAthens, which helps users sign-on and manage both their identity and access to resources. It will also replace a proxy server used by the library to gather online resources and improve network performance.

Finally, E-Resource Management is a software that aims to manage, assess and improve the retrieval of online content and services. This will also help control costs to the library.

The new services are planned to be implemented by summer 2020. The library website already has updates on the project under the FIRST FOLIO tab on the homepage.

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