Brace yourselves; May(ngo) is coming.

Several years ago, the libraries of the State University System and about half of the Florida College System switched to using a discovery tool (think library search engine) called Mango. At that time, FSCJ chose not to migrate to using Mango as our front-end discovery tool because it was expected to be replaced within a year or two with a different option decided upon at the state level and stuck with Primo as the catalog’s “face,” though background operations transferred to Mango and its statewide catalog. (If you’ve ever placed an interlibrary loan request through the library catalog and wound up with a book from UF or FSU despite never seeing those institutions in the possible list of holdings, this is why; you see your results in Primo, but the holdings were in the statewide union catalog, Mango, and the system knew to pull from the universities.)

Flash forward to 2018, and we’re still waiting to hear what the final statewide option will be, but in the meantime the FCS and SUS have decided it’s best we all be on the same page, system-wise. And so this June the library catalog will be converting to Mango, which (among other things) will increase the speed of updates made to our catalog and make it easier to request items via interlibrary loan. We’re working on the transition now, and expect Mango to go live by the end of July  August 1st.

For students, staff, and administration, this will mean getting used to a new interface, and LLC staff will be on hand to assist with that. We’ll be offering a series of workshops, help sessions, and videos beginning in August. The schedule will be posted here when it becomes available.

For faculty, this will mean that some of your links to library content may need to be updated in Blackboard, your syllabus, and other instructional areas for them to continue functioning. Please see the below chart for what kind of links will and will not require updating.

Once the transition to Mango is complete in July, faculty will need to review their course materials for any links to physical items in the library catalog beginning with the url discover.linccweb.org and replace them with updated links to those items in Mango. All other links pulled directly from databases like JSTOR or Films on Demand should remain functional, as they already exist outside of Primo. If you’re teaching summer classes, please don’t panic: Primo will continue to run in the background through the end of August, so you should not see any interruption of service on your existing links. However, your links will need to be updated to remain functional for Fall term.

We’ll keep you updated on the changeover as it happens, and will add support material to our Faculty Resource Guide as it becomes available, but if you have any questions at all please feel free to ask your local librarian.

Until next month (and Mango’s arrival!), we’ll see you in the stacks!