Introducing Omni, the new academic search tool presented by the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL). An outcome of OCUL’s Collaborative Futures initiative, Omni is powered by a collaborative system of team members and resources from 14 of Ontario’s university libraries. Omni users experience fast and easy access to a vast collection of diverse, high-quality, academic material, empowering them to confidently develop new insights in their areas of study, and succeed in their research goals. See the OCUL Press Release and Omni Information Page.
On December 10, 2019, all libraries at York University will be moving to Omni.
Omni will significantly change how all members of the York University community discover and access resources for teaching, learning, and research, providing an improved search experience that leverages new technologies. It also provides a significant leap in how the libraries manage resources behind-the-scenes, streamlining acquisitions, cataloguing, circulation, reserves, and analytics activities that currently require multiple systems that don’t always work well together.
What does this mean for you?
- A streamlined interface that facilitates resource discovery across a broad range of genres and formats - books, book chapters, journals, scholarly and popular articles, film, music, etc. - for resources in both physical and electronic form.
- Improved functionality for you to manage current loans and requests
- New circulation policies that improve how you currently interact with the libraries. More information about new loan policies will be available soon. Highlights for regularly circulating materials (e.g. books in the stacks) for all faculty, degree students, and staff include:
- 120 day loans
- unlimited renewals
- no overdue fines (except for recalled items)
- Resources currently in course reserves will be discoverable via the new interface by course code and instructor name.
- Links from course websites to library resources will be automatically redirected to the same resource on the new interface.
Adoption of a new platform to manage all library services and resources is a significant move. It’s why libraries generally only make the transition every 20-25 years. As with any transition of this scale, we anticipate there will be a few bumps and we will be ready to manage and resolve issues as they are identified.
As December 10 approaches, updates on the transition will be posted on this webpage. In the meantime, any questions about the project should be directed to Adam Taves (taves@yorku.ca), implementation lead for Collaborative Futures, York University Libraries.
