MnPALS Essentials

As a member of the Consortium of MnPALS Libraries (MnPALS or MnPALS Consortium), you join library staff members at 54 libraries and two consortium offices throughout the state of Minnesota. We gather in person and virtually to share knowledge and network with colleagues.

Your library's membership in the consortium provides you with:
1. A network of colleagues with which to share information and collaborate
2. Professional development opportunities
3. Support and training librarians to troubleshoot and consult on workflows
4. Cost savings for library management, digital asset management software, and proxy software
5. Free access to several open source products, including hosting and maintenance

How to navigate MnPALS Essentials:
At the top of the guide, you'll see a few tabs.
1. The first one to check out (after this one, of course) is the Get Involved! tab. This will provide information about our communication channels, the support center, events, and communities of interest that are open to all members of MnPALS.
2. The Important Terms tab will help decipher some of the library and consortium jargon you will encounter.
3. The CERV Enhancement Process tab provides the steps for user involvement in Ex Libris's software development process. 
4. Suggested Schedules for Tasks is just that- recommendations from your colleagues regarding when to perform certain tasks or processes.
5. Business Processes contains information about the Ex Libris contract, payment processes, and other topics pertinent to maintaining a library's membership in the consortium.

How do you fit into all of this?
Click on the tab labeled Get Involved! to learn more!

This guide is intended to serve as a resource for you at any stage of your membership in MnPALS. Please bookmark it and let me know if you have suggestions and/or corrections!

Create a PALS Support Center account using your business email.

Then, sign up for the MnPALS-Discuss list and any other email list that looks good to you.

Check out the knowledge base

If you'd like to contact someone in the PALS Office, submit a ticket to the Support Center through the portal, or by sending an email.

We are a consortium of 54 libraries and one support office in Minnesota. Our membership consists of a variety of library types: public college and university, private college and university, state agency, special, K-12, and Minitex.

Want to know more about the member libraries? Check out the member list.

Interested in the consortium's history? Read more here.

Governance Structure
The structure is built to encourage many levels of participation, ranging from informal Communities of Interest through formal MnPALS Consortium Board representation.

Learn more about the governance.

Policies and Documents
Official documentation of the consortium is available through the MnPALS Islandora site. 

Contents include:

• Policies
• Minutes/Agendas
• PALS Archive

PALS is a program of Minnesota State, and the support and training office for the Consortium of MnPALS Libraries.

The team consists of 12 people who work on software support and training, application development and support, finance, and administration. We provide software support for the MnPALS Alma/Primo VE environment, as well as some open source applications and stand-alone products. See more in our service catalog.

Our team teleworks with an office location at Minnesota State University, Mankato. 

Our goal is to ensure that our members have the information and support they need to serve their patrons.

If you ever have a question or concern about our work, email Johnna Horton, Executive Director of PALS.

The majority of member connection happens through our Communities of Interest (COIs). These are informal group the meet based on a general topic or area of interest. You'll find the usual groups centered on functionality of the software, but there are also groups that are more broad in scope, including Reference, Instruction, and Outreach and Digital Collections.

Click here for the list of the groups.

If there is a topic you're interested in and you don't see an existing group starting a new COI is as easy as getting in touch with your colleagues via the Discuss list or a discussion post! The PALS Office will help with logistics (creating calendar items, setting up the Zoom meetings, etc.) and you'll be ready to go. 

The MnPALS community has a few communication channels that we recommend:

MnPALS Mailing Lists
Click on the links to subscribe, unsubscribe, and change the preferences on your subscription.

MnPALS-Discuss
Use this list for general discussion or questions that may interest MnPALS members.This is open to non-MnPALS members as well.
MnPALS-Alma-Community
This list is focused on Alma/Primo VE issues and is where PALS staff will post information re: updates to the software or other announcements.
MnPALS-Cataloging
MnPALS-Cataloging is a discussion list for topics of interest to catalogers of the MnPALS consortium.
MnPALS Circ-ILL
A discussion list for topics related to interlibrary loan and circulation
MN-lib-data
A discussion list for topics related to library data in Minnesota

If you are having trouble using the lists, please contact mailman@lists.mnpals.org or submit a ticket.

Community Discussions 
These are discussion boards where members can ask questions, have discussions, or share information. Feedback is easier to see in the Discussions vs. in emails.

A login to the support center is required. Discussions are for members of MnPALS only.

Every year MnPALS members meet in person at the Spring Gathering, an event that provides valuable time for networking, information sharing, and elections to the MnPALS Consortium Board. 

The 2026 Spring Gathering is scheduled to be held on April 10th at St. Cloud State University. This event will be hybrid, and is tentatively scheduled for 8:30 am - 3:30 pm.

To get an idea for how these events work, see information about Spring Gathering 2025.

If you serve as the leader of your library, the Library Leadership Group meets annually in April to provide feedback, vote on financial matters, and offer guidance to the MnPALS Consortium Board for the following year.

The Library Leadership Group (LLG) is the assembly of one leader from each member library. Each library determines who will represent them on this body.

The LLG meets once a year in the spring following the Spring Gathering to discuss issues identified by the group. The LLG is also the voting body for financial decisions, including PALS service charges, user fee formulas, and contracts that involve all libraries.

The LLG elects a representative to serve as an ex-officio member of the MnPALS Consortium Board to ensure continued communication.

Current Library Leadership Group members

MnPALS is governed by the MnPALS Consortium Board, which also serves as the Network Zone Policy Group.

Representatives are elected according to library type and serve two year terms with the ability to serve two consecutive terms.

Other positions on the Board are identified by the existing policy groups which have their own guidelines for term length and limits.

Current MnPALS Consortium Board membership

Meetings are held on the second Tuesday at 2:00 pm on Zoom during the academic year (September - May).

Elections are held in the spring at the Spring Gathering.

MnPALS Governance Structure

• Communities of Interest (COIs): Established for communication and exploration focusing on areas of common interest, which may be a product, subject specialty, or topic. Any member of a MnPALS library can form an Interest Group
• Courier codes - Three letter codes used by Minitex and other libraries to designate interlibrary loan shipping and delivery locations. Also referred to as OCLC codes
• Library Leadership Group: an assembly of one leader from each member library
• Mailing lists - Electronic mailing lists maintained by the PALS office. See Get Involved! tab for links.
• MnPALS - aka The Consortium of MnPALS Libraries, a network of academic and state agency libraries that use a shared ILS
• MnPALS Consortium Board - a representative body of members who approve policies, and manages the business of the consortium
• OCLC - A global library cooperative that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large. Libraries in MnPALS catalog materials using OCLC Connexion or CatExpress. Other OCLC products include WorldCat and WorldShare
• PALS - The Minnesota State organization that supports the MnPALS libraries and is also a member of MnPALS
• PALS Support Center - The help desk system used by PALS to support the MnPALS libraries
• Policy Groups: Representative groups that guide official policy creation/revision for consortium-level concerns
• Task Forces: Conduct defined investigations that further the mission or clarify operations of the consortium. The Board establishes Task Forces

For complete glossaries: Alma, Primo VE

• Acquisition/Serials - The Alma functionality for managing acquisitions and serialized items. Not all MnPALS libraries use acquisitions
• Alma - The ILS used by MnPALS. The consortium went live January 2019
• Alma / Primo VE Certifications - Video course and test which provides in-depth knowledge for administration of Alma and/or Primo VE
• Analytics - Reporting tool that updates nightly. Uses Oracle infrastructure. Can save reports individually, share with others at your institution, or share with the consortium and beyond
• Booking - Request for a physical item or space at a specific point in time; can use the MnPALS Booking interface or Alma to manage booking requests
• Community Zone (CZ) - A shared repository for all Alma users maintained by Ex Libris. It includes authority records, bibliographic metadata, and an electronic materials knowledge base
• Customization Package - Used the change the user interface of Primo VE by editing existing files or uploading original files. Contains CSS, HTML, images, and JavaScript
• Ex Libris - A part of Clarivate, the company that produces the ILS we use
• Fulfillment - Umbrella term for circulation and interlibrary loan (ILL) in Alma
• Institution Zone (IZ) - Contains data specific to an insitution, such as item-specific information and local note fields
• Next Discovery Experience (NDE) -The NDE User Interface is mainly an interface upgrade and represents a shift in the user interface design of Primo VE
• Network Zone (NZ) - An administrative tool to manage and distribute information to member institutions
• Primo VE - Discovery product for use with Alma
• Resource Sharing - Alma's term for ILL
• Roles - Titles applied to Alma users that give them increasing levels of privileges. Controls access to pages and functions in Alma
• Sandbox - MnPALS libraries have access to three premium Alma sandboxes to allow for testing in a non-production environment
• Scopes (search scopes, search profile slots) - The various pre-filtered lists of search options that appear when you start typing a search (e.g. library catalog; online resources; articles)
• Views - Settings that are related to what end users see in the user interface (such as search scopes, look and feel, and services); can create multiple views based on institution, library, campus, and user group

Each year, members of ELUNA and IGeLU are encouraged to submit requests for enhancements to the Ex Libris products to which they subscribe.  This process is called Community Enhancement Requests and Voting, or CERV (formerly known as NERS ).  Each product has its own enhancement cycle and the schedules for each product’s timeline can be found in the Product Development section of the ELUNA website.  -- source.

The PALS Offices maintains a consortium membership in ELUNA, which allows any member of the MnPALS Consortium to participate in the CERV process for Alma, Primo, and Rialto. The voting process is coordinated by functional experts in the PALS Office, who requests member feedback when the appropriate window opens.

Individual MnPALS libraries may also maintain institutional memberships. This is especially helpful if the library uses additional Ex Libris products, such as Rapido, Leganto, Esploro, etc. This is the list of products covered by the collaboration agreement.

The current CERV process for the PALS Office ELUNA membership is coordinated by the PALS Office. They assist members in writing enhancements and share the enhancements identified during the voting window. They solicit feedback on those enhancements, and place votes accordingly. 

If an institution has their own ELUNA membership, they are encouraged to coordinate with the PALS Office to ensure maximum alignment to increase voting. 

Idea Exchange is managed and maintained by Ex Libris to provide a venue for enhancements outside of the CERV process. Ideas can be submitted by anyone and anyone who creates an account has 25 votes per login per forum/product to support ideas. This number increases to 50 in content forum. Please note that there is no guarantee of review or implementation of items submitted to the Idea Exchange. More information can be found in the document linked on this page.

MnPALS members are welcome to submit ideas in collaboration with others, or alone. We recommend that members share their ideas with the consortium to gather additional votes for the functionality suggested. This is often done at COIs, on the discussion forums, or via the MnPALS-Discuss list.

Still have questions? Check out the Idea Exchange FAQ.

ELUNA is the Ex Libris Users of North America, an international user community. ELUNA provides the venue for Ex Libris customers to participate in the development and feedback process for various Ex Libris products.
 

All MnPALS Libraries have access to ELUNA Learns webinars, as part of the consortium membership that PALS pays for.

2025 Offerings

Additional membership benefits

Upper Midwest User Group (UMWUG)

Each member library of MnPALS must designate a person to represent them as the Library Leadership Group (LLG) representative. The Library Leadership Group provides an assembly of the heads of all consortium libraries, Minitex, and Minnesota State.

The LLG meets annually in the spring. These meetings are hybrid. More information on member responsibilities.

MnPALS boasts 21 private university, state, special, and K-12 libraries as members. These member libraries pay for their ILS contract portion, according to the applicable formula provided here on the website. If the member library chooses to contract for additional ILS functionality, the library is billed for this via the PALS Office. 

The PALS Office, a program of Minnesota State, is the entity that negotiates and holds the contract for the ILS and provides support and training to all member libraries. The PALS Office staff does not replace librarian positions on campuses. They support the staff and manage some technical processes to ensure that campus staff are able to serve their patrons. in some cases, the PALS Office staff provides electronic resource management for very small libraries with historically low staffing levels. 

Minitex, a state-funded library organization, is an ex-officio member of MnPALS.

All Minnesota State libraries are members of MnPALS. The PALS Office, a program of Minnesota State, is the entity that negotiates and holds the contract for the ILS and provides support and training to all member libraries. The PALS Office staff does not replace librarian positions on campuses. They support the staff and manage some technical processes to ensure that campus staff are able to serve their patrons. In some cases, the PALS Office staff provides electronic resource management for very small libraries with historically low staffing levels. 

The ILS contract and overhead costs for Minnesota State libraries are funded through a legislative allocation. This money is a flat allocation, mediated by the system office, and distributed through each institution into a cost center that should be separate from general fund monies. The PALS Office invoices each institution according to the academic library formula for the costs of the software, support, and overhead. If you have questions about how to manage inter-company payments in Workday, contact Gretchen Cords.

If a member library chooses to contract for additional ILS functionality, the library is billed for this via the PALS Office.

The ILS used by the MnPALS libraries is Alma/Primo VE. The vendor is Ex Libris, a Clarivate company. The contract with Ex Libris/Clarivate is managed and maintained by the PALS Office, with fiscal agent Minnesota State University, Mankato.

The contract provides for Alma and Primo VE instances for each library. It also allows for libraries to purchase additional products, including Rapido, Esploro, Leganto, etc.

Private/State/Special/K-12 libraries have the option of making one full payment in July, or two six month payments.

Reminder:

• MnPALS is the consortium
• PALS is the support/training office for the MnPALS libraries.

Minnesota State (and the PALS Office) runs on a July-June fiscal year.

Minnesota State University, Mankato (MNSU) acts as the billing agent for the PALS Office. The PALS Office is a tenant of MNSU. We pay for space in the data center, library office spaces, and services such as IT, HR, contract management, and business office support.

The Consortium Board helps the PALS Office stay current with staffing updates for access to the Support Center. Lists are sent out in October. If you have staffing changes that happen after October, email the PALS Support Center.