INVITATION.pdf

RFI-2502BM

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION

Library Catalog Software for Library Media Centers

The Gwinnett County Public Schools (GCPS) Board of Education is soliciting a Request for Information (RFI) from interested service providers for a proposal to address the Library Catalog Software for Library Media Centers for Gwinnett County Public Schools.

RFI submissions will be received digitally until 9:00 AM EST, Wednesday, November 13, 2024 through the Bonfire Interactive online portal located at https://gwinnett.bonfirehub.com or by visiting the GCPS Purchasing website at ttps:publish.gwinnett.k12.ga.us/gcps/home/public/about/business-and-finance/p-and-p.

A list of submitting firms will be available the following business day on our website.

Questions regarding this RFI should be submitted in Bonfire under the Message Center of the RFI before the cutoff date of Wednesday, October 30, 2024 at 9:00 AM.

https://gwinnett.bonfirehub.com/

Introduction/Project Overview Gwinnett County Public Schools (GCPS) is inviting service providers to submit information about their Library Catalog Software for Library Media Centers. GCPS is one of the largest school systems in the country made up of 142 schools and approximately 182,000 students.

The purpose of this RFI is to allow GCPS personnel to learn about services provided by various Library Catalog Software providers to determine which one best meets the needs of the size of the district as well as the breadth of desired uses of the tool. GCPS will not enter into a contractual agreement based on this RFI. At some point in the near future GCPS may elect to issue a more detailed Request for Proposal (RFP) in order to solicit solutions for a Library Catalog Software for our system vendor.

Confidentiality Requirements This document is released for the sole purpose of inviting a response to this RFI and must be considered confidential. Any use, reproduction, or disclosure of the requirements, specifications, or other material in the response is strictly prohibited.

Retention of Responses The service provider will provide a clear and complete response to the services listed in direct response to the requirements set forth in this RFI. RFI responses are not publicly available until after an award by the Gwinnett County Board of Education is made or a contract is entered into.

RFIs must be signed by a company official that has authorization to commit company information and resources before uploading in Bonfire.

All RFI responses become the property of GCPS when submitted. GCPS will make all reasonable efforts to maintain responses in confidence and will release responses only to personnel involved in the review of materials submitted. Release of any information submitted shall be handled in accordance with Georgia’s Open Records Laws. Any supplier’s proprietary information shall be clearly identified as such and the Georgia Code covering such declaration shall be cited by Title, Chapter, Section, Sub-Section, etc. GCPS accepts no responsibility for the release of any information not so noted.

Communication Gwinnett County Public Schools Personnel: Individuals, firms, and businesses seeking an award of a Gwinnett County Public Schools contract may not initiate or continue any verbal or written communications regarding a solicitation. RFI submissions will be received digitally until 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday, November 13, 2024, through the Bonfire Interactive online portal located at https://gwinnett.bonfirehub.com/portal/?tab=openOpportunities or by visiting the GCPS Purchasing website at https://www.gcpsk12.org/about-us/divisions-and-teams/budgets-and-financial-reporting/bids-purchasing-opportunities. A list of submitting firms will be available the following business day on our website. All communications concerning the RFI must be submitted in writing to the Gwinnett County Public School’s Purchasing Department via Bonfire under the “Message Center” section of the bid. No response other than written communication by the Purchasing Department will be binding upon Gwinnett County Public Schools. Violations will be reviewed by the Purchasing Director. If determined that such communication has compromised the competitive process, the offer submitted by the individual, firm, or business may be disqualified from consideration for award. The Purchasing Department, in its discretion, may call upon user departments for clarification in their area of expertise.

All questions or commentary must be received in Bonfire under the “Message Center” section no later than 9:00 AM, Wednesday, October 30, 2024 to allow for appropriate and timely responses.

https://gwinnett.bonfirehub.com/portal/?tab=openOpportunities https://www.gcpsk12.org/about-us/divisions-and-teams/budgets-and-financial-reporting/bids-purchasing-opportunities https://www.gcpsk12.org/about-us/divisions-and-teams/budgets-and-financial-reporting/bids-purchasing-opportunities

Assessment GCPS will assess the RFIs received and will be evaluating the received proposals based on the service provider’s responses to the stated GCPS requirements, the completeness of the service provider’s response, and the perceived service provider’s capabilities to perform the overall objective of the RFI.

GCPS reserves the right to withdraw this RFI by written notice. GCPS shall incur no liability whatsoever to prospective service providers by reason of such withdrawal, rejection, or acceptance.

General Guidelines The submitted response should be clear, coherent, legible, and prepared in sufficient detail for further consideration.

The response should include both general information and, as best as possible, address the specific information requested by this RFI. Pricing information may be provided for purposes of reference.

In preparing the RFI response, emphasis should be placed on brief, complete, and factual data in the areas that are set forth in the response. Maximum use of tables and information summaries should be used in the response. Paraphrasing the specifications in part or whole will be considered insufficient.

content and quality are more important than quantity.

GCPS assumes no responsibility for the cost of preparation or other expenses incurred by responding to this RFI.

Optional Demo/Interview The decision to conduct a demonstration/interview and the number of service providers included in the demonstration/interview of the services requested in this RFI solution are at the sole discretion of GCPS.

Service providers selected to participate in the demonstration/interview will be notified in writing. All costs associated with the demonstration/interview (if required) will be at the expense of the proposing firm, and the services provider should be available within five (5) working days after request.

Letter of Transmittal A letter of transmittal must accompany each response. This letter must be signed by a person authorized to verify the accuracy of and legally obligate the service provider contractually to the scope, terms, and specifications of the submitted qualification application response.

Supplemental Information Service providers may provide supplemental information for a requirement as an appendix to the RFI response. Information included in the appendix should be referenced in the main body of the RFI response. Information such as product brochures, financial reports, manuals, or sample contracts should also be included in the appendix. This information should be uploaded under the additional information section within Bonfire.

References Please provide three (3) references of contracts of a similar scope and size. Include client name, address, telephone number, contact information, and how long they have been a client.

General Requirements:

Section A: Functional Requirements:

Catalog:

• Basic and Advanced Search Features for genre, sublocation, ISBN, Call No, Barcode, MARC record descriptors, category assigned.

• Basic and Advanced Search by site, level, district.

• Basic search limiters by material type, sublocation/genre, reading program.

• Advanced search limiters including material type, sublocation/genre, reading program, circulation type, publication year, call number.

• Create and share lists with individuals, schoolwide, and other school locations (district wide)

• Add/edit/delete categories assigned at local sites.

• Add/edit/delete copies at local sites.

Circulation:

• Basic Circulation: Check in, Check Out, Renew

• Placing holds: Certain roles able to place holds for other patrons. Students and Teachers placing holds for themselves.

• ILL: Ability to turn this off district wide. We do not use this.

• Reserves: Reservations for items to only be turned on for certain roles

• Copy status: Ability to scan an item to find out all the title details.

• Patron status: Ability to search for patrons by name, ID, etc. to see the details of a patron and all items association with the patron.

• Patron search: Ability to search for patrons at any of the school sites from any of the school sites.

• Patron Checkout: Ability to checkout materials to any patron at any site.

• Offline Circulation: Need this ability if internet connection is unavailable and/or for batch check-ins or check-outs.

• Circulation Statistics: Either a quick view or a report needs to be available showing check-ins and checkouts by date.

• Email to Parent when a child checks out a book: This is pending legislation for our state. If a parent wants to be notified, they can opt in to receive emails every time a child checks out a book.

• Check in/out, renew, mark lost, email patrons for books checked out from our Book Mobile sites to any patron district wide.

Local School Reports Available:

• Barcode lists: Identify used or unused barcodes.

• Title and Copy List: List the collection with optional copy details.

• Weeding Log: List copies that were weeded, deleted, or transferred.

• Current checkouts/Fines: Identify or send notices to the patrons with checkouts/fines. Also, ability to email these patrons who have moved to a different school.

• Digital Reports: eBook statistics

• Holds: View all holds and reserves

• Hold Notices: Print or email ready hold notices.

• Completed Inventories: view results of completed inventories and be able to access in spreadsheet format.

• In-Progress Inventories: report on inventories that are in-Progress (list all copies accounted for, or those still needing to be found)

• Barcode labels: create new or replacement barcode labels. Select used labels by resource list, category, barcode, or date added. Limit used labels by date added, material type, and circulation type. Create several unused barcode labels based on a starting barcode number.

• Spine/Pocket Labels: Create new or replacement spine/pocket labels. Select by resource list, category, date added or barcode. Limit by date added.

• Collection Statistics – Historical: Examine circulation statistics for a particular timeframe. Select by date.

View a summary or title and copy details. Organize based on call number prefix, Dewey, or category. Limit call number-based reports by call number, circulation type and resource list.

• Collection Statistics – Summary: Examine current circulation, age and value statistics.

• Copy Transaction Data: Excel containing transactions in a date range.

• Title/Copy Data – Excel containing titles/copies in a call number range.

• Top Homerooms/Grades: View a list of the homerooms or grade levels with the most circulations.

• Top Patrons: View a list of the titles with the most or least circulations.

• Database Search statistics: Examine how patrons are searching through databases that are integrated in the catalog.

• Overdue Materials: List overdue copies in the order they should be shelved.

• Patron Names: List all your patrons. Select by patron type, status, graduation year, and card expiration date.

• Patron Statistics – Historical: Examine patron circulations for a particular timeframe. View a summary of patron details. Organize by patron type, status, grade level, homeroom, or user defined fields. Limit by patron type and status.

• Patron Statistics - Summary: Examine current circulation statistics. Organize by patron type, status, grade level, homeroom, or user defined fields. Limit by patron type and status. Drill into patron groups for more details.

• Patron Barcode Labels: Create new or replacement patron barcode labels. Select used labels by patron name, grade level, homeroom, user defined field, or date patron added. Sort by patron name, grade level, homeroom, or user defined field. Limit used labels by patron type or status.

• Patron ID Cards: Create new or replacement patron ID cards. Select by patron name, grade level, homeroom, or user defined field, or barcode. Limit by patron type, status, graduation year and card expiration date.

• Bookroom Labels: Prints labels 2" x 4" for books with circulation type bookroom. This report will print bookroom labels to the AVERY 5163 (2" x 4") label stock from the user's Booklist. A pdf report is created for printing. Prints out the title, author, Lexile, call number, and notes field (indicating number of copies in a set).

• Inventory Statistics Report: Tallies relevant copy counts including lost copies. This report will tally relevant copy counts including lost copies.

• Patron Barcode Labels for Selected Homeroom: Lists all homeroom students in ABC order, with student name, barcode number and homeroom name in label format.

• Barcode Labels for New Patrons: These reports will print barcode labels to the AVERY 5160 label stock.

They create a pdf report as output. Can be generated by date enrolled or by barcode list or number.

Local Admin Settings

• Manage Patrons: Add, edit or delete patrons. Permission based access to this feature. Ability to search local site for patron. Ability to search across the district for patron.

• Update Patrons: Individual or groups based on criteria. Make changes to individuals or groups based on patron type, homeroom, grade level, patron status, access level, location, etc.

• Export Patrons: Export to excel patrons based on criteria. Export patrons based on patron type, grade level, homeroom, patron status.

• Update Patrons: Globally excuse fines. Permission based access to this feature. Ability to excuse fines based on date fines were assessed, grade level, value of fine, fines listed for a local site when student has moved to a different site.

• Manage Homerooms: Update teacher emails and associate students with teacher. Would like for this to be automatic. Currently we must associate teacher emails with their patron ID to attach the students to their record for printing homeroom labels.

• Patron Types: By Grade Level. Based on grade level, patron types can be customized based on circ type with max checkouts, max holds, fixed due date, ceiling date, setting fine amounts, setting expiration dates for ready holds and pending holds, and loan periods by circ type.

• Circ Types: By Circulation type (AV, bookroom, eBook, paperback, professional, parent center, media center, etc.). Circulation types can be customized by loan period, # of renewals, daily fines, max fines, automatic overdue by amount of time set to lost. These are customized by patron types. Circ types can be hidden from certain patron types also.

• Access Levels List: Viewable permissions for local media specialists. Media specialists are the only role that can change a patron's access level. We have standard access levels district wide that can only be edited at the district level for all schools.

• Circulation Calendar: Managed at district, but schools can edit for their school. Calendar is set at the district level with district holidays. The media specialist can select the fixed due date or ceiling date for when all books are due at the end of the year. If there are special schools with different attendance days, each local school can customize.

• Catalog Options: Catalog Maintenance. Ability to set it to automatically remove the title at the local site, when the last copy attached to that title record is deleted.

• Catalog Options: Library Inventory Options. During library inventories, check shelf order based on call no., call no./author, or call no./author/title.

• Catalog Options: Language Support. Choose default language and choose other languages that patrons may view select pages in.

• Catalog Options: Search interface. Ability to search through a standard interface or an elementary interface.

• Catalog Options: Show top 10. Customize based on patron type the Top 10 that shows in catalog.

• Circulation Options: Circulate to any patron in district. Allow materials to circulate to any patron at any site in the district.

• Circulation Options: Renewals for any patron in district. Do not allow renewals of library materials at the borrowing site. Renewals should happen in the local site catalog only.

• Circulation Options: Explanation for waiving fines. Require explanation when waiving a fine.

• Circulation Options: Auto-create fine for lost materials. Auto-create fine for lost materials. We have set prices for paperback, hardcover at each level. These prices are reflected in the copy MARC record.

• Circulation Options: Display book cover images on check out/in, and patron record screens. Display book cover images on check out/in, and patron record screens.

• Patron Records: Display pictures of patrons. Display pictures of patrons. Ability to load and/or edit pictures locally.

• Library Holds: Choose how many days an expired hold will be deleted. Choose how many days an expired hold will be deleted.

• Barcode Symbology: Code 39; Ability to use barcodes with fixed characters and between 6 and 14 digits.

• Email Address fields: Ability to pull up to three email address fields for students. Email 1 and 2 would be parents and email 3 would be students.

• Circulation Sounds: Have pre-loaded sounds available and the ability to customize sounds for check in/out, overdue, hold ready.

• School Logo: Customize school Logo in banner at top of each screen.

• Refund receipts: Ability to customize the printed receipt that automatically pops-up when a refund is issued.

• Refund Notifications: Ability to add multiple email addresses that will be notified when a refund needs to be issued.

• Inventory: Start a new inventory; Start an inventory that can be limited by Circulation types, genre/sublocation, Call numbers, and date limiters

• Inventory: View Completed Inventories; View completed inventories in pdf or excel form. Be able to see what parameters were selected when the inventory was set up.

• Inventory: View Lost Copies. View lost copies with details in a spreadsheet.

• Inventory: View In-Progress Inventories; Ability to move from one inventory to the next. Allows accountability in multiple inventories when each item is scanned.

• Inventory: Have multiple inventories open and progressing. The ability to have multiple inventories open.

Books scanned in will be accounted for in all open inventories.

• Job Manager: Keeps a list of jobs that have been completed at the local site until deleted. Keeps a list of the reports that have been run until each is deleted. Shows date and time of each.

• Notifications Tab: Notifies media specialist of reviews that need approval, holds that are ready, items transferred from another location, etc.

District Record Management

• Library Search; Basic and Advanced Search including search by keyword, title, author, subject, series, categories, barcode, etc.

• Check Sources: Searches by material type and ISBN, Author, title, and subject (search through the database sources for MARC records)

• Add Title: Update Z-sources. Database sources used for record searching: Alliance Plus, NLSBPH

• Add Title: Edit MARC Template. Edits template by material type

• Add Title: Update icon for Material Types. Customizes icons that show up in catalog searches for patrons.

• Resource Lists: Create a resource list in the district admin section that is accessible by level or by site.

• Import Titles: Title Matching: Strict or Relaxed. Strict matching for standard numbers, title, material types, authors, and publications dates must match. Relaxed matching for if no standard number is found, allows matching based on title, material type, author and pub date.

• Import Titles: Title Matching: Finding better titles. Have the option to replace an existing title if the incoming title is better; skip the incoming title; always add the incoming title (may cause duplicates; strict matching will be used).

• Import Titles: Indicate what the import file contains. Choose from the following: (a) Titles and copies for more than one library in the district. Use the library "short name" in tag 852_a to assign each copy to the appropriate collection. (b) Titles and copies from one of the school sites. (c) eBooks/audiobooks for either all schools, all HS, all MS, all ES, or the district catalog.

• Import Titles: Copy Matching. Choose from the following (a)skip the incoming copy if its barcode matches an existing copy's barcode. (b) replace the existing copy with the incoming copy if the barcodes and the titles match. (c) Always add the incoming copy record and assign it the next available barcode

• Import Titles: Import File. Upload the file and add one or more of the following options: (a) Add the imported titles to a resource list (b) Limit the job summary details to errors and warnings. (c) List the possible duplicate titles in the job summary after import.

• Export Titles. The ability to export titles from a list or all titles from a site location. Records exported can be brief or full. They can include copy information if you choose.

• Update Titles. Globally update titles by author, subject, series, material type or search by heading to find headings to update.

• Update Titles: Recon. Helps find bad records that have missing tags.

• Update Titles: Merge Duplicates. Ability to merge duplicate titles. Can do this by location or the district.

Matches title with Strict (exact match) or with Relaxed match (matches based on site, material type, author, and pub date)

• Update Titles: Remove Titles. Removes title records when there are no copies attached to the title by site or by district. eBooks without barcodes do not get removed.

• Update Copies: Individual Delete. Ability to delete a copy at any location or in the whole district.

• Update Copies: Batch Delete. Ability to delete multiple copies at any location or in the whole district with an attached or uploaded list.

• Manage Subjects. Can eliminate subject headings from any of the following: Sears, LOC, LCAC, Canadian, Local or Other.

District Admin Settings

• District Admin login is the only login that can add, edit, or delete access levels for local schools. Local schools can view each access/permission level. Media specialists at local schools can manually change access levels for patrons. They cannot edit the list of rights for access levels themselves.

• District Admin login can add, edit, and delete items or patrons; change site configurations, etc. at each local school. Local school media specialists can add, edit, and delete items or patrons, change site configurations, etc. without the ability to add, edit, delete original title records of items. A list can be provided of current rights for media specialists if requested.

• SMTP: Server for emails through library software company. Please list restrictions on mass emailing. yahoo, AOL, and iCloud email accounts had significant delivery failures with our previous provider.

• Truncated Barcode Search. This report produces a hitlist of barcodes from a truncated search. It limits the search by school. It identifies wrong barcodes or barcodes that are duplicated at multiple locations.

• Spine Label Report. This report will print spine labels to the Highsmith 8066 label stock. It pulls all copies currently in a local school resource list and prints a spine label for copies in a specified date range. It creates a PDF report as output. Might be called spine pocket (3 across: call number, title, title)

• Access Levels - Faculty Patron Type. Faculty is pulled in with a student access level default. This report helps identify which faculty need to be updated to a faculty access level. This is a report that was created at the district site that was pushed out to the list of reports in report builder that local schools can use.

• Access Levels – Administrators. This report lists which patrons in the district are listed as administrator. This is our highest level and only media specialists are allowed to have administrator access. We run this to make sure that others have not been granted this access.

• Fines that are over two years old. This report is created in our district report builder. We run a list of old fines for all elementary schools, all middle schools, and all high schools. Then, we manually delete these fines, unless they are 12th graders.

• Fiction series. This lists books in a series that a local site currently owns. It does not show what is missing but does show what they have if it is indicated in the MARC record.

• Patron Notes. We created this and pushed it out to local schools. If there is an ability to add a note to a patron record, we would either need a scheduler for when the note can be auto deleted, or we would need a way to run a report for all students with notes. That way the notes can be updated or deleted each year for the patrons.

• Ability to create a standard inventory with parameters (by circ types, etc.) and push out to groups of schools or all schools. Ability to create a standard inventory and push out to all schools at one level or all schools in district. Would be helpful for Title I inventory requirements.

• List of all jobs in the county that are running at each location. List all jobs with time stamp. Can mass delete jobs archive.

• Push default settings to all local sites from district admin login. Default Library Circulation Types can be set and pushed from the district level but are managed by the sites.

• Setup Mackin integration at district level. Push out standard databases by level. Local sites should have the ability to customize the databases that were pushed out from district and decide which can be searched through at their local school.

• District adds a title record, local sites attach a copy to that record. Local sites are not to be given permission to edit an original record. They can only edit local copies added to the district title records.

• Push default settings to all local sites from district admin login. Default Patron Types can be set and pushed from here but are managed by the sites.

• Batch Add/Edit/Delete Copies at local site. Add, edit, delete multiple item copies at local site.

• Upload Patron Pictures at local sites. Must have District Admin permission to upload patron pictures.

SSO/SIS/LDAP

• Fines export to My Payments Plus (Horizon). Exports fine data at 6pm daily to the appropriate fields in My Payments Plus student accounts. This is where the students pay for lost library books or fines.

• Data Export (Fines/Items checked out/inactive patrons/delete patrons). Exports fines/items checked out to Synergy (SIS) at 6:15pm daily. The fines and items checked out are being imported into a different database after an auto process that cleans it up and makes it usable from our current provider.

• Staff Data Import. Imports active staff from Synergy (teachers) and Peoplesoft (all other staff) at 3am nightly.

An XML file is generated combining Peoplesoft and Synergy staff data for import into our current provider.

• Elementary Student Import; Imports current elementary student data from Synergy (SIS) at 3:05am nightly

• Middle School Student Import; Imports current middle school student data from Synergy (SIS) at 3:10am nightly

• High School Student Import; Imports current high school student data from Synergy (SIS) at 3:15am nightly

• MPP Import on top of the hour, every hour; Updates from My Payment Plus to Library software if a student has paid a fine (between 8am and 6pm daily)

• Delete Patrons that are inactive for more than 6 months; Any inactive patron that does not have an item attached to their record is deleted each Friday night. This process is run within Library software each Friday at 9:05pm

• Mark Patrons Inactive after 4 days of no updates; If patron data is not imported in from Synergy with information, the library software will mark as inactive on each Friday. This process is run within Library software each Friday at 9:10pm

• Local School staff and students are authenticated (SAML) through the employee/student portal; Staff and student links are authenticated to go directly to the home page of the media catalog at their local site. Then, they click on login button. They are logged in with SAML. I would prefer that they are recognized when clicking on the media catalog link to the homepage.

• District Users can bypass SAML and manually log in; Staff members with district access go to a list of all school sites. They can bypass SAML/SSO by manually logging in as a district user.

• Special Logins at each local site; We have 4 special logins at each site location. Each of these logins are a fake patron in the library software with the appropriate access level. These were created for special use cases because of the SAML authentication. These fake patrons have special logins for the employee portal and then click the media catalog link to their own site location.

Section B: Technology Requirements:

• Platform – Android, iOS, or Windows

• Devices - Ability to be managed using Moysle (ios), Tanium, Altiris, Active Directory (Windows devices).

• App platform for browsing catalog and/or circulation transactions.

• Transaction logging

• Integration with Active Directory

• Agree to sign our data privacy documents.

• Agree to present solution to our ARB committee.

• All transactional data processing and inventory management, occurs in the cloud.

• The library catalog software supports secure device management, including lock screens and device encryption, to protect against unauthorized access.

• Supports role-based access control within the library catalog software to limit access based on employee roles.

• Disaster recovery procedure for restoring library software in the event of hardware or software failure.

• **Cloud-based monitoring and analytics tools to track system performance and customer behaviors in real-time – (preferred but not a necessity)

Section C: Strategy, Performance & Accountability Requirements:

• Compliance/acceptance with Gwinnett County Public Schools Data and Privacy Terms

• Usage/transaction reports

• User credentials to monitor and provide oversight.

• Integration with other Gwinnett County Public Schools systems as needed.

Section D: Training and Implementation Requirements:

• For pilot schools: Can train face to face and migrate data for some schools while other schools are still receiving and sending information from previous provider to and from the same vendors (MPP, SIS, etc.)

• Can migrate data from previous provider to new provider in a timely manner. We have 142 school library catalogs. This must be done quickly to avoid interrupting any instructional time.

• Have the capacity to clean up data that ends up missing or in unknown data fields after migration.

• Provide the option of all day face to face training sessions in addition to virtual one-to-two-hour training support sessions.

• Provide outline and actual instructional strategies that will be used to train.

• Have the capacity to train 260 people on site over the course of a few weeks when they are off contract.

• Ability to train staff members within their own library media catalog with real student data and resource data.

• By the end of training, library staff members have all settings recommended by district and trainers created and landing page developed to be ready for students by pre-planning week (a week prior to the start of the target school year).