EBSCO User Group
Omaha, NE
I am pleased to share a summary of my experience at the EBSCO User Group (EBSCO UG) Annual Meeting, which I was able to attend in Omaha, Nebraska, from May 5-7, 2026, thanks to the generous support of a CLRC Professional Development Award. As the Systems Librarian at Le Moyne College, attending this conference was a vital final checkpoint as our library prepares to migrate from a 30-year legacy system to EBSCO FOLIO in the summer of 2026. The conference provided invaluable technical and strategic insights necessary to optimize our new system and ensure a smooth transition for our staff and campus community.
The conference served as a powerful platform for professional engagement, allowing me to both learn and contribute to the wider library community. I presented a solo session on “Seamless Discovery: Unifying Your EBSCO and LibGuides Search Experience,” and also participated in a panel, “Strategic Adoption: Library Innovation through Staged Implementation,” where I joined my Library Director, Lisa Chaudhuri, and an EBSCO Library Services Engineer to discuss the planning behind our migration.
A central, unifying theme throughout the three days was how EBSCO and libraries approach artificial intelligence. Keynote speaker Rosalyn Metz (CTO, Emory Libraries & Museum) discussed the decline in college-bound students projected between 2025 and 2029, suggesting AI presents less of an existential threat and more of a catalyst for professional renewal. The consensus across sessions was the need for librarians to learn about AI, understand how it works, and lead users back to a shared reality. Discussions highlighted significant concerns surrounding data privacy and the potential for bias in AI tools, emphasizing the need for institutional policies and closed systems.
EBSCO provided updates on their own AI implementations, noting increased usage when AI tools are toggled on, which supports natural language search over traditional Boolean methods. They are working on “AI-assisted search” through Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG). Panelists stressed the importance of knowing where to deliberately place “friction” in the research process to encourage students to question tools and read critically, rather than relying solely on agentic discovery.
Beyond AI, the conference provided critical technical updates directly relevant to our current migration efforts. I gained deeper knowledge of the EBSCO Scholarly Graph, a linked data product that powers features like “Cited by” lists, People Pages for verified authors, and influential work flags. EBSCO also detailed significant interface changes launching on July 7, including moving navigation elements to the top bar and pinning open search filters. For our FOLIO implementation, sessions covered new tools like MarigoLD for creating and editing linked data representations of bibliographic records, as well as the potential for utilizing the AWS Marketplace for large-dataset analysis and metadata clean-up.
The overall experience provided me with essential “lessons learned” from peer institutions and direct technical details that will be instrumental as we finalize our configuration for the upcoming FOLIO go-live.
Pauline Shostack, Systems Librarian
Le Moyne College
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