LTS Newsletter: May 2026
Welcome to Library Technology Service’s occasional newsletter for anyone interested in Harvard Library IT.
Collections Explorer Adds 2.2 Million Alma Special Collections Records
Collections Explorer recently reached an exciting milestone with the launch of approximately 2.2 million Alma records for special collections materials.
This release significantly expands the range of materials that users can discover in Collections Explorer and adds special collections records from Alma alongside the finding aid content already available from ArchivesSpace. For researchers and staff, this means a broader view into Harvard Library’s special collections through a single, exploratory search experience.
The launch also included several user interface improvements designed to make browsing and evaluating results easier. Search result cards now provide clearer information at a glance, users can switch between list and grid views, and item detail pages provide a more complete view of individual records.
Behind the scenes, this release reflects substantial work across data modeling, metadata transformation and ingest, search indexing, interface development, testing, and infrastructure. The team also completed important foundational work, including an upgrade of our metadata pipeline infrastructure and implementation of automated front-end testing, to strengthen the system as Collections Explorer continues to grow.
This milestone is an important step toward the broader goal of helping users discover Harvard Library’s rich and varied special collections materials across systems and formats.
Building Better Together
The creation of Collections Explorer has been a collaboration between Library Technology Services and UX & Discovery. Meg McMahon, the User Experience Researcher in UX & Discovery within the Discovery & Access team at Harvard Library, has written a blog post about their team’s collaboration with LTS on the Collections Explorer project. This blog post is a good example of how the library’s UX studies strengthen the user centered nature of systems that LTS builds for the library.
Read the blog post: Building better together: Collections Explorer Partnership between UX & Discovery and Library Technology Services
Old-Style Links to Viewer Images
You may notice certain links that used to take you to a digital object in the Viewer behave a little differently now. For those links, a page may appear with the message, “This Resource Has Moved,” along with an updated link. Clicking that link will take you to the digital image. This message indicates that the original link is using an old format supported by legacy delivery services. It both helps LTS identify which links need to be updated across systems and informs users of the correct link for that digital object. In the coming months there will be less occurrences where you see this message as the platforms where old-style links exist will be updated by either LTS or Library service owners. When they have all been updated, the message will no longer appear for users.
Staff News: Thank you and Au Revoir
Katie Amaral, our technical lead for the Reimagining Discovery initiative, will be leaving LTS and Harvard at the end of the month for a new opportunity in the biotech AI space. Katie has been central to the development of Collections Explorer, Harvard Library’s new AI-powered discovery tool for special collections and archives. She has shaped our strategy for AI-assisted discovery by uniting deep knowledge of library systems, search, and emerging AI capabilities, while also strengthening our approaches to security, authentication, and application development practices across LTS. Her combination of technical rigor, curiosity, and pragmatism has left a lasting imprint on the project and on how we think about AI across LTS and Harvard Library.
Katie first joined LTS in 2019 and some highlights of her accomplishments include completing the development of ACORN, the primary application used daily by Harvard Library’s Weissman Preservation Center for documenting preservation treatments. She then helped build the next generation of URN management tooling with the Name Resolution Service (NRS). She played a vital role in redesigning Harvard Library’s IIIF infrastructure through her work on MPS, the Media Presentation Service. Katie also did truly innovative work on the HUIT ETIP project, Talk with HOLLIS, exploring how generative AI could empower users to search for and access Harvard Library’s collections in new ways.
Katie is currently focused on knowledge transfer to ensure a smooth transition before her last day on May 29th.
To say Katie will be missed is an understatement.
“Library Technology Services Newsletter: May Edition,” Harvard Library, © 2026 by Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College is licensed under CC BY 4.0