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OpenRS 2025 Product Reviews

2025 has been a significant year for OpenRS, marked by substantial development and a deeper understanding of consortium and library user needs. A core focus of our work has been strengthening resource-sharing interoperability, improving time-to-patron, building a complete picture of resource-sharing activity, and giving libraries meaningful choice in how they design and manage their networks.

DCB

New Integrations and Workflows

In 2025, a new Alma adapter was added to DCB. This adapter provides full DCB functionality for all Alma libraries, including such functionality as: pickup anywhere, staff requesting, and walk-up requesting. This helps to further increase the number of libraries who can participate in the highest level of OpenRS features with Alma being a big part of the library software space. We will be looking to increase this yet further with more adapters to other library management systems.

For an open source community to flourish the software needs to be easy to spin up and set up. A user is now able to import and edit their pickup locations giving the user an ability to implement a new DCB.

Patron and Staff Requesting

A major new resource-sharing workflow was introduced to support Pickup Anywhere. This allows patrons to choose their preferred pickup location from anywhere within the consortium, making access to materials faster and more convenient. This functionality has been fully integrated into the DCB codebase, and we are excited to see MOBIUS begin using these features following their upgrade to the FOLIO Sunflower SP4 release.

As part of our commitment to giving users flexibility in how they create requests, staff requesting was introduced as a natural next step. This supports scenarios where patrons prefer library staff to place requests on their behalf, or where staff need to correct or refine requests.

Walk-up requesting was another key development. This feature allows patrons to visit any library within the consortium and complete an instant checkout of an item from this library. DCB links the loan back to the patron’s home library and account, significantly expanding access to consortium-wide resources and improving the overall user experience.

DCB Admin for Libraries

Through discussions with MOBIUS users, it became clear that some features previously limited to DCB Admin would be highly valuable to library staff. In response, the OpenRS community developed DCB Admin for Libraries, a dedicated application designed specifically for consortium member libraries.

DCB Admin for Libraries provides high-level visibility into resource-sharing activity while focusing on the workflow details, error handling, walk-up requesting, staff requesting and reporting that individual libraries need. Following successful development, the application was released to MOBIUS and has been well received.

Reporting and Performance Improvements

Reporting continues to be a priority. Both DCB Admin and DCB Admin for Libraries saw enhancements to circulation and exception reporting, driven by ongoing feedback from users. We have been building on the fields a using can report on and built a filter than allows you to see the number of occurrences for this field in the last 30, 60 and 90 days. New reporting fields were added, including:

  • Date and time
  • Error state
  • Workflow status indicators

Significant performance improvements were also achieved in record ingestion and clustering within DCB. These optimizations reduced import times dramatically, enabling the ingestion of approximately 20 million records in a substantially shorter timeframe. While also continuing  to refine and improve the suppression support for FOLIO libraries.

Work Begun in 2025 for 2026 Release

Development also began on several features that will be released in 2026, including:

  • Improvements to functional settings
  • Creating an easier workflow for DCB setup 
  • Prevention of renewals with holds

ILL

The ILL app, part of the FOLIO ecosystem, saw focused development throughout 2025. Regular sprints were established to improve usability and expand the feature set, with an emphasis on enabling libraries to share resources both within consortia and with external resource-sharing platforms.

Usability

During the year, the request and supply workflows were brought together into a single, more intuitive interface, simplifying navigation and reducing complexity for users. To ensure compatibility with the wider FOLIO platform, the application was upgraded from Grails 5 to Grails 6, making it fully compatible with the Sunflower release.

Significant attention was given to usability and visual clarity. New Directory, Supply, and Borrow icons were designed to help users immediately understand which part of the application they are working in. Alongside this, modern user interface patterns were designed and implemented for detail panes, settings pages, and modals, ensuring alignment with established FOLIO UI standards across applications.

Foundational work was carried out to support Sunflower-compatible permissions, laying the groundwork for more granular access control in future releases. Design and implementation also began on directory groups and queues, allowing libraries to configure rota-based workflows that better match their operational needs.

Expanding resource sharing options

To expand discovery beyond the union catalogue, Z39.50 functionality was introduced, allowing ILL to locate holdings and availability from external sources. Support for ISO 18626 (2021) was also implemented, enabling the foundation for digital lending workflows and improving interoperability with compliant systems. In addition, email-based requesting was developed so that libraries without ISO 18626 support can still participate fully in ILL.

Finally, exploratory development began on deeper integration between DCB and ILL, setting the stage for a more unified resource-sharing experience. 

Work Begun in 2025 for 2026 Release

Development also began on several features that will be released in 2026, including:

  • User interface for Z39.50 using Directory Groups and Group Queues
  • User interface for digital lending  

The year also concluded with gaining the Wellcome Trust as the first customer of the ILL application, marking an important milestone.