Next NHU-PAC RFP goes public

Today marked a major step toward the Next NHU-PAC with the official notice to vendors of the release of DNCR-RFP 2018-145 ("NH Statewide Interlibrary Loan Solution").  This request for proposals is now available to vendors interested in providing New Hampshire libraries with a new system to facilitate interlibrary loan and cataloging functions.  You're welcome to have a look at it, too--all 91 pages of the RFP can be downloaded from the New Hampshire Department of Administrative Services website.

A State evaluation team will review and assign scores to the proposals as outlined in section 5 of the RFP.  The preliminary scoring will determine which vendors are invited to provide demonstrations of their proposed solutions.  Feedback on these demos from members of the NHAIS community will be included in the state procurement process.   Final scores will be assigned to each proposal following the demonstrations.  Once the team selects a vendor, contract negotiations begin.  The contract will be reviewed by state agencies including the Department of Information Technology and the Attorney General's office before being presented to the Governor and Executive Council for a vote.  Once a contract is approved by G&C implementation of the new system can begin.

This week State Librarian Michael York will be contacting the chairs of the NH library co-ops asking them to identify delegates from their group to attend the vendor demos and provide feedback on them on behalf of the group.  A specific schedule of times and vendors will be available approximately August 8th. All demos will be scheduled during business hours in the two week period from August 13 to August 24, 2018.

Some key dates from the schedule of events in section 2 of the RFP:

• July 18  final date for proposal submissions
• August 13-24  vendor demos will be held at the NH State Library in Concord
• October 17  approval of contract by Governor and Council

While some of us would prefer to spend our precious summer days floating in our rowboats rather than reading pages and pages of technical proposals (OK, I'm speaking for myself here), we want to move this along as quickly as possible so a fully functioning NHU-PAC is once again available.  For those who think tomorrow isn't soon enough to have a statewide ILL solution, please understand that the state has procedures that must be followed in order for us to use the capital appropriation of half a million dollars for this project.