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Planning and Gaining Support 7 Unfortunately for us, KFL’s ILS optimization project began in earnest a year prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, which made it difficult to speak with staff once we got underway and the pandemic was in full swing. We were able to include satisfaction questions with the library’s loan rules and our OPAC in a library survey sent to all students, faculty, and staff in 2018, which received more than 500 responses, and this data proved invaluable as we undertook a project in 2019–2020 to eliminate overdue fines. However, because of reduced traffic in the library and social distancing requirements, it was difficult to conduct face-to-face focus group and tabling sessions with our users during the pandemic. ILS Vendor Although you don’t have to worry about gaining their support, you should communicate with your ILS vendor about your optimization project, espe- cially if you have a hosted solution or they play a role in the ongoing manage- ment of your system. You may need your vendor’s assistance in implementing some of the changes you hope to make, and they may be able to fill in some of the gaps in the institutional knowledge around your ILS. If you have a vendor contact assigned to your library, then you can start there. If not, simply open a ticket with your vendor to start the conversation. KFL was in the midst of a contract negotiation when we began our ILS optimization project, and we were already in contact with our vendor repre- sentative as a result. During these negotiations, we brought up our project plan and discussed what we were hoping to accomplish. We learned from our vendor rep that Innovative Interfaces actually offered an ILS optimization service, in which they would revisit many of the major configuration settings with us and provide guidance on improving its setup. IT Department It’s crucial, too, to loop in your institution’s IT department about your ILS optimization project in case you need their assistance with some of the con- figuration changes. If your ILS is hosted on a local server at your institution, your IT department’s support will be crucial in making server and network changes to improve your ILS’s security (see Chapter 3, “System Security”). Even if your ILS is hosted off-site by your vendor, you might still need your IT department’s assistance with network and firewall changes. As the Kraemer Family Library began planning its ILS optimization proj- ect, we were running a self-hosted ILS server in the University of Colorado