Ex Libris has shared information about the process for getting early access to the Primo Next Discovery Experience (NDE) environment ahead of the general release in May 2025.
According to the Ex Libris NDE documentation and FAQ, the General Release of NDE is planned for May 2025. Primo VE customers can start testing and customizing NDE's UI and evaluate it side-by-side with their existing Primo VE view until going live. In May's General Release, the main functionality and many pages of Primo VE will be available in NDE, allowing you to begin testing and examining the new interface. Some pages, including the Browse Page, Newspaper Search, and so forth, will not be delivered May, but will be available in the following months.
Consortia such as PALS can also start testing NDE. Members of a consortia can start testing like any other institution and will see the following elements of consortia wide search scopes: cross-institution search scopes, CDI, local data and external sources. In addition, cross-institution facets will be available. Some Consortia-specific features (such as Get It from other institutions, options to filter loans and requests by institution within My Library Card and Union View) are not expected to be available until the end of 2025.
After the General Release of NDE in May of 2025, Ex Libris will release additional NDE functionality as part of their monthly releases.
Early Access
A trial environment for NDE is scheduled to be available starting in
March 2025.
Be aware that this is not a locally controlled environment but is administered by Ex Libris. For preliminary access to the NDE generic trial environment, please send an email to
DL-NDE_Info@clarivate.com. Ex Libris will add your request to their early access list and contact you in March. Requesting access does not commit you to testing or providing Ex Libris with feedback. Early access to Ex Libris' trial environment aims to learn more about the NDE before the general release, helping you start planning for future customization.
PALS Plans for NDE
The PALS Office plans to request access to the Ex Libris NDE Environment in March 2025 to review the available features. Beginning in mid-April 2025, we expect our Sandbox environments to have access to NDE.
Ex Libris has assured its users that we will not have to move all libraries to NDE simultaneously. Instead, libraries can experiment and test NDE features beginning in May to determine when they are ready to switch to the NDE environment.
PALS expects to form a short-term Working Group through the Web/Discovery Community of Interest to share information and experiences with NDE. Watch for a Web/Discovery COI call to participate in the next few months.