Trust sits at the heart of every strong library–campus relationship. Like a student accessing a required reading in seconds, a faculty member confident that course materials will be ready and accessible, or a library director making decisions based on credible data. These everyday moments shape how reliably libraries connect people to knowledge.
Clarivate’s library solutions are built to support that trust across the academic lifecycle. Alma, Primo, and Leganto each play a distinct role. Transparency in operations, ease in discovery, and care in teaching and learning all help libraries move from managing transactions to strengthening relationships.
Transparency & accountability in Alma
Operational trust starts behind the scenes. If systems are inconsistent, if data is patchy, if staff have to work around basic processes, that friction doesn’t stay internal, it eventually reaches students and faculty. Alma supports trust by giving libraries an operational foundation they can rely on and explain clearly to stakeholders.
Confidence in shared data and governance
One way Alma strengthens confidence is by ensuring that daily workflows are consistent across teams and locations, even in complex environments like consortia. In the California State University system, shifting from separate campus systems to Alma required unified policies and shared governance. Over time, that common platform helped reduce duplication and helped campuses trust both the process and each other. CSU’s shared governance approach relies on expert committees whose recommendations are widely adopted. An approach to the system says ensure efficiency, trust, and accountability.
That kind of operational transparency is also tied to the Alma Community Zone. It is a global metadata ecosystem shaped continuously by libraries, publishers, and Clarivate’s content teams. With tens of millions of bibliographic record updates flowing through the CZ each year (as shown in the 2025 Community Zone overview), Alma users aren’t working in isolation. They’re working in a shared environment where improvements made by one library can raise the quality of discovery for thousands of others. The result is quiet, but powerful: libraries can trust the records they activate and the services they expose because the data is continuously enriched, normalized, and governed with community input.
Trust in the workflows that carry the load
Alma’s trust story is also about enabling accountability. When staff can automate repetitive tasks without losing oversight, it reduces errors and makes service more predictable. This experience is reflected in how staff describe the impact of LibOW on day-to-day work.
“Both coders and non-coders can now work efficiently while IT resources are freed for more complex challenges.”
— Dr. Mathias Kratzer, Chief Information Officer, Bavarian State Library
When staff feel confident managing change, the library becomes more reliable for its users.
Alma gives leaders and staff a transparent operational baseline, shared metadata, reliable workflows, and credible analytics so that libraries can demonstrate value, make defensible decisions, and deliver consistent service even as needs evolve.
Empowerment & ease in Primo
If Alma is where operational trust is built, Primo is the system where users feel that trust. Discovery is a high-stakes moment: students and researchers come to the library website expecting clarity, not confusion. When discovery feels intuitive, it doesn’t just help someone find a source, it reinforces a sense that the library is a dependable academic partner.
Primo’s tight integration with Alma means that discovery is always grounded in what the library actually holds, subscribes to, and wants to promote. Users benefit from the kind of currency they often take for granted: changes in bibliographic metadata or collections surface quickly, and new records become visible within minutes.
That immediacy has a trust payoff. Students aren’t left wondering if a link is stale or if the library “really has this.” They just get to work.
Discovery that feels intuitive and dependable
Primo’s Next Discovery Experience (NDE) was designed with trust in mind. The redesign focused on keeping discovery familiar while making it easier to navigate and act. This further prioritizes clear information hierarchy, stronger visual guidance, and responsive layouts that reduce cognitive load for users. Under the hood, the NDE is guided by core UX values like user-friendliness and accessibility, convenience and efficiency, “focus on what matters,” and consistency without disruption. That means students and researchers encounter a discovery space that feels intuitive and modern at the same time. One that helps them transition smoothly to new capabilities without ever feeling lost.
Primo also supports confidence by reducing friction across disciplines and formats. It provides “one single and familiar interface” for searching and acting on results, including requesting items from partner institutions in consortial settings.
For a student navigating a new campus or a researcher moving between fields, that consistency lowers the barrier to engagement. Discovery feels less like a gate and more like a guide.
And because Primo’s Next Discovery Experience places simplicity and visual clarity at the center, it reflects an important truth: trust grows when people feel capable. The redesigned interface is built around “simplicity” and “visual appeal,” shaped with customer input, to make access easier.
Primo helps users feel confident and academically “at home” in discovery. When search, access, and requesting are smooth and predictable, the library becomes a reliable part of the learning routine, not another system to figure out.
Innovation, grounded in library values
Trust in discovery today also means trusting that the library’s tools will continue to evolve alongside user expectations. As AI-driven search becomes more common in everyday research, libraries need discovery experiences that feel modern without compromising accuracy, transparency, or academic integrity.
Primo supports this balance by introducing AI-assisted capabilities such as semantic search, natural language interaction, and the Research Assistant built on trusted library data sources and governed by institutional values. These tools help users explore topics more intuitively while remaining anchored in authoritative collections and curated metadata.
By embedding innovation directly within the library discovery experience, Primo allows libraries to lead with confidence. Users can adopt new ways of searching and exploring without feeling the need to turn elsewhere, reinforcing the library as both a trusted guide and a forward-looking academic partner.
Equitable access with care in Leganto
Trust in teaching and learning is deeply personal. Students are balancing time, money, and performance pressure; faculty are juggling content, pedagogy, and equity goals. Leganto supports this ecosystem by meeting people within the course environment where they’re already working, while keeping the library visible and supportive.
Equitable access that supports learning
Leganto’s core value is access without obstacles. By integrating directly with learning management systems and library holdings, Leganto connects students to course resources through their course pages, ensuring they see what they need at the right moment.
That tight alignment reduces the search fatigue that too often undermines student confidence and ultimately success in their courses. It also helps faculty collaborate with libraries on list creation and copyright and accessibility-compliant delivery, reinforcing the library as a partner in instruction rather than an afterthought.
The impact shows up in student experience data. In analysis of the 2025 National Student Survey, institutions using Leganto reported higher satisfaction with how library resources support learning: an average positivity score of 91.08% compared with 83.79% for institutions not using Leganto.
The report stresses that Leganto alone isn’t the sole cause, but the consistent correlation indicates it plays a meaningful role in creating a more supportive learning environment.
Importantly, Leganto achieves personalization with care. Lists can be tailored to course needs, formats, and accessibility requirements without intrusive tracking or uncomfortable personalization. The trust theme here is respect: supporting engagement while protecting privacy and academic autonomy.
Leganto delivers library support that is timely, equitable, and focused on students. This support reduces friction and unexpected costs for learners while freeing faculty from the access issues and administrative tasks that often derail teaching.
The partnership behind the platform
Trust doesn’t come from technology alone, it comes from the people behind it. Libraries place long-term confidence not just in systems, but in the teams that design, support, and stand behind them. Clarivate’s customer care, education, and professional services teams play a critical role in reinforcing that trust, helping libraries navigate change, resolve challenges, and grow their expertise over time.
From implementation and training to ongoing support and community engagement, these human connections give libraries confidence that they’re not working alone. The result is a partnership model where trust is reinforced not only through reliable workflows and interfaces, but through responsive support, shared problem-solving, and a clear commitment to library success.
True connected experience across the academic journey
Libraries carry a lot of weight in higher education, like supporting research rigor, student success, equitable access, and institutional credibility, often at the same time. The infrastructure behind that mission matters, but only insofar as it strengthens relationships.
Alma, Primo, and Leganto work together to make trust tangible. Alma provides transparent operations and credible accountability. Primo turns discovery into a confident, low-friction academic experience. Leganto connects teaching, learning, and affordability through supportive, privacy-respectful access.
Seen together, Clarivate’s library ecosystem helps libraries move beyond managing systems to sustaining relationships. Not because trust is a single module you can turn on, but because it’s built, interaction by interaction, across the academic journey.
