Activating an Alma Electronic Collection in your Institution Zone

Last edit July 18, 2025.

When your library purchases an electronic subscription or finds a useful free/open access collection, you can activate the e-collection in your institution zone. These instructions apply to I-Share institutions that are not using Alma Acquisitions or not with e-collections. If your institution uses Alma Acquisitions, these steps will not fully apply. See Activation Workflows for more detailed Alma Ex Libris documentation on activating e-collections. For more on Acquisitions, see training inAlma Essentials.

Demo Video of "Activating an Alma Electronic Collection" (6:00)

Note: these steps are specific to Alma collection types: Aggregator package and Selective package. There are fewer steps with an Alma collection type: Database.

1. In Alma, check your "User Details" Roles section. Make sure you have these roles active:

    Electronic Inventory Operator
    Electronic Inventory Operator Extended
    Repository Manager

2. Look up the electronic collection in your library's Alma Community Zone. TIP: If you are searching for an electronic collection you have purchased through CARLI, you can search by Electronic Collection > Electronic Collection ID and paste in the corresponding Alma CZ E-Collection ID copied from this CARLI webpage.

3. For the collection in question, click on the "Activate" button. 

4. This will start the Activation Wizard, which is the process to make a Community Zone collection active in your Institution Zone. On the first Activation Wizard screen, you may change the Public name (display name) of the e-collection. In the full text service section, you must select "Activate this electronic collection" and "Make service available." You may select "Automatically activate new portfolios" if your library wants all newly added portfolios to be activated immediately in the e-collection. You may add an "Active from" date.  When ready click "Next."

Note: the screenshot below does not include the newest feature release addition of "Automatically delete portfolios removed from this service." More information about this option and the CDI options can be found in the Activating Electronic Resources and the Activation Task List Knowledge Article.

If you selected "Automatically activate new portfolios", you will get this confirmation pop up. Click on "Confirm."

5. Next, for the collection and portfolio(s) bibliographic records, select either "No or "Yes" for Proxy enabled. This example is "No" because it's a free resource.  If yes proxy enabled, then select which proxy to use from "Proxy selected" list. Then click "Next". This can be changed later. 

Next, for the collection and portfolio(s) bibliographic records, select either:

• "Activate All" to activate all the portfolios or titles within the e-collection
• "Activate electronic collection and selected portfolios via Excel file" if you have a file prepared of the specific titles you library wants to activate within the e-collection
• "Manual Activation" just activate the collection with zero active portfolios or titles. You can activate via Portfolio Loader and/or by search and selection later.
• When ready, click on "Next."

You'll get a confirmation screen. Click on "Activate" to proceed.

6. You should get a message similar to this:

For very small packages or Alma collection type database (zero portfolio electronic collection), there may be no job submitted to activate the collection.

7. You may check the Admin > Monitor Jobs list for progress on the addition of the portfolio bibliographic records. You will receive an email from Alma when the job is done.

8. You may now look up the collection in your library's _Alma_ institution zone. 

NOTE: E-collections can take up to three days to be fully indexed in PrimoVE searches. There are separate indexing jobs for the catalog type and the CDI "Everything" or articles type search slots in PrimoVE.  You may have to wait three days (or in rare cases longer) to search and find the activated e-titles and articles from them in your PrimoVE. For more info see Publishing to Central Discovery Index.