And thank you for joining us this afternoon.
Again, housekeeping that the office hours will run until 2 PM and to please mute your microphone and we will have time for questions at the end.
This is a an office hours of the February Alma Primo VE new releases and so if you have any questions as people are going through what's coming up with this
release, please feel free to put them in the chat box or we can open the microphones up at the end of the session.
Okay, and as per usual, we will have announcements and reminders and upcoming events and then we will go into the quarterly feature release highlights.
So one of the announcements is the Ex Libris Users Group of North America, also known as eLuna, is holding an informational meeting about their upcoming conference.
The conference is in Minneapolis this year, May 14th through the 17th.
And if you'd like to register for that meeting, there is a link here.
The informational session, oh yes, and Marisa is putting all of the links from today's presentations into the chat for you.
That will be held on February 12th at noon.
And if you can't attend, if you do register, then you'll be sent a link to the recording if you're not able to be there.
And if you need more information about the actual eLuna conference, the link is in the chat for the eLuna website.
Another thing to note here is the premium sandbox refresh that will also be taking place this month.
It will occur on February 11th, so this upcoming weekend,
as part of the Alma quarterly release update.
And after the refresh, Carly's staff here will prepare the sandboxes for use, which includes refreshing the user accounts and configuring AFN between the sandbox institution zones.
So watch for any announcements.
We will be doing that as soon as possible after the release, and we will let everyone know once the sandboxes are ready for use again.
And a reminder that if you're using the sandboxes for any testing, any examples that you set up will be sort of swept away during the refresh and will need to be recreated after February 11th.
So more information, the link is in the chat.
And some of the upcoming events that we have.
Let's talk about fulfillment.
The next one will be Alma configuration linked user records, and that will be on February 13th.
And if you would like a full list of all of the upcoming sessions, the link will be in chat.
There is also a NC live service informational webinar on February 28th from 10 to 11.
And again, you can check the Carly calendar for all of our upcoming events.
We have everything listed there.
And so we will move on to the Alma February 2024 quarterly release highlights, and I will turn it over.
Thank you, Amy.
This is Ted Schwitzner at the Carly office, and I'll get started with some broad options and some technical services options, and then we'll head into other topics.
Our first improvement that's worth noting is
that Exlibris has added another incremental accessibility update in this month's release, expanding the use of keyboard shortcuts.
In this update, the top right menu, very technical term, has been assigned hotkeys A1 to A10.
To use these functions, you will press and hold the Alt key and then type A and the number.
And a given combination will either open or close the selected menu.
Typing Alt plus A selects the more options part of the menu, which is the three vertical dots on the side.
And if you have customized the order of these menu icons, Alma will adjust the all key sequences accordingly.
If requested, we can provide a demonstration of this later on.
And in case you weren't aware, the Alma metadata editor and screens with tabs also already support keyboard shortcuts for faster navigation.
Next slide, please.
Beginning this week, the new PO line task list is the official and only interface in Alma for working with PO lines.
Though, Xlibris does continue to improve the functionality in this area.
First, the sliding panel approach found in the new task list will now be added within PO lines for the material supplier and fund fields.
You'll see that this panel looks like an almost search results screen, letting users view more information in selecting a fund or vendor.
Another quality of life improvement will appear in the PO line action buttons that appear across the top of a POL when viewed from the task list.
Specifically, the save and continue button now appears on the screen when you view a POL from the task list.
Previously, you would have to select the POL to edit in order to view that save and continue button.
This will save reviewers of POLs time when they are approving orders and moving them ahead for auto packaging.
The next slide demonstrates, actually, no, the next slide doesn't demonstrate that.
It shows another new feature, quality of life improvements in several new modes of receiving ordered items.
Up to now, if you were receiving, you had one screen, the receive screen, to enter that you were receiving items.
In this release, those options are expanded to include both the P.O.
line and the item record as ways to mark an item received in your library.
Receiving from the P.O.L.
is something people have requested for a while.
So now you may search for a specific order, then edit the POL, and then under the inventory section, which is labeled as ordered items, the dot dot dot actions menu will include a receive option.
Clicking receive opens a pop-up screen that includes the keep in department option and the received date.
Next screen will show the same view from the item record.
And this is an even better improvement because this has been something that people have intuitively tried to do for some time, because the item record already includes a field for the receiving date.
But up till this point, entering that date manually did not fully mark the ordered item as received.
Now when you're editing an item record,
You can click save and receive in the top right corner, and this will allow tech services departments to combine their work on receiving and processing items at the same time into fewer screens.
The pop-up that appears includes the keep in department option as you see here, which allows you to select work order processing if desired, or mark something as staying in the department, such as the technical services unit.
You can also see here that a receiving note, if one was added or about interested users, for example, will appear on the screen.
And then clicking save and receive will mark the item as received and settle that particular workflow.
Next screen, please.
So speaking of the item record and processing options, the item record, you may have discovered, includes a field for recording the condition of an item.
Before now, there were only four possible conditions, damaged, brittle, fragile, or deteriorating.
Starting with this release, the list of conditions may be modified by an institution in updating a configuration table.
So if your institution has
different preservation procedures for different kinds of damage, or maybe you just want to standardize the categories of damage that you find, then anyone with the resource management administrator role may add new options to the list to account for the different kinds of damage you want to track.
And then these will be available in analytics or in physical items searches.
Next slide, please.
Changing gears a little bit, we'll note that over the last year, Ex Libris has improved the ability to both manage sets and adding options to search for and create sets of holding records.
For an organization like ours, Carly specifically, and all of you,
where we have been using MARC holdings for several years, this is definitely a welcome improvement.
Another logical progression appears this month, where now sets of holding records may be created and filtered using indication rules that are designed specifically to work with holdings.
An example of how this may be useful is for a library that may be looking ahead to creating local holdings records in OCLC.
They may want to start by finding the records that could have coding issues.
One might begin by creating a logical set of holding records where the summary statement, that is the 866 field, is not empty.
From there, if you want to look at whether the leader values are correct for the type of holdings, then you would apply a filter that looks at the record type field that would be applied in order to create a narrower set of records to review.
Next slide, please.
And now jumping away from tech services, but still in the realm of collection management, Ex Libris has been working with one of their focus groups on a development of several collection management reports.
And they're releasing the first few of these in this current release.
Two new data visualization dashboards will be available on the Physical Books Retention or the Physical Books Deselection topics.
You may look for these in the Alma subfolder under Shared Folders in Analytics.
The path is shown on the screen here.
And when you find these dashboards, you may copy them into your institutions folder or your private folder before you modify and use these further.
These dashboards are also available as analytics objects, meaning they can be featured on the homepage for Alma or scheduled to be delivered to different users.
And the default set of roles for these includes analytics administrator, general systems administrator,
designs, analytics, and physical inventory operator.
In my first look at these dashboards, I noticed they do some things very well.
For instance, they do reports on the number of titles with a single copy, overall title counts, give you visualizations on the distribution of classifications, and on loan activity.
They also do some things less well than expected.
In part, this may be due to the reports attempting to measure data that aren't present yet.
For example, some items may not have been marked as committed to retain.
That makes the visualization about the number of items that could be retained or not a less valuable data point.
Another area where the reports may be less useful necessarily is on the count of copies per library.
as analyses appear to be counting items per title rather than separate distinct copies.
So sets with multiple volumes may end up looking like multiple copies, at least in the first few experiences with this report.
We definitely encourage you to explore these reports further and learn what you can about them.
More training on data visualizations is available from the Analytics Become an Expert series that ran in 2023.
I'll pass this off to Denise.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ted.
Please let me know if there's any problem with my audio or if you can't see the screen clearly.
I'm going to give you a couple of updates about electronic resources and Link Resolver in Alma.
The first item is about automatic upload of electronic holdings.
Alma has been adding vendors to the list of those available for this feature.
Recently, Taylor and Francis Journals joined such publishers as Springer, Elsevier, and Ovid.
for automatic upload of electronic holdings on a monthly basis.
There was already an option for Taylor & Francis e-books, and now they've expanded it to include a profile for Taylor & Francis e-journals.
An unrelated item, if you are loading counter-compliant usage data reports into Alma, they have changed the options for deleting them.
Previously, when deleting counter reports, users needed to do it one at a time.
Now, before you attempt to delete reports, you'll get the options that are highlighted on this screen to select multiple reports for deleting or to delete all of them in the list you're looking at.
And so you can see the options here.
And of course, to delete these reports, you do need to have a particular role.
It's called Usage Data Operator.
And I'll go ahead and pass this on to my colleagues.
Hi, this is Jen Mescadrelli at the Carly office.
There's a couple other little tidbits here we thought were interesting.
This is a real-time notification upon job completion.
When you run a job, instead of having to select refresh over and over on the job list or waiting for an email notification, Alma will now display a message when the job finishes.
Here's an example of what that looks like, kind of a little pop-up alert that lets you know that the job, whatever the job name, is completed and a link to the job history.
Next slide.
For course reserves, the course loader that you may use if you use course reserves directory now supports Excel files in addition to CSV files.
It's an extra time saver so you don't have to save your course loading information in that CSV file format.
And you can also now configure Alma to include archived lists in the demand
and other list calculation.
This enables you to see which reading lists or courses use the same resource as your review and process citations across the history of your course reserves list.
Next slide.
And on to Primo VE.
Denise, I believe this is your slide, but we can't hear you if you're speaking.
Oh, okay.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for alerting me to that.
There is a fairly major change coming for Primo VE.
Some of you use the option called Quick Links, and I'll show you an example here in a moment.
Alma has been changing the default behavior, or I'm sorry, Alma will change the default behavior of Primo VE to encourage Quick Links use.
They have been advocating that most libraries start using Quick Links over the last several months.
Currently, this option is enabled at the Primo VE view level.
It will be moving to the
more comprehensive institution level to implement in May 2024.
Currently in February, this is an optional, it is optional to enable quick links and you have to opt in to do it.
However,
Alma is making quick links in the brief results display the default in May 2024 and you'll have to opt out of it using this new institution level parameter.
So in May 2024 you'll have to opt out or it will become the automatic option.
There is more information on QuickLinks in general at the link that my colleague will put in the chat.
And QuickLinks is not available for all vendors and publishers.
There is a list of who is currently cooperating in this effort.
Please, the next slide.
Well, here's some examples of what quick links actually look like.
I looked up football history, and you can see in the brief results display, items two and three had links, had quick links displaying.
That's what supplies the get PDF.
I was using an article search slot, and this particular library that I used as an example has quick links already enabled.
Quick Links works with the bibliographic data in citations, but only from cooperating publishers and vendors to provide a one-click option to get to full text.
Please begin discussing accepting or not this new Quick Links displaying default with your colleagues.
May 2024 is only three months off.
And one more option that I'll talk about with Primo VE regards the Central Discovery Index Records or CDI.
I think we all could agree that the CDI needs improvement in their subject terms especially.
Subject terms are received for CDI citations in various formats and style from literally thousands of providers, publishers, and aggregators, leading to much duplication and inconsistencies in the subject terms applied.
Alma is now attempting to map subject terms to a much more controlled vocabulary, which is based primarily on Library of Congress subject headings and medical subject headings.
In this context, normalized means taking all these subject terms and trying to make equivalent terms
either point to each other or be replaced by a consistent normalized term.
So if there was a variety of terms, let's say for United States of America, like could be like U.S.
USA, U.S.
of A, etc.
They would now in theory, at least all be normalized into whatever was the official United States of America subject heading or subject
field, excuse me, showing my age there, subject heading.
The outcome of this mapping
is described in the release notes as creating a new subject field normalized.
This indexed subject field normalized will include only subjects that match the CDI controlled vocabulary.
They are deduplicated.
There's also a new keyword field
which will include subjects that could not be mapped to the CDI controlled vocabulary, which is based on the Library of Congress and medical subject headings.
Normalized subject headings is off by default.
To enable it, you need to check the use normalized CDI subjects box in the general tab of your PrimoVE view level.
For more details, there is a link available that my colleague will put in the chat for using normalized subject headings from CDI.
So this particular one is off by default and you need to opt in.
And I definitely recommend you take a look at this and see if this improved subject fields is of benefit to your users.
And I think that is all for my part of this, and I'll pass it on to my colleagues.
Thanks, Denise.
Hi, everyone.
This is Jessica Gibson from the CARLI office.
I've got two more highlights for you today.
On the PrimoVE customization front, it is now possible to embed HTML code in more labels than before.
This HTML coding includes common formatting like bold and italics,
but also include the href tag if you would like to add a clickable link to an external web page in order to give users more information about something, such as this example here on the screen is showing where a click for help link has been embedded into the sign-in text for users to click if they need additional help.
and presumably this could go to a library webpage that has more explanation or a how-to, a step-by-step, or even click into opening an email form perhaps and getting more information there.
For some reason, Xlibris says they're not yet able to provide a complete list of labels that support HTML, but there is what they call a non-comprehensive list
of labels at this URL here in the screen and on the chat.
So our advice would be that if you're not sure if a label you'd like to use will support HTML, give it a try in a sandbox first and see.
If it's on the list already, the answer is probably yes.
But if it's not on the list, don't let that discourage you because it might actually support HTML after all.
I don't quite understand that, but
All in all, this is a good thing and it is an outcome of the Primo working group working with Ex Libris to improve the product.
Finally, our last highlight of the day is the new PrimoVE showcase widget.
I apologize in advance here.
I have left out the link to the documentation on this slide, so I will put it in the chat right now and make sure that that gets added to the slides that we post.
This new widget, showcase widget, allows you to embed a visual carousel of items on any website.
These would be the items coming from PrimoVE.
The contents of the widget are provided by a PrimoVE search URL that you construct.
So you could create the search in PrimoVE, add any filters, do any sorting, make the search URL the way you want it to be, and then that's what will feed in to the items that are displayed here.
However, this carousel is limited to the first 10 results of that search.
Again, you're able to construct the search to return what items you want and you have the ability to sort and filter, but you're not going to be able to select, these are the exact 10 items that I want.
It's meant to be a way that you're able to say, hey, here are the new books on a topic as this example screenshot shows new books on AI without library staff having to go in and update it.
all the time and individually add items to the carousel.
So there's pros and cons to that.
And the fact that it is limited to 10 and not the ability to show like all of the new books on AI is also something very important to know.
In order to set it up, it will require you to configure allowed website domains in Alma configuration for where the widget will be posted.
You'll also have to download and customize a JavaScript file and then host that JavaScript file on the website of your choice.
So it's one of the slightly more, I would say, technical features.
but is certainly doable.
I will share that there has been quite a bit of conversation on the Primo customer email list about this feature.
Some people sharing issues that they've had, sharing solutions.
They've also been expressing some of their concerns about accessibility with the feature.
Apparently they've run it through some tests and they're not entirely happy.
So I personally wouldn't be surprised if there aren't maybe some enhancements down the road to this once a bunch of customers test it out and provide feedback to Ex Libris.
But we'll just have to wait and see there.
So with that, it is now time to open up the floor to any questions.
Well, thank you, everybody.
So we have questions, you may feel free to unmute yourselves and ask any questions or put them in the chat and we can do the last of this meeting questions about this questions about other things.
Any other burning questions you have?
We will take them.
We have a question from Bill.
Is there a rule of thumb as to other import profiles, e.g.
films on demand or overdrive records, should be directed to the IZ or NZ?
We have profiles dating back to the migration that are not consistent in that regard.
It's a good question.
And the, the rule of thumb, the rules of thumb, I guess, uh, has been changing over time, uh, that we are, have been moving more to including records for those particular vendors in the network zone, uh, more often because of the number of records involved and the number of institutions that are using them.
So yeah, if you have been importing those records to your ISEE only, that's acceptable, but we encourage sharing the records and updating them there, as well as other records that you would normally send to the network zone naturally.
We are looking towards doing some more work on training on import profiles and updating people's knowledge on that.
And that should be something that comes along probably over the summer.
Thank you, Ted.
And the next question from Lori, is there a way to configure the quick link on the brief results to display favored vendor sites?
I think right now the quick link just displays the first one in the list.
Yeah, that's a really good point.
I was just looking at the documentation page quickly about quick links and there was a section in there
that directed folks to this link that I'll put in the chat about prioritization in the merged record for CDI, which implies that there are some ways you can try to prioritize certain vendors.
I have not actually tried that out, so I would encourage you to experiment in one of the sandboxes and see if that helped.
And that is a good question about using any such service.
When you're not taking the patron to that sort of full record display where you then get to see the view online and the list of links, there's always the option that they may not be getting the best link or they may, if the quick link they click on
doesn't work, they just give up and keep going on to something else.
So yeah, there are disadvantages with the quick links approach.
Your patron doesn't get the menu of options, but most of the time Alma is arguing that that's fine, that their quick links work most of the time.
Have you been experimenting with that, Lori?
Do you have any experience using the quick links or anybody else on the call?
Lori says, yes, we turned on quick links a couple of months ago.
We like them, and they work for most everything.
Oh, great.
Great.
Yeah, the list of the cooperating publishers and vendors is pretty extensive.
It includes a lot of the major publishers like Springer, Wiley, Elsevier, et cetera.
Great.
Thanks, Lori.
Thanks for letting us know that you're liking those.
We have time for other questions, certainly.
So feel free to unmute yourself or type in the chat any questions that you have about February release or Alma Primo BE in general.
I don't see anybody unmuting.
We'll give a few more minutes in case anyone has something that they would like to put in the chat.
Aha.
Again, Lori, is anyone on this call using AlmaDigital?
If so, could I contact you off list?
So feel free if anyone's using AlmaDigital.
It's not something I believe any of us have heard from coming from people.
But if you are, please feel free to put your information in the chat.
And we'll give people time for a few more questions if they want to.
If not, we don't want to keep you longer than you need to be here, but we are here.
So feel free to type in chat or unmute yourself.
Give it a few more minutes in case anyone has any questions here.
And if there are any topics that you would like to see Carly cover in future office hours, we are all ears.
Here we have a question from Bill.
Sorry if I should know the answer.
Do CZ records get overlaid by Ex Libris back to less desirable records?
If we enhance those records, do we risk losing the work?
Yes, that is a possibility.
The Ex Libris overlays those records based on what data they get sent from
the vendors that provide them.
And so that is a concern and I was talking with my colleague Marisa recently about how this is an issue that's come up at many Ax Libris ALMA sites across in consortia and just on their own as well.
If you are, I will add that if you're concerned about that, you know, the community zone data being overlaid as a result of enhancing it, it's always possible for you to relink your electronic portfolios to a bib record that you import into the network zone, just like it was a standalone title.
So like if you were cataloging it yourself and then you and, you know, the Carly members have control over how the record gets updated rather than a random vendor update.
And it is something that generally speaking, rule of thumb that I apply when I encounter duplicates and strange things is unlinking from the community zone and going with the record that we know we can rely on.
Thanks, Ted.
And Ted also brought up a very good point that if there are topics that you would like to see covered in office hours, we are always happy to hear that.
And if you have any that you would like to put in chat or unmute yourself, please feel free.
If not, you know where to get ahold of us at support at carly.illinois.edu.
And we're always happy to hear feedback if there's if there's something that you would like covered in one of these office hours.
And we'll leave the floor open for any more questions.
Well, I don't see anything coming in, so we are happy to give you 20 minutes back of your day.
I'm going to end the recording now.
And we thank you all very much for participating and coming into the office hours this month, and we will be here next month with another topic