[DCRM-L] Alma

Wed Sep 18 11:50:16 MDT 2019

Dear Colleagues,

I'm posting this on behalf of my colleague Alan Leopold. Feel free to contact him off-list.

The Newberry Library is in the process of migrating to Alma/Primo VE as part of the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI). We have had a chance to see how our data operates in our catalog in advance of the final data load and cut over to going live in June next year. I agree with the problems that both Matthew and Angela bring up.

The Alma consortium environment and its use of a "master record" places at risk the catalog records of individual participating libraries which have rare materials or special author, subject, format or genre collections. This is only the case if multiple libraries in the consortium own the same edition and use the same OCLC record.

Any institutional copy-specific information (e.g. provenance) can be preserved at the institutional level, but only if it can be clearly identified by appropriate standard MARC coding (e.g. MARC tags and subfield $5). Over the years at the Newberry, and elsewhere, our records do not always use the proper coding for copy-specific information and will be overlaid.

Any other descriptive, access, or coded information that is bibliographically accurate for all copies of a particular edition and that is added by an institution according to standard cataloging rules and practices will be deleted by the overlay of the master record from the union catalog. We routinely have developed specifications for special projects and other cataloging that enhance records with more edition specific information for our users. These descriptive and access enhancements, which are not copy-specific, will not be retained.

Since we are still in a testing phase of the project we hope that our ongoing discussions will result in a solution that preserves all of our bibliographic and holdings data.

On the issue of bound-withs and analytics we have not yet arrived at a workflow for both new cataloging and retrospective linking work for thousands of records already in our catalog. At this stage the display in Alma and in Primo VE does not look friendly to staff or users.

One last item, if authority records for names and subject terms from a variety of thesauri (FAST, LCSH, AAT, RBMS lists, LCTGM,  GSAFD, etc.) are especially useful in your work, you might ask how you can continue with all of them. Some may be supported as link data, others not.

If anyone who is in a consortium setting is interested, I can send off list some examples of how our bibliographic records have been changed by the overlay of the master record.

Alan Leopold

Director of Collection Services

leopolda at newberry.org

Newberry Library
60 W. Walton Street, Chicago, IL 60610
www.newberry.org<http://www.newberry.org/>

Jessica Grzegorski
Principal Cataloging Librarian
Newberry Library
60 W. Walton Street, Chicago, IL 60610
www.newberry.org<https://www.newberry.org/>

________________________________
From: DCRM-L <dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu> on behalf of Julie Moore <julie.renee.moore at gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 18, 2019 12:46 PM
To: DCRM Users' Group <dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu>
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] Alma

Dear Richard,

All I can say is Good Luck!

We moved from III's Sierra to Alma, with our go-live date more than 2 years ago, and I cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel on the clean up that we still need to do.

Are you part of a larger consortium? We are, and that complicated things. At least for us, we ended up using the OCLC master record. In doing so, we lost most of our locally-enhanced/value added notes, descriptions, subject headings, and etc. ... anything that we added locally (that we could not identify and mark as local) was lost. That represents a huge amount of time and effort over the decades of cataloging at our library.

Bound-withs are a nightmare in Alma ... so just brace yourself for that car wreck! They are possible ... but they behave very differently in Alma than they did in Sierra. They require many steps to set them up ... and it is very clunky. We are still fixing those.

I have also been sorely disappointed in Alma's authority control. They talked a good game when they sold it to us, and it sounded amazing ... and that was the main reason that gave Alma major points for me (compared to their competitors) ... but the authority control does not work like they claimed it would.

Julie Moore
Fresno State

On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 8:28 AM Matthew Bright <me at matthewbright.net<mailto:me at matthewbright.net>> wrote:
In a consortial environment with multiple libraries sharing a "Network Zone" bibliographic record there are some complications for rare materials. The shared record can be merged or overlaid by any institution (and some consortia automatically update these when the OCLC record is updated). Any copy-specific fields that are added as "local fields" (or "local extensions" as Alma calls them now for some reason) are retained when this happens, but only some MARC fields can be local fields. For example, 590 is allowed to be a local field, but 655 is not (a 69X would have to be used) and 700 is not (a 9XX would have to be used). Alma doesn't care about $5 designations, it just ignores this data.

Also potentially problematic is that Primo VE cannot display local fields of other institutions (though Primo non-VE can). This means that any copy-specific notes and headings added as local fields (which protects the metadata from accidental edit or deletion by other institutions) are not visible to users at those other institutions. Copy-specific holdings notes can be displayed in Primo VE for all institutions--I believe they are, or can be configured to be, keyword searchable--but this would not accommodate name and genre headings, etc.

We have decided to allow copy-specific information to be included in non-local fields in shared bibliographic records in order to make this information visible and searchable to all, but it limits the flexibility of record updates and overlays that are allowed.

Matthew Bright
Metadata Coordinator
American University Library

On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 11:11 AM Jones, Angela <arjones at mail.smu.edu<mailto:arjones at mail.smu.edu>> wrote:

Hi everyone,

SMU migrated from Voyager to Alma in the summer of 2017. Off the top of my head, here are my two cents about issues that specifically relate to cataloging rare or special collections materials.

First, bound-withs work very differently in Alma than in Voyager. I find the Alma workflow to catalog bound-withs to be more cumbersome, although the record displays and discoverability in both Alma and in Primo seems to work fine.

The second issue concerns local notes. When we migrated, we went from an environment where all the campus libraries shared Voyager, but didn’t share bib records. Our bibs all migrated as separate bibs, but going forward in Alma we have had to share new records. We all had been accustomed to using 590 fields in our specific records for local notes, but in a shared record environment that can get sort of messy. We have looked at using other MARC fields in the holdings record to put in copy specific notes such as donor notes, provenance, etc. But my understanding is that such notes aren’t necessarily searchable in Primo. I would love to find out that I am wrong about that, however!

As I said, that is my two cents. Others may have different perspectives.

Angela

Angela Jones

Head of Technical Services

Underwood Law Library, Dedman School of Law

Southern Methodist University

P.O. Box 750354

Dallas, TX 75275-0354

214-768-1827

arjones at smu.edu<mailto:arjones at smu.edu>

From: DCRM-L <dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu<mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu>> On Behalf Of Tedford, Beth
Sent: Wednesday, September 18, 2019 9:54 AM
To: DCRM Users' Group <dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu<mailto:dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu>>
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] Alma

I would as well. We will be migrating from Voyager to ALMA next year and would love to hear of others experiences. Thanks.

On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 10:36 AM Carpenter, Jane <jfcarpenter at library.ucla.edu<mailto:jfcarpenter at library.ucla.edu>> wrote:

I’d also be interested in hearing responses to Richard’s query—

Thanks—

Jane Carpenter

Special Collections Cataloger

UCLA Library Special Collections

jfcarpenter at library.ucla.edu<mailto:jfcarpenter at library.ucla.edu>

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 18, 2019, at 7:22 AM, Noble, Richard <richard_noble at brown.edu<mailto:richard_noble at brown.edu>> wrote:

Could those of you who have experience with Alma in the context of rare materials cataloging please advise me of what to look for in a presentation by representatives from ExLibris? Advice off the top of your head would be fine, and could be privately communicated if you think that advisable. We are currently a III Sierra user.

Many thanks -

RICHARD NOBLE :: RARE MATERIALS CATALOGUER :: JOHN HAY LIBRARY

BROWN UNIVERSITY  ::  PROVIDENCE, R.I. 02912  ::  401-863-1187

<Richard_Noble at Br<mailto:RICHARD_NOBLE at BROWN.EDU>own.edu<http://own.edu>>

--

Beth Tedford, MLIS

Special Collections & Archives Assistant

Rare books cataloger

Z. Smith Reynolds Library

Wake Forest University

PO Box 7777

Winston-Salem, NC 27109
336-758-4657

tedforme at wfu.edu<mailto:tedforme at wfu.edu>

Defender of Wonders

--
Julie Renee Moore
Special Collections Catalog Librarian
Fresno State
julie.renee.moore at gmail.com<mailto:julie.renee.moore at gmail.com>
559-278-5813

“Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.”
... James Matthew Barrie
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