[DCRM-L] Alma

[Gemberling, Ted P]

One really good thing about Alma is that it is programmed to know all sorts of important and helpful things. You don’t have to import authority records because it has them in the system. I just corrected a personal subject field from “Epicurus $x Fiction” to “Epicurus $v Fiction.” When I changed it to $v Alma recognized it was correct. I thought that was pretty impressive.

Ted Gemberling

From: Gemberling, Ted P
Sent: Thursday, September 19, 2019 12:41 PM
To: DCRM Users' Group <dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu>
Subject: RE: [DCRM-L] Alma

Amy,
One trick I find helps some is doing some searches in Primo. For example, Alma doesn’t index things likes RBMS genre terms. But if you do a “browse by subject” search in Primo, you can get a browsable list of them.

That is a rather odd thing I have observed a few times, that often Primo works better than Alma. Alma is rather rigid at times.

Ted Gemberling

From: DCRM-L <dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu<mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu>> On Behalf Of Amy Brown
Sent: Thursday, September 19, 2019 12:26 PM
To: DCRM Users' Group <dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu<mailto:dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu>>
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] Alma

Hello all:

In addition to the comments noted above, my chief complaint regarding Alma is an overarching lack of control over indexing MARC fields. Alma indexes the fields that it has decided to index, and you cannot add indexes for anything else. This is specifically problematic for libraries that have relied on unavailable fields, such as the 79x, to track local data.

--Amy

On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 1:15 PM Noble, Richard <richard_noble at brown.edu<mailto:richard_noble at brown.edu>> wrote:
Belinda-- Re Hell's Angels: Is there a circulating dead-tree copy of the book in any UCSC library? If so, what's the trick? I tried various searches and came up with Special Collections holdings only (including an "everything" search).

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>>


On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 12:19 PM Belinda Egan <began at ucsc.edu<mailto:began at ucsc.edu>> wrote:
We started with Alma and Primo VE over a year ago, and have discovered many of the issues that others have noted. For us the most user-unfriendly feature in Primo is how multiple editions of the same work are grouped. For example: last year we received a large collection of works by Hunter S. Thompson, including various editions, printings, and translations.  There seems to be no way to sort out the circulating books in Primo results. Here's an example, a search for "Hell's Angels", narrowed to "Held by library":

https://ucsc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/search?query=any,contains,%22hell%27s%20angels%22&tab=LibraryCatalog&search_scope=MyInstitution&vid=01CDL_SCR_INST:USCS&facet=tlevel,include,available_p&offset=0

Good luck to the undergrad just trying to find a copy of the book in English to check out... While we do have a facet configured to limit results to Special Collections, we can't go the other way and exclude non-circulating material.

-Belinda

Belinda Egan
McHenry Library, Metadata Services
UC Santa Cruz
1156 High Street
Santa Cruz, CA 96064
831-459-2094


On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 6:02 AM Christine DeZelar-Tiedman <dezel002 at umn.edu<mailto:dezel002 at umn.edu>> wrote:
Others have already made the comments that I would have made, but I would like to add, in regard to Primo, that you can configure the de-duping and FRBR-ization of bib records so that rare materials are not clustering in search results with other related items. When we first came up on Primo, physical copies of rare books were getting clustered with ebook and microform versions of the same title, and the ebook always displayed as the primary item in the cluster, so unless someone knew to drill down, users might not know that we had a physical copy of the book. We were able to configure things so that materials in special collections locations did not get combined in Primo search results with other formats, but it took some convincing because most people (including ExLibris) assumed that e-versions would ALWAYS be preferred by users. We were also able to get some targeted searches set up, limiting to special collection materials. None of this is Alma-specific, but since you brought up Primo I wanted to mention it.

On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 1:37 PM Gemberling, Ted P <tgemberl at uab.edu<mailto:tgemberl at uab.edu>> wrote:
Angela, 590’s are displaying in our Primo catalog and are searchable. Now, I think maybe one factor that may be different for you is you don’t want all your libraries to see all the notes. We just have one catalog for our libraries. Admittedly we don’t have a lot of 590 notes. They are mostly in our Special Collections materials.

Ted Gemberling
UAB Libraries

From: DCRM-L <dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu<mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu>> On Behalf Of Jones, Angela
Sent: Wednesday, September 18, 2019 10:11 AM
To: DCRM Users' Group <dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu<mailto:dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu>>
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] Alma

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



--
Christine DeZelar-Tiedman
Metadata and Emerging Technologies Librarian
University of Minnesota Libraries
160 Wilson Library
309 19th Ave. S.
Minneapolis, MN 55455
(612) 625-0381
dezel002 at umn.edu<mailto:dezel002 at umn.edu>

pronouns: she/her/hers



--
Amy F. Brown
Special Collections Technical Services, Head
John J. Burns Library
140 Commonwealth Avenue
Chestnut Hill, MA  02467
617-552-8124
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