[DCRM-L] Alma

[Gemberling, Ted P]

>From a discussion off-list, it looks like one issue that needs to be prepared for is whether you have control over your local records. We seem to have it over print records, at least. I do not deal with electronic resources. Alma makes a distinction between "institution zone" and "community zone" records. At least in our catalog, print records appear to be institution zone, and we control their content. I sometimes get a message that "an external process has changed the record. It is recommended you reload the record." I mostly ignore that. But it could be some institutions have set Alma up so they have to accept any changes made to the OCLC master record. To be honest, I do not know enough about how our system was set up to know why we do have control. But it's something to consider If you sign up. 

Ted Gemberling

-----Original Message-----
From: DCRM-L <dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu> On Behalf Of Joshua Hutchinson
Sent: Thursday, September 19, 2019 2:27 PM
To: dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] Alma

>> 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).

You can get there in 3 clicks: 
1) use the facets on the right. Click on 'Location'
2) Click on 'General Collection 3rd and 4th floors'
3) Click on '4 versions found, see all versions' for "Hell's Angels; a strange and terrible saga"

There are two copies in the McHenry Library General Collection at HV6489.C2 T48 1967 and HV6489.C2 T48 1967c


>> 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.

However, there is quite a bit of flexibility within Alma to define your own indexes within the 9xx fields. For instance, at my library we have created an 'Order information' index to search the 980 $c, which is where our GOBI invoice number goes; we have a Millennium BibID index to search our record identifiers from our previous system, which are stored in another 9xx field; and we have defined an index to search electronic resource package names, which we put in the 973 (they are copied from the 793-- both are locally defined fields, and we really don't need to perpetuate this duplication, but it doesn't seem to be hurting anything). 

Josh


Cataloging & Metadata Services Department (Monographs) UCI Libraries University of California, Irvine Irvine CA  92623-9557

Science Library Room 327 - (949) 824-8938 jchutchi at uci.edu