Q. Why are ebooks part of bib number but journals are not?
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A. E-Journals are counted separately, in a different metric. We are using “bib record” here as a shorthand. Really it means “bib records except for e-journals.” We are well under our contracted e-journal limit, so we’re not discussing it currently. If you are asking the broader question (“Why? Why?”) please consult works of philosophy, theology, business administration etc. |
Q. How are electronic magazines counted for bib records?
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A. E-journals as Ex Libris counts them includes non-scholarly periodicals (but not newspapers). So they are not counted in the bib record metric we are discussing here, but instead, are counted in a separate metric. |
Q. I know we can reduce named users by making them inactive. Is there a way to make bib records inactive? I'm thinking of reserves that are only used in one semester. Can they be inactive in the semesters they're not being used without having to re-enter the bib record again when they are being used?
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A. Simply suppressing or removing inventory from a bibliographic record does not keep it from being counted toward the total. If you wanted, you could export the bib record as a .mrc file, store it locally on a computer, delete it from your Alma repository, and then import it when you need it again. But this approach seems quite complex, and it is unlikely that this sort of practice is reserve titles at your library are contributing seriously toward our overage. Much more important is discovering and eliminating bib records that are not needed. |
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A. Of course the specifics of your collection expansion here are unknown. But generally, Alma/Primo is intended to represent your total collection. Primo is a discovery tool, and there has never been any discussion in our consortium of asking institutions not to use it as such. Whether librarians send students to OneSearch or to individual databases should be determined by their professional judgment of how best to meet the student’s information needs. |
Q. Why are ebooks part of bib number but journals are not?
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Q. How are electronic magazines counted for bib records?
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A. E-journals as Ex Libris counts them includes non-scholarly periodicals (but not newspapers). So they are not counted in the bib record metric we are discussing here, but instead, are counted in a separate metric. |
Q. If I understand Jeff's explanation from the webinar correctly that ExL essentially double counts bibs for titles in the NZ and holdings linked in our IZ, I'm not sure I understand how moving management of electronic collections to the NZ will help reduce the total number of bibs. As I understand it, electronic collections need to be activated in our IZ in order for them to show up in our Primo, so I don't see how this change in management would reduce the number of bibs. But I'm sure I must be missing something obvious! Would appreciate help understanding this!
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A. First, nothing in the world of Alma is obvious. Moving E-collections to the NZ means the following:
Results from the NZ e-collections would be discoverable in OneSearch for institutions listed in the NZ e-collections “Available for” area, even if they are not found in the institution’s IZ. Ex Libris recommends this approach for consortia, although not all consortia have implemented it. |
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A. The multiple activations should be resulting in additional portfolios, not additional bib records. In other words, for any title found in an All Titles or Electronic Titles search, there should be a single bib record with multiple portfolios listed under it. If you can check that this is the case, that would be helpful. We do not have limits on Our contract with Ex Libris does not limit the number of electronic portfolios (or item records)physical items) in our system. It is possible that multi-college institutions that use different proxy settings per-college will have special challenges with NZ-hosted e-resources. This is TBD. |
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A. One search method in Alma advanced search is All Titles - Has Inventory - Equals - No. However, some institutions have found a bug in this functionality currently, and some titles with electronic portfolios show in the search. If you find that happening, please open a high-priority support case. Even having done this search, you may want to get more information before deleting large sets of bibliographic records. We are working on Analytics reports that will give you more insight into identifying bibs without inventory and understanding why they have none (for instance, CZ collections that were not fully removed), and will be reaching out to institutions that have a large number of these bibs. |
Q. It would be really helpful if y'all could provide step by step instructions on the best way to completely remove electronic portfolios from our IZs. I've just been trying to remove 368 portfolios from our ebook central academic complete collection activation as they are not allowed to be accessed by US libraries. I ran a job on the set to set the portfolios to "inactive" and remove availability for the groups they were available for 2 inventory groups (we're in a multi-campus Alma). They are no longer showing up in Primo, but in Alma, they still show up in my IZ (albeit with the linked to CZ people icon in black not blue) and with the green dot next to Available for the two inventory groups. Is what I have done enough to remove them from the state's total bib count? I'd like to know so that I can check for other collections/portfolios that we no longer need and make sure that I am correctly removing them so that they will no longer count against the bib total.
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A. Here you have set the portfolios to “inactive”. But this was a change in the portfolios. It did not do anything to the bibliographic records. Here the way to go would be to run the “Delete portfolios” job on the set and, in the task parameters, set “Handling bibliographic records without inventory” to Delete Bibliographic Record(s). |
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