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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.

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.

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 reserve titles at your library are contributing seriously toward our overage. Much more important is discovering and eliminating bib records that are not needed.

A. Any bibliographic record you create will count toward the total. (A few institutions have implemented Leganto; perhaps there’s another path for these libraries that doesn’t create bib records?) However, we are looking to reduce our count by millions of records; it is unlikely that eliminating these particular records is really necessary. Assuming that finding these records in OneSearch reserves is important to your students, you should continue.

A. Whether or not a collection is Open Access is not the issue. If a collection of electronic portfolios has resulted in a new bibliographic record entering your IZ, then yes, they are counting toward our contracted bib limit, unless the bibs are considered e-journals, in which case they count toward the e-journal limit.

A. The consortium is not asking institutions currently to meet specific targets for bib records. We believe we can reduce the number of bibs sufficiently system-wide without asking institutions to reduce their resources. So instead we are looking for strategic ways to reduce the number, by targeting bibs without inventory and exploring Network Zone-housed electronic collections.

A. Electronic collections that are CDI-only, i.e. that have no portfolios, do not affect the total number of bib records.

A. Multiple bibliographic records representing the same title, format, and edition are resolved at the WorldCat level. If you find duplicate WorldCat records in the Network Zone, i.e. bibliographic records with different OCLC control numbers but representing the same title/format/edition, you can send a request to merge duplicates to bibchange@oclc.org. When these duplicates are resolved in OCLC, the next daily load into our Network Zone will include these records. Duplicates, or multi-matches, are resolved by the NZ Task Force on a daily basis.

A. Alma provides specific functionality related to instructor-owned reserves. To use that functionality you do need to create a brief bib. However, if you don’t need that functionality, and the instructor-owned copy matches a title already in your collection, you can simply create a new item for an existing bib and store info about the instructor loan in a note. Please note, it is unlikely that you are creating so many of these that it is having a serious impact on our total bib count. So if you are getting value from the Alma functionality, you should keep using it.

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.

A. First, nothing in the world of Alma is obvious.

Moving E-collections to the NZ means the following: 

• E-collections are activated in the NZ and “made available for” member institutions

• Those institutions then remove the corresponding electronic collections from their institution zones

• When removing the e-collections, institutions would specify to delete bibliographic records without inventory. This last step is the part that would reduce the number of bibliographic records.

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.

A. This sort of project, if undertaken, will be managed centrally and coordinated with institutions. Please monitor LSP-All for updates.

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. Our contract with Ex Libris does not limit the number of electronic portfolios (or 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.

A. You are correct: linking bibs to the NZ won’t reduce the number of bibs, and if you’re the only institution with a particular title, linking it to the NZ will actually increase the total number by 1. However, please don’t let that concern stop you from linking bibs to the NZ. Our consortial policy is that with certain exceptions, bibs should be in the NZ. Probably in most cases you will not be the only institution with the title, so you won’t be increasing the number of bibs in those cases anyway. We are really looking for cases where we can get rid of unneeded bibs.

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.

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).