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The goal of this page is to focus on strategies for print and electronic data cleaning, with a focus on organization, tagging for migration and matching in what will be the Network Zone (NZ). For a broader understanding of the requirements needed to implement Alma and Primo visit Getting Ready for Alma and Discovery Implementation.

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• Consider categorizing locations into about five “location type categories” that share common circulation policies: For example: regular loan; limited loan, short loan/reserve, closed stack, and media.

• Ex Libris expects that most locations should fit into one of the above categories and recommends that libraries restrict the number of ‘item type’ circulation exceptions to five.

• The diagram below illustrates the relationship between the bibliographic record, libraries, holdings recordrecords, location locations and item records.

  

• Visit https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Product_Documentation/010Alma_Online_Help_(English)/040Resource_Management/050Inventory/010Introduction_to_Alma_Inventory#Physical for additional information describing the relationship between ‘location,’ ‘holding’ and ‘item' in the institutional zone (IZ)

• Also consider amalgamating user groups that share common permissions

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• It would be most helpful if all items belonging to a particular item group are consistently tagged with the same MARC field/subfield (e.g., subfield tag in 852 or 9XX). For some systems, this may best be accomplished upon export – other systems may need to have edits performed in advance.

• During the migration process, Ex Libris maps these MARC tags to an Alma “location” specific to your Institution Zone (IZ). The migration form used will depend upon your source system. For more information read the https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Implementation_and_Migration/Migration_Guides_and_Tutorials/Generic_Alma_Data_Delivery_and_Migration_Guide OR https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Implementation_and_Migration/Migration_Guides_and_Tutorials/Symphony_to_Alma_Data_Delivery_and_Migration_Guide.

• Network Considerations: According to https: //knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Product_Documentation/010Alma_Online_Help_(English)/100Managing_Multiple_Institutions_Using_a_Network_Zone/Discovery_when_Using_a_Network_Zone/010Overview_of_Discovery_when_Using_a_Network_Zone, “availability and delivery for physical resources harvested from Alma are relative to the institution of the view.”  Visit https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Product_Documentation/010Alma_Online_Help_(English)/100Managing_Multiple_Institutions_Using_a_Network_Zone/01_Overview/01_Overview_of_Collaborative_Networks for an overview of Network Zone (NZ) Functions. Regardless, successful matching functions. Successful bibliographic matching in the Network Zone (NZ) is dependent upon accurate unique identifiers, such as SIRSI 035 | a; OCLC 035 | a, etc.

  • https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Implementation_and_Migration/Migration_Guides_and_Tutorials/010Alma_Migration_Considerations_for_Consortia describes the process for providing and processing records into a shared consortial environment in Alma from various legacy ILS systems. At the local level, Ex Libris recommends: “that the NZ use fields 900-949 and the IZ uses 950-999. This way the local NZ fields (900-949) are those that are local to the entire consortium where every institutional member uses them, and the local IZ fields (950-999) are those that are local only to the single institution. This is recommended because it is important to be able to retrieve groups of records based on data in specific local fields, and having the same local field used for two different data elements may cause problems in retrieval. During migration, if a 900-949 tag has $9 LOCAL subfield, it is removed and the tag is kept in the NZ.” For additional context, visit Local Extensions (MARC) section of Alma Migration Considerations for Consortia https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Implementation_and_Migration/Migration_Guides_and_Tutorials/010Alma_Migration_Considerations_for_Consortia#Non-OCoLC_match_method

  • The following videos provide insight into functions available through the broader Network Zone (NZ): http://exl-edu.com/01_Alma/Alma_Collaborative_Networks_(Alma_Consortia)/Alma_Collaborative_Networks-Introduction/story_html5.html?lms=1 and http://exl-edu.com/01_Alma/Alma_Collaborative_Networks_(Alma_Consortia)/Shared_Bibliographic_Records_in_the_Network_Zone/story_html5.html?lms=1

  • https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Product_Documentation/010Alma_Online_Help_(English)/100Managing_Multiple_Institutions_Using_a_Network_Zone/Discovery_when_Using_a_Network_Zone provides insight into publishing records to Primo. According to https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Product_Documentation/010Alma_Online_Help_(English)/100Managing_Multiple_Institutions_Using_a_Network_Zone/Discovery_when_Using_a_Network_Zone/010Overview_of_Discovery_when_Using_a_Network_Zone, “availability and delivery for physical resources harvested from Alma are relative to the institution of the view.” 

  • Extraneous identifiers

Additional Data Preparations (Ex Libris):

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Consider running past loan/usage statistics/analyses prior to migration, as only key fields/subfields will be migrated. More to come….

ExLibris Migration Resources - Getting Ready

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