Recommendations to College Libraries for

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Data Planning and Information Gathering

The goal of this page is to suggest print and electronic data cleaning strategies that might help to streamline your migration efforts to Alma. For a broader understanding of the requirements needed to implement Alma and Primo visit Getting Ready for Alma and Discovery Implementation.

KEEP IT SIMPLE

The recommendations below contain tips or suggestions for ways to tidy up your data get organized before migration to Alma. This is not a ‘one size fits all’ guide – but a list of local considerations that you can begin to think about. Ex Libris suggests that local data cleaning may streamline the migration process and help to ensure to best possible outcomes. Read Getting Ready for Alma and Discovery Implementation, Appendix A - Fulfillment Simplificationto gain a fuller understanding of Ex Libris' suggestions. As you explore this information in the Ex Libris Knowledge Center, consider keeping the https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Product_Documentation/010Alma_Online_Help_(English)/120Alma_Glossary open in a new tab for quick reference.

Organization and Simplification of locations, patrons and item types:

Making sure that records and collections in your original source database are well organized is one thing you can do to ensure a best possible migration outcome. If there are small collections that no longer need to stand on their own, consider merging them into larger ‘locations’. Depending upon your system, you may choose to merge collections ahead of time OR simply choose to map two collections together upon migration. Note: In Alma, a location is defined as a “physical place where items are stored” that is “associated with a library.” Locationsthat have similar fulfillment (circulation) policies and blocks will become associated with your library’s fulfillment units.

• Consider categorizing Plan to categorize 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. Item type circulation exceptions are only used in situations where items cannot circulate in the same way as the majority of items in their location, for any given user group. To read more about Item Exceptions, refer to the Alma Configuration Form Guide, pages 17-18; 21; & 52.

• The diagram below illustrates the relationship between the bibliographic record, libraries, holdings records, 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.

Electronic Resource Handling in Alma

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– Planning Considerations:

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• Ensure the links for locally catalogued eResources in your source system are active.

• Consistently identify/tag catalogued eResources in your source database (If not done already). You’ll be mapping these tags to ‘locations’ and identifying these locations as electronic resources on the Alma Location mapping tab. The bibliographic records for these collections will be sent to Ex Libris along with the rest of your collection.

• Creation of an input file (csv format) of bib record numbers that correspond to the eResource collections that you are migrating from your source system (e.g., from MARC 001). The migration specialists will match this file to the corresponding recently imported bibliographic records in Alma to create electronic portfolios.

• Once migrated, Ex Libris may guide you to run a job in Alma to update your proxy prefix if changes are made to local authentication policies. Running this job in Alma will update user access via Primo.

Analytics:

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

A selection of Ex Libris migration guides and tutorials can found in the links below – this additional information may help to further inform your data cleaning decisions.

• https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Implementation_and_Migration/Migration_Guides_and_Tutorials/Overview_of_Migration: migration phases in a nutshell

• https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Implementation_and_Migration/Implementation_Guides/02Getting_Ready_for_Alma_and_Discovery_Implementation: explains library and Ex Libris' roles and responsibilities; project team roles; technical migration requirements; cutover prep for third parties; data format requirements; training; fulfillment simplification; optional data preparations

• https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Implementation_and_Migration/Implementation_Guides/03Technical_Requirements_for_Alma_and_Discovery_Implementation

General Migration Guides:

The links below are a selection of guides and tutorials that may inform data cleaning decisions. Visit https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Implementation_and_Migration/Migration_Guides_and_Tutorials in the Ex Libris Knowledge Center to find all migration guides and tutorials.

• Video: http://exl-edu.com/01_Alma/Implementation_and_Migration/Migration_Guides/Tips_For_Completing_Migration_Form/#/

• Video: http://exl-edu.com/01_Alma/Implementation_and_Migration/Migration_Guides/Inventory/#/

• Video: http://exl-edu.com/01_Alma/Implementation_and_Migration/Migration_Guides/Generic_Acquisitions/#/

Symphony (SIRSI) Migration Guides:

• https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Implementation_and_Migration/Migration_Guides_and_Tutorials/Symphony_to_Alma_Data_Delivery_and_Migration_Guide: This guide includes information and links to forms used to map Symphony LIBRARY (999|M) AND HOME LOCATION to the Alma Library and Location (bibliographic, holdings, item, circulation and patron field/subfield data). A copy of the Symphony mapping form is included below.

Generic Migration Guides (Non-SIRSI)

• https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Implementation_and_Migration/Migration_Guides_and_Tutorials/Generic_Alma_Data_Delivery_and_Migration_Guide: This guide includes information and links to forms used to map legacy bibliographic, holdings, item, circulation and patron field/subfield data from systems other than SIRSI to generic Alma fields. A copy of the generic field mapping form is included below.

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Note: Insight into amalgamating St. Clair’s two Centriva databases into one IZ may be gained from this ExLibris Knowledge Center link: Combining Source Databases into One Alma Institution

Data cleaning hindsight - past experiences for review

Notes from Novanet

https://www.novanet.ca/adventures-in-alma-issue-2/

Cleanup Progress

The Advisory Group and members of the Acq, Cat and Access Service groups have been busy with the first round of Aleph Cleanup. As you’ll recall, the purpose of this work is to do as much as we can to the data in Aleph so that we’ll have less cleanup to deal with when we start on Alma.

Current cleanup projects include:

• Barcodes that cannot be searched or scanned in Aleph (and probably Alma) because they contain symbols, spaces and other oddities.

• Collections with multiple item statuses, these need to examined and edited so there is one collection per item status.

• No Collection – item records without collection codes

• Item Process Status report – these will be reviewed to identify item process statuses no longer in use and clean up records that have old item process statuses that may need to be removed or changed.

Clean up projects on the horizon:

• Suppressed records clean up – we’ve learned that suppressed records in Aleph can be migrated to Alma but we need to identify if there suppressed records that do not need to be retained.

• Unclosed Orders – Acquisitions Service Group are identifying what order statuses are used for closed order. We will then produce a report for all these orders for review.

• Electronic/print records split – We are working on identifying bib records that have both electronic and print items.

Posted on November 27, 2020 by Bill Slauenwhite

Work resumed in September and the small working groups, lead by the Implementation Advisory Group, have started meeting again. They have been busy cleaning up things collection codes, old orders, separating print and electronic holdings, fixing record formats and the like. A full list of cleanup jobs in the queue and those that are completed can be seen at: https://www.novanet.ca/clean-up-reports/