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Data Cleaning Recommendations - Draft for your Review

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We will continue adding new resources and recommendations to this guide as we learn more. Remember to check back regularly for new information, or start “watching” this page to receive a notification email whenever there are updates.

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Recommendations to College Libraries for Cleaning Data

The goal of this page is to focus on strategies for print and electronic data cleaning. 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 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 Simplification to gain a fuller understanding. 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 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 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.” Locations that have similar fulfillment (circulation) policies and blocks will become associated with your library’s fulfillment units.

  • 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, holdings record, location 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)

  • consider amalgamating user groups that share common permissions

Tags and Identifiers:

To allow for clean migration, ensure collections are well identified. Consistent tagging is important for moving records from your source collection to Alma locations. From a broader perspective, unique identifiers are essential for record matching in the Network Zone (NZ). In order to migrate your data:

Additional Data Preparations (Ex Libris):

The additional suggestions below are from Getting Ready for Alma and Discovery Implementation, Appendix B - Optional Data Preparations. This appendix can help you decide which clean-up efforts are a priority for your library – not everything will be relevant to all libraries. Examples of other data cleaning could work include:

  • Library and collection identification tags:

  • Bibliographic, holdings and item data

  • Enumeration

  • Statuses and codes (as discussed under #1 above)

  • Old/inconsistent data (includes old patron records, fines beyond a certain date and/or less than a certain amount; old POs etc.)

  • Library and collection names

  • Patron, vendor, library contact names

  • E-resource and package resources

Electronic Resource Handling in Alma Migration:

Note: The P2E instruction below applies to local electronic records that are not likely to be found in Alma’s CZ/Central KnowledgeBase (CKB) or cannot be migrated via the link resolver form. Please see the Notes on P2E Processing below for tips on migrating these local resources. For more information on migrating electronic resources see https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Implementation_and_Migration/Migration_Guides_and_Tutorials/Electronic_Resource_Migration_General and https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Implementation_and_Migration/Migration_Guides_and_Tutorials/E-Resource_Activations. A separate, more complete guide is being developed for eResource activation.

Notes P2E (Physical to Electronic) Processing: Due to Alma’s database structure, local catalogue records for electronic resources are migrated as physical resources, then changed into electronic resources via https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Implementation_and_Migration/Migration_Guides_and_Tutorials/Physical_to_Electronic_(P2E)_processing. In brief, this involves the following steps:

  • 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.

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.

Symphony (SIRSI) Migration Guides:

Generic Migration Guides (Non-SIRSI)

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/

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