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Study Group Session 109: General Question and Answer

Study Group Session 109: General Question and Answer

Session Notes

New Page 1+ Study Group Series Invitation

Diana Borges, OCLS

  • new Study Group invitation was sent out to registered attendees for sessions between July 30-December 17

  • if you did not receive the invitation and/or know someone who would like to register for Study Group, please use the registration form to sign up. A meeting series invitation will be sent to your inbox. Join us on MS teams.

Summary and discussion of the avoid_fuzzy_search_resolving parameter

Marie Song, OCLS

  • avoid_fuzzy_search_resolving parameter has been recommended by Ex Libris to resolve incorrect matching issues in Primo

  • was part of the November 2023 release

  • this parameter is being used in the NZ but OCLS has not shared information about it yet

  • We would also like to hear how the parameter is configured in your IZs and what your experiences have been with it

  • For more information about the parameter, see the PowerPoint slides below

 

Aimee Jeffrey, Conestoga College:

  • ours is set to true, but I haven't thought about it for a very long time. 

 Dana O’Hagan, Niagara College:

  • Ours is set to true as well at Niagara.

 Rebecca Pearson, Lambton College:

  • At Lambton it is set to 'true'. We did it after two unrelated titles were resolved.

Danielle Emon, OCLS:

  • A couple of questions:  What constitutes author info?  1XX & 7XX or just 1XX? Does it consider other elements in the record, such as resource type and date?

Marie:

PowerPoint Slides

 

ELUNA 2025 Highlights

Stacey Boileau, OCLS

  • Stacey sent out a summary of the highlights from ELUNA 2025 last week to the Page 1+ Systems listserv

  • Has anyone had a chance to read the e-mail? Anyone have thoughts about it? Did anyone find anything surprising?

  • I was surprised by how fast AI developments are happening.

  • There was also a bit about new products:

    • Primo NDE is upcoming and those who have Alma-D will be moved to Specto Essentials, and there are these two other levels of Specto (Alma Specto and Specto preservation), which would be extra cost

    • There is also the Known Issues Portal - has anyone taken a look at it? Would a demo be helpful?

Rebecca:

  • Read the highlight e-mail, don't remember anything that raised an eyebrow.

  • Looked at the Known Issues Portal and found it has everything and is overwhelming.

  • A demo might be nice. I didn't realize there was more to it than a list.

  • I didn't realize that Specto (?) was replacing Alma-D. I ignored new product because there was no way we were getting them. I will now have to learn about it.

Dana O’Hagan:

  • also looked at the e-mail and did not find anything surprising.

  • hear that everything is now AI

Aimee:

  • would also appreciate a demo.  

  • Have we thought about how we are going to evaluate the new NDE UI in advance? That might be nice to do as a group. 

Stacey:

  • that might be good

  • there is a tool that I got to evaluate Primo Research Assistant but it might be valuable for any discovery type product

  • it is very thorough, from a Swiss consortium

Raghav Bali, Algonquin:

  • I reached out to them yesterday re: Specto and this is what I heard: 

Upon the launch of Specto, all current Alma Digital customers will be automatically transitioned to the Specto starter solution, which encompasses all the functionalities of Alma Digital and additional features, with the opportunity to upgrade to the advanced Specto solution.

https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Product_Materials/010Roadmap/Alma_Roadmap_Highlights_(2025-2026)/Digital_Resource_Management#Specto

To that end we do not expect any functionality change, gain (or loss) of any functionality, or any major change required on your end of the equation. We will continue to announce updates on Specto via our release notes as more information comes to light.

Since Specto is in ongoing development we will not be able to provide much additional clarity until the details of the product are announced and laid out in documentation, but please let us know if we can attempt to clarify the roadmap notes above at this time!

CLO Cataloguing Discussion Forum Post - Cataloguing AI

Danielle Emon, OCLS

  • Rebecca had a question in the CLO cataloguing discussion forum about cataloguing AI: Books written by AI

  • this is coming up, something that the group is doing research on and planning a discussion

New labels feature in the NDE UI

I attended the Primo updates session this week and they spoke about a new feature in the NDE UI in which you can add debuglabels=TRUE to see the name of the labels used. That sounds super handy!

Discussion Forum Post - Retaining blocks when item overdues switch to lost

Diana Borges, OCLS; Erin Williams, Fanshawe College

Retaining blocks when item overdues switch to lost

  • adding automatic blocks on overdue loans

  • but when items switch to Lost, the automated overdue block will be removed.

  • the Overdue and Lost Loan Profile using the Create block checkbox, however there is no checkbox available when the profile type is set to: Change to lost.

  • Since we do NOT CHARGE FINES/FEES I’m not able to use a dollar amount to keep the user blocked while items are in “assumed lost” limbo. We want the user to stay automatically blocked until we periodically run the Close Lost Loans job manually. Any suggestions on how to go about retaining a block on users with open lost loans that don’t rely on fees/fines thresholds?

Erin:

  • library management is looking at it now to decide how to proceed

Resource Sharing Updates

Liana Giovando, OCLS

  • hoping to gather all colleges the week of August 11 and the week of August 18 to roll out digital resource sharing and resource sharing with the universities

  • the sessions will be recorded if you are unable to attend

Thank you to Joan Hutt at Loyalist College

Diana Borges, OCLS; Aimee Jeffrey, Conestoga College

  • the resource sharing team would like to express our appreciation for all of the work that Joan has done for the resource sharing project

  • it was a great pleasure working with Joan

Next Session

  • July 30, 2025 at 11-11:30 a.m. Open Q&A

  • Sign up sheet for questions/knowledge share topics is now available: https://clo-collaboration-spaces.atlassian.net/wiki/x/BgDfg

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Recording

 

Transcript