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Study Group Session 113: General Question and Answer

Study Group Session 113: General Question and Answer

Session Notes

Questions/Topics from Sign Up Sheet and Discussion Forum

Seeking info from colleges that have implemented eReserves WITHOUT the use of Leganto (Contact from Georgian?)

Erin Williams, Fanshawe College

  • while researching resources regarding Alma and eReserves came across an example from Georgian College and was wondering if they would be willing to share some information

  • if you have info, feel free to reach out to Erin: ewilliams@fanshawec.ca

    eReserves without Leganto help appreciated!

  • How are your classes organized? What kind of structure are you using in Alma D? Processes regarding how you would load student info on it if you’re limiting it to a specific class?

Aimee Jeffrey, Conestoga College

  • We use eReserves in Primo VE, but it is just what Alma can do, no Leganto.

Dana O’Hagan, Niagara College

  • currently have a few resources in Alma D for courses

  • there is a way to configure Alma D for Niagara students only - all students uploaded through SIS load so there are a few thousand student records but have course reserves set in Alma D so only Niagara students can access them

  • potentially you could create a specific group of students if the instructor gives you a list of names

  • create sub collections so students know where to go and send the direct link to the instructors

  • Alma D is a very valuable tool and pretty versatile. We’ve been using it quite often and we’ve had other departments in the college ask us to put resources on our Alma D page (e.g.we are partnering with the recreation departments at both campuses so they can loan out equipment and they can use the Alma D page to check out what is available and then fill out a form to request it)

  • Con: freezes sometimes when you’re doing a lot on Alma D, so need to be patient if you’re going to load a bunch of resources at once

Travis Winwood, Algonquin College:

  • If you use user statistics in your SIS load, you can restrict by school/class etc. (We are not there yet)

Resource Sharing requests viewable from all service desks

Nicole Maddock, Georgian College

  • we have implemented physical and digital resource sharing and enabled resource sharing with universities

  • we are seeing requests come in to the service desk but have the resource sharing circ desk set up as the default - the pick from shelf, the borrowing and lending requests can be viewed from all of the desks

  • Is that expected behaviour or should we only be seeing the resource sharing requests in the resource sharing circ desk?

Aimee

  • that’s normal behaviour - if you give everyone roles, everyone will see them at all the circ desks, regardless of where they are logged in

  • they would need to log in to the resource sharing circ desk to be able to work with the requests

  • for the pick from shelf, at Conestoga, we have chosen to turn that off for resource sharing requests and then activate that from the resource sharing library for those staff if they need to get the request from another satellite library or they just pull it themselves if it’s at their library

  • other libraries have kept the pick from shelf on because they have just one library and it doesn’t matter if these requests hit the pick from shelf for them

  • At Conestoga, had 4 requests from university partners in 1 day

Nicole

  • going well otherwise

  • that is about how many university requests we have, it’s exciting

  • I am handing them at this point and making instructions for training

Travis

  • mostly going well, but just had ILL person returning from leave and things will also slow down because of the strike

  • turned things off for the time being just to simplify it

Instructions for Temporarily Disabling your Resource Sharing Library or Notifying your patrons about service delays

Diana Borges, OCLS

CLO Cataloguing Program Sessions in October

Danielle Emon, OCLS

Merge Patron Records Job

Erin

Nicole:

  • I was just trying to do this and noticed I don't the option for that. I will request that. Thanks!

Dana:

  • get daily reports from Alma about new students that are added/updated

  • my report says that these students are updated automatically so this makes me wonder what happens when these students are updated

Erin:

  • depends on the setup - when we know there’s an incoming student, we can use their Fanshawe ID and then that will automatically sync with our college system nightly and update/merge them together

  • the problem is that sometimes over the summer we have students whose accounts are managed by the SIS and they are not active, so the only way to give them access to materials over the summer is to create a temporary guest account using first name, last name, primary ID

  • we are trying to figure out a better solution for that because it gives us some duplicates occasionally and I have been doing manual clean up but now there is this job that I can tell that 2 records are a match and it will transfer the loans from one to the other, merge them

  • put in a ticket with Ex Libris to request that the job is enabled and will let us know how it goes

Danielle:

  • what field does this report use to identify duplicates?

Erin

  • it doesn’t identify duplicates, just merges records you’ve identified as duplicates - you would put in from user and to user, check off the parts of the record you would want to copy over and then run the job

Andriana Drakos, Mohawk College:

  • with ours, if a student can’t borrow anymore because they’re not active, we just update the expiry date instead of creating a new account for them - is that not possible?

Erin

  • our expiry field is managed by SIS so we can’t manually update that

Andriana:

  • what if you toggle their account to internal, change their expiry, and toggle is back to external? That’s what we do because it’s just a handful of students.

  • We’ve also given a 2 month buffer with our SIS records (used to be, the moment their classes ended, their account expired) to narrow down how many students we actually have to update manually. The 2 month buffer usually covers them until they register again and become active.

Erin:

  • we did a 3 week because that’s our loan period but ours don’t get loaded to the first day of classes so we found ourselves with a pretty big gap

  • can try toggling and see how that goes

Rebecca Pearson, Lambton College:

  • It depends on how often you run the SIS upload. Each upload would overwrite any changes you make when you toggle it off

Andriana:

  • Our difference is that we don’t overwrite fully,

  • The SIS load triggers only a change, it uploads if a student changes their address or name or something like that and only changes the expiry if they’re a new students or register for another course

Travis:

  • Toggled to internal, the SIS will not over-write the account. You will just get an error report saying "User not External"

Rebecca:

  • You can leave the record as internal and then just remember to toggle to external in the fall

Danielle:

  • that’s the key - if you’re depending on your SIS load to refresh those files and update the student information, you definitely want to toggle back and refresh

Next Session

  • Sep 24, 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

  • To register for Study Group click here. A meeting series invitation will be sent to your inbox. Join us on MS teams. If you already have the series in your calendar, no action is needed!

Recording

 

Transcript