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Study Group Session 117: November New Releases and General Question and Answer

Study Group Session 117: November New Releases and General Question and Answer

Session Notes

November New Releases

Diana Borges, OCLS

  • What did you find interesting?

  • Did our summary cover all of the releases you were interested in? Were there additional releases you are interested in? Do you have suggestions for the new releases communication we send out?

  • Will your library be making use of any of the new releases in particular? How is it going?

New releases are available on the Page 1+ Alma Primo VE LibGuide.

To view the full list of new features for Alma and Primo VE, see this Alma page and this Primo VE page.

Aimee Jeffrey, Conestoga:

  • love it

Michelle Johnson, Centennial:

  • How can I get these e-mails?

Stacey Boileau, OCLS:

  • we send these to the Page 1+ Systems listserv

  • will add Michelle to the listserv

NDE

Marie Song, OCLS

  • Primo NDE general release came out in November, it will become the default in January 2028.

  • The release also means that you can switch to live now, so just a note of caution about that. The switch is under Configuration > Discovery > Configure Views > More actions menu next to each view. It is easy to do and accessible to anyone who can create views and cannot be rolled back with ease.

  • OCLS sent out an e-mail about the NDE highlighting this in the Page 1+ Systems listserv

  • Check in about that - how do you feel about the NDE and Primo new releases?

  • Is there anything else that you noticed that we didn’t flag in our summary?

Michelle Johnson, Centennial:

  • Where can we access specs on NDE - security, how it works?

NDE documentation in the Ex Libris Knowledge Center:

Go NDE - Ex Libris Knowledge Center

Next Discovery Experience User Interface - Ex Libris Knowledge Center

Marie Song, OCLS:

  • reminder to bring your questions about the NDE to the next Study Group session on Nov. 19

Dana O’Hagan, Niagara:

Sarah Wiebe, George Brown:

  • Has anyone created a test view for NDE?

Aimee:

  • I did, but haven't worked on it.

Jennifer Horwath, Mohawk:

  • Interested but haven't enabled it yet

Dana:

  • I haven’t started with NDE yet but will need to do a lot of work on it. I will eventually, because we do have to make some changes in terms of design.

  • It looks the same as Primo, same process in terms of opening the customization package, changing the HTML coding and saving it.

  • The changes are mainly to bib records, but not so much headers/footers etc. I was anticipating a huge change, needing to learn a new coding language.

Sarah:

  • It’s all the same, CSS.

Stacey:

  • It’s a diff with the angular stuff.

Dana:

  • What level of angular are they using?

Lingling Jiang, Sheridan:

  • NDE -> angular 18

Enhanced DEI

Aimee:

  • Has anyone tested out the Enhanced DEI exclude terminology list yet? I used normalization processes to change alot of old records when we migrated, but hopefully this will be an ongoing norm rule that will apply to future acquisitions.  

  • I think it’s interesting if it works, haven’t had time to really test it yet. I did some work on that when we first migrated, but then it didn’t apply to anything, I didn’t add it to our portfolios or collections, it didn’t apply to anything new. So hopefully this will - you do it once and don’t have to worry about it.

Marie:

  • We thought it was interesting that there’s that option to add a note next to the term so you can add a bit more information for your end users.

Stacey:

  • It will be brought to Metadata Steering to discuss what this new development could mean for the approach developed by the decolonize the catalogue working group. What are the opportunities? It seems like a bit of a duplication of work, but it needs to be tested.

Sarah:

  • We have pushed this to January to sort as the liaison librarians want to provide input. They would want to be more specific about the terms and the explanation, and they probably don’t want to use the phrase DEI policy.

  • Has anyone activated it yet?

Aimee

  • Yeah, I looked at the config and it already has a list that has been excluded. But you can also replace which could be more useful

  • There is already a list that they’ve removed but you can also replace these terms, which will be more useful. This is what you’ll want to bring to your team.

AI Insights

Dana:

  • Is anyone interested in that AI insights?

Sarah:

  • We looked at it, but haven’t reviewed it. It’s not super useful right now but we think it might be in the future.

Dana:

  • Let us know if you come up with anything, because it sounds useful - we evaluate our stats very frequently so that quick access is pretty interesting.

Sarah:

  • I thought so too, especially for collection development. Our librarians don’t really use or search Alma in the backend, they use Primo. I am trying to figure out a way to get them to use Alma more because I think some of the AI insights would be interesting for them.

  • I would also want it to be on different roles, because right now it’s very limited in the roles that can view it.

Collection Development Workflows

Stacey:

  • Are you also interested in the collection development workflows and the consortia analytics when that gets turned on? Maybe it will help bring them in too and if you are responsible for analytics, less pressure on you.

Sarah:

  • Yes, I am also interested in those, if they work in the way I hope they work.

  • Did everyone get the Ebsco email? Will this affect the collection workflows? No, because it would still look at items in your own collection?

Stacey:

  • Yes, it’s not really Rialto marketplace anymore. Users who don’t have Rialto can still have the benefits of it . It’s looking at your holdings title data versus other institutions.

  • And I think it’s mainly print right now. In the webinar they said they’re starting with print and eventually it will apply to print series, electronic resources.

New Collection Development Workflows Webinar: https://youtu.be/NRVDLwWs_r8?si=-o67QcTueqcky4_E

Cataloguing Assistant

Sarah:

  • I haven’t looked into the new AI helper for cataloguing yet. We have not found the Primo research assistant to be great. But I like the potential for AI insights because that looks like it’s analyzing a lot of records that we might sometimes miss or ignore.

Stacey:

  • A lot of people have talked about the whole idea AI isn’t the best for searching, research, compared to something where you’re trying to put data together.

Sarah:

  • I think it’s good for identifying books that haven’t bene looked at, areas that are underserved, but not so great at explaining.

Terri Duff, Fleming:

  • We turned on the AI cataloguing assistant because we’re not able to get physical books from Rialto very much anymore. I had to buy a whole bunch from Amazon and catalogue everything and it was horrible.

  • It does the basics and then you have to fill in the rest.

Danielle Emon, OCLS:

  • An early dip into AI cataloguing showed me that a critical eye was still needed for oversight. Sarah, you'd be in your element!

  • Be critical of subject application! Also watch control field coding.

Louis Lacelle, La Cite:

  • I agree with Danielle

Known Issues Portal

Ex Libris Listservs

Sarah:

  • Is everyone on the listservs?

Dana:

  • I am and am very overwhelmed.

  • I have the emails sent to a separate folder.

Stacey:

  • There is an archive, so if you don’t get to read them and something comes up, you can go to the archive and search it.

Sarah:

  • I search through the knowledge base, the support tickets, and Ex Libris website, videos, and all of the e-mail listservs when I have a problem.

Aimee:

  • Best to search when you need it.

Known Issues Portal

Aimee:

  • Are we still having a Known Issues tutorial?

  • I haven't really touched on that yet, but perhaps that would integrate from the listservs. I haven’t used it yet.

Diana:

  • The Known Issues Portal session will be on December 17, our last session for the series.

Sarah:

  • I go through it now and then.

  • I used it when I was issues with Leganto 

 Aimee: They used to list those on the monthly updates. I used to read through those.

Sarah:

  • I used it when I was issues with Leganto. Some of my issues were not there.

Stacey:

  • I imagine it’s something that will become more useful, because when it started it was just Ex Libris reporting on things that were happening at their end.

Next Session

  • Nov 19, 2025 at 11 a.m. - 12 p.m.: OCLS will be hosting an information session about the Primo NDE migration. We will share information about the migration process and timeline, and it will be an opportunity to raise questions, and discuss dependencies for colleges in the networked environment. The session will be recorded for those who are unable to join live. All colleges are welcome to attend. You can register for Study Group meetings here and read more about or access previous study group recordings here. The session will run for an hour but we will use the existing series invite.

  • Dec 3, 2025at 11 a.m. - 12 p.m.: Claudia Balby from Ex Libris will present on Benchmark Analytics in Alma. This will be another hour long session. We will send a reminder for colleges to submit their questions for Claudia in the Sign-Up Sheet closer to the date.

  • Sign up sheet for questions/knowledge share topics is now available: Page 1+ Study Group Sessions Sign-Up Sheet

  • 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