Alma
Your feedback matters to us. Help us improve Alma by telling us what you’d like to see using the message areas below. You can also can support something already posted.
We would love to be able to respond to every idea that is submitted, but this is not feasible. We are, however, committed to responding to the most popular ideas—those that have received the most points.
For more information please review our FAQ and guidelines. Thank you.
123 results found
-
Add Visual Materials to Quick Cataloging citation types options
Our library uses the Quick Cataloging tool/interface to create records for materials in course reserves. Currently, the only options for citation types are books and articles. We have DVDs professors place on reserve. When records for DVDs are created, they are created on a record type for book. It would be great to choose citation type "visual materials" at the point of creating the bib record via the Quick Cataloging tool.
59 votes -
Ability to use import profiles on OCLC Connexion exported records
Currently import profiles can applied to Marc files that are uploaded into Alma. One can use the import profile to specify match methods, tell Alma how to deal with matches of existing and incoming records (overlay, merge, or use NZ record), and also specify inventory info to map the Marc 949 field to holdings and item records. Although the OCLC Connexion integration profile deals with importing records it lacks the features described in the previous sentence. Please see screenshot of settings in Oclc integration profile versus in an import profile.
Basically we would like the ability to specify an import…
58 votes -
bulk remove titles from collections (not the electronic type)
Add the ability to remove titles in a set from a collection (not the electronic type) in bulk, as well as add titles in bulk from a set.
58 votes -
Need ability to search 79X fields
We plan to implement use of the 790 field for local tracings (such as former owners) to be used for special collections materials, and have set up a separate search field in Primo. Now we see that we can't search that field at all in Alma, only Primo. Since Alma does index 59X fields as "local notes" and 69X fields as "local subjects" we propose that the 79X be indexed as well.
58 votes -
Change color of NZ icon to distinguish from the CZ icon
The new Alma UI has made the NZ icon and CZ icon the same color and very difficult to distinguish from each other. The previous interface had different colors for these icons, which made it very easy to distinguish them. Please change the color of the NZ icon so that at a glance we can easily distinguish it from CZ records.
57 votes -
Make Suppressing a location function the same as suppressing a holding in all publishing jobs
Currently, the general publishing job exports inventory in locations which are ticked "Suppress from Discovery" in Physical Locations config, when "Excluded Suppressed Locations: is ticked in the Publishing Profile.
Alma should handle this flag as it does for Publishing to Primo and Publishing to Libraries Australia and ignore suppressed locations, otherwise what's the point of setting this at the location level and then providing an option to Exclude suppressed records. It is extra work to set this value for each individual bib/holdings record.
55 votes -
Add all Enumeration and Chronology fields to the Inventory Information tab of an Import Profile
Currently, only Enumeration A - C and Chronology I - K are listed in the Inventory Information tab of our Import Profiles. Our consortia uses Enumeration A-D; Enumeration D specifically is used for free-text phrases that do not conveniently fit into the category of volume, number or issue; so "index", "part", "box", etc. are all written in EnumD. This is why it is frustrating that this enumeration field cannot be imported via an import profile.
It would be immensely helpful for us if all enumeration fields were listed in the import profile. There is no point in having so many…
55 votes -
Index fields 700 $$4 and 710 $$4 for the Alma Repository Search
As 100 $$4 and 110 $$4 are already indexed and can be very useful for cataloguers for searching records in Alma, we strongly suggest having also the relator codes in 700 $$4 and 710 $$4 indexed for the Alma Repository Search.
(Follow up of support case 6659197)
55 votes -
Create a Set of Inventory from a Title Set
It would be very useful to be able to take a set of titles, and convert it into a set of inventory attached to those titles. Specifically, I would like to create a Portfolio set from a set of Electronic Titles. I have regular need to move groups of portfolios from one local e-collection to another. I have only a list of ISBNs to start with, which I use to create an itemized Electronic Titles set. However, moving portfolios requires a Portfolio set, which can only be created with Portfolio IDs. It is very cumbersome to arrive at the appropriate…
54 votes -
Increase download limit on large sets
The limit on the number of records that can be download to Excel from a set is around 70,000 records. Sometimes it's necessary to download larger sets (200,000+) but this is limited by size. It would be better if there was an option to download in CSV so larger data sets could be exported. Or, the Retrieve Set Members API was improved to include the information that is present in the Excel file downloaded from the set's results page. Or, there was an additional export job that allowed a set to be exported using one of the bulk jobs under…
54 votes -
Additional "Suppress from FRBR/dedup" option and display
When viewing a bib record, the pop-out information to the side of the screen lists whether or not the bib is suppressed from discovery and suppressed from search. It would be helpful if this info also contained whether the bib was suppressed from FRBR/dedup.
Additionally, when you edit a bib record, you can select "Suppress from Discovery" and "Suppress from External Search" under the Record Actions dropdown menu. It would be helpful if there was also a "Suppress from FRBR/dedup" here.
51 votes -
Make Push Selected to MDE button available for Itemized Sets
'Push Selected to MDE' (pushing records in bulk to Metadata Editor) is not available for Itemized sets, but it is available for Logical sets in the current Alma implementation. While the option to Push Selected to MDE is plainly visible in the Logical Set Results view (please see the attached screenshots), it is replaced by the 'Remove Selected' button in the Itemized Sets Members’ view. We would be very interested in having the Push Selected to MDE available for both Logical and Itemized sets. Is it possible to add the 'Push Selected to MDE' to he Itemized view and keep…
49 votes -
Improve "Select all" search results selection
When running a search within Alma, we have the option to "Select All", at which point we can accomplish various tasks like "Push selected to MDE" (for a Physical Titles search), "Add to Itemized Set" and "Create Itemized Set" (for a Physical Items search), etc.
However, when clicking "Select All", this only selects the results on that page of results, which is capped at 50. If you create a search with many pages of results, you would have to take action on each page individually. Clicking "Select All" should actually select all results, not just the results on that page--or…
49 votes -
Ability to run a job on a set from the Manage Sets screen
Currently we need to create a set in the Manage Sets area then go to "Run a Job", select the job to run and then select the set.
Wouldn't it be great if you could go to Manage Sets then click on "Actions" for a particular set, then choose "Run a Job". You could then be prompted to choose the job to run but you wouldn't need to go through the additional step of choosing the set (and you wouldn't have to exit the sets screen to go to the "Run a job" screen). And only the jobs that can…
47 votes -
Option to publish new set with Publishing Profiles
Currently, when you change the set in a publishing profile, the previous set is first published as deleted, and then the new set is published by the job. This behavior means that we have to duplicate an existing publishing profile each time we want to publish a new set with an existing publishing profile in order to get a "clean" output and to avoid overly long processing times publishing the old set as deleted. This results in the needless duplication of institutional publishing profiles and extra staff time to duplicate the publishing profiles to publish new sets. The current publishing…
46 votes -
Fix Call Number Sorting for certain classifications
Certain call number classifications that don't follow the typical format (LC class code, class number, Cutter code, title code, pub date) aren't sorting correctly in Alma's Browse Shelf Listing or Primo's call number browse.
One example is from a classification concerned with books about Civil War troop regiments:
E
577.5
24th
.T55
2010Which should typically sort like this:
E577.5 1st
E577.5 2nd
E577.5 3rd
E577.5 10th
E577.5 24th
etc.However, it seems as though the call number normalization isn't set for these specialized classifications and they end up sorting incorrectly, like this:
E577.5 1st. P48 2004
E577.5 10th .W35…45 votes -
Massive copy of records from the community zone to the local catalog
In our institution, we have thousands of active electronic records for our institution but belong to the Community Zone. We want to copy massively these records to our catalog without having to do it one at a time.
Our usual procedure is, from an excel file in which we have the ISBNs or ISSNs of the electronic documents, to upload the portfolios from the electronic collection itself. In this way we bring and activate in our institution the portfolios of the collection, but this does not generate a local copy in our catalog of each of them. So, we have…45 votes -
Allow option to abort import once it has been submitted
Once an import has been submitted, there should be an option to abort or cancel the import.
Sometimes mistakes are made. The wrong import profile is chosen, the wrong file is chosen. Often the mistake can be noticed very quickly, but there is no choice but to wait until the entire import file is loaded. And by then the damage is done, it can be very tedious in Alma to undo certain mistakes (portfolios imported to the wrong collection for example).
Alma offers the action option to "abort" once a job has been submitted. This same option should be available…
44 votes -
Enhance Advanced Search to allow regular expressions
Allow the matching of regular expressions as one of the criteria to perform an advanced search. This would be a much more powerful and precise method for gathering sets.
44 votes -
create brief record
In Resource Management, there are options for creating a physical item using a template that list the MARC fields as their type, not like the field numbers in Metadata Editor. Such as, Title is listed with a field to enter this information, and Author and so on for the Resource Information. As a cataloger, I know the MARC field numbers and can easily catalog in Metadata Editor, but this is not the case for the acquisition coworkers I collaborate with to order new materials.
In the Add Physical Item function, you can create a brief record with only the title,…
42 votes
- Don't see your idea?