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.
142 results found
-
Flexible and normalized comparison of portfolio coverage dates in Overlap & Collection Analysis
Currently, Overlap & Collection Analysis compares portfolio coverage dates exactly as they appear in the portfolio coverage fields. As a result, equivalent coverage ranges are not always recognized as matches when the dates are recorded at different levels of detail or when some components are missing.
For example, coverage such as:
• 2.1.2016, Volume 1 Issue 1
and
• 2016, Volume 1 Issue 1
may represent the same start point, but the system treats them as different because one includes a full date while the other includes only a year.
In many knowledge bases and vendor data, coverage dates are…120 votes -
Make restored CZ electronic portfolios local when using the Manage deleted repository tool
When using the Manage deleted repository tool to restore deleted CZ electronic portfolios, the restored portfolio should be restored as local, with the blue house icon.
Currently, the restored portfolio does not become local, but instead appears as linked to the CZ (blue person icon displays), even though the CZ portfolio no longer exists. The result is portfolios in your IZ, that look like they should be CZ linked/managed, aren't. Because the portfolios appear as CZ linked, you are unable to identify the portfolio as local through filtering/reporting and take desired follow up actions. For example, if a CZ portfolio…
52 votes -
Contributed collections - a Report to Contributor instead of Report to Ex Libris
There are many collections now that are contributed by the community. Sometimes there are errors within them and as it is now, there is no way to report that and get the linking problem (for an example) fixed and the issues can be so many that a deactivation is necessary, but then the collection becomes dead and just clutter KB. My suggestion is that when a institution contributes a collection, a mandatory field is added to the workflow of contributing. This field contains an email address. That email address is then incorporated into a button so you can report to…
128 votes -
Community-Managed electronic collections: Add several portfolios to one title
In Community-Managed electronic collections, it is not possible to contribute a second portfolio to the same title that is pointing to a different URL. Use case: Both URLs are valid, both contain copies (in part) of the journal. It would be nice, if the contribution only gets blocked, if the URL of the newly contributed portfolio is identical to the existing one.
34 votes -
Flag AI created resources
As an electronic resources access manager, I would like to propose functionality be created to identify when a resources was created all or partially by artificial intelligence.
More content is being created by AI and it is getting harder and harder to detect. Gobi now has "AI-generated" as a tag under "interdisciplinary topics" when purchasing books (screenshot attached) and it would be great if Alma could do something similar to alert users when they are looking through institutions catalogs of resources.
I am not sure if this idea is for Alma only or Alma and Primo but it would be…
21 votes -
Add "linking information" in Community zone databases when they are not activated yet
Hello,
When I look in the Community Zone at an electronic Portfolio that has not been activated by us yet, I can click on "Linking Information" and test the link and control if it goes where we want it to go.Unfortunately, this is not possible yet, when we want to look at a zero title database. There, we actually can only test the link after we have activated it.
Therefore, I suggest adding the field "Linking information" on database level, too, for databases that are not activated yet; analogous to the field that exists on portfolio level.
Best,
Igor…36 votes -
Add/remove public notes for electronic collection notes in bulk
If there are known access issues with one specific provider, it would be useful to add / remove a note to all electronic collections, which an institution may have for this provider / interface at once. At present, we have to edit all collections for providers individually if we want to add the same public note for all.
15 votes -
Improve the Update Inventory Import Profile so that it can add standalone portfolios to electronic collection
When using the GOBI API to create e-book orders, we've chosen to not match to CZ collections, and prefer to use vendor provided marc records loaded via an update inventory import profile. The GOBI API creates standalone portfolios when PO lines are created. The Update inventory import profile lacks the ability to update standalone portfolios with electronic collection information.
If the Inventory tab > electronic resource mapping > portfolio type is set to part of an electronic collection, but the inventory in Alma is standalone, the import job will update the bib record but not the portfolio and yield the…
21 votes -
Alma Show Access Type value (e.g. Perpetual ) in Alma brief view search for Electronic Collections
Please show Access Type in Alma brief view search for Electronic Collections.
Access Type is quite important, since it may be not only Current but also Perpetual or Current and Perpetual. From the brief view many operation, included deletion, can be performed. Having this information at first glance, if possible together with a warning on deletion attempt as suggested here ( https://ideas.exlibrisgroup.com/forums/308173-alma/suggestions/42179845-prevent-deletion-of-portfolios-with-access-type-pe ) may help preventing accidental deletion of important perpetual assets.40 votes -
Import Profiles - support mapping to E-Collection
See https://enhancements.exlibrisusers.org/ideas/AENH-I-36318
We need the ability to map to Electronic Collection. Because you cannot map to E-Collection, you have to have a separate profile for each collection for which you want to load portfolios. This dramatically increases the number of profiles we need to maintain. In addition, this requires more staff to have the ability to modify import profiles, even though the only thing changing each time is the collection name.
Mapping either the collection name (exact match) or the collection ID would be sufficient. This will enable more uniform loading of records.
25 votes -
Display access model in All-titles basic search results
When you are performing a market search, the access model shows up on the holdings records if they are either attached to the POL or have been manually added to the record. This is incredibly useful and time-saving for searching! When doing an All-titles search, you have to click into the record in order to access that information. This line for access model can be easily added to the listed metadata in the All-titles results page. See attached screenshot
4 votes -
"Interface name" field separate from Vendor records
Have an option for the "Interface name" field in local electronic collections to be independent of Vendor records. Our vendor records are itegrated with multiple systems outside of Alma (such as our HR software, Workday). We would like to use the "Interface name" field for display purposes/logic, and possibly reporting in Analytics, but we're limited with it only be populated by Vendor records.
4 votes -
Display NZ activated Portfolios even if Related Records Services are enabled in an IZ
In our consortial environement, we have activaded a number of portfolios on NZ level, which we would then expect to also be available in our IZs. Often this is not the case and instead of a specific article that is part of the portfolio, only the journal it belongs to is displayed under Services for Related Titles. As Ex Libris informed us, this is because Related Records Services are activated in our consortium, which leads the link resolver to display those related journals instead of checking if there is an NZ activated portfolio. Their solution to this would be to…
73 votes -
Display Open Access Indicator based on Setting at the Portfolio Level
Currently, the Open Access (OA) indicator displays in Community Zone records when the record contains a 506 field with the following formatting:
506 0_ $f Unrestricted online access $2 star
Records in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) collection are automatically enriched with this data, but not records in any other collection. The rationale is that the OA indicator may appear on records that are not available as OA in all collections, leading to a confusing display. However, this can lead to cases where institutions do have OA access, but cannot display the OA indicator.
To avoid both of…
193 votes -
Contribute URL Type (Override) to community-managed collections when contributing portfolio changes
I locally changed the Free E- journals link for bioRxiv (PID: 53441287610000041) to a dynamic URL:
IF(rft.doi)
https://doi.org/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_id=info:doi/{rft.doi}
IF()
https://www.biorxiv.org/This allows the links on all the bioRxiv CDI records to go directly to the article. However, I can't contribute this change to the community because the "URL type (override)" won't go with it. So, my idea is to include that setting with any portfolio changes contributed via community-managed collections. This will allow the community to write more dynamic URLs and perhaps get those Free E- Journals links to link directly to articles, rather than to the journal's homepage.
3 votes -
Add purchase model to more auto-holdings.
It is great to have purchase model added automatically for Ebook Central og JSTOR Books holdings, and it would be even better if we could get purchase model also when using auto-holdings for publishers such as Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, Taylor & Francis and de Gruyter. We have evidence based acquisition agreements with all of these publishers and it would be very helpful if we could see which titles were in the EBA corpus and which we have purchased, either through the EBA or by earlier collection purchases.
108 votes -
Improve search "electronic titles" to include results with and without inventory
At the moment, when using the search "electronic titles" only titles with inventory can be found. Apparently, this is by design. It would be an obvius improvement to be able to find all electronic titles regardless of inventory when using this search.
30 votes -
Link single or selected local portfolios in a CZ collection to the community instead of all local portfolios in a CZ collection
Currently, when linking local portfolios in a CZ collection to the Community Zone (CZ) using “Link Local Portfolios to Community”, it is only possible to run the job on all local portfolios in that collection, rather than just a single portfolio or a selection of portfolios. (Linking a single portfolio only works for stand-alone portfolios, not for local portfolios in a CZ collection).
It would be useful if an option could be added to link a single local portfolio in a CZ collection to the CZ. Also, it would be helpful if the "Link Local Portfolios to Community" option in…
9 votes -
royal society of chemistry gold 2026
Please advise on the ETA on when the Royal Society of Chemistry Gold 2026 package will be loaded into the Community Zone for activation. The vendor rep I am in communication with has mentioned that they are currently in progress to send EXL their 2026 files. It would be great to know when to expect it to be available for activation. Thank you!
3 votes -
Add a filter to remove consortia-specific e-collections from CZ search results OR remove consortia from "Interface" facet
It would really improve the CZ search experience (when looking for the right package from the large publishers of e-journal/e-book packages) if there was a way to toggle off the results from all of the consortia-specific e-collections. For large publishers like Springer, the consortial results completely overwhelm the search results.
OR, at the very least, to separate consortial names from the "Interface" facet - these consortial names aren't actual interfaces - the links in these collections go to publisher platforms. Would it be possible to tag the consortia name in some other way? In a new field?
9 votes
- Don't see your idea?