Alma documentation states that Alma supports the following Edifact message types – INVOIC, ORDERS, OSTENQ, ORDRSP, ORDCHG. However our old LMS Aleph supported an additional Edifact message type called DESADV.

This allowed our serials agent, Ebsco, to check in our journals in on the LMS remotely via EDI once our monthly consolidated deliveries of print journals were despatched from the warehouse.

Provided our prediction patterns matched the PIA line this worked efficiently. An example of EDI text is as below:-

LIN+1'
PIA+5+0001-4788(2012)42?:1;1-9:SI::28'
IMD+L+050+:::ACCOUNTING AND BUSINESS RESEARCH'
QTY+12:1'
RFF+SNL:52280023'
RFF+SNA:52280023'

The above essentially means that for order no 52280023 (linking to order no. RFF+SNL and SFF+SNA lines), check in Vol. 42, 2012, Issue 1, pp.1-96, for ISBN 0001-4788 (PIA additional product ID line)

This is an urgent improvement required and it is highly unusual that such a powerful market leader as Alma does not provide this service, which is pretty standard in much more basic systems. Since upgrading to Alma we have had to re-introduce a manual workflow which had been completely automated for the last 10 years.

Best wishes,

Neil O'Brien
Acquisitions Librarian
James Hardiman Library
National University of Ireland Galway

Phone: 00353 91 493338
Email: neil.obrien@nuigalway.ie