Alma should remove any whitespace before/after identifiers, barcodes, call numbers etc.
Alma should automatically remove any leading or trailing whitespace in user identifiers, barcodes, call numbers etc. - any kind of identifiers entered manually or via copy&paste. Barcodes that are not working, users that are not matched at login are examples of real-life malfunctions that cost us time to analyze, all caused by a simple trailing blank entered in a form. It could be easily trimmed by Alma itself with neglectible implementation effort.
Frank Lützenkirchen
shared this idea
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Christopher Thomas commented
This is probably fine for user identifiers, barcodes, etc. For MARC21 data, it is important for ExLibris to abide by input conventions specified in the MARC21 format. For example, LCCN in 010 or 776 must begin with 2 spaces for a 10 digit number or 3 spaces for an 8 digit number. Some libraries publish records to OCLC, and if the spacing is not correct for LCCN, records will fail validation in OCLC.
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Toby Teng
commented
This is still a desperately needed feature in 2024. Please consider implementing it.
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Timothy Prettyman
commented
I can't believe this is not being done! This is a "fix a defect" request, not an enhancement request.
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Evan Marzahn
commented
Particularly frustrating since some parts of Alma (e.g. some search fields) seem to ignore leading/trailing whitespace, while others don't. I wish it were consistent.
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Dean Lingley commented
Ditto on this one. Trying to create a physical item set using a set of barcodes and 22,000 wouldn't match up... come to find out they all have a space stored at then end of them. Alma should fix this automatically,