When Ex Libris decided to make the default for Publish to OCLC as "Publish", they also intended to do the same for Libraries Australia. However, We successfully argued that this was not the option that most Australian libraries would prefer. That's why it is the opposite from OCLC. This is from memory, as the change was made quite a long time ago, and I don't think may libraries worldwide were using the publish to OCLC option in Alma at that time (May 2015).

I agree with my colleagues that we should have the ability to determine which records are automatically marked for publication. Currently, there are cases where batches of records require special handling to correct the wrongly set management tag. Without proper monitoring and execution, this results in erroneous publication to OCLC, which requires corrective measures afterwards.

We want this because the only times that we create records, they're all in categories we wouldn't want to publish anyway: reserves, streaming videos and ebooks that we can't loan and so don't want to attach WorldCat holdings to, temporary records for ordering.

I’ve been directed here by Ex Libris after putting in documentation feedback that I couldn’t see any information on expectation of a default for ‘Export to Libraries Australia’, which appears to be ‘Don’t Publish’. We want autonomy to be able to decide for ourselves what records are marked automatically to be externally published, and not be forced to have our records marked to publish to OCLC and not to Libraries Australia. MD Editor Templates are hardcoded to this as well. Also, the MARC21 Bibliographic Normalize on Save task options for both OCLC and Libraries Australia do not work (closed Pending Work Plan case from 2018). The only options are trying to catch as many records as you can by import profile management tag settings and endlessly creating sets and running manual jobs. This seems ridiculous for a LMS which purports to support us with the ability to streamline by automating our work. It seems like that’s only true when what we want happens to match what Ex Libris wants.

I would also like it if there were a configuration setting that would allow us to indicate whether OR not we wanted CZ records to automatically have the management tag of Publish Bibliographic records to OCLC. Since Alma documentation notes that many libraries seem to prefer setting their electronic holdings via OCLC Worldshare's KB, it would be really nice to use the OTB Bibliographic data synch without having to run jobs to change the management tag on new CZ records to do not publish. Alternatively, I could see a simple checkbox setting in the publishing profile to include or ignore electronic resources.

We do submit records to OCLC, but need to implement more complex selection than is supported by the basic Alma approach wrt which records are published at what point. We will be setting the Export to WorldCat management tag via a series of queries and jobs to set the tag to the value(s) we need that will be run prior to each run of the publishing job(s). It would be far preferable for us for the default in all cases, including records saved in the ME to be "Do not publish" so that we don't need to worry about tags that may be set sooner than we want.

This is also a concern for libraries that export records from OCLC into Alma, rather than publish records to OCLC. The records we bring in from OCLC have the "Don't Publish" tag, but our shared templates for creating bibliographic records (mainly used by acquisitions for placeholders when ordering) have the default "Publish Bib" and we are unable to change that. We'd like that default to be configurable.

The default when creating a new marc21 bib is for the management tag 'Force export to WorldCat' to be set to 'Publish bib'. This applies even when the Library isn't a member of OCLC. I'd like the default behaviour to be configurable so that 'Don't publish' can be set as default by those libraries who choose not to do so. In our case this would then mirror our existing stock, which was migrated from our previous LMS/ILS with the tag set to 'Don't publish'. In turn if a Library chose to join OCLC at a later date all items would have the same management tag rather than having a mixture of the two.