Allow CZ records to preserve or support local subject access for non-english indexing
We would like Alma to support a stable and sustainable solution for managing local subject access in Community Zone records.
Currently, when CZ records are updated, subject fields (65X) may be overwritten or removed. Although local fields can now be recovered in local indexes, this doesn't solve the core issue: subject access in our language is lost from the standard 65X fields, and this information becomes invisible to our consortial members.
We manage a large and continuously growing volume of electronic records, and the loss of controlled subject access has a significant impact. We have already identified more than 6.000 titles where subject headings that had previously been indexed were lost due to CZ updates. This number continues to grow over time.
We propose the following improvements:
Allow institutions to protect specific subject fields (e.g., 65X) in CZ-linked records from being overwritten by CZ updates.
Provide a supported mechanism to map local subject fields into standard 65X fields without those fields being lost during synchronization.
This is not merely a local customization issue, it affects discovery quality and multilingual access. As electronic collections continue to grow, this limitation increasingly impacts metadata quality and user experience.
We believe Alma should support multilingual and locally controlled subject access in CZ workflows in a sustainable way, without forcing institutions to rely on workarounds or repeated data recovery processes.
Thank you for considering this enhancement.
joana
shared this idea