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29 results found

  1. offer true author/creator browse

    Currently Alma offers browsing bib headings with using "names" type - which includes also headings from 600/610/611.
    We find it more useful to have a way to browse by author/creator headings without the subject name fields (relevant 1xx and 7xx without 6xx).

    263 votes
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    Completed  ·  Dana Moshkovits responded

    Alma enables you to browse bibliographic headings to support various cataloging workflows. You can browse by author name, subject, series, and title.
    As of November release for cases when a person appears both as a creator and as a subject (i.e., ‘Agatha Christie’ might be both the subject and an author), you can select between the following methods of mapping the MARC 21 fields 600, 610, 611:
    Names – (existing options) When browsing bibliographic headings using this option, the 6XX fields appear under Names.
    Subjects – (existing options) When browsing bibliographic headings using this option, the 6XX fields are not found.
    Names (without MARC21 600/610/611) – (new option) When browsing using this option, the 6XX fields are not found.
    Subjects (with MARC21 600/610/611) – (new option). When browsing using this option, the 6XX fields appear under Subjects.

    For more information please see Alma November Release Notes:
    https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Release_Notes/2020/Alma_2020_Release_Notes

  2. Authority jobs & authority control task list - ability to exclude certain categories of records from authorisation

    Some records are necessarily brief and are not fully catalogued, for example records for Resource Sharing requests, and new records for items that are On Order and haven't yet been catalogued. We would like to exclude such records from the authority linking process and from the Authority Control Task List, to ensure that the Task List only includes records that we really do need to check. If the authorisation process could be configurable to allow us to exclude categories of records, the Task List would be a much more usable feature in Alma.

    241 votes
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    Completed  ·  Dana Moshkovits responded

    The Authority Control task list is used to monitor and manage the authority control process in relation to the institution’s bibliographic records. It is now possible to facet authority control messages related to bibliographic records that are linked to the Community Zone, which is helpful when you do not want to monitor the authority control process for these records. See Using the Authority Control Task List for more information.
    Ability to define events that should be reported separately is planned and will be supported in future release.

  3. Edit an authority record when cataloging a bibliographic record

    Here is an enhancement request concerning authorities.

    Currently, when cataloging a bibliographic record in the metadata editor, we can press F3 in a field to choose an authority.

    Example :
    MARC21 field 100 -> F3 to choose an author authority.

    When pressing F3, the cataloger can :
    - select an authority
    - view an authority

    I would like ExLibris to add a third option :
    - edit authority

    (for example : after clicking on "view" an autor authority, I want to be able to edit it to add a field 4xx)

    Thanks for taking this into account!

    204 votes
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  4. Include authority cross-references in Browse Bib Headings

    The very useful Browse Bib Headings tool includes only information from bib records. It would be extremely useful if it also included authority cross-references for controlled headings, similar to how the Primo browse works. This way, if a user tries to use the Browse Bib Headings and enters the non-preferred term, the cross-reference will let them know that they need to search on the preferred term.

    194 votes
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  5. Generate accession number by using keystroke combination

    Generation an accession number in 852$$h can only be done by using the menu (tools -> MARC21 holdings -> generate accession number), we would prefer a keystroke combination. It would reduce the clicking enormously!

    142 votes
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  6. Authority control task list - ability to exclude certain MARC fields and authority vocabularies

    We would like to be able to configure or filter the Authority Control Task List so that only the vocabularies that we authorise are included in the list. Also, it would be useful to be able to exclude or filter out selected MARC fields from the list to make the list more manageable. At present the only way to filter the list is to export it to Excel, which means that you can't work on records directly from the list. A configurable or filter-able list would be much more user-friendly.

    136 votes
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  7. Add the possibility to open more than one record in MD editor

    On a search result list, I can click on 'edit' to open a record in MD editor. If I want to open more than one record in MD editor, I need to click 'edit' for the first record, click 'Back' on the MD editor screen, click 'edit' of the next record an so forth.
    I would be nice if more than one record could be selected to open in MD editor.

    119 votes
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  8. Delete multiple MARC fields after they are highlighted / selected in Metadata Editor

    At the moment, you can select multiple MARC fields when you hold down CTRL, as can be seen by the fields highlighted in BLUE in the attached screenshot.

    However, when one attempts to remove them (CTRL+F6), only the first field is deleted.

    This is a request to delete all highlighted fields

    117 votes
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  9. Add OCLC number to physical item export

    Large scale weeding projects would be made much more efficient if Alma offered the ability to include OCLC numbers in the physical items set export details. Currently, we are in the position of using a work-around where we must create a title-level set based on the same items. There are bib-level elements present in the physical item export, so we assume this is possible. Ultimately, we would prefer the option to select which fields export for every export we perform, but the addition of OCLC number to physical item exports would be a great first step. 

    95 votes
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  10. Add full browse functionality to the F3 authority search in the metadata editor

    The recent browse of authority headings found in the bibliographic catalogue is very useful, as is the further enhancement to edit records associated with a heading.

    If similar functionality was added to the F3 search in the metadata editor, this would be a great improvement. The current search is very prescriptive and contains a list of headings that contain an exact match on what has been entered. This makes finding the correct heading difficult, especially for complex author/title authority records or headings. We are finding that our cataloguers are searching Connexion or LC Authorities Online, then having to type the…

    71 votes
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  11. “Pushing” sets of records from an Institution Zone to the Network Zone (consortial environment)

    In some cases (actually quite regularly) we are facing the following problem in our Alma Network configuration. Using a normalization rule, we want to make bulk changes to a set of bibliographic records (stored in the Network Zone) where this set can only be built in the Institution Zone because the query uses search criteria from either localized fields in the bibliographic record or from the inventory (holdings, items, portfolio, …). Building the query and saving the set in the IZ is obviously not a problem but running normalization rules on NZ bibliographic records from within an IZ is. Non-localized…

    69 votes
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  12. Increase size of MD Editor main panel

    The Metadata editing window (main panel) is really small compared to the rest of the screen. Dragging and dropping the panes does not have much effect. There is also the Full Screen functionality which only widens the editing screen. The problem is that it should extend the view of the fields in the length. We would like to see more fields of the record at one time. The panels at the top and bottom of the screen are very wide, so there is plenty of space to make more room for the actual editing.

    52 votes
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  13. Create a Physical Titles or Physical Items set from a list of MMS IDs

    It is possible to create an All Titles set from a list of MMS IDs, but not a Physical Titles or Physical Items set. To run certain jobs – like Change Holdings Information – a Physical Titles set is required. In order to run this job on a list of MMS IDs, you must first create an All Titles set, then extract some other key like OCLC #, then create a Physical Titles set from that list, and only then can you run your job. Since all physical titles and items DO have MMS IDs, it should be possible to…

    40 votes
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  14. Provide ability to "Catalog set" and "Filter set" on sets of authorities

    Under 'Manage Sets' we are able to send sets of less than 30 bibliographic records directly to the Metadata Editor by clicking 'Catalog set'. We can also filter sets of less than 30 bibliographic records using indication rules by clicking "Filter set". These functionalities are not available for sets of authority records.

    Existing authorities often will not be available to cataloguers using F3 if there are any coding mismatches from what Alma expects. This is much too big of a job to handle manually.

    It would greatly improve authority control, especially cleaning up old authorities, to be able to filter…

    32 votes
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    Completed  ·  Dana Moshkovits responded

    For better management of local authority records, the following new options are now available:

    Catalog Set – A set of local authorities records can be opened in the MD Editor for cataloging.
    Filter Set – You can filter a set of local authority records using indication rules to create a subset of records with only the records that pass the indication rules conditions.
    For more information please see Alma November Notes:
    https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Release_Notes/010_2019/Alma_2019_Release_Notes

  15. cataloging level defaults

    We have cataloging levels enabled in Alma. We would like the default for imports to be higher than the lowest level. Currently, all imports from import and integration profiles are assigned the lowest level, and the only way to change them is to run a job after importing.

    30 votes
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  16. Use the same font and formatting in the MD Editor and View Versions pane

    Alma currently uses a different font in the View Versions display than that used in the MD Editor. The records are also formatted differently, with the field number being center justified against the corresponding field, rather than the number appearing at the beginning of the field. Line spacing is also different between the two versions.

    These design issues make comparing two versions of a record side-by-side much more difficult than it should be.

    Please use the same font and formatting in both the MD Editor and the View Versions record display. The use of shading in alternate fields (as in…

    26 votes
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  17. Prevent 9xx local fields from being saved to Community Zone (CZ) records

    There is a known issue of some sites not adhering to the Community Zone (CZ) Contribution Guidelines and Community Catalog Standards.
    An example of this is the addition of local 9xx fields to CZ records.
    Ex Libris already uses a normalization routine to validate CZ records which are changed by customers.
    However, this routine does not specifically prevent the addition of local 9xx fields, even though the guidelines are clear that only changes which benefit the broader community should be made.

    Use case:
    This has been a longstanding issue, but has been fixable in the Primo Back Office to an…

    24 votes
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  18. There should be a way for institutions to share normalization rules amongst each other.

    Currently each institution makes his own normalization rules and no one else can take advantage of the "cool tricks" and "advanced formulations" done. There should be a method similar to the very useful and popular one done in analytics, where there is a "community" folder in which institutions can share. In analytics reports are shared among all of the live institutions, saving time and effort. Something similar should be done for the normalization rules. We now have a huge pool of existing reports libraries share. Libraries copy reports from other libraries and then when necessary make local changes. This would…

    19 votes
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  19. We expect UNIMARC and CNMARC tag 100 could be treated as a Control Field in NRs like MARC 008 field.

    We have an issue with UNIMARC/CNMARC field 100 which is not considered as Control Field when using Normalization Rules
    The current incorrect behavior is that the UNIMARC/CNMARC tag 100 cannot be changed using a NR for "replaceControlContents" - "Failed during compilation of drools files". Changing the NR to "replaceContents" produces no error but is not working (as 100 is a Control Field)
    We expect UNIMARC and CNMARC tag 100 could be treated as a Control Field in NRs like MARC 008 field.

    7 votes
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    A new function was added to enhance the Alma DROOLS to support the normalization of UNIMARC and CNMARC 1XX fixed position fields. As a result of the enhancement, UNIMARC and CNMARC tag 1XX are treated as Control Fields in Normalization Rules and no error messages are displayed.


    For more information please see Alma November Release Notes

  20. Ability to limit Authority Control task list to only Institution zone records

    It is overwhelming to have hundreds or thousands of records listed in the Authority Control task list every day, especially when most of them are Community Zone records that we're not supposed to change. We need to have the option to get a list of only our Institution Zone records that need to be worked on. This would save a lot of time and frustration from having to weed through the morass of Community Zone authority issues.

    4 votes
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