ExLibris has deployed a helpful enhancement for articles ahead of print in Primo VE for users accessing digital resources. These articles often show as full text available in Primo VE and sometimes they are not. According to ExLibris, this occurs when an article has been indexed by a publisher but they do not yet have access to the full text. ExLibris uses the Online First label in Primo VE to alert users of articles that may or may not be available as full text as indicated in the documentation https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Content/Knowledge_Articles/Primo/Knowledge_Articles/Ahead_of_Print_(Online_First)_Articles_in_CDI.

Deploying this enhancement in some form in the Alma lending module would be helpful.

Many of the schools in our consortia have a RapidILL integration to lend and borrow digital resources. When processing a RapidILL lending request, it is a recurring issue that digital resources are identified as available to lend when the articles are not available as full text for the institution.

As with Primo VE one cause of this issue is when articles are indexed by vendors but are not available because they are ahead of print. Since RapidILL holdings are identified using publication year and journal, articles ahead of print cannot currently be identified by the system. This results in staff clicking on the provided links after choosing Download Electronic Resources and then receiving either a record with no full text, no results or an error message instead of a full text entry. No indication is given that the requested article is ahead of print in most cases. Further research is needed to determine this, such as looking at the record in Primo VE or the vendor platform.

It is important to note that some articles ahead of print are available, so using a staff visible flag in Alma would be preferable over removing these articles for availability completely as was done with Primo VE. This would assist staff in understanding why a full text article may not be available to fill a resource sharing request. This would improve workflows and quickly show why an article that is flagged as available for RapidILL but isn’t actually available.

If this flag could be displayed in the resource list on the download resources screen that would be great.