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- Answerable using Alma Analytics? NO
- Consult your campus office of Institutional Research and the Common Data Set
- FTE is based on credit hours in a 12-month period (for semester schools, 30 = 1 undergrad; 24 = 1 grad)
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Library Trends and Alma Migration: Potential Imact on Reported Data
Q: Media counts appear to be increasing and Physical Serials counts decreasing over last year. Is this expected? Where else might we expect to see significant changes?
A: Increases and decreases in particular formats are likely because of the following widespread trends:
- Libraries are increasingly expected to support media needs--some physical (e.g. DVD movies) but mostly streaming (e.g. Kanopy, Docuseek2, Films on Demand, Naxos Music Library)
- Therefore I would expect to see media counts increase year over year
- Libraries are increasingly expected to reduce their physical collections to make room for other services, and a major way to accomplish this is by withdrawing print journal runs
- Therefore I would expect to see physical journal counts decrease year over year
- I would also expect to see a general decline in the number of physical volumes reported
- Libraries are increasingly (though not entirely) preferring electronic formats over print
- Therefore I would expect to see a decrease in physical titles and an increase in electronic titles year over year
Q: What changes in reported data might result from the Alma migration?
A: It is difficult to estimate the impact of the Alma migration on collection counts, but the following factors may be involved:
- Libraries may have re-calibrated their collection counts for items like physical journal volumes due to the barcoding projects many campuses undertook as part of the migration process
- Libraries may have conducted physical inventory and/or major database cleanup projects that resulted in purging a significant number of bibliographic records
- Libraries may have added holdings and/or items to collections that did not require them in the legacy system (e.g. special collections, government documents, or microforms)
- The counting method for e-books and e-journals differs slightly from the old methods used to derive the data from SFX, Serials Solutions, or ILS records
Q: What wording would be useful if we need a standard/generic explanation for this for every library?
A: If the reported data has changed significantly, individual campuses should supply a clarifying comment. However, the following generic comment will cover most situations:
- “Due to the ILS migration to the new Unified Library Management System - Alma this year, methods for calculating this data have changed."