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Background

This best practice document applies to resources purchased and managed by individual campuses. Once electronic resources are activated within Alma, they need to be updated from time to time to reflect changes to access details and dates of availability. There is a cooperative element to this process due to the availability of information in the Community Zone and the likelihood of changes to affect multiple CSU campuses. However, centrally acquired resources will also be managed and updated centrally, so individual libraries will generally only be editing collection and portfolio level information that applies to their own library's IZ.

Policy Statement

These are the best practices for maintaining and updating e-resources and portfolios that are already activated in Alma. This would be for updating date thresholds, activating or removing portfolios, updating parse parameters (jkeys/bkeys/URLs) and updating linking parameters.

Often it is necessary to make local changes to linking and availability information for e-resources when the information from the community zone is either inaccurate or does not match local details. While this localization is sometimes required, always keep in mind that updates to the CZ information may come later, so be sure to look carefully at update notes when localized information is involved.

Best practice recommendations

Updating date coverage for portfolio

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When editing a portfolio, enter the “Linking Information” tab. If you’re entering a journal level URL, you will probably need to use the Bulk::BULK parser, that is likely already selected. To update the link, enter a new parameter in the Parser Parameters (override) field with the syntax jkey=http://www.website.org

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Even with some vendor-specific parsers, an update to the parser parameter may be fairly straightforward. For example, for an ABC-CLIO ebook portfolio using the ABC::ABC parser, the parameter is just the ISBN. If you notice a typo in the ISBN, you might just correct it using the Parser Parameters (override) field and the following syntax: bkey=9781440829918

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The most important consideration with notes is how you will find and use them later on. When searching for portfolios or collections with these notes, it is strongly recommended that you used the advanced search rather than a simple search. This is because of the duplication of search indexes from portfolios and electronic collection services in the simple search drop down of fields. For example, when conducting a simple search for an electronic portfolio, you will likely see “internal description” appear twice, but there is no indication of whether it’s the portfolio internal description or the service internal description. However, the advanced search makes this distinction much clearer.

Simple search


Advanced Search

Procedures in Alma

Many of the topics here, as well as some others related to local collections (rather than thosed pulled from the CZ) are discussed in the Alma Ask an Expert videos on eResource Architecture and Concepts, Parts One and Two.

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