Nov/Dec 2019 ULMS Update

Created by brandon dudley (Unlicensed)
Dec 18, 2019
7 min read

 

Project Management



  • Finished ULMS satisfaction survey conducted over October and November assessing satisfaction with ExL, Alma and Primo amongst library deans, staff and governance committees. The results have been shared with COLD and Ex Libris and will be used to inform our contract renewal discussions in 2020

  • Reorganizing Confluence in January to improve usability and discovery of materials. Philosophy for sharing all documentation past and present remains intact.

 

Analytics

Working Group



  • SUSHI Survey - all but two campuses participated. Findings: Most campuses are currently utilizing Alma for SUSHI harvesting and/or plan to implement more widely in the future, contingent upon vendor support. The delay in Ex Libris' COUNTER5 support is a major impediment. Some are also gathering COUNTER data in spreadsheets, while some rely on vendor websites (EBSCO) or other aggregate services (RedLink). Contact/demographic data was also collected. Results were shared with the ERM Committee and will be used to inform best practices and policy recommendations.

  • ULMS Survey for Analytics & Assessment submitted. Issues noted were:

    • Scalability - particularly in NZ

    • Data availability - Not all data is exposed through ETL. Tighter integration between the way data is organized and presented in Alma and reported on in Analytics is desired.

    • Primo Analytics - An underdeveloped product (Google Analytics is the standard). There is doubt about the reliability of current reports.

    • Course reserves - Available reports are unsatisfactory.

  • Completing initial review of the centrally shared vendors’ COUNTER 5 compliance/transition date documentation. This draft will help reference important information once ALMA can handle COUNTER 5. Crosswalk documentation has been developed and will be published to Confluence.

  • Mapping workflows for staff and ERM/Systems Librarians that want to implement SUSHI at this time.

  • NZ ACRL report issues - NZ ACRL reports for electronic resources (e.g. 42b) which rely on the "Available for Group Members" dimension are failing due to a longstanding issue. Ex Libris is aware and alternate reports have been provided in the interim.

Resource Management

Working Group



  • LCSH Illegal aliens update- COLD has approved the proposed approach for addressing this problematic LCSH term.

  • NZ Management Group update-  In the October cleanup of bibs without inventory, 85,394 e-resources records were deleted and 35,241 physical resources records were deleted. The NZ Management Group will meet soon to discuss whether we should perform the e-resources records cleanup more frequently. We’ll also explore other potential NZ management projects.

  • ULMS Survey for Resource Management submitted. Among the general issues facing Resource Management:

    • Collection discovery is not localized in our consortium environment

    • Deduping vector in Primo could be refined for better and more precise deduping.

    • Alma terminology could be more clear, e.g. “copy to catalog” can mean either “copy to IZ” or “unlink from NZ”, depending on the context.

    • More precise conditions for advanced searching desired (for all indexes), e.g. does not contain, not equal to, etc

  • The committee has decided to reconvene the Authority Control Task Force. Yvonne and Israel will work on updating the charge. We expect a call for members to go out some time mid-January.

  • Committee member Carole Chapman will request three additional item record material types (Archival material, Broadside, Poster) via a Salesforce case. If Ex Libris adds these, it will have a minor impact in Primo, as the new item record material types would display (unless you have implemented the customized GetIt menu) under request options.

  • The committee began a discussion about the possibility of enabling headings enrichment at the NZ level in Alma. This is a content option in the Alma->Primo publishing profile that enriches the MARC record sent to Primo with variant name and subject headings. Enabling this option has the potential to enhance discovery, as it would allow a user to type in a variant heading (e.g. Ballot measures or Ballot initiatives instead of the authorized heading Referendum) when doing a subject search, and retrieve results. 



Acquisitions & ERM

Chancellor’s Office



  • Updated ERM policies and procedure on the wiki. 

  • Discussed using CDI in the NZ with the ERM Committee.  Recommendation is to leave the activation of resources to each institution. 

  • Updated all of the Network Zone Gale e-collection names to match the new names given by Cengage GaleGroup.  The public names now match what Gale displays on their site.

  • Mallory helping ERM maintenance and troubleshooting in the NZ for the month of December.

Working Groups

Acquisitions:



ERM:

  • Discussed the change from PCI to CDI. The ERM committee recommends that we leave CDI activation to each institution. 

  • Almost finished taking inventory. Working on updating several ERM pages within the ULMS wiki.

  • Working on a possible Open Forum session on ERM workflows.



Resource Sharing

Chancellor’s Office



  • Troubleshooting unexpected due date issues at Fresno and making up analytics report to find any outstanding issues

  • Working with Joe Adkins to communicate with Unity and UCIrvine re: starting courier service between the CSUs and UCI

  • Gather and deliver feedback on the Rapido kickoff meeting

  • Troubleshooting Issues

    • Evaluating instance of CSU+ requests being created for Sonoma when they do not have available inventory

    • Tracking down reason for system-cancelled CSU+ requests at San Marcos

    • Investigating instances of graduated students placing CSU+ requests at Humboldt

    • Investigating and explaining locate failed requests occurring at Maritime

    • Helping SDSU with reactivating a request that was completed by mistake

    • Investigating mis-match between item requested and item sent at Monterey Bay

  • Creating and distributing NZ logins

  • Updating and distributing CSU+ holiday closure guidelines

  • Working with Natalya Magazino at San Marcos to create CSU+ ACRL/IPEDS reports, saving them in the folder maintained by the analytics committee 

Working Group



  • Held a joint meeting with the Fulfilment Functional Committee in regard to CSU+ loan periods (extention or renewals).  We solicited ideas and concerns and received some good feedback to use as a starting point for what data we need to collect.  

  • Started a discussion on revamping RSFC’s Confluence space. We discovered that there were some common Alma procedures our people need to know about that weren’t covered yet on Confluence, even though we all thought they had been.  Next steps are to actually get to the editing and improvement of our Confluence space.

  • Many RSFC members + our CO Ex Officio Mallory DeBartolo went to Minneapolis for the Next Gen Resource Sharing (Rapido) Partnership Kickoff Meeting.

  • Started investigating some interesting things in Alma’s new release.  

    • Notification Email Delay is of interest because this has been a problem with CSU+ from day 1. The delay will help prevent patrons from coming to pick up their CSU+ requests before they are actually processed and ready for checkout. The RSFC will write instructions for configuring and post on Confluence.  

    • Alma can now talk to ILLiad through API.  This is useful for ILLiad as lender of last resort if CSU+ cannot fill.  API should be simpler to setup and in theory more secure. San Marcos will begin testing the Alma ILLiad API for pushing CSU+ requests into ILLiad (lender of last resort) on December 16th.

  • Replaced UC Davis with UC Irvine as a courier delivery stop.  Earlier this year we did a study across the CSUs to see how were our most common UC ILL partners.   A new contract with Unity was recently signed and switching these two UCs was asked for.

  • Started discussion on establishing system-wide reciprocal agreements with UCs, at least those within our courier agreement. We first need to find out what reciprocal agreements already exist between the CSUs and UCs. Many RS folks don’t know which UCs charge them so Meghann and Natalya are developing a query that RS folks can run in ILLiad to determine which UCs are charging them and how much. We will collect this data and then determine how to go about approaching the UCs.

  • Natalya and Meghann presented on CSU Resource Sharing statistics for FY 18/19 using self-reported data from CSU Resource Sharers as well as data retrieved from Alma Analytics and RapidILL.The presentation as well as the raw data are accessible via the I-SPIE website: https://ispiecsu.wordpress.com/statistics/

  • The I-SPIE TV group has been creating demo videos for CSU+ basics that can be used for new hires and substitutes.

  • We created a document listing each CSU Resource Sharing department’s holiday closure period so that we can notify Unity of when not to make deliveries. Mallory sent this information to Unity.



Fulfillment

Chancellor’s Office



  • Researching “course icon” appearing in Primo for items even when the given institution does not have the item on reserve

  • Distributing configuration info to check for active patron status before they can create requests

Working Group



  • Course Reserves interviews of the system have concluded. The information needs to be compiled to we can see similarities and differences between campuses, find stand-out programs, and determine which projects, programs, and procedures could be shared with the larger community early next year.

  • Work with the Resource Sharing Committee is ongoing and analytics are being created to determine the average amount of time a CSU+ item is on loan, overdue and possibly re-requested.

  • We had our Open Forum on 11/7 discussing Letters/Notices, Purging Users and new release highlights. The recording of the open forum can be found here.

  • Discussion of future open forums have included Course Reserves highlights and sharing and integrating fines & fees with campus SIS/Bursar’s office.

Discovery

Chancellor’s Office



  • Leading Renorm and Custom UResolver projects.

Working Group



  • We’re interested in campuses testing the new Custom UResolver (Get it menu).  The testing page includes some test scenarios and a feedback form to report any problems.

  • Renorm 2019-B will kick-off on December 29, 2019, and wrap-up around January 1, 2020.  This includes changing the ‘Illegal aliens’ subject heading to ‘Undocumented immigrants’, as already mentioned above, better alignment of resource types in advanced search and facets, normalization of subject lateral links for improved retrieval, and a plethora of minor changes and tweaks to search, display, and dedupe rules.

  • The Discovery functional committee held its first open forums for the year in late October and November. David presented on Git, GitHub, and updating the Central Package.  And Zach, Ian, and David shared how to test and provide feedback on the custom Get It menu.

  • The Discovery Steering Committee met to discuss priorities and projects for the year. We are identifying the status of our current projects, as well as looking for additional features to possibly develop this upcoming year.