Background Individual e-books can be ordered using GOBI for several e-collections. Prior to Alma migration, for all but two e-book subaccounts, orders and e-book holdings were created manually to accommodate the single record approach and because e-book holdings could not be created using the order loader. While two e-book subaccounts had the order loader turned on to load orders and invoices, they required a lot of manual clean up for every title loaded. Best practice in Alma - implemented 7/6/2021 Contact the Dataloads Librarian to script Import Profiles to automatically load orders and invoices for individual e-books. This can automatically add the community zone portfolio to the activation queue, or create a local portfolio when the CZ portfolio does not (yet) exist. Past practice in Alma Manually create order and activate e-book, as documented below. This process was sunset on 7/5/2021 PLEASE NOTE: Alma uses the multiple record approach for electronic and print versions of a title. This means One time eBook orders via GOBI will have a separate bibliographic record and order from the print version in Alma. 
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1. Place order in GOBI
The order is placed on GOBI by a selector or acquisitions staff-member. This order will contain information on supplier/collection, number of simultaneous users and fund/budget codes, which can be used to set up the order in Alma.
If this is not the first order for this ebook, the new order will match on the existing bib record, meaning that no further additional action is needed when this happens.
2. Editing the order in Alma, if needed
The stub bib record, inactive portfolio, and order record will load overnight, following the order's placement on the GOBI platform. The turnaround time for these should be the same as for print firm orders.
Once the order record has been created in Alma by the dataload, it can be edited, if anything needs to be added or updated.
- Notifications for Patron Requests: If there is a patron request for the title, add them to the Interested Users tab.
- Search Order Lines for the title of the book
- Click Edit
- Click the Add Interested User Tab
- Enter the patron info
- Check off "Notify user upon receiving/activation"Click "Add and close"
- Notes: if useful, you can record order-specific information (like the Request Tracker ticket number) on the Notes tab by clicking "Add Notes".
- The Technical Specifications given to GOBI will include feeding the number of simultaneous users for an ebook into the portfolio note, so adding this information as a note either in the PO Line or in the portfolio should not be necessary.
3. If needed, providing the link to a patron or Access Services before the title appears in Hollis
Roughly one week following the order load in Alma, the brief bib record will be overwritten with a full record, and the portfolio will be activated automatically to appear in Hollis, there is no need to monitor the NOA notifications or to go into the e-activation task list to make the title available. These instructions provide how this may be done, if it is needed in a case by case basis.
- If a title is a rush order, and needs to be made available before the full record has loaded, once the GOBI NOA email message has arrived, and access has been confirmed:
- Locate the URL from the NOA email message
- Prepend the proxy prefix to the front of the URL to ensure it works from off campus –
http://www.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/login?url= - That would make the URL above look like this: http://www.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=1149011
- Paste this URL into a web browser, and confirm access by trying to open a chapter.
- Send this URL to the interested faculty member/reserves/requestor. Some canned text that can go with this message:
Dear (NAME),
Harvard Library has ordered the ebook title that you have requested, (TITLE). Online access to this title has been confirmed. A record for this title will appear in Hollis within the next week. Until it appears, the book may be accessed directly on the publisher's site at:
(URL).
Please report any difficulties you encounter with this title, by submitting a problem report at http://library.harvard.edu/report-problem
Sincerely,
Harvard Library Acquisitions
- NB: Because the dataloads will take a week for firm orders to appear in Hollis, selectors who would like to track the progress of their orders should be instructed to monitor them in Alma. This page on preorder searching provides several strategies for how this can be done.
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