Alma Project Requests

Completed Projects List

Project requests included for prioritization/reporting require more than 16 hours of FTE time across one or more FTE.
Prioritized In Process Projects
Requester Request Date Target Completion Date Prioritized Date Size Priority Title/Scope LTS Lead Library Owner Status Update Date Impact/Status/Notes
Alma Tech Team 1/1/2017 See individual items 1/1/2017 Medium High Data updates that adversely affect workflows Laura Morse TSWG
Workflows will not be possible without key updates to data in Alma
Various Item Policy/Library changes
Item Processing Status Analysis/Cleanup (11/23)
AP will create an analysis
Pseudopatron Monitoring (11/2023)
Kara will circle back to access to inventory which IDs still have active loans
Non-arrived item cleanup (11/2023)
AP will create an analysis
Status: See underlying pages for in process items.
Alma Tech Team ongoing ongoing
Medium Medium O&M Projects Tim Elliot Various
Secure Job monitor with Harvard Key

Status: 11/23 - Is accessible to vpn tunnels only. Tim to check with Sharon about if this is required
Alma Tech Team 1/1/2017 Fall 2021 1/1/2021 Medium Medium Inscriptio Replacement Laura Morse Amy Boucher
Due to security issues with the application, this system needs to be entirely replaced. Scoping for this pojrect needs to be done ASAP. Below is initial scope:
HK integration for LTS App
Functional enhancement to use Alma API to loan carrel
Update 1/1/2021. Inscriptio now has huge technical debt and security issues and cannot be open to the public. This needs to shift to replacement of the system. Currently, LibCal Seats does not support year long appointments, and the map seat selection enhancement is not yet available.
Determine if HeyCarrel is still a need with new system.
Status: Ready. As of 3/3/2022, there is one remaining issue related to certain Frequency Limit values not working that Springshare will fix in the April release. However, we have a working configuration that prevents users from reserving more than one carrel, so this does not prevent go-live. Access Services plans to start migration of current carrel assignments the week of March 7th.
LTS 5/5/2021

Small Medium Upgrade Canvas Leganto LTI to LTI 1.3 Kara Young Spruill Harder TBD by June 2024 Upgrading Canvas Leganto LTI (available from ExLibris in June 2021).
Jason Clarke 8/6/2019

Medium Medium
Analyze EZP/ILLiad infrastructure changes required to implement automatic patron creation from SAML data
Process of SSO setup began in Fall 2023 to facilitate this data exchange.
Kara Young Jason Clarke TBD by summer 2024
Starting in ILLiad 9.1, ILLiad supports automatic user creation by leveraging authentication enhancements when requests are submitted to ILLiad from a non-registered user. This may finally allow patrons to skip the registration process when they submit an ILL or Scan and Deliver request for the first time. Here are the release notes: https://support.atlas-sys.com/hc/en-us/sections/360003610473-Pre-Release-v9-1-August-2019
(Note: Submitted in FP #37081 D&P). Significant analysis required to determine if this is possible in our environment and what data privacy concerns may be involved.

Alma EOC 3/17/2022 6/30/2023 3/17/2022 Large Medium Google and HathiTrust Discovery and Data Maintenance (Ongoing Data Flows, Data Sync) Benson Smith/Corinna Baksik Suzanne Wones 11/29/2023
Metadata flows to Hathi and Google are complete and in production. Designing process for prospective digitization projects.
Michael Hopper (Was Richard LeSage) 1/1/2022

Small Low
BDRC Collaboration 2022
(Buddhist Digital Resource Center)
Corinna Baksik Michael Hopper 11/29/2023
Test data being loaded.
Scope
Load MARC for new assets
Load new assets into DRS
Overlay local Tibetan records with OCLC, since OCLC has already updated the transliteration.
Create dark archive NET holdings for previously loaded assets
Check on 776 linking fields that have Harvard numbers. Replace with OCLC numbers to support catalog clustering. (e.g. 990142549470203941). Fix 020$z in initial batches (should be in 776)
Alma Tech Team 3/7/2019

Low Items with Item Policy 88 (Suppressed) (These display to the public) Corinna Baksik/KY
12/5/23 These items were suppressed from display in Aleph, but are displayed to the public in Alma. In Alma you can suppress entire holdings, but not individual items attached to holdings. Sometimes units have these items and just didn't want them to display to the public for misc. reasons; in other cases the libraries no longer have the item. Items with this policy are not requestable by patrons.
Chelcie Rowell 12/12/23 2/28/23
Small Medium Standardized Rights Statements for digital holdings contributed to DPLA Corinna Baksik Chelcie Rowell 12/12/23 Project is being scoped. Affects ~30k bibs and holdings.
Kate Bowers

Small Small Retrospective conversion of ETD profiles to NET ETD holdings to be consistent with new pipeline Corinna Baksik
4/23/24 Planning meeting held in April 2024. Work to be completed as time allows. Expected completion by end of May.

Requests To Be Prioritized by the Alma Executive Committee
Requestor Request Date Requested Completion Date Target Prioritization Date Size Priority Title/Scope LTS Lead Library Lead Status Update Date Impact/Status/Notes
Anne Adams 3/30/21

Medium (Suggest priority Medium) Batch tool to update sets of bibs with newer OCLC copy Corinna Baksik Anne Adams w/ Alma TSWG
When a bib already has an OCLC number, there is no straightforward way to update it with newer copy other than one at a time. This tool would allow staff to identify sets of records in Alma that are not fully cataloged, or less cataloged, and update with newer copy from OCLC.

9/22/21 - Should be reviewed post-BNS implementation to see if there is continue need.

1/1/2017

Medium Medium HFA loads Corinna Baksik

Lack of new/updated HFA data in HOLLIS
9/22/21 - ITS will review and determine if this is still a continued need.
Alma Tech Team 7/1/2017

Small Medium
Mispaired non-Latin fields flipped to vernacular
Corinna Baksik

Loss of non-Latin data in local records. (More detail on Known Issues page)
Library Kiosk Machines (increased HOLLIS logout time) 5/2019

Medium High
Ensure that all library public terminals have kiosk accounts
TBD

Issues with HK logins on shared public library terminals
This project would allow all HOLLIS users to have an increased logout time so they are not logged out after 45 min, a significant complaint from patrons and staff.

9/22/21 - Laura to move this elsewhere
ITS 7/31/2018

Medium Low Order Requests Bill Wash ITS
System is used to triage requests largely from selectors and route internally to ITS departments. Project would analyze ways to utilize Alma or other systems to replace this system.
Alma Tech Team 3/7/2019

Low Items with Item Policy 88 (Suppressed) (These display to the public) Corinna Baksik

These items were suppressed from display in Aleph, but are displayed to the public in Alma. In Alma you can suppress entire holdings, but not individual items attached to holdings. Sometimes units have these items and just didn't want them to display to the public for misc. reasons; in other cases the libraries no longer have the item. Items with this policy are not requestable by patrons.
Elizabeth Vernon 6/4/2019

? Medium API Key on LTS Server - implement service to allow proxy API access locally on an LTS server

This would allow sharing of utilities making use of write APIs while keeping the API key (and therefore Harvard data) secure. There are a number of areas where Alma write APIs could be put to valuable use at Harvard, particularly for encoding statistics information.
(D2D and other folks) (2015?)

Small Low
Holdings Public Note clean-up (852 $z)
(Not including the Consult Circ Desk notes - those will be handled as separate project)
Corinna ?
Prior to the implementation of MARC 5XX holding notes, important special collections information about binding, provenance etc. was added to the 852 |z, a generic public display note. This problem is that this info should be searchable but because it’s in 852 |z it isn’t searchable.
Special collections info from 852 |z should be moved to 5XX notes so that 1) they are indexed 2) they display better to the user. There are too many of these to do manually.

Staff may still create 852 |z notes for content that belongs elsewhere (e.g. source of acquisitions notes, etc.) so this is also a training issue.
Complete for single volume titles.
Alma Tech Team 11/14/2019

Medium Low Outstanding migration-related data cleanup TBD TBD
STA DELETED Bibs with attached STA SUPPRESSED Hols. This may be an accidental byproduct of the delete-holdings-bibs perlscript - Report (created 5/30/2018).
Suppressed holdings with active items: 266,599 / 103,609 - Report needed
Deleted bib with active holdings - Report
Convert all remaining item status 28 items to 01
Requestor Request Date Requested Completion Date Target Prioritization Date Size Priority Title/Scope LTS Lead Library Lead Status Update Date Impact/Status/Notes
Library Kiosk Machines (increased HOLLIS logout time) 5/2019

Medium High
Ensure that all library public terminals have kiosk accounts
TBD

Issues with HK logins on shared public library terminals
This project would allow all HOLLIS users to have an increased logout time so they are not logged out after 45 min, a significant complaint from patrons and staff.

9/22/21 - Laura to move this elsewhere
ITS 7/31/2018

Medium Low Order Requests Bill Wash ITS
System is used to triage requests largely from selectors and route internally to ITS departments. Project would analyze ways to utilize Alma or other systems to replace this system.
Elizabeth Vernon 6/4/2019

? Medium API Key on LTS Server - implement service to allow proxy API access locally on an LTS server

This would allow sharing of utilities making use of write APIs while keeping the API key (and therefore Harvard data) secure. There are a number of areas where Alma write APIs could be put to valuable use at Harvard, particularly for encoding statistics information.
(D2D and other folks) (2015?)

Small Low
Holdings Public Note clean-up (852 $z)
(Not including the Consult Circ Desk notes - those will be handled as separate project)
Corinna ?
Prior to the implementation of MARC 5XX holding notes, important special collections information about binding, provenance etc. was added to the 852 |z, a generic public display note. This problem is that this info should be searchable but because it’s in 852 |z it isn’t searchable.
Special collections info from 852 |z should be moved to 5XX notes so that 1) they are indexed 2) they display better to the user. There are too many of these to do manually.

Staff may still create 852 |z notes for content that belongs elsewhere (e.g. source of acquisitions notes, etc.) so this is also a training issue.
Complete for single volume titles.
Alma Tech Team 11/14/2019

Medium Low Outstanding migration-related data cleanup TBD TBD
STA DELETED Bibs with attached STA SUPPRESSED Hols. This may be an accidental byproduct of the delete-holdings-bibs perlscript - Report (created 5/30/2018).
Suppressed holdings with active items: 266,599 / 103,609 - Report needed
Deleted bib with active holdings - Report
Convert all remaining item status 28 items to 01
Alma Tech Team 12/10/21

Small Low Weed Acq records for closed libraries from Alma Corinna Baksik

A number of closed libraries remain in Alma, because the library has never weeded Acquisition records (purchase orders, invoices). LTS has removed inventory for these libraries, but the libraries themselves remained configuration in Alma because we cannot remove them while the Acq data exists. Having closed libraries in Alma causes confusion and can create unnecessary overhead during other projects. Libraries include:
GEO, closed in 2005
CEA, subsumded by Fung in 2005
SOC, closed in 2009
Hilles
BIO, closed 2007
PSY closed 2008
CHE
GRO, 2018
LIT, 2006 (still some outstanding inventory to resolve, records were suppressed but some physical inventory still exists on shelf)
Anne Adams

Project to unsuppress and adapt metadata for legacy preservation facsimiles

Info in ticket: https://harvard-lts.libanswers.com/admin/ticket?qid=11164606

Requester	Request Date	Target Completion Date	Prioritized Date	Size	Priority	Title/Scope	LTS Lead	Library Owner	Status Update Date	Impact/Status/Notes
Alma Tech Team	1/1/2017	See individual items	1/1/2017	Medium	High	Data updates that adversely affect workflows	Laura Morse	TSWG		Workflows will not be possible without key updates to data in Alma Various Item Policy/Library changes Item Processing Status Analysis/Cleanup (11/23) AP will create an analysis Pseudopatron Monitoring (11/2023) Kara will circle back to access to inventory which IDs still have active loans Non-arrived item cleanup (11/2023) AP will create an analysis Status: See underlying pages for in process items.
Alma Tech Team	ongoing	ongoing		Medium	Medium	O&M Projects	Tim Elliot	Various		Secure Job monitor with Harvard Key Status: 11/23 - Is accessible to vpn tunnels only. Tim to check with Sharon about if this is required
Alma Tech Team	1/1/2017	Fall 2021	1/1/2021	Medium	Medium	Inscriptio Replacement	Laura Morse	Amy Boucher		Due to security issues with the application, this system needs to be entirely replaced. Scoping for this pojrect needs to be done ASAP. Below is initial scope: HK integration for LTS App Functional enhancement to use Alma API to loan carrel Update 1/1/2021. Inscriptio now has huge technical debt and security issues and cannot be open to the public. This needs to shift to replacement of the system. Currently, LibCal Seats does not support year long appointments, and the map seat selection enhancement is not yet available. Determine if HeyCarrel is still a need with new system. Status: Ready. As of 3/3/2022, there is one remaining issue related to certain Frequency Limit values not working that Springshare will fix in the April release. However, we have a working configuration that prevents users from reserving more than one carrel, so this does not prevent go-live. Access Services plans to start migration of current carrel assignments the week of March 7th.
LTS	5/5/2021			Small	Medium	Upgrade Canvas Leganto LTI to LTI 1.3	Kara Young	Spruill Harder	TBD by June 2024	Upgrading Canvas Leganto LTI (available from ExLibris in June 2021).
Jason Clarke	8/6/2019			Medium	Medium	Analyze EZP/ILLiad infrastructure changes required to implement automatic patron creation from SAML data Process of SSO setup began in Fall 2023 to facilitate this data exchange.	Kara Young	Jason Clarke	TBD by summer 2024	Starting in ILLiad 9.1, ILLiad supports automatic user creation by leveraging authentication enhancements when requests are submitted to ILLiad from a non-registered user. This may finally allow patrons to skip the registration process when they submit an ILL or Scan and Deliver request for the first time. Here are the release notes: https://support.atlas-sys.com/hc/en-us/sections/360003610473-Pre-Release-v9-1-August-2019 (Note: Submitted in FP #37081 D&P). Significant analysis required to determine if this is possible in our environment and what data privacy concerns may be involved.
Alma EOC	3/17/2022	6/30/2023	3/17/2022	Large	Medium	Google and HathiTrust Discovery and Data Maintenance (Ongoing Data Flows, Data Sync)	Benson Smith/Corinna Baksik	Suzanne Wones	11/29/2023	Metadata flows to Hathi and Google are complete and in production. Designing process for prospective digitization projects.
Michael Hopper (Was Richard LeSage)	1/1/2022			Small	Low	BDRC Collaboration 2022 (Buddhist Digital Resource Center)	Corinna Baksik	Michael Hopper	11/29/2023	Test data being loaded. Scope Load MARC for new assets Load new assets into DRS Overlay local Tibetan records with OCLC, since OCLC has already updated the transliteration. Create dark archive NET holdings for previously loaded assets Check on 776 linking fields that have Harvard numbers. Replace with OCLC numbers to support catalog clustering. (e.g. 990142549470203941). Fix 020$z in initial batches (should be in 776)
Alma Tech Team	3/7/2019				Low	Items with Item Policy 88 (Suppressed) (These display to the public)	Corinna Baksik/KY		12/5/23	These items were suppressed from display in Aleph, but are displayed to the public in Alma. In Alma you can suppress entire holdings, but not individual items attached to holdings. Sometimes units have these items and just didn't want them to display to the public for misc. reasons; in other cases the libraries no longer have the item. Items with this policy are not requestable by patrons.
Chelcie Rowell	12/12/23	2/28/23		Small	Medium	Standardized Rights Statements for digital holdings contributed to DPLA	Corinna Baksik	Chelcie Rowell	12/12/23	Project is being scoped. Affects ~30k bibs and holdings.
Kate Bowers				Small	Small	Retrospective conversion of ETD profiles to NET ETD holdings to be consistent with new pipeline	Corinna Baksik		4/23/24	Planning meeting held in April 2024. Work to be completed as time allows. Expected completion by end of May.

Requestor	Request Date	Requested Completion Date	Target Prioritization Date	Size	Priority	Title/Scope	LTS Lead	Library Lead	Status Update Date	Impact/Status/Notes
Anne Adams	3/30/21			Medium	(Suggest priority Medium)	Batch tool to update sets of bibs with newer OCLC copy	Corinna Baksik	Anne Adams w/ Alma TSWG		When a bib already has an OCLC number, there is no straightforward way to update it with newer copy other than one at a time. This tool would allow staff to identify sets of records in Alma that are not fully cataloged, or less cataloged, and update with newer copy from OCLC. 9/22/21 - Should be reviewed post-BNS implementation to see if there is continue need.
	1/1/2017			Medium	Medium	HFA loads	Corinna Baksik			Lack of new/updated HFA data in HOLLIS 9/22/21 - ITS will review and determine if this is still a continued need.
Alma Tech Team	7/1/2017			Small	Medium	Mispaired non-Latin fields flipped to vernacular	Corinna Baksik			Loss of non-Latin data in local records. (More detail on Known Issues page)
Library Kiosk Machines (increased HOLLIS logout time)	5/2019			Medium	High	Ensure that all library public terminals have kiosk accounts	TBD			Issues with HK logins on shared public library terminals This project would allow all HOLLIS users to have an increased logout time so they are not logged out after 45 min, a significant complaint from patrons and staff. 9/22/21 - Laura to move this elsewhere
ITS	7/31/2018			Medium	Low	Order Requests	Bill Wash	ITS		System is used to triage requests largely from selectors and route internally to ITS departments. Project would analyze ways to utilize Alma or other systems to replace this system.
Alma Tech Team	3/7/2019				Low	Items with Item Policy 88 (Suppressed) (These display to the public)	Corinna Baksik			These items were suppressed from display in Aleph, but are displayed to the public in Alma. In Alma you can suppress entire holdings, but not individual items attached to holdings. Sometimes units have these items and just didn't want them to display to the public for misc. reasons; in other cases the libraries no longer have the item. Items with this policy are not requestable by patrons.
Elizabeth Vernon	6/4/2019			?	Medium	API Key on LTS Server - implement service to allow proxy API access locally on an LTS server				This would allow sharing of utilities making use of write APIs while keeping the API key (and therefore Harvard data) secure. There are a number of areas where Alma write APIs could be put to valuable use at Harvard, particularly for encoding statistics information.
(D2D and other folks)	(2015?)			Small	Low	Holdings Public Note clean-up (852 $z) (Not including the Consult Circ Desk notes - those will be handled as separate project)	Corinna	?		Prior to the implementation of MARC 5XX holding notes, important special collections information about binding, provenance etc. was added to the 852 \|z, a generic public display note. This problem is that this info should be searchable but because it’s in 852 \|z it isn’t searchable. Special collections info from 852 \|z should be moved to 5XX notes so that 1) they are indexed 2) they display better to the user. There are too many of these to do manually. Staff may still create 852 \|z notes for content that belongs elsewhere (e.g. source of acquisitions notes, etc.) so this is also a training issue. Complete for single volume titles.
Alma Tech Team	11/14/2019			Medium	Low	Outstanding migration-related data cleanup	TBD	TBD		STA DELETED Bibs with attached STA SUPPRESSED Hols. This may be an accidental byproduct of the delete-holdings-bibs perlscript - Report (created 5/30/2018). Suppressed holdings with active items: 266,599 / 103,609 - Report needed Deleted bib with active holdings - Report Convert all remaining item status 28 items to 01
Requestor	Request Date	Requested Completion Date	Target Prioritization Date	Size	Priority	Title/Scope	LTS Lead	Library Lead	Status Update Date	Impact/Status/Notes
Library Kiosk Machines (increased HOLLIS logout time)	5/2019			Medium	High	Ensure that all library public terminals have kiosk accounts	TBD			Issues with HK logins on shared public library terminals This project would allow all HOLLIS users to have an increased logout time so they are not logged out after 45 min, a significant complaint from patrons and staff. 9/22/21 - Laura to move this elsewhere
ITS	7/31/2018			Medium	Low	Order Requests	Bill Wash	ITS		System is used to triage requests largely from selectors and route internally to ITS departments. Project would analyze ways to utilize Alma or other systems to replace this system.
Elizabeth Vernon	6/4/2019			?	Medium	API Key on LTS Server - implement service to allow proxy API access locally on an LTS server				This would allow sharing of utilities making use of write APIs while keeping the API key (and therefore Harvard data) secure. There are a number of areas where Alma write APIs could be put to valuable use at Harvard, particularly for encoding statistics information.
(D2D and other folks)	(2015?)			Small	Low	Holdings Public Note clean-up (852 $z) (Not including the Consult Circ Desk notes - those will be handled as separate project)	Corinna	?		Prior to the implementation of MARC 5XX holding notes, important special collections information about binding, provenance etc. was added to the 852 \|z, a generic public display note. This problem is that this info should be searchable but because it’s in 852 \|z it isn’t searchable. Special collections info from 852 \|z should be moved to 5XX notes so that 1) they are indexed 2) they display better to the user. There are too many of these to do manually. Staff may still create 852 \|z notes for content that belongs elsewhere (e.g. source of acquisitions notes, etc.) so this is also a training issue. Complete for single volume titles.
Alma Tech Team	11/14/2019			Medium	Low	Outstanding migration-related data cleanup	TBD	TBD		STA DELETED Bibs with attached STA SUPPRESSED Hols. This may be an accidental byproduct of the delete-holdings-bibs perlscript - Report (created 5/30/2018). Suppressed holdings with active items: 266,599 / 103,609 - Report needed Deleted bib with active holdings - Report Convert all remaining item status 28 items to 01
Alma Tech Team	12/10/21			Small	Low	Weed Acq records for closed libraries from Alma	Corinna Baksik			A number of closed libraries remain in Alma, because the library has never weeded Acquisition records (purchase orders, invoices). LTS has removed inventory for these libraries, but the libraries themselves remained configuration in Alma because we cannot remove them while the Acq data exists. Having closed libraries in Alma causes confusion and can create unnecessary overhead during other projects. Libraries include: GEO, closed in 2005 CEA, subsumded by Fung in 2005 SOC, closed in 2009 Hilles BIO, closed 2007 PSY closed 2008 CHE GRO, 2018 LIT, 2006 (still some outstanding inventory to resolve, records were suppressed but some physical inventory still exists on shelf)
Anne Adams						Project to unsuppress and adapt metadata for legacy preservation facsimiles				Info in ticket: https://harvard-lts.libanswers.com/admin/ticket?qid=11164606