June 2020 Release - Harvard Highlights

Ex Libris Documentation

Harvard Alma Working Groups have summarized key changes below. A full list of changes for the release can be found in the official Ex Libris Release Notes:

General Enhancements

Bulk changes to Physical Items - you can now perform changes on multiple Items directly through the Physical Items search and Items list.

To use the new feature, use the "Manage Selected" button at the top of a List of Items, or a Physical Items search results.
Using the Select All button will select only those items displayed on the page. You can navigate to the next page and Select All again to choose more.
The "Manage Selected" option allows you to immediately run on a job on the selected items. You will only be able to run a job if you have permissions. Staff with permissions are listed on the Jobs & Batch Processes page. This page also has instructions on how to request permission to run jobs.
The "Manage Selected" option also includes the ability to create an itemized set or add to an itemized set.

The Change Physical Items job has been enhanced with the following:

Additional parameters were added, which allow setting and clearing all parameters related to temporary location changes. The parameters correspond to the options available on the Physical Item Editor tabs that can be accessed by doing a repository search for physical items and selecting Edit for one of the items in the search results list.
The parameters that pertain to permanent and temporary locations were divided to separate sections to enable better visibility and clearer workflows.
The page layout visually reflects the dependencies between the different parameters.
All Enun/Chrom fields are now included.

Analytics & Reporting

Enhancements

Analytics Infrastructure Performance upgrades will greatly improve performance when running analytics reports.

Modified By and Creator fields were added to Funds Expenditure > Vendor.
Num of Research Assets (Active) and Num of Research Asset Files fields were added to Titles > Title Measures.

Resolved Issues

OBI displayed the wrong number of citations for lists associated with multiple courses. This was fixed.
Notes from the 852 field were truncated in the Holding Local Param fields to 500 characters. The was fixed by increasing the size limit of the fields to 4000 characters.
Analytics export to CSV was limited to 250K rows. This was fixed by expanding the limit to 500K rows.
In the Course Reserved subject area, the Copyright Status field was empty even when in Alma the copyright status was 'Not determined'. This was fixed, and now the Copyright Status field in analytics displays 'Not determined'.

Acquisitions/Finance

Enhancements

Access Model Field added to PO Line - The access model is now stored in the new Access Model field on the PO line for electronic orders. The access model also appears in the Public Note field on the portfolio. If you modify the access model on the PO line to be different than the access model on the portfolio, the portfolio will be updated. The access model field will be reportable in Analytics in a future release.

Resolved

PO Line that has items with Expected receiving date in the past and arrival date is empty did not go in to claim list. This was fixed and now PO Line that has items with Expected receiving date in the past and arrival date is empty is set to Claim even if the expected receiving date of the PO Line is in the future.
On the In Process Items page, the filter change was incorrectly indicated and the check boxes were cleared. This was fixed. Now when selecting Done, the check boxes remain selected.

Course Reserves/Leganto

Enhancements

Reusing Already Digitized Files Between Citations: Librarians can now search for and copy files between citations to avoid the need to digitize files that have already been digitized. Select Attach Existing File from a citation's actions list.
Students can now receive a notification email informing them of all upcoming due dates occurring within the coming nine days. The letter is sent on a Sunday to provide students with the maximum amount of time required to meet their deadlines.
List owners can now receive an owner subscription letter after the completion of a rollover. Subscription letters are sent to all list owners when a new list is created or when a person is added to a list as a collaborator.
Instructors can can now indicate that they plan to lend their personal copies of items to the library for circulation.
The library can now use Leganto to help understand and express the monetary value that library resources can provide to students, compared to what they would pay for course materials on their own.

Resolved

The course code was not included in the file name when exporting lists to PDF in bulk. This was fixed.
When changing the Material Type from Article to Electronic Article, changing the secondary type changed the fields in the citation's metadata section in the primary type. This was fixed.
Copyrights for chapters were being approved when non-numeric characters were entered. This was fixed.

E-Resources

Enhancements

Portfolios display Service and Collection data - Alma now displays certain electronic service and collections information–such as whether the service proxy is enabled–as read-only information in the Portfolio Editor.
Additional Advanced Search options - Advanced search query options were expanded to include Not Contains Keywords, Is Empty and Is Not Empty when searching Electronic Collections for Public Note and Internal Description.
Access Model Field added to PO Line - The access model is now stored in the new Access Model field on the PO line for electronic orders. The access model also appears in the Public Note field on the portfolio. If you modify the access model on the PO line to be different than the access model on the portfolio, the portfolio will be updated. The access model field will be reportable in Analytics in a future release.
CDI Provider Coverage field - The Provider coverage field is now available on the CDI tab of the Electronic collection editor. When this read-only field is set to Yes, the collection is indexed with data received directly from the provider. When set to No, a feed from the provider is not available, but at least 80% of the content of the collection is covered in CDI by data received from other providers. The field also displays in the Electronic collection result list, in Institution and Community tabs, below the In CDI field, for any electronic collection where In CDI = Yes.

Resolved

On the E-activation task list, an error message could display when selecting Done. This was fixed.
When saving a new SUSHI account, if there was a problem verifying the report type(s) with the vendor, the account was not saved. This was fixed. Now, the user is informed of the problem via a confirmation message and the account can be saved.
In the SUSHI harvesting job, the word retrieved was misspelled. This was fixed.
Space characters in portfolio linking static URLs were encoded as '+' instead of '%20', leading to some broken links. This has been fixed.
A database collection that was deactivated in Alma still got published to CDI. This was fixed.

Fulfillment

Enhancements

Hold request loan indicator: If you create a hold request, the Loan Audit Trail now includes a Hold Loan field to indicate if the loan originated from a hold request. This will be reportable in Analytics in a future release.
Request notes in pick from shelf list: On the Pick from Shelf list, if one or more request notes exist, they are now displayed aggregated together with a "|" (pipe symbol) in between each request. Only notes for active requests that are being picked by the current circulation desk are displayed.
Resource Sharing: Searching for Resource Sharing Requests from Persistent Search Bar: You can now search for resource sharing requests from the persistent search bar on the top of the application. All existing search options also remain available. The default search option for the resource sharing requests is External Request ID.
In the Scan In Items page, every scan operation now adds a new row to the scanned items list.

Resolved

On the Scan-In Change Item Information page, an asterisk was added to the Location field to indicate that it is a mandatory field.
If an item was in department at a process, scanned in with no following requests and was designated to transit for reshelving, the description, call number and other fields were not displayed in the items details within the list. This was fixed.
In a SIP2 patron information request from a Bibliotheca kiosk, the Overdue Items request was not aligned with the Charged Items request. This was fixed. Now, Alma returns only the overdue items without the charged items. Also, when BP or BQ message elements are requested, Alma now returns only the requested items.
To improve performance, optimizations were performed for the reading rooms desks, active hold shelf pages.
Selecting Submit Request on the Manage Patron Services page occasionally resulted in an error, typically when selecting the second time. This was fixed
Restore requests were incorrectly triggering an Item is Requested by Another Patron block. This was fixed.

Resource Management

Enhancements

Holdings field 909 has been added to the Advanced Search.

Resolved

When running the 'Change Holding Information' job and the holdings did not match the normalization rule, the holding Last Update date was changed anyway. This issue was fixed.
When using Browse Bib Headings, the Miagkii znak and Ayn characters can now be omitted from the search strings. (This will take effect with the June re-indexing).
New Metadata Editor: Push to MDE is not working when a record does not have a modification date. This was fixed.