September 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

Create Itemized Set from ISBN/ISSN list: Support for matching ISBNs on 020 and 022 subfield a. See Creating Itemized Sets.

Analytics & Reporting

Enhancements

The following fields were added to the Portfolio and Electronic Collection dimensions of the E-Inventory subject area and to the Bibliographic Details folder for all subject areas in which it appears:
- Managed by Provider – indicates if the electronic resource is managed by the provider
- Provider Name – the name of the provider

Reading Lists without citations are now displayed in the Course Reserves subject area.
Resolved

In Course Reserves > Reading List Citations > Citation Origin, the value 'Brief'' was displayed, which is not a possible value in Alma. This was changed to 'Manually added', which is the value displayed in Alma.
When creating a report to display the number of PO lines by receiving date, multiple values were unexpectedly displayed. This was fixed.
When the Receiving Date (Latest in POL) field was added to a report, it did not run properly. This was fixed.
In the Fulfillment SA, when policy loan information was added to a report, it did not run properly. This was fixed.
Alma failed to delete invoices with more than 1000 invoice lines. This was fixed.

Acquisitions/Finance

Enhancements

Currency Exchange Rates Override - You can now define a fixed exchange rate in a new Explicit Exchange Rates code table (Configuration Menu > Acquisitions > Invoices > Explicit Exchange Rates).
Vendor-controlled PO Line Renewal - (Currently, only for ProQuest subscriptions) You can enable a vendor to automatically update a PO line once a subscription is renewed. A new check box is available on the Vendor Details page, System Integration tab, Renew at Vendor System. When enabling this option, you must supply ProQuest with your API key to them to update the relevant PO line.

Course Reserves/Leganto

Enhancements

Course Reserves/Analytics: Reading Lists without citations are now displayed in the Course Reserves subject area.
Librarians can now get insights on the usage of citations on a list, via a new job called "Citations Insights job". This job identifies citations with high or low usage on a variety of metrics. These insights can help inform purchasing and licensing decisions regarding the appropriate number of licenses or copies required to support the students taking the course. To run this job, go to Admin > Run a Job > Citations Insights job. For more information on running jobs, see Running Manual Jobs on Defined Sets.
In Leganto, you can now add permalinks to exported files using the new permalinks option in the Export dialog. This option is available when exporting to Word, PDF, and Excel files.
Previously, staff users could search for courses only from the Course's page (Fulfillment > Course Reserves > Courses). With this enhancement, staff users can now use Alma's simple and advanced searches to search for courses by selecting Courses and specifying All or any of the following supported search fields: Course Code, Course Code (Include Section), Course Name, Course Notes, Instructor Name, Searchable ID, Section, and Year. For more information, see Searching in Alma
In Alma, in the Review Requester column of the Reading List page, the name of the instructor who submitted the reading list for the library to review now appears. For more information on reading lists, see Managing Reading Lists.
A new Guided Tours mapping table allows you to activate/deactivate individual guided tours. The table is found in Leganto Configuration > Features > Guided Tours. This table replaces the Guided Tours flag, which has been removed from the Leganto Features mapping table. For more information, see Configuring Other Leganto UI Elements.

Resolved

In Leganto, exporting citations to an EndNote file didn't map the fields correctly. This has been fixed.
The search for citations in Leganto used to have problems with "AND" and "&". This has been fixed.
In Leganto, citations didn't display the View Online link in certain cases. This has been fixed.
In Leganto, the librarian was not able to duplicate locked lists. This has been fixed.

E-Resources

Enhancements

Coverage percentage of CDI records - Items that are available for CDI now indicate the coverage percentage of the records in CDI. This indicator also includes the last date of calculation for this statistic. (This information only displays if the coverage percentage has been calculated.)
CDI-only full text activation - This option is used when the library does not wish the collection and its content to appear in the Primo local index or in the link resolver. It is used for collections that use the link in record, regardless whether the collection also has portfolios or not. Content of collections that are using the link in record are set to full text available on collection level. If Do not show as Full Text available in CDI even if active in Alma is selected as well, an error is displayed when saving. The effect of using this option is:
- The collections and the portfolio bib records are suppressed in Alma and are not published to CDI.
- The collection level record is published to CDI in the zero title file with the effect that the collection is set to full text available and is discoverable in CDI.
- Do not use this setting on link resolver collections - If this option is used in connection with a collection that has portfolios and is marked as using the link resolver, the link resolver will in this case not be able to resolve the OpenURL. The portfolios are suppressed and therefore the link resolver regards them as not active. Ex Libris will remove the option for link resolver collections in a future release.
Moving information between electronic portfolios - Now you can move local administrative information, such as PO-line, license and notes details, between portfolios in different collections, even if these portfolios do not share bibliographic records. Previously, it was only possible if both portfolios shared bibliographic records. This is possible if the portfolios share any of the following:
- The same bibliographic record (the same MMS ID, as before)
- ProQuest Title ID (the 'bkey' - populated in the "Parser" parameter of the portfolio)
- ISSN / eISSN
- ISBN / eISBN

This enables moving portfolio details from a local electronic collection to a Community Zone-activated electronic collection and encourages customers to move a locally-managed electronic collection to a Community Zone-managed electronic collection. In addition, now you can move the 'Public access model' information between electronic portfolios. To support this, the checkbox "Move public access model" was added to the third step of the Move electronic portfolio information job wizard.

Fulfillment

Enhancements

When a loan is not renewed because the patron is expiring, the reason is now reflected in the report as "Patron card will expire."

Resolved

The request queue was displayed as empty for items in a temporary location. This was fixed.
When scanning an item that had a Transit for Reshelving request in the Scan In items page, if the Automatically Print Slip field was set to Yes, the error message “Print Slip failed” appeared, although no slip should have been printed. This was fixed.

Resource Management

Enhancements

New metadata editor:
- When right-clicking on a set in the left panel, you have the option to release all records from set, release displayed records (results of a filter), or reload the entire set.

Resolved

New MDE: When hitting Back from Metadata Editor, the cursor jumped to the beginning of the records list, and not to the relevant record. This was fixed.
ISMN numbers beginning with M did not validate correctly. This was fixed.
Text in angle brackets <> was not displayed in the Metadata Editor F3/ View and in Browse Bib headings. This was fixed.
When adding a new field in the Metadata Editor, and entering the field data and both two indicators data, sometimes the data was deleted and the cursor went back to the blank first indicator. This was fixed.
In the first line of any field, ligatures of CZ did not display in the Metadata Editor. This was fixed.