[Wactclc-alma] Ebook collections in the CZ

Fri Oct 27 14:15:27 PDT 2017

We finally made the decision this quarter to manually load our records instead of relying on CZ.

My experience is similar to Lesley's. For a while, things were kinda tolerable because it was only EBSCO that was giving me a headache, but now ebrary is giving me a bunch of broken links, too. What's even worse is that when I deactivate an electronic portfolio, sometimes there are "ghost" records still showing in Primo. These records will say "full text available" in the brief display, but will have no links to the full text in the full record.

Kanopy (PCI activation) is also including a bunch of titles that we don't have access to and there's no way to deactivate the titles except to go through SF. I don't want to wait forever for SF to get around to them. Sometimes SF is really fast and other times really slow. I seem to be on the slow track with them lately.

Lily

From: Wactclc-alma [mailto:wactclc-alma-bounces at lists.ctc.edu] On Behalf Of Nina Pitts
Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2017 3:21 PM
To: WACTCLC Alma Discussion <wactclc-alma at lists.ctc.edu>
Subject: Re: [Wactclc-alma] Ebook collections in the CZ

Your decision makes sense, Lesley. We weren't seeing so many broken links, though (luck? Fewer searches?), so we decided to go the other way. We already had a fairly easy (Voyager) workflow for importing ebrary records, but we didn't ever establish a speedy way to process deletions - they were time-consuming. So we decided to manage our subscription through the CZ once we moved to Alma.

Our results have been good. We haven't seen many inaccessible records.

Our ebrary Partners site shows we have150,918 bibs in our subscription for Academic Complete. The number of portfolios listed in the CZ is 150,877. Caveat - because of ebrary's transition to ebook Central, those numbers seemed muddled for a while, and maybe we still aren't comparing apples to apples.

But if we are, that's a discrepancy that we think is small enough to live with, for the convenience of not having to manually manage records each month.

I'm really glad for this conversation and others' experiences, because we'd like to know if the CZ is all it promised to be - the feature of central management was one of our strongest incentives to move to Alma in the first place. :)

Thanks!

Nina

Nina Pitts
Library Supervisor
Peninsula College Library/Media Center
1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd.
Port Angeles, WA 98362
(360) 417-6274
npitts at pencol.edu<mailto:npitts at pencol.edu>

From: Wactclc-alma [mailto:wactclc-alma-bounces at lists.ctc.edu] On Behalf Of Lesley Caldwell
Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2017 2:25 PM
To: WACTCLC Alma Discussion
Subject: Re: [Wactclc-alma] Ebook collections in the CZ

Hi all,

When we made the decision to move to a local EBSCO collection, it was because thousands of old, inaccurate titles were showing up in our Primo results. I was getting almost daily reports of broken links from our reference librarians. If you review our cases in Salesforce, we have several examples from the fall of 2016.

We received a title list from EBSCO in November of 2016 and found it to be significantly different than what was in the CZ.

Since we already had a workflow for importing records (for Films on Demand), creating our own collection just made the most sense to us. However, if the CZ continues to improve in quality and currency, we may reconsider. That's just not the way things were this time last year. :)

Hope that helps!
Lesley

From: Wactclc-alma [mailto:wactclc-alma-bounces at lists.ctc.edu] On Behalf Of Whittaker, Shellie
Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2017 1:49 PM
To: WACTCLC Alma Discussion (wactclc-alma at lists.ctc.edu<mailto:wactclc-alma at lists.ctc.edu>) <wactclc-alma at lists.ctc.edu<mailto:wactclc-alma at lists.ctc.edu>>
Subject: {Spam?} [Wactclc-alma] Ebook collections in the CZ

At today's Leads meeting I found myself sort of defending the use of ebook collections in the Community Zone, but the conversation made me realize I might be drawing some errant conclusions.

I wonder if someone would correct me, or enlighten me, about the accuracy/reliability of the results found using the Community Zone Updates Task List.

Here I illustrate my findings as I worked to determine how many and how often EBSCOhost Academic eBook Collection (North America) portfolios are being added/deleted in Alma's Community Zone.

It appears that during the period 1/1/2017 - 10/24/2017 22,883 portfolios have been added, with the most recent additions occurring on 8/7.  3,686 have been deleted, with the most recent deletions occurring on 10/23.

Are these counts misleading?

If they are accurate, maybe there are other factors involved in the choice to manage this collection locally.  While a three-month wait for additions to the collection seems a little bit long (last one was 8/7), it doesn't seem horrible and the collection is being maintained on a regular basis.  And deletions seem to be happening more often than additions.   I wonder if the latency for added portfolios comes from Ebsco's schedule for updating their collection or the schedule they use to make that information available to Alma.

What factors are considered when making a choice between using Community Zone collections or creating local collections?

Screenshots from Highline's Alma:

[cid:image001.jpg at 01D34F2C.41077740]

[cid:image002.jpg at 01D34F2C.41077740]

[Title: Big Bend Community College Logo]

Shellie Whittaker
WACTC Library Consortium Services Coordinator
Big Bend Community College
shelliew at bigbend.edu<mailto:shelliew at bigbend.edu>

360.452.5264

www.bigbend.edu<http://www.bigbend.edu/>

Big Bend Community College * 7662 Chanute Street NE * Moses Lake, WA 98837-3299

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