Best Practice Toolkit: Evaluate and Analyze Content for Acquisition
What is it?
Directions for the process of evaluating, analyzing, and trialing resources before considering a new acquisition, before signing a license or making a purchase.
Why evaluate and analyze content for acquisition?
Electronic resources demand a significant financial commitment, and so it is important to properly evaluate and analyze content before considering a new acquisition or making a purchase. In Alma, an evaluation is the workflow of using and evaluating the material. A trial is an instance of the evaluation workflow, and overlap analysis enables you to compare the content of electronic collections to determine where there may be a subscription overlap before acquiring resources.
Before You Start
Make sure the Trial – Start and Notify Participants job is Active, and the Trial Letter is Enabled:
If the above are not enabled, the below steps are necessary:
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Submit a Support case to request enabling the Trials - Start and Notify Participants job
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Customize the Trial Letter sent to users
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Navigate to Alma Configuration > General > Letters > Letter Configuration
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Enable and customize (Trial Letter)
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For more information on how to customize letter, see Configuring Alma Letters
Evaluate and Analyze Content for Acquisition
Step 1: Evaluate
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Create a Purchase Order Line (POL) for the Trial resource following the steps provided at Evaluation Workflow
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Once the PO line is saved and is Under Evaluation, the Trial can be found with status Requested and can be edited on the Manage Trials page (Acquisitions > Purchase Order Lines > Manage Trials) by the Trial Operator/Manager
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The operator needs to start the trial by adding start and end date and Activate the resource
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To move the trial from the Draft stage, make sure the criteria for publishing a database is met
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If running trial on Ebook Central make sure to add Customer ID at Linking Parameter
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Evaluate the resource by setting a survey at a selected language and adding participating patrons to solicit feedback on the resource
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Public trial survey details can also be publish using Participant Page URL (on your internal site or send by email)
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When the trial end date arrives, analyze, and evaluate the trial survey result. Save it and store it at the Trial where Export Survey Feedback to excel is also available to share the analysis with your peers (see Analyzing Trial Result)
Step 2: Analyze
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Run Overlap Analysis tool to compare the content of electronic collections to determine where there may be a subscription overlap
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Perform Overlap Analysis for a Set or ran Overlap and Collection Analysis for Selected Titles
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Review the Comparison Reports from the Overlap Analysis Job Report
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Evaluate and Analyze results for new Content Acquisition
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Finally, make a library decision to acquire or not the evaluated resource
Step 3: Content Acquisition
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Decide as to whether to purchase the resource
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If the decision is to purchase, the PO line continues in the regular PO line workflow described in step 2 of the Purchasing Workflow.
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If the decision is not to purchase, the Purchasing Operator cancels the PO line (see Canceling PO Lines).