Best Practice Toolkit: Auto Holdings Update
What is it?
Alma enables institutions to automatically update electronic holdings from information providers. The method is to set up a scheduled integration profile.
This eases the library staff workload in managing electronic holdings by automatically activating and updating library specific eResources and eliminating any manual work process.
This is currently supported with ProQuest Ebook Central, Ovid, Springer and Elsevier electronic holdings. Set up steps are similar.
Where is it?
To set up auto holdings update (using Proquest Ebook Central as an example):
- Contact ProQuest Support to enable automatic updates of DDA, Owned, and Subscription titles. See Getting Started.
- Contact Support. Support team will set CP upload_e_holding_incremental to True
- Activate the Community Zone electronic collection Ebook Central Perpetual, DDA and Subscription Titles. See Activating Ebook Central Perpetual, DDA and Subscription Titles.
- Set up the integration profile. See below or Creating an Ebook Central Integration Profile.
- Disable manually managed ProQuest Ebook Central Subscriptions electronic collections. See ProQuest Ebook Central Subscriptions.
Beware: Do not activate your Ebook Central integration profile in Alma until you have confirmed with ProQuest Support that your account was activated and Ebook Central files have begun publishing to Alma. If the Alma Ebook Central integration profile is activated and scheduled before ProQuest has started to publish the relevant files, the job will fail.
Find below the steps on how to create an integration profile in step 4 above:
- Open the Integration Profile List page (Configuration Menu > General > External Systems > Integration Profiles).
- Select Add Integration Profile on the Integration Profiles page
- For the Integration Type parameter, select Upload Electronic Holdings from the drop-down list.
- For the Vendor parameter, select ProQuest Ebook Central from the drop-down list.
- Only one ProQuest Ebook Central integration profile may be created.
- Optionally, enter a description and select Next.
- Complete the details, including the schedule you wanted of this profile, in the Upload Electronic Holdings section using the information provided by the ProQuest Books division for the trial and referencing the table below
- Save the profile using one of the following options:
- Select Save. The integration profile is scheduled and appears in the list of scheduled jobs (see Viewing All Scheduled Jobs).
- Select Save and Run Now. This saves your profile settings and immediately queues the upload to run. The Save and Run Now button also appears on the actions tab when you edit the profile - Refer to the Monitor Jobs History tab (Admin > Manage Jobs and Sets > Monitor Jobs) to view the Upload electronic holdings report that is generated from running this job. See below for an example report.
