Description 

We've noticed that Bibliographic Details.Network Number is being truncated to 256 characters in Analytics reports. In some cases, particularly with bound-with host records, this eliminates a significant amount of important information that cannot be easily gathered in any way other than Analytics.  (Note:  Though the problem is most noticeable for bound-with items, it is not limited to bound-with items.)

This record contains 20  774 fields, each with subfield w containing the MMS ID of a bound-with record. Because of the 256 character limit, the 8th MMSID is cut off in the Analytics report and the first seven are not there at all (Analytics data starts with the last field and goes up); the 035 and 019 fields would not be reported at all in this scenario. 

With a little manipulation, the Network Number is a useful way to create a report of the linked titles and convert it to a set in Alma, but the truncation problem causes the resulting report to be incomplete. 

Given that Alma may map a very large amount into the Network Number field, is it intended for it to be limited to only 256 characters? 
 

Resolution 

Resolved in November 2017 release.  Note that the fix did not retroactively fix records that already surpassed the previous character limit; a job was run by Ex Libris to correct existing records.  

• Article last edited: 7-Feb-2018

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