Creating Legal Deposit PO Lines
This page describes how to work with legal deposits including configuration. For a list of links to pages with instructions for purchasing in Alma including creating PO lines in general, renewals, working with vendors, etc., see Purchasing. For information on the overall purchasing workflow see Purchasing Workflow. For an overview of working with acquisitions in Alma, including links to relevant sections such as Infrastructure, Invoicing, Configuration, etc., see Introduction to Acquisitions.
If you are a government or national library that receives copies of publications at no charge from vendors, you can use the Legal Deposit acquisition method to carry out transactions with vendors. Legal Deposits allow a zero value for a PO to coexist with a notification to the vendor, requiring neither funds nor a price to send out different versions of the PO line order letter.
The Legal Deposit method is delivered with Alma and enabled for institutions that require it. When a new PO line is created, Alma checks if Legal Deposits are enabled. If so, Alma displays the acquisition method as an option.
How It Works
Libraries receive one or more copies of every item published within their jurisdiction. (This includes monographs and serials, print and electronic.) Libraries can claim a zero purchase price and, in the same transaction, send an acknowledgment of receipt to vendors or publishers. Acknowledgments are system-generated with the following rules:
- For each item (for monographs)
- According to event (claim, order, receipt).
Claims letters are not sent automatically for continuous order items (serials).
Alma delivers the following Legal Deposit notification letters that can be customized:
- Legal Deposit Annual Receipts Letter
- Legal Deposit Claim Letter
- Legal Deposit Order Letter
- Legal Deposit Receipt Letter
For detailed information about editing form letters in Alma, see Configuring Alma Letters.
Once the Legal Deposit method has been enabled and the letters reviewed and edited, you can create a PO line with the Acquisition method of Legal Deposit. See Manually Creating a PO Line.
Legal Deposit Workflow
- An administrator enables Legal Deposit as an acquisition method for the institution. See Configuring Acquisition Methods.
- The user creates a PO line with an acquisition method of Legal Deposit. See Manually Creating a PO Line.
- Alma sends a request notification to the vendor. Note that when the LEGAL_DEPOSIT_NOLETTER acquisition method is active, no order is sent to the vendor. A Legal Deposit Claim Letter however will be sent (if appropriate and activated).
- When the operator creates an order using the Legal Deposit acquisition method:
- Price and fund are not mandatory
- The PO line is packed and sent to the vendor
- The PO line is not invoiced
- The PO line is redirected to the claims task list when appropriate
- The vendor sends the Legal Deposit monograph or serial requested by the library.
- The library sends an acknowledgment to the vendor on the following schedule:
- For Legal Deposit monographs, at the time of receiving.
- For Legal Deposit serials, Alma creates an out-of-the-box annual Analytics report, and you can create other reports, but Alma does not automatically send them. If required, you can run a job to send these reports to the required set of vendors. To do this:
- Create a set of vendors. See Vendor Sets.
- Configure the Legal Deposit Annual Receipts Letter. See Configuring Alma Letters.
- Configure the required Analytics report and enter its path. See Configuring Legal Deposit Report Paths. Also add the report as an Analytics object of type Report (seem Working with Objects in Analytics).
- Run the job Legal Deposit Annual Receipt Task. See Running Manual Jobs on Defined Sets.