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    Community Zone Contribution Guidelines

    Translatable
    One of Alma’s greatest assets is its user community. As such, Ex Libris has been working to create more options to allow you to play an active role and collaborate in the Community Zone. Employing the wisdom of a broad base benefits all Alma users.
    Ex Libris, therefore, established a framework for contributing to the Community Zone. This term simply means that you can add data to the Community Zone with the purpose of sharing it with the greater Alma community.
    The Community Zone offers users the opportunity to update bibliographic records, add portfolios to collections of the type Free E-Journals, Miscellaneous E‐Journals, Miscellaneous Free E‐Books, and U.S. Government Documents, contribute collections, and contribute General Electronic Services.
    Please contact Ex libris Support to be given contribution privileges.
    For more information regarding cataloging standards and policies, refer to the document Alma Community Catalog: Cataloging Standards, Policies, Rights, and Responsibilities .
    For additional information regarding contributing to the Community Zone, refer to:

    Bibliographic Record Contribution

    You have always had the option of locally enriching Community Zone records that you copied to your inventory. By allowing you to enrich records directly in the Community Zone, everyone can benefit from the work of other libraries in the community.
    For any changes that would not benefit the broader community, users may copy the record to the local Institution Zone catalog. All management of this record will then be handled locally, and no connection to the global record will be maintained.
    Note that without copying records to your inventory, you can also create and maintain local extensions in Community Zone-linked bibliographic records in order to record your own proprietary information. See Working with Local Extension Fields for Community Zone Records for more information.

    Service-Level Agreement

    The following points describe the service-level agreement as it relates to bibliographic record contribution:
    • Any change to Community Zone bibliographic records is automatically reflected in the records at every institution that uses the Community Zone bibliographic record.
    • When an edited Community Zone bibliographic record is saved, it is validated using the Community Zone MD Registry and validation routines. It is also normalized using the Community Zone normalization routines.
    • Records edited by a member of the community can be merged with incoming enhanced vendor records, which could cause edits to be overridden.
    • Ex Libris places the following restrictions on the community’s ability to edit bibliographic records:
      • Contributors may not edit the 022 field.
        This restriction is maintained because the 022 field is relied on as a match point for the CDI, as well as Community Zone enrichment and automatic upload of electronic holdings. In addition, some portfolios still rely on the 022 field for linking, and so editing this field could, therefore, potentially break linking for other institutions.
      • Contributors may not add new records unless they are contributed as part of a collection (refer to the details below).
      • Contributors must be at institutions that have moved to the production phase with Alma in order to edit bibliographic records in the Community Zone.

    Portfolio Contribution

    With new books and journals constantly being published, it is not possible to keep informed of each and every one. Users, therefore, frequently add local portfolios so that their patrons can access content not yet available via the Community Zone. As in the case of bibliographic records, enabling you to contribute portfolios directly to the Community Zone (rather than only allowing you to add the portfolios locally) enables everyone to benefit from the wisdom of the community.

    Service Level Agreement

    The following points describe the service-level agreement as it relates to portfolio contribution:
    • The community currently can only contribute portfolios to collections of the type Free E-Journals, Miscellaneous E‐Journals, Miscellaneous Free E‐Books and U.S. Government Documents. All other collections remain under the auspices of Ex Libris.
    • Any modification to a portfolio in the Community Zone changes the portfolio for every institution that has activated that portfolio.
    • Portfolios can be added or modified but cannot be deleted.
    • Contributors must be at institutions that have moved to the production phase with Alma in order to contribute portfolios to the Community Zone.

    Collection Contribution

    Alma’s international user community has much insight into the needs of library patrons in their respective regions and globally. As such, libraries can contribute entire collections to the Community Zone, which will enable all Alma users to benefit from this knowledge.

    Requirements for Submission – General

    Ex Libris requires that the submitted collections be:
    • Academic in nature
    • Relevant to other institutions; avoid submitting collections that are uniquely tailored to your institution
    • Ones that are not already found in the Community Zone

    Requirements for Submission – Content

    Collections contributed to the Community Zone can represent either packages or databases.
    Collections representing packages should include:
    • A bibliographic record describing the collection
    • Portfolios that reflect all relevant content that can be acquired as part of the collection
    • A full bibliographic record for each item within the package
    • Linking information for each portfolio
    • A parser on the Electronic Service Editor page - If the target URL of each portfolio is exactly the value of the jkey = statement in the portfolio parser parameters, use a Bulk::BULK Parser
    • Coverage information for each portfolio (serial content only)
    • Interface name
    • Linking level (in Electronic Service)
    Collections representing databases submitted without portfolios such as abstracting and indexing databases like PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and so forth where portfolios are less relevant should include:
    • A collection-level bibliographic record
    • A link to the core interface

    Service Level Agreement

    The following points describe the service-level agreement as it relates to collection contribution:
    • Contributors must be at institutions that have moved to the production phase with Alma in order to contribute collections to the Community Zone.
    • Once a collection has been submitted, it can no longer be edited until after it has been approved for use in the Community Zone.
    • The Ex Libris Data Services team will respond to the submitter within five business days. Possible responses include:
      • Contribution approved
      • Contribution cannot be included in the Community Zone (with a reason provided)
      • More information is required

    General Electronic Service Contribution

    You can contribute your general electronic services to the Community Zone and copy and use the general electronic services that other institutions contributed to the Community Zone. Once the general electronic service has been copied to the institution, the institution can make changes to it in order to customize it for its needs. 

    When a general electronic service is contributed, all its related rules are contributed as well.

    The general electronic services set by the network institution are managed by the network institution and therefore, cannot be edited or contributed by the member institution. To distribute the general electronic service to consortia members, the Distribute Fulfillment Network Configuration job is used (see Configuring Fulfillment Information in the Network Zone).