Publishing to SUNCAT

Prior to running your ongoing automatic synchronization process with SUNCAT, you need to coordinate and process an initial publishing of the Alma records that you want exposed in SUNCAT.

1. Communicate with SUNCAT to let them know that you will be running an initial publishing of records from Alma and discuss any profile configurations that need to be coordinated between your institution and SUNCAT.
   1. Prepare for your communication with SUNCAT by familiarizing yourself with the Alma publishing profile details in Publishing and Inventory Enrichment (General Publishing), and by reviewing any shared information in the Ex Libris Developer Network. (For an example, refer to https://developers.exlibrisgroup.com/blog/Publishing-to-SUNCAT-Experience-of-the-University-of-York.)
   2. Prepare a checklist of questions that should address the following Alma configuration requirements:
      • FTP configuration details (refer to Adding S/FTP Connections for additional information.)
      • MARC output format (MARC 21 binary or MARC 21 XML)
      • File size preference (1,000, 5,000, or 10,000 records per file or one single file)
      • File naming convention (prefix) for published files
      • Publishing schedule
   For your initial publishing job, you will want to run it manually from Alma. For ongoing publishing, you will probably want to set your publishing profile to publish automatically on a certain repeating frequency.
2. Create the logical set of records that you want to publish to SUNCAT. See Creating Logical Sets.
   If you need to normalize these records before publishing, refer to Working with Normalization Rules for more information and/or use the normalization options provided on the Data Enrichment tab of the publishing profile (refer to the example below).
   

   

   Data Enrichment Tab (Publishing Profile)
3. With the information that you have gathered, create the Alma publishing profile for publishing to SUNCAT using the procedure in Publishing and Inventory Enrichment (General Publishing). See below for an example of the Profile Details tab.
   

   

   Profile Details Tab (Publishing Profile)
4. According to your pre-arranged schedule with SUNCAT, run your initial load publishing job.
   1. Access the SUNCAT publishing profile that you have configured (Resources > Publishing > Publishing Profiles).
   2. Run the SUNCAT publishing profile.
   3. Check the History tab on the Monitor Jobs page (see Viewing Completed Jobs) to determine the status of your SUNCAT publishing job.
5. Follow up with SUNCAT to confirm that your publishing job was successfully received and that your files have been loaded into the SUNCAT database.
6. Configure your SUNCAT publishing profile for the ongoing publishing of your records to SUNCAT. See the next section, Ongoing Publishing to COPAC.

Once you have completed your initial publishing job with SUNCAT and confirmed that your files have been loaded into the SUNCAT database, you are ready to begin the incremental/ongoing process of updating your records in SUNCAT. Alma general publishing is designed to do one initial full upload of records with the necessary logic incorporated to identify the incremental changes to each previous upload and only publish those records that have changed since the last publishing job was run. As a result, republishing a full load is not provided as an option.

For ongoing publishing, you may find it easier to set your publishing profile to run automatically on a repeating schedule.

1. On the Publishing Profiles Details page (Resources > Publishing > Publishing Profiles), select Edit in the row actions list for the publishing profile that you created for the initial upload to SUNCAT.
2. Modify the Scheduling parameter to match your preference.
   

   

   Scheduling Parameter
3. Select Save.