eBooks in Discovery
Introduction
Managing eBooks for discovery in Primo works a bit differently from other material types. The reason is because CDI usually indexes data (for example, journals) at the item level (for example, articles), while Alma (and therefore the Primo local index) contains higher level records (the journals). Specifically for eBooks, CDI contains both, eBook and chapter-level records. This leads to a situation where you have the same book records from both Alma in your local Primo index and CDI. As a result, users see duplicate records in their results list when using a blended search scope. Since it is not technically possible to deduplicate these records between the local Primo index and CDI, we are providing alternative options to reduce or suppress the duplications, as described in this article.
EBooks records from CDI appear in the result list if either of the following is true:
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The eBook collection is active in Alma and has active portfolios. Users will see duplicate records in their Primo search results when searching blended search scopes because all portfolios are automatically published to CDI and indexed in the local Primo index as well. To prevent this, you can use either of the following options:
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The eBook collection is active for search. Unless there is an active portfolio in any of your Alma collections, these records display the No full text available status and appear only when the expanded search option is enabled.
Option 1 - Suppress CDI eBooks
When this option is enabled, the CDI eBook records for this collection do not appear in the filtered result list (filtered by items that are available). If the same collection is active for search, the records appear in the expanded search (expand beyond the library collection) and display the No full text available status. The same applies to the chapter level records, which also do not appear in the filtered result list, and in the expanded search, appear only if the collection is active for search.
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This option does not affect your local bibliographic records. They are published to the local Primo index and are discoverable as before in Primo.
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In cases where the same content is available and active in several collections in Alma but is only suppressed for CDI in one collection, the content is not suppressed, and the CDI records for those eBooks appear as available in CDI.
Option 2 - Filter CDI eBooks
When this option is enabled:
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eBook records from CDI are filtered out in your blended search scopes for collections with portfolios in Alma regardless of the following collection-level parameters in Alma: CDI Search activation status, We subscribe to only some titles in this collection, and Do not show as Full Text available in CDI even if active in Alma.
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Book chapters are not filtered out of search results. If you want to suppress book chapters, select the following collection-level parameter in Alma: Do not show as Full Text available in CDI even if active in Alma.
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Book records for databases in Alma that have Electronic Collection Type is set to Database and do not have any portfolios are not filtered out of search results. This is to prevent unique ebooks, which are unlikely to have local records, from not appearing. They are still discoverable unless you select the Do not show as Full Text available in CDI even if active in Alma parameter in Alma.
For information on how to configure collection-level settings in Alma, see the CDI tab on the Electronic Collection Editor page in Alma.
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This option still displays duplicates when a book record is available from both a database collection and a collection with portfolios (and both are part of the same merged record), regardless of your institution's activations.
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This configuration does not affect your local bibliographic records. They are still published to the local Primo index and are therefore discoverable as before in Primo.
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If you are also using Rapido, you can use this option. Its effect is the same as described above for the filtered search, but when using the expanded search option, users will still see duplicates if a book is available from the global title index used by Rapido and from a collection without portfolios and/or as a local record. The global Title index books are not suppressed.
Create and set the excludeCdiEbooks parameter to true in the View Properties mapping table (Primo Home > General > Mapping Tables) for your view. For more details, see Configuring View Properties.
Select the Exclude CDI eBooks option in each search profile that includes a CDI search scope (such as Central Index) on the Define a Custom Search Profile page (Configuration > Discovery > Search Configuration > Search Profiles). For more information, see Configuring Search Profiles for Primo VE.