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    Viewer Services

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    Viewing Digital Representations

    You can view digital representations that you discover when searching the repository.
    To view a digital representation:
    1. Perform a search in the repository for digital titles. For example:
      digital_titles_new.png
      Digital Title Search Results
      Alma attempts to display a thumbnail image for the titles. If the title has a digital file, a thumbnail of that file appears. If no thumbnail is available, a generic image of the material type (book, video, music, etc.) appears.
      • Alma is not always successful in generating thumbnails from Microsoft Office documents, due to the technical limitations of the third-party tool being used for this.
      • Files of auxiliary representations are not taken into account for thumbnail generation. If a title has only auxiliary representations, the standard thumbnail service for a non-digital title is applied, as described in Customizing the Thumbnail Display.
    2. Select View It for a title. For each representation, the number of files and the file type appear.
      no_of_files.png
      Number of Files and File Type in Representation
      If you do not have access rights to the representation, a message, such as the following, appears:
      no_permission.png
      Access Denied Message
      This message is customizable when configuring the access rights for the representation.
      If you have copyrights configured for the representation, an icon appears when selecting View It. This can be configured: for Primo at Configuration > Fulfillment > Discovery Interface Display Logic > Labels and for Primo VE at Configuration > Discovery > Display Configuration > Labels > Viewit Labels.
      viewit_copyrights_icon.png
      Copyrights Icon
      If there are a large number of representations for the bibliographic record, the More... link appears.
      more_link.png
      More Link
      Select More... to display the complete list. For example:
      filter_find.png
      Multiple Representations for a Bibliographic Record
      You can sort and search the list using the options at the top of the list.
    3. Select the link to open the Digital Viewer (see The Digital Viewer).

    The Digital Viewer

    Alma includes a tool to view digital representation files called the Digital Viewer. The viewer displays JPG, GIF, and PNG images, PDF documents (with browser support), Microsoft Word documents, (New for February!) ePub books, and audio/video formats supported by HTML5 (the list may vary between browsers).
    pretty_painting.png
    The Digital Viewer
    The viewer contains three panes:
    • The left pane appears only for representations with multiple files. The pane displays the files of the representation. Select an image to display it. Select the icons at the top of the pane to switch between thumbnail and list view.
    • The center pane displays the image, controls for an audio file or video file, or the text of a PDF file. Select the arrows at the top of the pane to move between files. If a file cannot be displayed, a download link appears. For example:
      download_unsupported_file_types.png
      Unsupported File Type Download Link
    • The right pane displays bibliographic information.

    You can perform the following actions from the Digital Viewer:

    • Select Download to download the currently-displayed file.
    • Select Language to change the language.
    • Select Share to display a link to the representation for sharing on social media or by email. To configure the social network sharing buttons, see Configuring Viewer Share Buttons.
    • Select Copyrights to display copyright information about the file (if any).
    • If you are not logged in to Alma, the Guest link appears. Select it to display the Sign In link. Select Sign In to display a login page. For information concerning configuring this feature, see Enable Delivery Login and Configuring Patron User Authentication.
    On mobile devices the panes appear vertically.
    An administrator can configure the labels in the viewer; see Configuring Viewer Labels.

    The New Digital Viewer

    In March 2020, a new Digital Viewer was introduced, with enhanced features over the legacy version. For information on configuring Alma to use the new viewer, see Configuring Viewer Services.
    new_alma_viewer.png
    The New Digital Viewer
    The new viewer has similar features as the legacy version, with the following enhancements:
    • Full-Text Display – the new viewer can display a full text file along with the digital one. To expand the pane with the full text, select the separator on the left side of the pane. To hide the full text file, select the Hide fulltext check box in the Digital Viewer configuration (Configuration > Fulfillment > Discovery Interface Display Logic > Viewer Services > Digital Viewer).
      new_alma_viewer_full_text.png
      Full Text Display
    • File-level Delivery – when selecting Share Focused File for a file in the new viewer and clicking Copy URL, the link provided opens to the selected file of the representation. Note that the Share Focused File checkbox appears only when there are multiple files in the representation.
      share_focused_file.gif
      Share Focused File
    • Closed Captions – toggle the captions to be on or off by selecting the closed captions icon at the bottom of the viewer and selecting captions on/captions off.

      For more information about configuring captions for video files, see Managing Digital Files from the Digital Representation Resource Editor.

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