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    Alma Roadmap – Completed – 2021 H2

    Metadata Management

    General Publishing – enhanced related records enrichment

    What’s New Highlights Impact
    Alma's General Publishing profiles will be enhanced to take into account related record changes, as well as to include information about the records that are published
    • Include institution related record information – bibliographic and inventory  ​

    • Include consortia and its members' related record information – bibliographic and inventory​

    • Incremental publishing will also be based on updates to the related records or inventory

    The institution or consortia catalog will have better exposure 

     

    Japan - Integration with NACSIS-CAT

    What’s New Highlights Impact

    Institutions using Alma in Japan will be able to continue to benefit from NACSIS services. ​

    Staff will be able to perform day to day cataloging workflows in Alma, reducing the need to switch between the two systems.

     

    Catalogers will be able to:​

    • Search and retrieve bibliographic records from the NACSIS catalog

    • Receive bibliographic record updates from the NACSIS catalog

    • Contribute records and updates to the NACSIS catalog

    Better support for Japanese libraries

    Electronic Resource Management 

    CZ Update Task List Improvements​

    What’s New Highlights Impact

    Additional details, facets and better navigation between electronic resource management entities and relevant Community Zone updates

    For more information see Community Zone Update Task List Improvements

     

    The staff user will be able to navigate from the electronic resource editor to the relevant entries in the Community Zone Task list and see the specific electronic collection/portfolio Community Zone changes Better transparency about Community Zone ongoing updates that might affect the management of electronic resources

    Limit Electronic Resource Management Actions According to User Role’s Scope​  

    Library Independence.png
            Library
       Independence

    What’s New Highlights Impact

    Staff users will be permitted to perform electronic resource management actions based on the scope of their roles

    For more information see Limiting Actions Related to Portfolios and E-collections According to User Role's Scope

    Various staff user's actions such as edit, update, delete, activate, deactivate etc., will be enabled/disabled based on the scope definition of the user role (specific library level or institution level (across libraries)).

    Better control over staff activity across libraries

    Digital Resource Management

    Controlled Digital Lending - Course Resources

    What’s New Highlights Impact

    Manage waitlist for controlled digital lending of course resources

    For more information see Patron Waitlist Management for Controlled Digital Lending

    • Patrons register for a digital resource​ which is limited by the number of concurrent users

    • Notification sent when resource is available via email or SMS

    Enhanced patron services for controlled digital lending

    Batch File Download

    What’s New Highlights Impact
    Download all files of a set Support downloading all files of a logical set to a local server Improved staff access to digital content

    Autonomize Copyrights

    What’s New Highlights Impact

    Copyrights can be assigned regardless of access rights

    For more information see Configure Copyright Statements Independently of Access Rights

    Copyrights can be assigned to digital resources as an autonomous attribute, removing dependency on access right policies Simplify copyright assignment

    Advanced Digital Delivery

    What’s New Highlights Impact
    Strict download control and image watermarks
    • Fully restrict file download, including browser actions

    • Overlay images with copyright watermarks

    Support advanced digital delivery services​ for copyrighted content

    Physical Resource Management

    Holdings – Staff Search

        Search and lists.png
    Repository search
       enhanced UX

    What’s New Highlights Impact

    A new type of search results - for Holdings - will be added to the staff search capabilities

     

    • Ability to search holdings based on holding information ​

    • Ability to search holdings based on title information​

    • Ability to search holdings based on item information

    Staff users will have direct access to more accurate results for holdings level records​

    Holdings search

    Acquisitions

    Interested Users - Enhanced Functionality  

    What’s New Highlights Impact

    New options to control the PO line 'Interested Users' functionality allows for more granular control on when a notification will be sent to the interested users once an item arrives or is activated.

    For more information see Control "Interested User" Options For Automatically Created PO Lines  

    3 major improvements were introduced as part of this enhanced functionality:

    • Purchase Request editing screen - Staff users are able to decide which notifications will be sent to the users directly from the purchase request screen

    • "Create Order" import profile (EOD) - New mapping allows institutions (creating orders via files received from the vendor) to determine which notifications will be set for PO lines created from the import process (this includes the Patron-Driven Acquisitions import process) 

    • A dedicated "Update PO Lines Interested Users" Job enables users to create a set of PO lines and apply the "Interested Users" settings on the members of the set. 

    Institutions are able to serve their patrons in a better more reliable way when sending notification regarding newly received/activated item availability.

    SUSHI – Harvesting Period 

    What’s New Highlights Impact

    When a user manually requests that a SUSHI account/report be harvested, the user is now given an option to define the exact time period for which they would like to harvest the usage data.

    For more information see Define a Specific Time Frame While Manually Harvesting R5 SUSHI Data. 

    The option to select the time frame when using the manual harvest option allows users to:​

    • Harvest usage data for greater than 12 months previous for newly configured accounts​

    • When troubleshooting data errors, users will be able to harvest a single month at a time

    Institutions will no longer have to go to the vendor website in order to retrieve past usage

    Fulfillment & Resource Sharing

    Support for InnReach APIs – General Availability 

    What’s New Highlights Impact

    Support of InnReach APIs will be made generally available.

    For more information, see INN-Reach API Integration

    • Direct API calls between Alma and InnReach for:​

      • Publishing bibliographic and holdings information to InnReach​

      • Managing the resource sharing process between Alma and InnReach

    Save costs, and benefit from a more robust integration by removing the RSB (formerly DCB) component.

    Link Resolver Get It  - Define Location Sort Order (NERS) 

    What’s New Highlights Impact

    The institution will be able to define the sort order of library locations. 

    For more information, see GetIt Libraries - Customized Display Order

    Multiple holdings will be listed in the order that has been defined by the institution when displaying the list of locations in the GetIt tab. Easily select the relevant resource from a list with multiple locations

    Japan - Integration with NACSIS ILL 

    What’s New Highlights Impact

    Institutions using Alma in Japan will be able to continue to benefit from NACSIS ILL services. ​

    Staff users managing resource sharing requests will be able to integrate with the NACSIS ILL broker system Better support for Japanese libraries.

    Alma Analytics

    Local Authorities

    What’s New Highlights Impact
    New subject area – Local Authorities
    • There will be a new subject area for Local Authorities.​

    • The institution will be able to see how many local authority records have been, for example, created, edited, and deleted by vocabulary within specific times frames.

    Gain insights into how local authority records are being used.

    DARA Recommendations

    What’s New Highlights Impact
    New subject area - DARA recommendations
    • There will be a new subject area for DARA recommendations.​

    • The institution will be able to see the recommendations that were generated, implemented and dismissed by category.

    Easily understand how automated recommendations are affecting the workflows of the institution.

    Consortia

    Assign/Reassign Bibliographic/Authority Records in Network Shared Catalog​

    What’s New Highlights Impact

    Consortia members will be able to share & manage cataloging activity across the Network by assigning records for cataloging to any user in the Network

    For more information see Re-assign MMS Records in Network Shared Catalog

    Today a cataloger can only assign records for cataloging  to catalogers that are in their institution. With this new functionality a cataloger will be able to assign a record for cataloging to any cataloger in the Network ​ Simplify the ability to share and manage  cataloging activity and expertise across the Network​.

    Inventory Transfer between Institutions​
    Early Access

    What’s New Highlights Impact
    There will be a workflow that will allow consortia members to acquire physical resources by one member and to transfer these resources for the use of another member.

    For more information see: Joint Inventory Workflow - Purchasing Items for Another Institution in the Consortia

     

    The purchasing and receiving of a physical resource will be done by the purchasing institution​

    The item will be sent to the host institution​

    The host institution will receive the item and adds/change any necessary item information

    Simplify the ability to share physical resources across the Network

    Automatically delete Bibliographic records that are not used across the Network 

    What’s New Highlights Impact

    Automatically delete Bibliographic records that are not used across the Network

    For more information see:
    Automatic Deletion of Network Zone Bibliographic Record not Held by Other Institutions

    When the last item in the Network is deleted by a consortia member, the shared bibliographic record in the  Network Zone will automatically be deleted as it in not held by any consortia members Added efficiency in managing bibliographic records across the network

    Open Platform & Administration

    Language Support - Additional Languages

    What’s New Highlights Impact
    Search, Sort & Browse will be enhanced to support the special handling of diacritics for additional languages  
    • Alma's handling of language specific searching and sorting needs will be enhanced to include the following languages:​
      • Lithuanian​
      • Iceland​ic
    • In addition, the handling of Swedish and Norwegian special diacritics​ will be improved

    Better support for Alma in specific languages

    Online Printout Improvements

    What’s New Highlights Impact
    Improvements to the online printout queue workflow
    • A visual indication will show how many pending printouts are waiting in the online printout queue

    Improved efficiencies for handling pending printouts in the online printout queue

    Email and letter configuration sharing

    What’s New Highlights Impact
    Libraries will be able to contribute, copy and share xsl customizations for letters and printouts 
    • A new option to contribute an xsl customization will be added to the letter and printout list
    • As with other areas of contribution, the xsl customization will be available for other institutions to copy and reuse 
    • This will be achieved by adding new options to browse contributed xsl customizations, preview their format, and then copy the relevant customizations to the institution's list of letter and printout definitions

     

     

    Institutions can take advantage of the work of the community rather than building letter configurations from scratch

    User Experience & Accessibility

    Safari Certification

    What’s New Highlights Impact

    The user will be able to use the Safari Browser (MDE Excluded)

    • Ability to use a Safari browser on MacOS​

    • Ability to user a Safari browser on iOS, using an iPad in landscape orientation

    Users will be able to use a larger variety of major browsers according to their preference

    Accessibility -  WCAG 2.1 level AA 

    What’s New Highlights Impact
    All elements of Alma will comply with WCGA 2.1 level AA
    • Colors and contrasts standards​

    • Keyboard usage instead of mouse​

    • Support for screen readers​

    • Zoom and responsiveness

    Users with disabilities will be able to better interact with Alma
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