Alma October 2017 Release Notes

• The new Alma UI was officially released in September 2017 and can now be enabled (turned on) for all institutions, although it is not turned on by default. For information on enabling the new Alma UI, see Enabling Alma's New UI for Your Institution. For general information on Alma's new user interface, see What's New in Alma's New User Interface, as well as the training videos available at Introduction to the New Alma User Interface. 
• As part of the new Alma UI, we introduced the concept of gradual or progressive discloser of inventory information in repository staff search results in order to improve usability by presenting only the minimum amount of data required for a task. Recently, we added the option to expand inventory information as a user preference within an Alma session. As of September 17th, this option can also be saved for multiple Alma sessions.
• The logic of how advanced searches are built changed in Alma's new UI from Alma's classic UI. As a result, saved advanced search queries (logical sets) built in the classic UI cannot be edited in the new UI. These queries must be recreated in the new UI. For detailed information, see Advanced Search Logic: Differences Between the Classic and New UI. 

• Alma and Clio have now been successfully integrated. For more information, see the following blog by Stephen Gladwin from Curry College: https://developers.exlibrisgroup.com/blog/Clio-and-Alma-Together-at-Last
• An additional presentation on resource sharing funds—functionality that was released in August—is now available. 
• ILLiad and BLDSS use is on the rise:
  • The number of borrowing requests that have been automatically copied from Alma into ILLiad has reached the 6000 requests mark, including 1400 requests handled in August. 
  • 600 requests have been sent to BLDSS using the new resource sharing APIs, including over 100 requests sent in August.
• With the November release, you will be able to publish and view MARC records as BIBFRAME records. The Bibliographic Framework (BIBFRAME) Initiative is a Library of Congress project for defining a bibliographic data model. Based on linked data principles, BIBFRAME has been designed to replace the MARC standards and to make bibliographic data more useful both within and outside the library community. For more information on BIBFRAME, see the Library of Congress web site.

• As of September, the CKB includes the following resources:
  • Total packages: 7,209
  • Aggregator packages: 1,592
  • Selective packages: 5,617
  • eBook packages: 3,008
  • eJournal packages: 3,901
  • Mixed packages: 300
  • Full text titles: 17,432,856
  • eBook titles: 15,064,552
  • eJournal titles: 2,368,304
  • Peer-reviewed journals: 61,208
  • Total bibliographic records: 5,257,042

• Click here for authority record Community Zone updates and new electronic collections added to the Alma CKB in the past month.

• The Alma Essentials Training Kit is now available in French and Simplified Chinese. It will soon be available in Spanish and updated in Italian for the new Alma UI.
• The Alma Online Help will soon be available in Simplified Chinese. 
• In 2018, Alma will be available in both Hebrew and Portuguese.

View a list of the features that are planned for the November Alma release.