Alma KB: A New OverDrive Ebooks and Audiobooks Collection Released Early November 2024

Ex Libris and OverDrive have partnered to allow OverDrive ebooks and audiobooks titles to be included in the Alma Community Zone.

A new OverDrive Ebooks and Audiobooks collection (ID: 61499649300000041) was just released on November 3rd, 2024. 

Customers who wish to activate the OverDrive titles from this collection have 2 options:

Option 1:

1. Activate the OverDrive Ebooks and Audiobooks collection (ID: 61499649300000041) from the Community Zone

2. Select the "Activate electronic collection and selected portfolios via Excel file upload" option

3. Contact your account team at OverDrive and ask for an Excel file listing your holdings

4. Alma expects a specific file format with specific headers to be loaded when asking to activate portfolios using an Excel file. See attached "Alma template for portfolio loader" file with the dedicated format.

In case the file received from the provider is not in xlsx format or does not have the correct headers:

 -   Copy the ISBNs from the file you received from overdrive to column E in the "Alma template for portfolio loader" file

 -   In case the ISBNs do not appear as expected, change the format of the cells to "Text" (right click on the column header -> Format cell)

Please note that at this time Alma is performing a match based on the value of an ISBN identifier. This means that the titles that do not have an associated ISBN in the holdings file will be not selected via this process and will need to be activated manually. We are working on enhancing the matching process and will update when this work is complete. 

5. Follow the instructions in the activation wizard to complete the upload the Excel file

6. Validate the all the expected titles were activated successfully

Option 2:

1. Activate the OverDrive Ebooks and Audiobooks collection  (ID: 61499649300000041) from the Community Zone

2. Select the "Manual activation - activate electronic collection and manually select portfolios" option

   

3. Manually identify and activate the relevant portfolios

How do I make sure my collection is up to date?

Once you have the initial setup complete, any time you would like to align the collection with changes made to your holdings with OverDrive, use the "Portfolio Loader" and upload an up-to-date Excel file which you retrieved from OverDrive (if need be, re-formatted per the above instructions) , please see this help article.  

Another option is to manually activate additional titles from the Community Zone.

How can I locate the Website ID which I need to configure in Alma? 

Customers need to configure their OverDrive Website ID in Alma. This value can be found in The OverDrive Portal and provided to customers upon request.

What if I can't locate all my holdings in the "OverDrive Ebooks and Audiobooks" collection?" 

The titles within the "OverDrive Ebooks and Audiobooks" collection were ingested into the Community Zone using a title list which Ex Libris received from OverDrive. OverDrive builds the title list by aggregating all the relevant titles which mutual Alma/OverDrive customers have in common.

In case you are unable to locate some/all of your OverDrive books and audiobooks content in the "OverDrive Ebooks and Audiobooks" CZ collection (ID: 61499649300000041), please reach out to your account team at OverDrive and ask them to include your titles in the feed of MARC records supplied to the Ex Libris “Community Zone.” 

Is Kanopy content included?

Not at this time. Ex Libris is working with the provider to review Kanopy's metadata. Kanopy's intergration will be later announced in a separate knowledge article. 

Last Update Date: 05-NOV-2024