What is the Alma Community Zone?

The Alma Community Zone (CZ) is a platform that contains shared electronic bibliographic records and authority vocabularies. Bibliographic records in the CZ are enriched from providers MARC records to a merged record. High quality bibliographic record ensures that the library receive comprehensive discovery options and detailed analytics and collection analysis of library holdings.

Resources are available for use to all Alma institutions. Alma community can update Community Zone catalog bibliographic records.

It is a "one stop shop" that reflects the offerings sold or openly available by content providers.

It is the heart of the library electronic resource acquisition and resource management workflows.

More information about how Alma and CDI (Primo, Summon) work together is available in Using Ex Libris Products to Manage Electronic Resources (ERM)

What are the benefits of the Alma CZ for libraries?

Improve operations and services

• No need to manage & maintain electronic resources locally
• No need to import records from providers or copy catalog records from external sources
• Locate relevant resources in the Community Zone Knowledge Base, activate them and use
• No need to invest in the original cataloging of electronic resources
• Locate relevant resources in the Community Zone Knowledge Base, activate them and use the bibliographic records describing the electronic resources

Increase efficiency through automation

• Automatic addition of new titles and updates to existing collections
• Updates to journal coverage information
• Updates to linking information

Transparency

• All knowledgebase updates are available via a dedicated Community Zone Update Task list
• Focus on updates and operations relevant to library collections

Alma Demos

A list of publicly available Alma demos are available by selecting "Alma" in our Demo Center: https://exlibrisgroup.com/products/demo-center/

• Article last edited: 04-Jan-2022