The Central Discovery Index (CDI) powers Primo and Summon.
To learn more how to supply content for CDI, please see Partner With Us
What is the difference between Alma, SFX, Client Center/Intota, Summon, and Primo?
Alma, SFX, and Client Center/Intota (powered by the 360 Knowledgebase (KB)) contain collections, which are provider title-level sales models/offerings/products. Our mutual clients use these tools for administrative and cataloging purposes.
In order to have content made discoverable in the Summon and Primo interfaces, our mutual clients must first activate (i.e. "turn on") the content in a collection in the knowlegebase.
The index contains more granular content than the title-level metadata in the knowledgebase (e.g. article-level). It is aimed at end-users/patrons.
How can I see how the Alma, SFX, Client Center/Intota, Summon, and Primo products work?
Which formats of the title lists are supported for ingestion in your knowledgebases?
Ex Libris prefers that data submitted to the KB meet the KBART Recommended Practice guidelines. KBART recommends tab-delimited, UTF-8 encoded text (.txt) files
Ex Libris can also accept Excel (.xls/.xlsx), CSV
MARC records (for books only)
Some types of XML data (depending on schema used and data elements available)
To learn more how to supply content for the knowledgebases, please see Partner With Us
What is KBART?
KBART (“Knowledgebases and Related Tools”) is a NISO Recommended Practice that facilitates the transfer of holdings metadata from content providers to knowledgebase suppliers and libraries. Knowledge bases are widely used to support library link resolvers and electronic resource management systems.
Ex Libris supports KBART automation for Alma and SFX. (Support for KBART automation in the 360 and Intota services suite is planned for 2022). KBART automation is a service that regularly updates a library’s holdings in a KnowledgeBase with information retrieved from their content provider
More information is available in the following resources:
What is the best frequency for submitting updates?
We recommend submitting updates as soon as your content changes, whether that is daily, weekly, monthly, etc.
If you are concerned that you have submitted a recent update but that change is not live, please contact us at Provider.Relations@exlibrisgroup.com.
What happens if the format of my content changes, we remove metadata fields, or we are migrating platforms?
If your content format changes, you migrating from one platform to another (which results in linking syntax changes) or metadata fields are removed without contacting us first to account for the changes, it can cause adverse effects to linking and discoverability. Mutual clients and their patrons will not be able to successfully access content on your platform.
Please reach out to us at Provider.Relations@exlibrisgroup.combefore making changes to the format or fields in your metadata. We highly encourage you to reach out to us with as much advance time as possible, as it can take one month or longer to process, depending on the extent of the changes.
For significant changes, we will write articles in this Knowledge Center to let our mutual clients know that we are working together and supply anticipated timelines.
What are the best practices for collection names?
We suggest ensuring that the collection names you supply us for the knowledgebases (360, Alma, SFX) match what you supply to clients. For example, use the names as you provide on invoices.
How can we see our content represented in your systems?
Please reach out to us at Provider.Relations@exlibrisgroup.com and we will be happy to set up a time for a demo of your products in 360, Alma, SFX, Primo, and Summon as relevant.
Will we need to sign a contract?
For Alma CZ MARC Enrichment and CDI ingestion for non-Open Access content, we will need to work with our Global Content Alliance (GCA) team and your legal contacts to sign an agreement.
This step is not necessary for the KBs or Open Access Discovery content, though we may need to clarify the terms and conditions for Open Access content, as there are various models.
We require a contract to protect the intellectual property rights for MARC records and CDI feeds, the latter of which may contain full-text and proprietary schema details.
If you are a provider who contracts a third party to create MARC records, it is important to review the details of those contracts, to confirm that you have the rights to redistribute those records to another party.
When should we submit our annual collection title lists?
Please reach out to us at Provider.Relations@exlibrisgroup.com with the names and locations of the title lists for all of your annual collections as soon as you have them ready, ideally by November, so that our mutual clients can activate the content well before the beginning of the new year.
Why is our content being removed from your products?
If we are unable to reach you to get new title lists for the knowledgebases or for the CDI feed and the links are broken, we generally opt to remove the content so there is no longer a poor customer experience.
We are very happy to be in touch with you to reload or refresh the content once new title lists or feeds with operational URLs are ready. Please reach out to us at Provider.Relations@exlibrisgroup.com.
