6 Tips to Avoid Holdings Hold-Ups
- Product: RapidILL
If you don't use Alma, you must periodically upload files to the Rapid website to update your Rapid holdings. Usually, this is an entirely automated process that is completed within 48 hours, but some changes might hinder the holdings process. Here are 6 tips for making sure your holdings don't get held up:
- Send the same file type: Once you upload a certain file type, that's what our system expects to receive and knows how to process. For example, if you sent a tab-delimited .txt file last time, that's what you should send next time as well. We accept .txt, .xlsx, .mrc, .json. Try to avoid .csv files, as those tend to cause issues more often than other formats.
- Don't change how the data is structured within the files: Our system expects to find information about your holdings in the same place it was last time. For example, if your file had title in column A, then the next file should do the same. Similarly, if certain information was in a certain MARC field, that's where it should be in your next file as well.
- If you do zip, do so only once: While Rapid can handle compressed files (.zip, .rar), it can only handle uncompressing them once before it expects to get to the holding files. While our upload page can deal with large files, it's recommended that you split the holdings into several files no larger than 500 MB, rather than compress the files.
- If you have multiple files for the same format and type (for example, 3 files for print journals), they must all be the same file type and have the data structured in the same way within the files (see tip 2).
- If you do need to break any of rules 1-3, contact support when you upload. Any change in file format, data structure within files or any instance of double zipping requires human intervention, and it's best that we take care of it before it becomes an issue.
- If big changes are happening in your holdings, contact support when you upload. Our system flags and stops any big changes to holdings, so someone from our team can give it a look and make sure it's intentional, and not due to an error. For example, a large percentage of your books have been removed, or your journals have all changed from LendableInternational to LendableCountry, our team should be given a heads up so we can approve the change manually before it gets stuck.
- Article last edited: 05-Oct-2021