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Introduction to Alma

1.1 Welcome

Notes:

Welcome to this introduction to Alma.

1.2 Introduction

Published by Articulate® Storyline www.articulate.com Notes:

In this session, we will provide background information on Alma, including the strategic framework and the needs that led to the development of Alma, and how Alma is accessed and deployed. This will be a brief introduction to the detailed training sessions that will follow.

Published by Articulate® Storyline www.articulate.com 1.3 Strategic Framework

Notes:

Let’s start with the strategic framework.

Published by Articulate® Storyline www.articulate.com 1.4 Strategic Framework

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This is the high-level, strategic framework in which Alma resides. At the top are activities that patrons engage in-learning, teaching, research, and so on. They are the activities that libraries support, as the work of the library is not for its own sake, but to support the goals in service of patrons.

At the bottom are potential resources that could support these patron activities. Resources might include print or online materials, digitized resources, or even shared collections. All of these resources might be of aid to patrons to support their work.

The strategic framework of Ex Libris connects resources to the activities that they support. The Ex Libris solution is the set of systems that we use to accomplish this. It comprises three parts: 1. Unified Resource Discovery & Delivery is a single point for all patron activities. We call this discovery environment Primo. 2. Unified Resource Management is the environment in which staff conduct their work. This is called Alma and is the focus of these training sessions. 3. Finally, both patron and staff tasks are facilitated by cloud data services such as the Alma Community Zone and the Primo Central Index.

Published by Articulate® Storyline www.articulate.com 1.5 Consolidate the Frameworks

Notes:

Previously, we had to work across systems in silo’d environments. There might be a system for ordering, another system for managing electronic resources, another system for managing digitized resources, and so on - and there may have been redundancies between the systems - perhaps duplication of work or duplication of data.

These redundancies required data synchronization, forced inefficiencies in workflows, and limited enhancements for specific processes to one system at a time.

Published by Articulate® Storyline www.articulate.com 1.6 Consolidate the Frameworks

Notes:

With the Alma framework, we changed the silo’d environments to a unified management environment where all of the data is in one system and end-to-end workflows can happen without having to switch between systems.

This allows for a more integrated workflow for managing resources, and supports unified discovery of all resources that are managed or made available by a library.

1.7 Alma: Consolidated System

It is useful to understand what systems Alma includes. Previously, you may have had a separate Integrated Library System, Electronic Resource Management system, link resolver, and digital asset management system. Alma consolidates these systems, so it can take the best parts of each system and apply them regardless of resource format.

1.8 Workflow Silos: Electronic Resources

Notes:

To make this more concrete, let’s take a look at an example with electronic resource management. When managing electronic resources, staff may work across three or more systems - trials are handled in the ERM system, ordering in the ILS, licensing in the ERM, and when it has all been approved you must activate in the link resolver and ERM, and simultaneously import descriptive metadata into the ILS. As a result, data that may be needed for evaluation is distributed across all three systems. In practical terms, this means a lot of synchronizing data between systems, working across multiple applications at once, and perhaps dividing the work by who has access or logins for each system, rather than by the expertise of the individuals conducting this work.

Published by Articulate® Storyline www.articulate.com 1.9 Collapse Silos: Electronic Resources

Notes:

In Alma, you can handle the end-to-end workflow without leaving the system. This allows you to optimize your workflows for better automation and provides better workflow consistency across resource formats.

Published by Articulate® Storyline www.articulate.com 1.10 Community Zone and Institution Zone

Notes:

The Alma data model has 2 basic zones - the Community Zone and the Institution Zone. Within the Community Zone are:  Global Authorities, which are the vocabularies and name authority files that ExLibris keeps up to date on your behalf  Community Catalog, which is currently comprised of mostly electronic resources, but also shared bibliographic records that are managed by Ex Libris, as well as Alma libraries.  Central Knowledgebase, which contains administrative and connection information for electronic resources, which you can, in turn, activate for your local institution, if applicable.

The Institution Zone contains your institutional catalog for bibliographic records and your inventory. The inventory is important to our model because it defines what is yours and identifies those titles that are managed by your environment regardless of where the bibliographic record is. Note that your local inventory can be linked to records in the Community Zone, your Institution Zone, or the Network Zone, which is applicable in a consortium scenario.

Published by Articulate® Storyline www.articulate.com 1.11 Community Zone Collaboration

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Let’s see the interactions between your Institution Zone and the Community Zone.  If you acquire a resource, the bibliographic record can be imported into your Institution Catalog, and you can create inventory - in other words, holdings and item records, from the bibliographic record.  You can also use a bibliographic record from the Community Zone. You can search for the record in the Community Zone, and associate local inventory with that record.  If you acquire an electronic collection and want to manage the collection in your inventory, Alma will link out to the titles in that collection based on data from the Central KnowledgeBase - so you can manage, order, and pay at the collection level, but get all of the constituent titles - in this example, all of the titles that reside in Academic Search Premier, from the Central Knowledgebase.  Lastly, Global Authorities can be used to authorize your Institution Zone records. Although they are authorities in a global environment, you can use them to authorize your local institution zone catalog records. Though not illustrated here, if you need vocabularies that are not currently in the Community Zone, you can have your own local authorities as well.

Published by Articulate® Storyline www.articulate.com 1.12 Alma Workflows

Notes:

Alma is made up of workflows. A workflow is typically a series of steps to complete an end-to- end process. In Alma, there are system-managed workflows - a series of steps that Alma manages, sometimes with no intervention needed by staff. If staff intervention is needed, the same staff member may or may not perform every task in the workflow; different staff members might in engage in different steps or tasks of the workflow.

System-managed workflows allow for overall automation, reducing or eliminating staff intervention; as well as customization to enable precise monitoring of stages in end-to-end workflows and mandate manual staff intervention where required.

Some examples of workflows in Alma include request workflows - such as hold requests, digitization, or booking requests - course reserves reading list workflows, acquisitions workflows such as purchasing, receiving and invoicing, and electronic resource activation workflows. Each of the various workflows will be discussed in detail in separate Alma training sessions.

Whenever possible, we have built functionality and functional workflows to be cross-format. This means, for example, more consistent and efficient workflows for ordering or cataloging regardless of whether you’re working with print, electronic, or digital resources.

Published by Articulate® Storyline www.articulate.com 1.13 Alma Functional Areas

Notes:

As mentioned previously, Alma is a single system where you can access the functionality for all available workflows in the same place. This shows the Alma menu for a super-user who has roles across all functional areas, including technical services, public services, administration and configuration.

Generally speaking, in Alma:  The Acquisitions functional area encompasses ordering, receiving, and invoicing.  The Resource Management menu includes cataloging, physical inventory maintenance and control, and electronic resource activations tasks.  Fulfillment is a broader term to mean not just circulation, but also requesting, course reserves, and access control; it is how to fulfill user requests.  Administration means user management and general administrative tasks - so you don’t have to go elsewhere to do these types of administrative tasks.

Any staff user may see a combination of menus from the different functional areas. Which menus display to a staff user are based on the roles assigned to the user. This will be discussed further in the User Management sessions.

Published by Articulate® Storyline www.articulate.com 1.14 Publishing to Discovery

Notes:

Let’s talk briefly about the publishing model. Once we have bibliographic records and inventory, how do they become available to patrons in Primo?

Alma publishes to Primo bibliographic records that are in the Institution Zone, as well as bibliographic records from the Community Zone that have been activated in the Institution Zone. Alma also provides information about inventory that is associated with those bibliographic records. This information is harvested by Primo and made available for searching.

The first time Alma publishes to Primo, all information is published. Subsequently, the publishing job runs in update mode, publishing only information that has been changed - that is, added, deleted or modified - since the previous publishing job.

Published by Articulate® Storyline www.articulate.com 1.15 Deployment and Releases

Notes:

We will discuss some of the basics of the deployment model next.

Published by Articulate® Storyline www.articulate.com 1.16 Cloud Deployment

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Alma is deployed as a cloud system. That means that for day-to-day activities, you do not need to install any clients, but instead access Alma using a browser such as Firefox or Chrome.

Note that there are two small exceptions regarding installed clients. When you do your final cutover to Alma, you will use an offline circulation client. This can also be used if a network outage is experienced. It allows circulation transactions to be uploaded to Alma once the connection has been restored. Additionally, label printing is handled by a third-party client to support custom printer setups.

Printing is handled by emailing to a printer - the setup of which you will discuss later with your project team.

Lastly, all upgrades happen automatically and are managed by Ex Libris. That means that all libraries are always on the most recent version of Alma, with all of the current functionality and bug fixes. Currently, Alma upgrades occur on a monthly basis.

Published by Articulate® Storyline www.articulate.com 1.17 Session Review

Notes:

This brings us to the end of this session.

Published by Articulate® Storyline www.articulate.com 1.18 Summary

Notes:

To summarize, in this session we covered:  the approach to consolidating different types of systems into one application  key functional areas within Alma  the general concept of workflows  cloud deployment and release upgrades.

1.19 Additional Resources

Thanks for viewing this introductory session. More detailed information on Alma functionality can be found in the Alma training sessions, as well as using the online help in Alma and the Alma guides that are available in the Documentation Center.

1.20 About this Training

Notes:

Published by Articulate® Storyline www.articulate.com 1 Pre-requisites

2 Lesson Objectives

Published by Articulate® Storyline www.articulate.com 3 Intended Audience

4 Copyright

Published by Articulate® Storyline www.articulate.com