Presented at the 2015 Charleston Conference by Mingyu Chen, Head of Metadata Services, University of Texas at Dallas, and Ellen Safley, Dean of Libraries, University of Texas at Dallas

1. WHEN A NEW
DISCOVERY LAYER
IMPACTS COLLECTIONS:
EXCELLENCE, IMPROVEMENT, FRUSTRATION
Charleston Conference 2015
Ellen Safley, Dean of Libraries
Mingyu Chen, Head of Metadata Services
University of Texas at Dallas

2. INTRODUCTION
• University of Texas at Dallas
• Discovery Layers
• ALMA/PRIMO
• Impacts on Collection Development
• Projects and Clean Up
• Conclusion and Questions

3. UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS
 Founded in 1969 as a graduate institution.
Juniors and Seniors were added in 1975
and freshmen were added in 1990.
 Today, 24,600 students, Technology
concentrated.
 38% in graduate school
 134 degree plans including 30 doctoral
programs
 About 20% of students live on campus

4. Eugene McDermott Library
Named after one of the founders of
Texas Instruments
2,732, 613 volumes
71, 987 electronic journals
1,131,155 eBooks
$4,185,040 budget
80 staff including 30 professionals
Federal depository

5. Other facts
• 93% of materials budget is for electronic
resources
• Maximize access but still hybrid model for
collections
• No remote storage

6. Discovery Layer(s)
• Originally a NOTIS Library
• Adopted Encore discovery layer from III in
2010
• Had SFX and BX
• Early adopter of ALMA/Primo in 2013
• In the cloud
• Hosted

7. DISCOVERY LAYER #1 -- ENCORE
• Running Voyager for the catalog system
• Running discovery layer from another company---
----
• DELTA FILES—changes in customer records,
change in bibliographic records, holdings issues,
what was checked out
• Not instant access to updates

8. Discovery Layer #2--Primo
• Change to the next generation system—ALMA
• Required Primo for public interface
• August 2013!

9. PRIMO Challenges…
• Plenty of conversion problems
– Holdings
• Print holdings did not convert. Had to be manually input
– Series
• Sometimes the number was included in the series and sometimes it
was not included. The link was not clickable to find all parts of a
series..
• Earlier and later titles
• Record fields did not display as needed
• CHANGE IS HARD

10. Fixed by separating series title from series number into 2 fields

12. ALMA Implementation

13. WHAT IS PRIMO/ALMA?
Primo – Public Side Alma – Staff Side

14. Primo/Alma Implementation Challenges
• Implemented discovery services, Primo
and integrated library system, Alma
simultaneously.
• Difficult to understand two new systems
• Difficult to identify where the problems
are
 Display issues in Primo
 Bibliographic data issues in Alma
 Difficult to communicate with staff
members at the different levels

15. Post-Implementation Challenges
• Functionality issues
More than 100 cases filed
Changes every month
• Data migration issues
Fields in wrong format
Lost some fields
• System configuration issues
Data display issues
• Metadata duplication issues
• Learning curve

16. Post-Implementation Challenges
• Knowledge sharing program
within Metadata Services
• Workflow format standardized
• New workflows and guidelines
established for Alma written
by Metadata Services
• “Metadata Services
Knowledge Base” Built

17. Batch-loading Profile Function
• Embedded import profile function
• Ability to handle large quantity of vendor
records
• Help to ease librarians’ workload
Portfolio is updated automatically
Access URL is activated automatically
Internal note and interface name are added
automatically
Portfolio material type is selected automatically

18. E-BOOK RECORD BATCH-LOADING (Since Sep. 2013)
Package Name Number
Ebrary 43,371
Safari 11,886
Springer 6,074
EBL on Demand 17,592
Gale Nineteenth-Century Collections Online 38,078
Government Documents 14,129
Proquest Congressional Database 12,778
Early English Books Online 30,479
Kanopy 4,969
ERIC Document 18,059
… …
Total 231, 466

19. EXPORTING AND IMPORTING
FUNCTION

20. DE-DUPLICATION FUNCTION: CASE 1

21. DE-DUPLICATION FUNCTION: CASE II

22. UPDATE PHYSICAL ITEM FUNCTION
 Media VHS/DVD
Changing holding location for VHS materials from Media Videotapes to
Media Remote.
Number of records: 3,019
 UTD Ph.D. Dissertations
Relocating Ph.D. Dissertations to a remote location
Changing item policy into “4-hour check out”
Changing item’s material type into “Ph.D. thesis”
Number of records: 2,843
 Ackerman Center Items (Holocaust Reading Room)
Changing holding location for Ackerman Center materials from
McDermott Library to Ackerman Center
Number of records: 1,027

23. UPDATING PORTFOLIOS FUNCTION I
Public Note Portfolio Record Number
Read this eBook 218,170
View online 5,039
Online version 550,158
Authentication Note Portfolio Record Number
Read this eBook 6,365
Total 779,732

24. UPDATING PORTFOLIOS FUNCTION II
• Complete: Changing portfolio interface Name
from “DOC WWW” to “US Government
Documents”
Number of records: 4,922
• Complete: Adding interface name “US
Government Documents” into those Portfolios
that did not have any interface name
Number of records: 73,562

25. PDA RECORD MANAGEMENT
FUNCTION
• Patron Driven
Acquisitions with EBL
since 2008
• Records lifecycle
• Automatic processing
Records
Loaded
Patron
Browse
Purchase
Queue
Approval
Notification
Record
Enhancement

26. Conclusion and Future Challenges
• ALMA enables a level of cleanup not available
in heritage system. ALMA is an expert at
changing lots of records in a very short period
of time. One record at a time editing is a bit
more labor intensive.
• Fairly easy for the cataloger to handle a
problem and find a way to solve a mess.
Requires a strong analysis by the cataloger…so
far so good

27. Conclusion and Future Challenges
• Records: Vendor created, machine created,
OCLC. Great variations in those input into
ALMA. Analysis is required and correction is
possible before the final load. HELPS
COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITIES!
• Authority processes are not working properly.
Search function is not perfect but Ex Libris is
working on it. Matching records using ISBN
numbers continued to be an issue.

28. QUESTIONS