Minutes January 15, 2021

Nancy Babb (UBuffalo)
Nancy Babb (UBuffalo)
Last updated 
SUNY Discovery Working Group meeting, 1/15/2021, 1:00 pm, via Zoom
Participants: Stephanie (chairing), Nancy (notes), Amanda, Heidi, Jen, Jessica, Michelle, Pam 
  • Confirmation of 2021 schedule
    The group agreed that the 3rd Friday of the month at 1:00 pm continues to be a workable schedule.  Nancy will investigate adding Stephanie as co-host on Zoom.
  • Discussion and testing of new CDI source field / troubleshooting efficacy, per Michelle's discussion with Ex Libris (CDI Source  - Discovery Working Group) and the CDI Tips and Tricks documentation.
    Ex Libris is in the process of adding new "Source" fields to CDI records to identify which collections are actually responsible for the record being included in a library's Primo VE search results (i.e. which collections have been activated in Alma). The Collection facet is also being revised to indicate the Source rather than Record Source. Record Source will still be indicated by the record id -- but the record being used in the CDI may not have any relation to the collection activated in Alma, since the CDI uses a merged/master record as well as alternative coverage. The Source field will only be relevant for "active" collections and not "active for search," so troubleshooting access issues will continue to have many layers of complexity.
    ACTION ITEM: The members of the working group will review Ex Libris documentation and begin testing in our individual Primo VE instances, noting both successes and challenges with the Source field and Collection facet in identifying collections and troubleshooting access issues. We will discuss results of individual testing on Basecamp and at our next meeting.
  • New issue: CDI resource type problems
    The group has noted numerous problems with incorrect resource types in CDI records. One big problem is article-level content that is assigned the "journal" resource type, resulting in many false results in Journal Search results. Nancy has ticket 00876456 open in Salesforce, specifically citing false "journal" type results in records with prefix cdi_gale_infotracacademiconefile*.  Ex Libris has responded that the problem is with the metadata provided by the publisher; the type provided by the publisher for the problem content is "newsletter," which is mapped correctly to "newsletter" type in Summon but in Primo VE maps to "journal." Ex Libris has marked the issue as "Pending Development" with a target fix no later than May 2021.
  • New issue: disappearing facets -- is this issue recurring?
    Facets failing to be displayed in initial search results has been a persistent but erratic problem since go-live. Sometimes reloading the page in the browser fixes the problem and forces the correct display of the full page, including facets, but not always. There have been several support tickets on this problem, some related to problems with complex searches, others related to Sandbox vs Production instances -- but all had seemed to be resolved by development updates. However, there may be new reports of this problem. If they are noted and can be documented, it would be good to open a ticket with Ex Libris to ensure that the problem really is resolved, long-term.
  • Review of 2021 Alma Roadmap:
    https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Product_Materials/010Roadmap
    Members of the group had briefly reviewed the Alma Roadmap, but have not yet noted particular items for discovery-oriented exploration. We expect that the Primo Roadmap will have many items for discussion and investigation. The Primo Roadmap has not yet been released, but the 2021 Primo Roadmap Overview webinar is scheduled for Wednesday, February 10.
    The group will hope to discuss the Primo Roadmap at our February meeting.
  • ELUNA enhancements: journal coverage in brief results
    Heidi noted that the ELUNA enhancement request to display journal coverage in brief results was approved, so it will be very interesting to see how Ex Libris is able to implement this functionality in Primo VE.
    Nancy noted that a perhaps related functionality, that of displaying Summary Holdings in the brief record display, was introduced in the January 2021 Release. 
  • Dedup/FRBR for External Collections
    Jen reported that support for FRBR / Dedup for External Data Sources was indicated in the January 2021 Release. SUNY has been working with IR collections and has tried to implement FRBR / Dedup for these external data sources, but with no success. 
    Nancy noted that the NZ makes the FRBR / Dedup process more complicated, regardless -- although indeed this may not be an issue specifically with the External Data Sources issue.
  • FRBR/Dedup general info
    The ability to check FRBR / Dedup across both IZ and NZ records was added in November 2020, and December 2020 introduced the ability to kick off the Recalculate FRBR / Dedup job by the individual institution in Alma, without having to request the job from Ex Libris -- but notably that will only run the job on IZ records, and NZ would have to be run by SUNY.
    After working with Ex Libris, Nancy learned the following process for testing and fixing FRBR / Dedup issues:
  1. Use the FRBR / Dedup Test Utility to identify what matches are being made and on what fields. Generally, testing a single record can be helpful when trying to figure out which records are being merged/FRBR-ed in Primo VE (for example, to troubleshoot problems where the merged record seems to be missing content, links, or other elements); comparing records can be helpful when trying to get records to merge/FRBR in Primo VE display (for example, to get records for online and physical holdings to display on a single merged record in Primo VE).
  2. Based on the results in the FRBR / Dedup Test Utility, you may wish to make changes to the source records in Alma. For example, the CZ records for the online version of a journal may be lacking key fields necessary for Dedup with a more complete record for the physical version; or a CZ record may include incorrect data that is causing it to inappropriately merge with another records; or you may discover that multiple records have the same key identifiers, some of which may be incorrect.  In some cases, institutions can make changes to the CZ records; in other cases, data errors can be reported to Ex Libris for correction. After data has been corrected, use the FRBR / Dedup Test Utility again to see if the match/non-match is now more appropriate.  If you are adjusting the records to enable merge, you'll likely see that although the key matches are identified, the records are not yet connected in the database, and won't be until additional jobs are run.
  3. If changes have been made to records to impact FRBR / Dedup, you can then run the job "Recalculate FRBR and Dedup Groups" from the FRBR / Dedup Test Utility. A caveat to this, however, is that if the records are NZ (which SUNY records probably are), then you'll need to wait until the NZ indexing changes have been applied. For CZ records, there are typically two stages: the IZ record pretty much immediately displays the CZ changes, but the NZ record also needs to be updated with the CZ changes, and there isn't a way for individual campuses to kick off this job. Opening and closing or editing the record isn't sufficient, and it may take as much as 2 weeks. Once you see the CZ changes in the NZ record, you can run the Recalculate job.
  4. If instead of adding merge/FRBR to records, you want to prevent/suppress FRBR/Dedup -- there's a job for that, too: "Prevent FRBR and/or Dedup in Discovery". This job can be run on a set of records, but again will need to be run in both the IZ and the NZ.  After the Prevent FRBR and/or Dedup in Discovery job has been run, the Recalculate job also needs to be run.
  • Move from Basecamp to Workplace
    SUNY is moving many of the Basecamp groups to Workplace, including the SUNY/SLC Headquarters (HQ) discussion forum which has been widely used for discussion of Alma, Primo VE, and related discovery issues.
    Additional information about Workplace, including links to join and training sessions, are available in the SUNY/SLC Headquarters (HQ) Basecamp.
    Important note:  The working groups will continue to use Basecamp, while more general SUNY discussions will move to Workplace. So the SUNY Discovery WG will continue to use Basecamp.
  • Next Meeting:
    Friday, February 19, 2:00 pm, via Zoom