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Welcome to ENUG

Brandeis University – October 16, 2025

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The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up Alma

Kristen Fredericksen

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The City University of New York

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Agenda

  • Why tidy up Alma?
  • Cleanup projects at CUNY
  • Tools
  • Pitfalls

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Why tidy up Alma?

  • Get rid of everything that doesn’t spark joy

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Why tidy up Alma?

  • Get rid of everything that doesn’t spark joy

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Why tidy up Alma?

  • Can patrons discover the materials they need?
  • Can they figure out how to locate or request physical materials?
  • Can they access electronic resources?

Discovery

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Why tidy up Alma?

  • We won’t be using Alma forever
  • Maintaining clean data now means less cleanup in the future

Migration

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Why tidy up Alma?

  • Alma contract
    • Bibliographic records
    • Staff user accounts

Pricing

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Why tidy up Alma?

  • GIGO = Garbage In, Garbage Out
  • Missing or incorrect data ruins reports
  • Libraries depend on accurate statistics for expenditures, loans, patron counts, number of volumes owned, etc.

Reporting

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Why tidy up Alma?

  • Alma is an integrated library system, so acquisitions, cataloging, circulation, collection development, weeding, etc. are all related
  • One error can have unintended consequences in other areas

Workflows

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Records without inventory

  • Bibliographic records without
    • holdings records
    • electronic portfolios
    • electronic collections
    • digital files
  • Holdings records without items

What is it?

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Records without inventory

  • Discovery
  • Migration
  • Pricing
  • Reporting
  • Workflows

Why is it a problem?

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Holdings without items

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Records without inventory

  • Advanced search for All Titles where “Has Inventory” = “No”
  • Narrow by facets or add additional search parameters

How to find it in Alma

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Records without inventory

  • Advanced search for Physical Holdings where “Has Items” = “No”
  • Narrow by facets or add additional search parameters

How to find it in Alma

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Records without inventory

  • Analytics report
    • Subject area: E-Inventory
    • Bibliographic Lifecycle = In Repository
    • No of Portfolio (In Repository) = 0
  • Add additional filters as needed

How to find it in Analytics

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Records without inventory

  • Analytics report
    • Subject area: Physical Items
    • Holdings ID is not null
    • Num of Items (In Repository) = 0
    • Bibliographic Lifecycle = In Repository
    • Holdings Lifecycle = Active
  • Add additional filters as needed

How to find it in Analytics

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Records without inventory

  • Save Alma searches as sets to revisit later and/or run jobs
  • Save Analytics reports as Alma sets to revisit later and/or run jobs
  • Analyze records by
    • Bibliographic Level
    • Has Orders
    • Linked Institution
    • Resource Type

How to analyze it

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Records without inventory

  • Don’t be afraid to delete records
  • Deletion jobs:
    • Delete Bibliographic records
    • Delete Holdings records with no Physical items

How to fix it

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Local notes

  • Institutions link their bib records to a record in the Network Zone (NZ) to take advantage of the shared catalog.
  • Some bibliographic fields can be protected so they’re only editable by that college’s staff and visible to that college’s patrons.
  • MARC 09X, 59X, 69X, 77X, 78X, 9XX

What is it?

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Local notes

  • Discovery
  • Migration
  • Pricing
  • Reporting
  • Workflows

Why is it a problem?

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Local notes

  • Indication rule
    • Start with a set
    • Filter the set by an indication rule
    • Jobs can be run on the new set, or the results can be exported

How to find it in Alma

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Local notes

  • Ask Ex Libris to index the field(s) in Analytics
  • Create a set in Alma and run the “Export Bibliographic records” job to get a file you can analyze in MarcEdit or OpenRefine
  • Compare local notes to non-local notes to detect outliers

How to analyze it

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Local notes

  • 590 notes in CUNY NZ records:
    • Barcodes!
    • Dates whose significance is lost
    • Local donors
    • Local grant-funded collections
    • Local shelving practices
    • Notes from OCLC members, not CUNY

How to analyze it

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Local notes

  • Metadata Editor
    1. Go to Editing Actions 🡪 Add Local Extension
    2. Enter the tag, indicators, and field contents
    3. Delete the non-local field

How to fix it

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Local notes

  • Normalization
    • Create a set of titles
    • Create a normalization rule
    • Create a normalization process with the normalization rule
    • Run the normalization process on the set
  • Consortia require an extra step
    • After the note is converted to a local extension in the IZ, the non-local note must be deleted in the NZ

How to fix it

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Diacritic Errors

  • Special or foreign-language characters that didn’t render correctly

What is it?

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Diacritic Errors

  • Usually caused by incorrect settings in Connexion
  • Also caused by copying and pasting without changing indicators

What is it?

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Diacritic Errors

  • Discovery
  • Migration
  • Pricing
  • Reporting
  • Workflows

Why is it a problem?

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Diacritic Errors

  • Simple search for All titles where Keywords contains “<U+fffd>”
  • Narrow by facets or add additional search parameters

How to find it in Alma

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Diacritic Errors

  • Analytics report
    • Subject area: Titles
    • Lifecycle = In Repository
    • Author contains any <U+fffd>;ǂ;â��;<U+0019>;<U+0014>;<U+001c>;&#x5d
    • Editions contains any <U+fffd>;ǂ;â��;<U+0019>;<U+0014>;<U+001c>;&#x5d
  • Add additional filters as needed as needed

How to find it in Analytics

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Diacritic Errors

  • Don’t.
  • Sometimes difficult to identify the correct character
    • could be anything
    • <U+fffd>e can represent é or è or several other characters

How to analyze it

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Diacritic Errors

  • Metadata Editor
    1. Delete the problem character(s)
    2. Go to Editing Actions 🡪 Insert Unicode Characters
    3. Select the correct character

How to fix it

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Diacritic Errors

  • Overlay the records
    1. Do a batch search in OCLC or Z39.50
    2. Downloads the MARC records
    3. Load them with a repository import profile (use merge rules to replace the fields you want to correct and protect the fields you want to retain)

How to fix it

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Barcodes

  • A unique machine-readable identifier that links an item or patron to its library record.
  • Usually numeric
    • Starts with 2 for patrons
    • Starts with 3 for items

What is it?

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Barcodes

What is it?

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Barcodes

  • Discovery
  • Migration
  • Pricing
  • Reporting
  • Workflows

Why is it a problem?

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Barcodes

  • Simple search for Physical Items where Barcode starts with a number or a symbol
  • Narrow by facets or add additional search parameters

How to find it in Alma

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Barcodes

  • Analytics report
    • Subject area: Physical Items
    • Lifecycle = Active
    • Barcode contains any “ ”
  • Add additional filters as needed

How to find it in Analytics

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Barcodes

  • Bonus tip from SUNY reports: use a custom formula to display the spaces as different characters
  • REPLACE("Physical Item Details"."Barcode", ' ', '⸱’)
  • 3 9016 0106 4271 9 🡪

3⸱9016⸱0106⸱4271⸱9⸱

How to find it in Analytics

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Barcodes

  • Use conditional formatting to highlight characters like . and $
  • Calculate the length of the barcode with the =LEN() function
  • Be aware of historic and current barcoding practices at your institution

How to analyze it

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Barcodes

  • Manually edit items one by one in Alma

How to fix it

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Barcodes

  • API + script
    • Create an API key in the Ex Libris Developer Network
    • Write a script that removes spaces in barcodes

How to fix it

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One-time POs/POLs that don’t close

  • Purchase order (PO) or purchase order line (POL) that remained open when it should have closed

What is it?

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One-time POs/POLs that don’t close

  • Discovery
  • Migration
  • Pricing
  • Reporting
  • Workflows

Why is it a problem?

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One-time POs/POLs that don’t close

  • Go to Acquisitions 🡪 Purchase Order Lines 🡪 All PO Lines
  • Narrow by facets
    • Acquisition Method: anything except Depository, Exchange, or Gift
    • Creation date: More than 6 months ago
    • Purchase type: anything with “One Time”
    • Workflow step: anything except Auto Packaging, Cancelled, or Closed

How to find it in Alma

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One-time POs/POLs that don’t close

  • Analytics report
    • Subject area: Funds Expenditure
    • Acquisition Method ≠ Exchange or Gift
    • PO Line Creation Date Filter = Older than 90 days
    • PO Line Type Name: anything with “One Time”
    • Status ≠ Cancelled or Closed
  • Add additional filters as needed

How to find it in Analytics

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One-time POs/POLs that don’t close

  • Figure out why the PO/POL didn’t close
    • Was the item properly received or activated?
    • Is the item in a work order?
    • Has an invoice been posted?
    • Did you use the wrong acquisition method?

How to analyze it

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One-time POs/POLs that don’t close

  • Different problems require different actions. You may need to:
    • Cancel the order
    • Receive the item
    • Activate the electronic portfolio
    • Complete an e-activation task for the electronic portfolio
    • Post an invoice
    • Reopen the POL and change the acquisition method
  • CUNY FAQ: How do I prepare for fiscal year rollover?

How to fix it

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Proxy links

  • Prefix at the beginning of an e-resource URL that redirects the user to the proxy server

What is it?

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Proxy links

  • Discovery
  • Migration
  • Pricing
  • Reporting
  • Workflows

Why is it a problem?

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Proxy links

Why is it a problem?

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Proxy links

  • Advanced search for electronic portfolios where URL (Electronic Portfolio) contains keywords "ezproxy"
  • Narrow by facets or add additional search parameters

How to find it in Alma

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Proxy links

  • Analytics report
    • Subject area: E-Inventory
    • Lifecycle = In Repository
    • Portfolio URL contains any “proxy”
    • Portfolio URL does not contain any [your library’s proxy]
  • Add additional filters as needed

How to find it in Analytics

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Proxy links

  • Is it your institution’s proxy?
  • Export an Analytics report to Excel and sort by URL

How to analyze it

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Proxy links

  • Manually edit electronic portfolios one by one in Alma
    1. Delete proxy from URL
    2. Set Proxy enabled to Yes if the link needs your proxy
    3. Set Proxy selected to “Default” if the link needs your proxy

How to fix it

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Proxy links

  • Run a job in Alma
    1. Save the electronic portfolios as a set
    2. Run the “Electronic portfolio information” job
    3. Check the box for “Delete or replace URL's prefix”
    4. Enter the full prefix
    5. Leave “with” blank

How to fix it

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Proxy links

  • API + script
    • Create an API key in the Ex Libris Developer Network
    • Write a script that removes proxy prefix from portfolio URLs

How to fix it

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Expired hold shelf

  • Patron request that has expired

What is it?

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Expired hold shelf

  • Discovery
  • Migration
  • Pricing
  • Reporting
  • Workflows

Why is it a problem?

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Expired hold shelf

  • Patrons will be frustrated that an item is “on hold shelf until” a date in the past

Why is it a problem?

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Expired hold shelf

  • Fulfillment 🡪 Resource Requests 🡪 Expired Hold Shelf
  • Narrow by facets

How to find it in Alma

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Expired hold shelf

  • Analytics report
    • Subject area: Requests
    • Lifecycle = Active
    • On Hold Shelf Time (Days) ≥ 14
    • Request Status = Active
  • Add additional filters as needed

How to find it in Analytics

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Expired hold shelf

  • Check for the books on your shelves

How to analyze it

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Expired hold shelf

How to fix it

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Expired calendar events and exceptions

  • Event or exception for a date in the past
  • Event = specific date (e.g., last day of semester) that affects fulfillment policies
  • Exception = times when your library is not open during regular hours (e.g., spring break)

What is it?

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Expired calendar events and exceptions

  • Discovery
  • Migration
  • Pricing
  • Reporting
  • Workflows

Why is it a problem?

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Expired calendar events and exceptions

  • Go to Fulfillment 🡪 Advanced Tools 🡪 General - Opening Hours
  • Go to Configuration 🡪[select institution or library] 🡪 Fulfillment 🡪 Library Management 🡪 Opening Hours

How to find it in Alma

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Expired calendar events and exceptions

  • Export to Excel and sort by record type (event, exception, or standard opening hours) and “Valid to” date

How to analyze it

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Expired calendar events and exceptions

  • Delete one by one in Alma

How to fix it

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Expired staff and patron accounts

  • Alma user accounts with expiration dates in the past

What is it?

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Expired staff and patron accounts

  • Discovery
  • Migration
  • Pricing
  • Reporting
  • Workflows

Why is it a problem?

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Expired staff and patron accounts

  • Advanced search for patrons with expiration before a certain date
  • Narrow by facets or add additional search parameters

How to find it in Alma

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Expired staff and patron accounts

  • Analytics report
    • Subject area: Users
    • Expiry Date < 1/1/25
    • Status ≠ Deleted
  • Add additional filters as needed

How to find it in Analytics

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Expired staff and patron accounts

  • No analysis necessary

How to analyze it

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Expired staff and patron accounts

  • Alma set and job
    1. Create a set of expired users
    2. Run the “Update/Notify Users” job on the set to add a purge date
    3. Run the purge job (Admin 🡪 User Management 🡪 Purge User Records)
  • Knowledge article: Purge users based on a set, carefully

How to fix it

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Tools

Ex Libris tools

External tools

  • Excel
  • Large language models (ChatGPT, Copilot)
  • MarcEdit
  • OpenRefine

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Pitfalls

  • Don’t: Make changes in production without testing in sandbox or in a small scale
  • Don’t: Work without a backup
  • Don’t: Do cleanup for the wrong reasons
  • Don’t: Leave your colleagues out of the loop
  • Don’t: Keep fixing problems without (re)training

Don’ts

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Pitfalls

Script/file versioning

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Questions? Comments?

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Problem

What is it?

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Problem

  • Discovery
  • Migration
  • Pricing
  • Reporting
  • Workflows

Why is it a problem?

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Problem

  • Advanced search for XYZ
  • Narrow by facets or add additional search parameters

How to find it in Alma

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Problem

How to find it in Alma

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Problem

  • Analytics report
    • Subject area:
  • Add additional filters as needed as needed

How to find it in Analytics

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Problem

How to find it in Analytics

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Problem

How to analyze it

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Problem

How to fix it

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