Full Presentation Details 2021

Tuesday, October 26

Ex Libris Updates

Presenter:  Jane Burke (Ex Libris)

SUNY Alma Resource Sharing with Non-SUNY Libraries

In order to increase fill rates for Alma resource sharing requests and give SUNY libraries a viable resource sharing alternative to OCLC, SUNY has actively pursued Alma resource sharing partnerships with libraries outside the SUNY system. This presentation will discuss the implementation of Alma resource sharing with Ithaca College, Brandeis University, the Cal State University system, WRLC, and the CSCU system. It will also discuss future plans for expanding SUNY’s resource sharing option in Alma.

Presenter: Timothy Jackson (SUNY Library Services)

E-ILL, CDL and ISO18626: Oh My! New services for institutional sharing

Presenter: Allen Jones (The New School)

Improving our Access Game: ensuring curated e-content is discoverable in Alma/Primo VE

SUNY Purchase College is a 4 year public institution with approximately 4k FTE. When the Purchase College Library moved to Alma/Primo in 2019, our small staff became a liability in taking full advantage of all of Alma Primo’s expansive capabilities. Part of our electronic collections, specifically curated ebooks and streaming content, would remain invisible to our users. When our library closed during COVID 19, it became a tipping point. It was crucial that our nascent ebook collections were discoverable as access to physical reserve materials was discontinued. Similarly, we were more reliant on streaming films. This presentation will cover our somewhat triaged approach to creating a process for ordering and adding individually purchased ebooks to SUNY Purchase’s Alma/Primo VE, allowing us to maximize use of our digital resources. Such imperfect processes might be just the right fit for other small institutions!

Presenter: Carrie Marten and Rebecca Oling (SUNY Purchase)

Wednesday, October 27

Customizing and Integrating Alma

This presentation will share examples of how University at Albany has customized Alma with reports and widgets to support acquisitions workflows needed to meet the unique procurement circumstances in New York State, as well as widgets that support other local needs. Examples that integrate Alma with other library systems using the Alma API will also be covered. These scenarios may be unique to University at Albany, but they illustrate possibilities available with the Alma platform.

Presenter: Janetta Waterhouse (University at Albany)

Using Drill Down within Alma Analytics Reports

The presentation covers the creation of drill down queries with our annual and monthly reports. This function of drilling down into a report allows our librarians and staff to query what the items are behind the numbers, and allows them to find and correct problems with our data in Alma.

Presenter: Ray Schwartz and Linda Salvesen (William Paterson University)

Alma/Primo and the Pivot to Remote Technical Services

In mid-March 2020, our director asked us to create a contingency plan in case the COVID-19 pandemic forced our library to work remotely. What began as a two-week contingency plan quickly became a reality that stretched on for well over a year and expanded to revolutionary changes to technical services librarianship. Our success in working remotely throughout the pandemic and our future potential as a profession is owed largely to cloud-based library management systems such as Alma/Primo and other cloud-based tools.

While library resources have been rapidly shifting to digital and electronic in the past twenty-five years, technical services departments are often viewed as unchanging and stagnant, particularly in comparison to newer services such as remote chat and discovery services. The idea that a technical services librarian spent her days chained to a desk, ordering and cataloging physical materials persisted, despite the fact that our work had shifted to working with remote resources such as e-books, online databases and journals, and streaming media, using web- and cloud-based tools. When the pandemic shifted our workforce into remote spaces, we found this to be a natural pivot largely because so much of our work had made the change ahead of us.

Presenter: Mary Beth Weber and Melissa De Fino (Rutgers University)

Process Authority: Expediting the Authority Control Task List

The Authority Control Task List (ACTL) allows Alma libraries to view access points which require reconciliation within bibliographic records. While this tool is useful, processing ACTL reports can be daunting as headings can accumulate into the hundreds or thousands each week. It can be difficult to target records which need reconciliation as not all collections/locations within the repository may require comprehensive authority work. Further, the delay between when authority records are deposited within the LC/NACO Name Authority File and when they appear in the Alma Community Zone can result in headings on the ACTL that no longer need reconciliation. The College of New Jersey (a member of the NACO New Jersey/New York Funnel) uses Alma Analytics and Python to assist in processing the ACTL each week, resulting in a reduction of staff time needed to examine authority reports. This presentation will demonstrate how this process works and offer Python code to assist Alma libraries in their authority work.

Presenter: Colin Bitter and Yuji Tosaka (The College of New Jersey)

Thursday, October 28

TIL: Creating Open Documentation Through Public Note-taking and Literate Programming

“What do you do when you’re an early career librarian, in a new position, and learning a new software? You seek out the knowledge and expertise of other librarians who have done the work before. But what if the existing documentation is sparse, incorrect, or nonexistent?

In this presentation, I provide an autoethnography of learning Primo VE and its development environment, which includes the challenges I faced when consulting official documentation and my process for finding instructions and tutorials from other librarians. I also stress the importance of making personal and institutional knowledge public, and I provide methods of public note-taking to create open documentation, such as literate programming. By incorporating learning in public as a community practice, metadata librarians, systems librarians, and other library workers who work in technical services and related fields can create a shared corpus of invaluable knowledge for ourselves and future librarians.”

Presenter: Jay L. Colbert (University of New Hampshire)

As an ook cometh of a litel spyr: planting the seeds to grow institutionally-relevant dataset discovery

Over the past two years at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, we have been bringing up a new Research Data Management service which includes implementing new applications, augmented cataloging, developing relationships with our researchers, and participating in cooperative networks of like-minded librarians and information scientists. In this presentation, I’ll showcase some of the pieces we’ve put in place and how they contribute to a growing system of resources designed to increase data discoverability at our institution. I’ll discuss how we are integrating repositories, a data catalog, pre-existing library services, and our Primo discovery interface to highlight relevant datasets for our researchers, encourage reuse, and increase the visibility of datasets in the context of the published research they support.

Presenter: Anthony Dellureficio (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Library)

Growing the Repository with Smart Expansion

Esploro offers various automated capture tools to help customers harvest data about institutional research outputs and grow their repository. This presentation will offer an overview of Smart Expansion via CDI, which leverages the power of Ex Libris’ Central Discovery Index (CDI) to import information about an institution’s research assets. We’ll discuss the process of preparing the input file, configuring and running the import job, reviewing the harvested data, as well as some of the discoveries and challenges found along the way.

Presenter: Joseph Deodato (Rutgers University)

Using Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning Techniques to Analyze Library Chat Service Data: A Pilot Project

The transcripts of library chat service contain a large amount of data. By analyzing the data, the library may be able to provide better and more efficient chat service to their patrons.
In this pilot project, the presenter used a classification model of Natural Language Process (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) techniques to analyze the chat transcripts of multi-year accumulation of the presenter’s library. The goal is to categorize the users’ questions into two groups: reference question vs. non-reference question, so that the non-reference question can be filtered out by the model before it reaches the librarian who monitors the chat.

In this presentation, the presenter will discuss the concept of NLP and ML, and its general steps in terms of data processing and programming. The classification model with its result, along with some python code, will also be presented.

Presenter: Yongming Wang (The College of New Jersey)

Friday, October 29

How CUNY “Changed the Subject”: A How-To Guide

In recent years libraries have taken it upon themselves to make changes to bibliographic records to better reflect the world around us, even if that has meant going against the “approved terminology” of institutions like the Library of Congress. Following the leads of several other peer institutions, CUNY decided to follow suit this past summer, tackling existing subject headings involving “illegal aliens”. In this presentation I will discuss how we drew upon the work of other institutions, implemented normalization rules and processes across our network and libraries, and handled display rules in Primo VE. I will also discuss the issues we encountered along the way and what we learned that can be applied to other projects.

Presenter: Rebecca Hyams (CUNY – Borough of Manhattan Community College)

Rialto: the next generation. Alma acquisitions using Rialto

Buffalo State College has recently implemented Rialto, a book ordering system from Ex Libris built on the Alma platform. This presentation will review our experiences with the implementation process, changes to our ordering workflow, and expectations for the future. It will endeavor to answer any questions you may have about the experience and about the usefulness of Rialto.

Presenter: Joe Riggie (Buffalo State College)

Analytics in Primo VE

Presenter: Jenny Draeger (ExLibris)