See Best Practices for Decision Pages and Tags for groups
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Recommendation
For physical materials, see https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qBB29zs2Ztp_P2EbFrsBr8p_BpLv2Xc4-ZUkZyNM5Iw/edit#heading=h.li2chn5mjo2w used to build Prototype Version 2 (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eoN1qFGTYA4JQG_SY89UvhznCvgGZj6w/ ) which does not use any date variables.
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Note: Pending SILS and ExLibris explanation behind significant differences in counts when dates are used in the report/data extraction builds.
Impact
Stakeholder group | Impact |
|---|---|
UC Libraries | Determinations around what and how we report are for the most part managed/owned by the UC Libraries (i.e., shared ownership). |
CDL | CDL analysts, who are responsible for building report queries at the Network Zone according to templates agreements upon by the UC Libraries, will have to exclude items and titles based a variety of date parameters. |
Reasoning
After review, the AASA-PT Harmonization group determined that
Background
The AASA-PT Harmonization group reviewed all the UCOP statistics data that can be retrieved via Alma Analytics. Factors considered during this review were the existing UCOP, ACRL and ARL requirements.
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Other variables were also reviewed and considered but they played minor roles for the build. They included locations, item policies, call numbers, etc.
Observations about the current data:
Physical Items
Lifecycle
Three values are available in this “Physical Items“.”Physical Item Details”.”Lifecycle” variable:
Active items are active and discoverable in Primo.
Deleted items are not discoverable.
None items are not discoverable. These records are also associated with records without creation dates and possibly other pertinent metadata; consultation with Ex Libris is ongoing.
For withdrawn counts, filtering based on lifecycle, where lifecycle equals “Deleted” and/or “None” will cause the following issues:
Exclusion of items that were deleted from the repository after the reporting deadline but before the report run date. For example, if a weeding project happens in August 2023 and hundreds of print items and their associated records are removed, a report looking for the items from before July 2023 that runs in October 2023 will exclude those items, even though they were still in the collection before July 2023.
Inclusion of items deleted because they were added by mistake, but that do not actually represent items that were removed from the collection. To account for this type of deleted item would require a change to harmonized approaches, revised local procedures, or both.
Modification Date
There exists two available modification date options:
“Physical Items”.”Item Modification Date”, which cleans up and harmonizes the value available in “Physical Items”.”Physical Items Details”.”Modification Date”. ExLibris documentation reads that “The Item Modification date is the date of the last change to the item. Therefore, if on January 19, 2016 the item was in process type Acquisition, on January 20, 2016 the item was in process type Request, and on January 21, 2016 the item was in process type Loan (and no additional change to the item was made after January 21), the Item Modification Date is January 21, 2016.“
“Physical Items”.”Physical Items Details”.”Modification Date”, which allows us to know when the item record is modified. ExLibris documentation reads that this variable “Holds the date the physical item was modified“.
Alma-based findings not yet attempted. No similar issues and findings as those found for other date variables are found for modification date variables. AASA-PT team looking for reasons to dive into a study on modification date options. So far, per common knowledge and experience, each of the modification date options suggest automatic generation due to any alteration or modifications attempted. Although not senior seasoned users, per experience in Alma Analytics thus far, the recent availability of the Physical Items Historical Event Subject Area in late 2022, and the current data available in such recent available area provides no complete historical data on the changes behind each record type, be it one on each physical item or one on each bibliographic record.
Alma Analytics data-based findings:
When crossed with Lifecycle = Delete, modification dates can be useful to determine and account for items withdrawn from the collection (see Prototype Version 1 at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IBV9tKyvO3xq-UZeuLoeEViSmBwgp2YO/edit#gid=552748451 ). However, due to the problems noted in the Lifecycle section of this decision page, certain institutions are requesting to opt out of reporting annual add and withdrawal counts in statistical reporting.
No significant findings in the values of the modification date variables.
Values in “Physical Items”.”Physical Items Details”.”Modification Date” suggests automatic generation by system when item records are modified. If record has not yet been modified, no modification date is available.
Values in “Physical Items”.”Item Modification Date” suggests that this dimension and variable was created to make use of and harmonize any discrepancies found in “Physical Items”.”Physical Items Details”.”Modification Date”. Since none was experienced there, no discrepancies are found in this variable.
Based on the reported knowledge and practices, “Physical Items”.”Item Modification Date” would be the best variable to use to determine when the items' records were last modified, especially when the record of the item was deleted. Doing so would encourage leaderships to consider oversights in understanding and reporting about the practices in the deletion of records in the usage of SILS.
Creation Date
Per common database design knowledge, automatic date and time stamps for when records are created are expected, resulting in the choice of creation date values. There exists two available creation date options:
“Physical Items”.”Item Creation Date”, which cleans up and harmonizes the value available in “Physical Items”.”Physical Items Details”.”Creation Date” (variable mentioned below; ExLibris documentation reads that this variable “Stores the item creation date in a date format such as 2/29/2014” and that “All date dimensions include dates up to and including 30 years back and 20 years forward. So, for example, if today is March 17, 2021: The earliest loan date that would appear is March 17, 1991. The latest due date that would appear is March 17, 2041.“).
“Physical Items”.”Physical Items Details”.”Creation Date”, which allows us to know when the record on the item was created. (ExLibris documentation reads that this variable: “Holds the date the physical item was created” and that “This date is assigned by Alma when the physical item is created.“)
Alma-based findings:
The abovementioned definition in ExLibris documentations are questionable due to the Alma Analytics data-based findings mentioned in below section.
Location of where originating physical item creation date field in Alma which corresponds to those in Alma Analytics is unknown and not yet provided to AASA-PT analysts.
There are three possibilities of how this field is populated in Alma for Alma Analytics:
Items are created on order and, as part of predictions, before the material is received AND/OR
Using the “Add Item” button in Physical Item Editor module upon finding bibliographic and/or holdings record AND/OR
Using other record creation options and practices behind outside of Alma such as those needed and used for initial data migration purposes.
Alma Analytics data-based findings:
Initial findings in usage of creation date is documented at https://docs.google.com/document/d/125dx-__jZOHNRH0ysuRLtEr1j33HjV7e/; summarizing that there are ongoing additional records with no or blank creation dates provided over time. Therefore, setting Creation Date = NULL as a data-extract-, report-development cleanup and the like or filter will not provide accurate counts of how many records were created in each specific, non-NULL fiscal year and/or date ranges. This impacts at least 14% (4.9 million records of this finding out of the 34+ million total amount of records made available in Alma Analytics) of the records. This finding continues to be an ongoing issue (see https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12B7ICBG4DLiViDerm4EwN1Y5BtKByngn/).
Recent findings from comparing inclusion and exclusion of creation date in report design criteria show that significant records are dropped when dates such as Creation Date is included. Compare https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IBV9tKyvO3xq-UZeuLoeEViSmBwgp2YO/edit#gid=552748451 where Creation Date is included against https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eoN1qFGTYA4JQG_SY89UvhznCvgGZj6w/ where Creation Date is excluded. See Table 3.
Based on the following and our knowledge of the campuses' current practices, “Physical Items”.”Item Creation Date” would be the best variable to use, if reporting counts of items added into the catalog by fiscal year and/or a particular date range is needed:
“Physical Items”.”Physical Items Details”.”Creation Date” is the raw data transferred from Alma to Alma Analytics.
“Physical Items”.”Item Creation Date” is the harmonization/data cleanup processed variable based on the Physical Items.Physical Items Details.Creation Date.
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Those highlighted in green (NRLF, SRLF, Berkeley, Merced, and Santa Cruz) should consider a preference for Version 1 and use Item Creation Date to count toward items added each fiscal year.
Options Considered
Option 1 | Option 2 | Option 3 | Option 4 | Option 5 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Option | "Physical Items". "Item Creation Date" | "Physical Items". "Item Receiving Date" | "Physical Items". "Physical Item Details". "Receiving Date (Calendar)" | "Physical Items". "Physical Item Details". "Receiving Date" | "Physical Items". “Physical Item Details”. “Creation Date” |
Pros | Cleans up/converts/harmonizes each of the value in “Physical Items”.”Physical Item Details”.”Creation Date”, which includes all the Pros and Cons of that variable. Available at the item level which specifically describes when each of the physical item counted were “supposedly” created. Although counts are not significantly higher, this variable does provide a higher count than when receiving date options are used. | Cleans up/converts/harmonizes each of the value in “Physical Items”.”Physical Item Details”.”Receiving Date” and “Physical Items”.”Physical Item Details”.”Receiving Date (Calendar)”, which includes all the Pros and Cons of those variables. Available at the item level which specifically describes when each of the physical item counted were “supposedly” received. | Cleans up/converts/harmonizes each of the value in “Physical Items”.”Physical Item Details”.”Receiving Date”, which includes all the Pros and Cons of that variable. Available at the item level which specifically describes when each of the physical item counted were “supposedly” received. | This variable suggests the actual date of availability of the item at the library and would be the best option if it was used properly*. Available at the item level which specifically describes when each of the physical item counted were “supposedly” received. | Available at the item level which specifically describes when each of the physical item counted were “supposedly” created. |
Cons | Item records can exist for items that we do not have, e.g. on-order items. Actual location of how and where creation date is generated and/or entered into Alma have been educated guesses and not confirmed by ExLibris, hence the term “supposedly” used in the Pros section for this variable. Even though this variable was created to clean up and harmonize “Physical Items”.”Physical Item Details”.”Creation Date”, it does not read the values from such a variable correctly such that dates in m/d/yy formats are not converted to mm/dd/yyyy formats and dates more recent than certain date values are interpreted as dates older than that same certain dates. | Not all campuses update this field via Alma upon item arrival to campus. Even though this variable was created to clean up and harmonize “Physical Items”.”Physical Item Details”.”Receiving Date” and “Physical Items”.”Physical Item Details”.”Receiving Date (Calendar)”, it does not read the values from such a variable correctly such that dates in m/d/yy formats are not converted to mm/dd/yyyy formats and dates more recent than certain date values are interpreted as dates older than that same certain dates. When used, due to above finding, items may fall into the NULL counts or the wrong date ranges. Since some dates were of dates in the future, items with such future dates will need significant amount of investigation and attention. Although counts are not significantly less, this variable does provide a smaller count than when creation date options are used. Further, if receiving date options are used, filtering by receiving dates may drop records which are not updated where receiving dates are not available. | Even though this variable was created to clean up and harmonize “Physical Items”.”Physical Item Details”.”Receiving Date”, it does not read the values from such a variable correctly such that dates in m/d/yy formats are not converted to mm/dd/yyyy formats and dates more recent than certain date values are interpreted as dates older than that same certain dates. When used, due to above finding, items may fall into the NULL counts or the wrong date ranges. Since some dates were of dates in the future, items with such future dates will need significant amount of investigation and attention. | While some campus reps report that this field is used, some report that this field is not used. *This variable is found to be “Received Date” in Alma but named “Receiving Date” in Alma Analytics. Dates found within these fields go beyond today’s date--dates in the future. *This variable is found to be populated as the “Received Date”, date when item was received, in Alma, where the field is a free-text textbox. | Alma Analytics are not able to fully filter this variable. Some of the dates in this variable are in m/d/yy formats. Alma Analytics seems to be confused. For instance, if the “yy” portion is “22”, should it be 1922 or 2022? According to ExLibris users, 1922 and dates prior to availability of computers may make sense to their build because some ExLibris customers do have historic items created and/or received from way before time. Although the users and customers may consider using “Receive Date”, ExLibris has not yet responded to these other clients of theirs. |
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ExLibris. (2023). “Subject Areas”. Retrieved from https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Product_Documentation/010Alma_Online_Help_(English)/080Analytics/Alma_Analytics_Subject_Areas last accessed May 26, 2023.
Action Log
Action/Point Person | Expected Completion Date | Notes | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
AASA-PT | Review Draft | ||
AASA-PT |
| Final Decision |