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Videos

• Searching for Electronic Resources in the Community Zone (6 mins)

• Ordering One-Time Electronic Resources in the Community Zone (6 mins)

• Ordering Subscription Electronic Resources in the Community Zone (7 mins)

• Ordering Databases in the Community Zone (6 mins)

• Activating Electronic Portfolios from the Community Zone (3 mins)

• Activating Electronic Collections from the Community Zone (9 mins)

• My Electronic Collections by Provider Tool (6 mins)

Ordering Subscription Electronic Resources in the Community Zone

Training Exercises

Using your sandbox, sign in as AlmaUser01. For these exercises, you may choose to either use the initial prompt to complete the activity on your own, or if you prefer, follow the step-by-step instructions. 

Exercise 1: Export a list of portfolios from the Community Zone that can be used with the Portfolio loader

1. Choose Electronic collection in the persistent search box menu, choose the people icon (Community Zone) from the dropdown next to the magnifying glass search button, search for a keyword of your choice. In the results list, collections that have already been activated in your institutions have the Institution icon to the left of the collection name.

2. To export a list of portfolios that are in the format supported by the Portfolio loader, click Portfolio List next to the relevant collection. For this exercise, you might choose a small collection if you want the process to go faster.

3. When the Portfolio list for the collection appears, click the Export list icon located at the upper right corner of the list next to the gear icon, then click the Extended Export option to download the list to your local computer.
   
   

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4. If you subscribe to only some portfolios in the collection and want to use the Portfolio Loader when activating the collection, remove the portfolios you don’t have access to from the portfolio list.

5. See below for exercises that will incorporate the exported list.

Note: Descriptions for each field on the Excel portfolio loader file can be found here. The header format can be used as a template for uploading local portfolios to a local collection in exercise number 3. One of the identifiers for the portfolio such as ISSN, ISBN must be present. 

Exercise 2: Activate a collection in the Community Zone.  You may "activate all" portfolios or use the portfolio loader to load a subset. 

1. Choose Electronic collection in the persistent search box menu, and choose the people icon (Community Zone) from the dropdown next to the magnifying glass search button. Choose Advanced to search by “Electronic Collection Name” for the collection you would like to activate. For this exercise, choose a collection with Type “Selective package” or “Aggregator package”. Select a small collection if you want the process to go faster (the Portfolio List button will show the total included in the package).

2. Click Activate.

3. On the Activation Wizard: Electronic Collection and Services Setup, there are 2 sections:

   1. Local Electronic Collection Information--Optional

      If you want patrons to be able to search for this collection by name in Discovery, for the collection name to appear in the search result, uncheck Mark Bib as suppressed and make sure collection level URL is provided. If you want the collection URL to be proxied, set up proxy information in this section. This step is not required for portfolios to be discoverable, as described next.

   2. Full Text Service

   • Check Activate this electronic collection service

   • Check Make service available if you want the portfolios in this collection to be made available in Discovery as soon as this collection as activated. Leave this unchecked if you want to test access before making it available to end users. Collections that are activated in the Institution Zone but not available for Discovery will be noted by a Community Zone icon that is gray instead of blue.

   • Check Automatically activate new portfolios if you subscribe to the entire collection and want any changes to this collection in the Community Zone (portfolios are added or removed) to be applied to your collection in the Institution Zone.

4. Click Next

5. Activation Wizard: Linking Information: This is set up at the service level, and will be applied to all portfolios in this collection. There are 2 sections:

   1. . Full Text Service – Linking Parameters

      Some vendors, such as Gale, require special parameters for authentication. The Activation Wizard will request them only if they are required--enter parameter value as applicable.

   2. Full Text Service – Proxy setup

      Set up proxy information if you want to have all the portfolios in the collection proxied.

6. After entering linking and/or proxy information, select Next.

7. Activation Wizard: Select Activation Method
   Activation Type: 3 options

   1. "Activate all – Activation of the complete electronic collection with no selection of portfolios"

   2. "Activate electronic collection and selected portfolios via Excel file upload" (Choose this option if you want to upload the portfolio list you exported in Exercise 1. See more information on Portfolio loader in the attached PPT (E Resources - Adding Updating or Removing Portfolio Information in Bulk Using an Excel File and the Alma Portfolio Loader.pptx)

      E Resources - Adding Updating or Removing Portfolio Information in Bulk Using an Excel File and the Alma Portfolio Loader.pptx1.24 MB 

   3. "Manual activation – activate electronic collection and manually select portfolios" (Choose this option and click Activate if you do not have the portfolio list prepared as shown in Exercise 1, and are not activating all of the portfolios in the collection.)

NOTE: If you select option c, "Manual activation," the collection will be activated, but no portfolios will be activated. The collection will appear in the Institution Zone without the Portfolio list. Here are the steps to activate the portfolios once the collection is activated.

Search for the collection in the Institution Zone, click the ellipsis/More actions button and choose Edit Service. Go to the Portfolios tab. 

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The options available in the Electronic Service Editor for activating portfolios in a Community Zone collection are:

Move Set of Portfolios

Activate/ Deactivate:

• Activate Selected

• Deactivate Selected

• Activate All

• Deactivate All

Load Portfolios (use this option if you have a portfolio list prepared in the format supported by the Portfolio Loader)

Add

• Add Local Portfolio (use this option if the collection from Community Zone does not yet include portfolios that you have access to)

• Add Portfolios from Community: manually activate portfolios.

• Add All Portfolios from Community

Delete Selected

Below is screenshot how to Load Portfolios from a file.

Here is a file you can download.

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Notes: In the electronic collection activation process step 3b above, when "Make service available" is not checked, the collection is activated in the Institution Zone but it has a gray (inactive) Community Zone icon

To test access to portfolios:

• Search for the collection in the Institution Zone

• Click on Portfolio List

• Click the ellipsis/row actions button for a portfolio, then click Test access

Once the collection should become available in Discovery 

• Search for the collection in the Institution Zone, click […] to click Edit Service.

• On Electronic Service Editor Activation tab:

• Service activation status: change from Not Available to Available

Exercise 3: How to Create a local electronic collection and attach portfolios to it

 Go to Resources > Create Inventory > Add Local Electronic Collection

 Once the local electronic collection is created, there are 4 ways to attach portfolios to a local electronic collection:

• Use portfolio loader to upload a list of portfolios

Search for the collection, click […] to click Edit Service, go to Portfolios tab, click Load Portfolios

• Use an import profile (EOD import, or a repository import) if you receive the MARC records from vendor. If you want to try a repository import, a sample file is provided containing government document portfolios: GovDocsPortfolios.mrc GovDocsPortfolios.mrc59.8 KB 

  • Login as username: CatAdmin to create an import profile (Resource Management Part 2 exercise 3).  In the Inventory Information tab:

  • Inventory Operations: choose Electronic

  • E-Book Mapping: Portfolio type: choose Part of an electronic collection, then search and attach the local electronic collection created above. Map extract access URL from field, subfield and other fields as appropriate.

  • When done, check Activate resource.

• Add a set: this can be used for adding a set of local portfolios created by the P2E process

Search for the collection, click […] to click Edit Service, go to Portfolios tab, click Add > Add from Set

• Manual method of attaching portfolios.

Exercise 4: run a job to update portfolios in bulk

1. Create a set of portfolios (logical or itemized set)

2. Go to Admin menu > Run a Job, find Change electronic portfolio information job, click Next

3. Select the set of portfolios created above

4. Try any parameter as you wish such as Enable proxy, Set proxy, Set availability status, Delete or replace url's prefix, etc.

Exercise 5: Link to community for collections, portfolios 

1. Local portfolios and collections are typically created by P2E. For this exercise, find a portfolio that is available in the CZ and not in the IZ, copy the ISSN. 

2. Go to Resources > Add Local Portfolio 

3. Enter information in Title (mandatory), ISSN (copied above), etc.

4. Click Save and Done.

5. The portfolio is created as local. Click […], then click Link to community, choose the appropriate portfolio

2 options will be presented:

• Use descriptive metadata from the community

• Keep local descriptive metadata. Note that the descriptive metadata will not be synchronized with updates from the community zone.