NZ SRU: Enrich with Member Availability

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Recommendation

SILS Operation Center will modify the NZ production SRU integration profile to check “Enrich with member content.”

Information on how to automatically strip out the 852 information in MarcEdit should always be provided when providing information on how to use the SRU.

Anyone who uses SRU with MarcEdit should setup the automatic process to strip out the 852 field upon export even if they don’t currently have the NZ Bib API setup to export records back to Alma. This must be done for every MarcEdit client. (See Additional Information below.)

Impact

Reasoning

Allowing the ability to view campus holdings outweighs the risk of extraneous 852 fields potentially exporting back into Alma as long as everyone with access to the NZ Bib API agrees to automatically strip out 852 fields upon export from MarcEdit.

Unlike the IZ SRU, the NZ SRU does not appear to add these additional fields: 866, 867, 868, 541, 561, 562, 563, 583.

Background

SRU stands for Search/Retrieve via a URL.  It's a way to retrieve bib record information from Alma in XML format.  MarcEdit also has an ILS integration option that allows libraries to search Alma records using SRU. Checking the “Enrich with Member Availability” option will include an 852 for each campus with holdings.

Advantages

1. Additional tool for comparing campus holdings

2. Enhancement of overlap analysis and reports

3. Ability to see other campuses' holdings prior to marking an NZ bib for deletion

4. Unlike the APIs, the SRU protocol has no daily limit

Allowing the SRU to contain member availability provides an additional tool for campuses to compare holdings.  Depending on the workflow, integrating the SRU search with MarcEdit may be an easier and more up-to-date option than using OCLC to compare campus holdings.

This is also helpful in the creation of overlap reports. For example, a report can be generated in Analytics of all the physical items in a particular collection. That report can then be enhanced by using SRU to search for the Network MMS ID or OCLC number for other UC holdings to add that data point to the report, which can then be used to make collection management decisions.

For electronic records, an additional field (=AVE) is added to the record, visible in MarcEdit, that indicates electronic inventory and IDs in the NZ.. This will be useful for E-Resources staff to use when doing overlap analyses between print and electronic materials as well as inventory activities for electronic resources.

An additional use-case is for determining whether to mark an NZ bib for deletion. When a campus deletes their inventory, the SRU would allow a batch search to determine if there are any remaining holdings at other UCs. If not, the campus can then add the appropriate MARC field that will signal CDL staff to include the bib in their batch delete. It is prohibitive to do this in the Alma interface, since it requires a large amount of mousing and cannot be done in batch.

Another upside to using SRU is that there are not the same call limits that there are with other APIs in Alma. For example, you can make 10,000 simultaneous SRU calls at a time without any daily limits, versus a daily combined limit of ~200,000 calls for APIs.

Disadvantages

Ex Libris has hard coded the SRU search to return member availability in the 852 MARC field. In most cases this is not a problem as SRU is a read-only protocol. However, when combined with the NZ Alma Bib API, it could create unwanted 852 fields within Alma.  At the moment, CDL SCP is the only group with NZ Alma Bib API access. While they're currently not using the Read/Write MarcEdit integration option, we do not want to restrict their options in the future.

We can use MarcEdit's ILS Process Settings to automatically strip out the 852 field with a one-time setup per client.

Questions to consider

Additional Information

Steps to strip out the 852 in MarcEdit

1. Open up MarcEdit and choose the MarcEditor.

2. Click on the Tools menu and choose Managed Tasks.

3. Click the dropdown under Task Actions and choose New Tasks.  

4. Click Select.

5. Enter a task name and click OK.

6. If desired, enter a description.

7. Next to Actions click the + and choose Add Delete Field Task.

8. Next to field enter 852 and click Delete Field.

9. Click Save and then Close.

10. Click on the Alma menu and choose Process Settings. (If you don’t see an Alma option, you may first need to setup the SRU/API Integration.)

11. Under Tasks to Run on Export click the Select Task link.

12. Click the 852 delete task created above and click OK.

13. Click Save.

Action Log