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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.
   

   

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. 

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.