For questions or corrections to this guide, please contact the OCLS Help Desk at helpdesk@ocls.ca.
Thanks!
This page provides information about eResources that, for one reason or another, must be managed in the colleges' Institution Zones (IZs), even when they are ordered/renewed through OCLS. These eResources are incompatible with the Network Zone.
Some eResources are accessed by a URL that includes a unique identifier for the college (an institutional UID). Prior to August 2024, these resources could only managed in the licensed colleges' Institution Zones (IZs). A workaround has now been implemented in the Network Zone (NZ) to allow for NZ management of these resources.
If you have any questions about these resources or NZ management for them, please reach out to the OCLS Help Desk helpdesk@ocls.ca.
Upload Electronic Holdings Integration Profiles automatically update your Alma/Primo records whenever you order a new e-resource or cancel a renewal. One profile per vendor is required and there are limited vendors for which these profiles are available. For more information, including how to set up the integration profiles, you can refer to Ex Libris’s Automatic Upload of Electronic Holdings documentation as well as the KBART section in Centennial’s Page 1+ LibGuide.
Certain CZ collections must be activated for an Upload Electronic Holdings Integration Profile to work, and these collections must be activated in your IZ.
The integration profiles will automatically retrieve your holdings information from the vendor and activate the relevant portfolios in Alma, reducing the amount of manual work required to activate and maintain your electronic holdings.
They may be beneficial in situations where:
| You have many individual title purchases. | The integration profiles will automate the activation of individual titles you purchase. If you have many such purchases, using the integration profile may be more efficient than manual portfolio activation for each title. |
| You have many perpetual access purchases. | The integration profiles will automatically apply coverage dates for titles as they are recorded in the vendors' systems. Using the integration profile would mean that you would not have to adjust coverage details if you subscribe to new content or cancel a renewal. |
| Your holdings are currently not accurately represented in Alma-Primo. | If the existing Alma Community zone collections are not suitable matches for your content, you may find that unlicenced content is discoverable or licenced content is not discoverable in Alma-Primo. The integration profiles can create more accurate collections by activating only your holdings. |
Risks associated with using the integration profile include:
| Some manual intervention is still required to ensure accurate holdings in Alma. | Each time the upload electronic holdings job is run, an Errors/Warnings Report is produced and should be reviewed. The report includes information about titles that were not activated and where manual activation may be needed. |
| You have less granular control over collections in Alma. | Normally, one or more CZ collections are activated for each vendor's product. With integration profiles, only one or two autoholdings collections are activated per vendor. Activating more collections increases maintenance work but offers greater control over collection configuration, such as public notes and CDI settings. |
| You have less granular control over portfolios in Alma. | The upload electronic holdings job will override local changes made to portfolios, such as changes to coverage and linking information. |
| You may have multiple licences with the same vendor. This is the case if you acquire content from the vendor independently as well as through OCLS. | If that is the case, CLEAR links should be added in the Public Notes at the portfolio level rather than the collection level. New portfolios activated by the upload electronic holdings job will not automatically have a CLEAR link applied to them and will need the relevant link added. |
| It may be more difficult to track usage. | Some institutions have raised the concern that activating one or two autoholdings collections per vendor inhibits tracking usage and acquisitions related to the collection. |
The My Electronic Resources By Provider tool provides an option for central management of your ProQuest eResources. With this tool, you can review the ProQuest collections in the CZ that are available to your institution, including those for open access and complementary eResources; identify which are activated in your IZ and which are not; and activate/deactivate collections one-by-one or in bulk.
To access the tool, click on Resources in your Alma sidebar, and then click on the My Electronic Resources By Provider link under the "Manage Inventory" heading.
By default, OCLS will activate all collections you've ordered through OCLS's eResources Management service in the NZ. You can use My Electronic Resources By Provider to activate any other collections available to your college in your IZ.
In the context of this documentation, an Alma collection is a compilation of bibliographic records (bibs) compiled by the library in their IZ to support user discovery of resources that are related in some way. For example, Centennial’s Diversity & Belonging collection brings together material related to diversity, equity and inclusion topics of interest to their community.
Alma collections can contain a mix of physical, digital, and electronic materials, including bibs for electronic collections and portfolios from the CZ, but only when those CZ records are activated in the IZ. Bibs associated with electronic collections activated in the NZ cannot be added to IZ Alma collections.
There is an idea in the Idea Exchange for a development that would allow IZs to add content in the NZ to their IZ collections. We encourage you to vote for this idea by clicking the “Vote” button next to the idea’s title and description. If you do not have an Idea Exchange account, you will be prompted to create one before you cast your vote.
For more information about how to create and maintain Alma collections, see Managing Collections in the Ex Libris Knowledge Center.
In the meantime, if you would like to opt out of an NZ activation in order to add bib(s) for that electronic collection or its portfolios to an Alma collection in your IZ, contact helpdesk@ocls.ca for assistance.