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TCC’s Alma Implementation
Experience
Who are we?Tarrant County College
Opened South campus in 1965Originally called Tarrant County Junior CollegeName changed in 1999 to Tarrant County College6th largest college/university in TexasFall 2012 enrollment: 50,439Spring 2013 enrollment: 46,750Spring 2012 Distance Learning enrollment: 11,179Average student age: 26 years
Who are we?Tarrant County College
5 campusesFort Worth (3 campuses)ArlingtonHurstOther satellite campuses
Trinity River East for Health Care ProfessionalsDegrees: AA, AS, AA-Teaching, AAS80 technical and transfer areas
Who are we?Ann Kutulas - Voyager Cataloger
Jana Murphy - No Voyager Experience
Jim Robinson - Programmer
Why Move to Alma?Dr. Richard Heyser, Ph.D. (our boss)
Implemented Voyager in 2001 from mainframe.Subscription, cloud-based solutions are Ex Libris’
future.The Cloud is supposed to make things easier:
Automatic updates!No client installations!Shared data is more accurate data!
We had the money available.
Why Move to Alma?Aggressive Schedule (March – August)
We had the money available when we started the process in September 2012
Implementation by August 31, 2013No disbursement of funds if it was spread over 2
fiscal years.
Implemented Primo TotalCare and SFX with Voyager in September 2012.
We had problems with SFX from the start…
Patron Load1st Attempt – load everything like Voyager
Programmers wrote a new script to re-create the Voyager SIF file as an XML file.
But, Alma cannot have multiple roles for patrons like Voyager can.
Patrons who were both student and staff were loaded with a seemingly random role.
Patron Load2nd Attempt
Thanks David Schuster!!Load students first, then load staff.
Still has problems. Only the first few hundred patrons would load.
File size problem?
Patron Load
Patron Load
Patron Load3rd Attempt
Broke students into 13 files
Staff was a separate file
Patron Load
Patron LoadThe last role to load for a patron is their role in
Alma
Patron Load
Patron Load4th Attempt
Still having problems!
Claudia is a student who works in the print shop.
Claudia was loading as a student, not as staff.
Dolph suspected there was a database commit timing issue.
2 different load schedules.
Patron LoadStudents and staff load at 1:00 a.m.
Patron LoadStaff load again every 6 hours, which varies.
ReportingFines and Fees Report
Automatically generated by Alma each night.
TCC uses Datatel Colleague for all business.
TCC would have to spend >$10,000 to implement.
Could not use Analytics (weekly until Nov 2013).
Now usually nightly, but some problems.
ReportingTried to teach librarians simple Access reports.
Created web interfaces for reports.
Reporting
Reporting
ReportingReluctant to give librarians Analytics access.
Must provide trainingNot any easier than Access reportsLess data available
Only one role for Analytics – Design AnalyticsAll-or-nothing means users can alter reports.Slowly building a widget/dashboard library.
Reporting
CalendarNortheast Campus normal operating hours:
Open 7:00 am
Close 10:00 pm
CalendarException: Open 8:00 a.m., Close 9:00 p.m.
CalendarException: Closed from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m.
CalendarException: Closed from 12:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m.
Withdrawn Items Reporting
Withdrawn Items Reporting
• Itemized list of all items deleted that month.
• Required by TCC administration to help in determining the value of the library collections as defined by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (the value of the collection has to be depreciated)
Withdrawn Items Reporting
Required Information:• Item ID• Title• Call Number• Library• Barcode• Description (Chronology and Enumeration)• Price• MMS ID• Holding ID• Date Created• Date Withdrawn• Item Policy
Withdrawn Items Reporting
ChallengesPrice • In migration placed in
replacement cost field• Replacement cost not
available in analytics• Unable to get financial
info related to specific Item ID
Date Created• Analytics return
migration date• Original date displays in
item record summary
Withdrawn Items Reporting
Out-of-the-box Alma report “Item Withdrawals”Count only
Our 1st attempt, report based only on life cycle “deleted”Detailed data only for items with existing holdings Items with deleted holdings: Item ID, barcode and
dates Includes items deleted as part of acquisitions workflow
Withdrawn Items Reporting
Current
workaround procedure
• Statistics note 3 “withdrawn”• Statistics note 2 “dd/mm/yyyy” – deletion
date
Current
workaround procedure
• Run local Analytics report
Current
workaround procedure
• Match results against our Voyager item information exported into Access table to get price and accurate create date – match point: Originating System ID
Withdrawn Items Reporting
Physical Item Details• Item ID, Barcode, Enum A, Chron I, Creation Date, Originating System ID,
Material Type, Item Policy, Creator, Stat. Note 2 & 3, Life Cycle, Description
Bibliographic Details • Title, MMS ID
Holding Details• Holding ID, Permanent Call Number, Summary Holding
Location
Library Unit
PO Line Reference
Withdrawn Items Reporting
• Filters
• Statistics Note 3 is equal to / is in withdrawn
AND• Life Cycle is not equal to / is not in Deleted
Withdrawn Items Reporting
Future
Acquisitions & CatalogingChallenges and lessons learned
Implementation (We made it!!)
Short road Total time from start to production was about 4 months
Technical Services staff challenges
Acquisition Challenges
Immediate challenges after implementation
Processing of Physical items challenges
Positives of Alma (or Wow we couldn’t do that before!)
Technical Services Challenges
Getting staff members on board Training was focused on
individual ordering of item, most of our ordering is in batches by cart
Training manuals keep being updated
Keeping positive Short implementation/turn
around time Ordering for five libraries with
five vendor accounts at our major vendor (plus different for entertainment items..DVDs,etc.)
Not much time for learning Cataloging b/c Catalogers busy helping to implement other areas
Acquisition Challenges
Biggest challenge was getting EDI ordering to work with our major vendor Baker and Taylor
First tested right before “go live” August 15 2013, didn’t work, finally working at the end of November because of communication with Alma Developers, B&T representatives, and us
Steps to EDI:
Set up New Order Import Profiles (right now we have 20 different New Order Profiles)
Steps to EDI :
Steps to EDI:Send out order using EDI, set up vendors for EDI
(at this stage we have 8 vendor profiles set up for B&T)
Alma Cataloging
Centralized cataloging for our five libraries
Each physical item goes through cataloging
Overlay acq. records with OCLC record/or original cataloging as needed
Set up OCLC Gateway between OCLC & Alma
Physical Processing
Take items out of the work order process to set to transit to library (mark books as Done)
For spine labels we use the Spine-O’Matic (has really helped us a lot)
Continuing Challenges
Setting EDI vendor accounts for our DVDs (they are ordered differently through the vendor)
Number of items we order at a time, right now Alma seems to max out at 50 for us (this with importing the records and using EDI for ordering)
All the initial delays created a backlog
Work order departments are new to us (Manage In Process Items)
Alma Positives
Can map our ISBNs directly to the identifier in the POL (don’t have to worry about the 020s fields)
Able to un-receive items
Ability to change Process type right on the item record (really helps for relinking)
And the list keeps growing…
??Questions??
Contact Information
Jim Robinson
Jana Murphy
Ann Kutulas
