Emory University Libraries Alma Documentation

Collaborative repository of Emory University Libraries documentation with a focus on Ex Libris's Alma.

Documentation that is general enough to apply to any EUL library will be named by activity, e.g. Suppress a Bib Record; documentation that represents a library's specific, local practice will be preceded by the short name of the library, e.g. Woodruff - Gift Book Collections.

Overlay a Record: Import from Connexion

In Alma, merging records from External Search is not as customizable as exporting directly from OCLC Connexion.

Please continue exporting records from Connexion instead of importing them using External Search.

Open the existing record (the one you want to overlay) in the metadata editor.

Identify the record you want to overlay from OCLC.

In this case, the old OCLC record, 318716062, has been merged into a new OCLC record, 213299537.

Records only match on the 035s exactly, including the prefixed contents

To increase the accuracy of the match process, before comparing the records, this match method adds a new 035 field to the incoming record that combines the 001 and 003 fields of the incoming record. (If the incoming record does not contain both a 001 and a 003 field, no 035 field is created by the match method.) This new 035 field is then taken into account in the matching process.

Change the 035 of the existing record to force an overlay and make sure you have the prefix (OCoLC).

Make sure to SAVE and RELEASE the Alma record.

The OCLC record won't overlay if you don't release the Alma record.

Export the record you want to overlay from OCLC to Alma by pressing F5 or choosing Action --> Export in OCLC.

The new record will automatically overlay the old record.

Default Normalization and Merge processes, explained below, affect how the new record overlays the old record.

Default Normalization Process is applied to incoming record.

The default OCLC normalization process removes these fields from the OCLC record:

In addition, all 035 are reformatted to "(OCoLC)012345678", and any 019 $z are changed to 035 $z in the same format.

Default Merge Method is used to overlay/merge records.

Then, the default OCLC import merge process replaces all fields from the OCLC record except for these fields, which are retained in the final record:

Aleph 035s
5XX $5 GEU
590
655s $5 GEU
700/710/711/740 $5 GEU
830 $5 GEU
856
and all 9XX (excluding 910 MARS and 910 RDA ENRICHED, 994)