Primo Work Day QUESTIONS SUBMITTED VIA REGISTRATION FORM May 19, 2014

Primo Work Day QUESTIONS SUBMITTED VIA REGISTRATION FORM May 19, 2014 Valley City State University

Question – Connecting to Resources ‘I would be interested in discussing issues connecting to online sources via Primo.’ ‘As a part of the discussion on May 19th, I would like to see issues addressed that deal with PRIMO access to online materials. We have a complicated process here and I am very curious how it appears and works for other libraries.’

Answer – Connecting to Resources During the investigation of this question, it was discovered that this particular library has several ebooks in Aleph that had a bad url. Once this issue was resolved, the online linking was no longer a problem.

Question – Searching by OCLC # ‘Can we now also search by OCLC number?’

Answer – Searching by OCLC # The OCLC number now works as a way to link back to Primo via FirstSearch, however it is not currently indexed or searchable within the Primo interface.

Question – Limiting Holdings by Date ‘In classic ODIN, when we were looking at our own journal holdings, we could limit the search to a particular year and volume. I don’t see this in Primo yet. Is that something that could be added?’

Answer – Limiting Holdings by Date

Question – Holds on Available Items ‘Hold requests go on the first item, not on an available item when using the ‘Request’ tab.’

Answer – Holds on Available Items The behavior of the hold is controlled within the ILS (in this case ALEPH). The ODIN CLassic functions in the same manner. Since the patron is placing a hold on the first item on the list, the system will wait for that item to become available. If the patron should want the first available copy of an item, they should "click Locations tab to display all items" and place their hold on an available item within the list.

Question – ILL Option for Unavailable Items on Hold ‘If a patron already has an item on hold, and places another hold request for the same item Primo gives them the option to ILL the item.’

Answer – ILL Option for Unavailable Items on Hold Much of the placing holds functionality is controlled within the ILS (ALEPH). In this case, the library allows holds on available items and does not allow ILL on locally owned material. Response from Ex Libris indicates if there are loanable items but none of them are available, the request is NOT considered locally owned. Therefore ALEPH does not find anything locally owned and goes to the ILL option.

Question – One Location Displays on Results Screen ‘A patron always has to click the ‘Locations’ tab to see where/if an item is available because only one location shows on the results page.’

Answer – Only One Location Displays on Results Screen Displaying one location line in the brief results is a limitation of Primo. With ExLibris’ assistance, a tweak was made to display all location lines in the brief results, however by doing so, all formatting was lost and the locations ran together in one block. An enhancement request was submitted via ELUNA for functionality that will allow for the display of more than one location line. It received several votes in the 2013 enhancement round, but didn’t make the cutoff. We’ll continue to pursue this as a request.

Question – New Titles List ‘Can Primo create and display a list of new titles in the library?’

Answer – New Titles List

Question – Online vs. Physical Items ‘ “Online access: physical copies may also be available” that displays in the location line is confusing.’

Answer– Online vs. Physical Items This message appears when there’s an online link AND an item attached to the record. The issue is that in the ALEPH database, E-books almost all have item records– dummy item records, but item records nonetheless. The message initially stated: ‘Online Access. The library also has physical copies.’ When Primo sees an item record, it assumes a physical item exists. It was altered to say ‘may also be available’ because while the majority of online records are solely online items, there are also many records where both the online and physical item were cataloged on the same record. We need something to prompt the patron to check for copies.