How does the Library catalog work? De-mystifying Primo

Presentation given at Boston College Library on January 8, 2018. Provides Library staff with an overview of the Primo/Alma systems.

Transcript

1. How does the Library catalog work? de-mystifying Primo Emily Singley with Luke Gaudreau and Theresa Lyman January 2018
2. §  What is Primo? §  How does Primo work? §  What is in the Books search? §  What is in the Articles search? §  How do Alma records become Primo records? §  Q&A
3. What is Primo?
4. Primo discovery service =
5. Primo Alma Discovery services load records from multiple sources Digitool eScholarship and more…
6. Primo Data export, transformation, and normalization Source System Discovery services transform the data loaded from source systems
7. How is Primo different from the old Quest?
8. Aleph Quest OPAC Quest was part of Aleph, our old ILS
9. Aleph Quest OPAC Patrons searched Aleph directly using the OPAC Data was not exported or transformed
10. Alma Alma replaced the Aleph ILS
11. Alma Alma doesn’t have a patron-facing search interface (no OPAC)
12. Primo Alma Primo and Alma are separate systems Primo does not search Alma directly
13. ??? Alma Alma can work with other discovery services
14. TAKEAWAYS: Alma and Primo are separate systems Primo does not search Alma directly (not an OPAC) Primo loads records from multiple sources
15. How does Primo work?
16. Search Books Articles Primo searches two separate buckets of stuff
17. 5 million books 1 billion articles
18. Primo searches 93,565 ARTICLES 199, 791 BOOKS
19. What is in the Books bucket?
20. Books Books bucket and more.. eScholarship Digitool Alma
21. Books Books bucket = Local Catalog We load the records We control the metadata
22. What is in the Articles bucket?
23. Article metadata from lots and lots of publishers Articles bucket
24. Articles bucket And Lots more…
25. Articles = Primo Central Index Articles bucket = Primo Central Index (PCI) We do NOT control the metadata Ex Libris (vendor) loads the records
26. Articles Articles is NOT the same as Library databases
27. Articles Not all BC subscribed content is available - including EBSCO databases But Articles does include journals also covered by EBSCO databases – provided through different sources
28. Example of article in both EBSCO and Articles
29. Articles List of everything in Articles is on Library Wiki (or ask us)
30. TAKEAWAYS: Primo searches two separate buckets – Books and Articles We load and manage books Articles are loaded by the vendor Articles bucket is not the same content as Library databases
31. How do Book records get into Primo?
32. Let’s take a look…
33. TAKEAWAYS: How records get into Primo: 1) Exported from source system (Alma, Digitool, etc) 2) Normalization rules applied 3) Transformed to PNX 4) Indexed Process happens nightly for Alma records Other source systems on varying schedules
34. We use Normalization Rules to configure: Display Search Facets Links and more…
35. Questions? librarysystems-ggroup@bc.edu