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
   

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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
   

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3. What is Primo?
   

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4. Primo
   discovery service
   =
   

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5. Primo
   Alma
   Discovery services load records from multiple
   sources
   Digitool
   eScholarship and more…
   

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6. Primo
   Data export, transformation, and
   normalization
   Source System
   Discovery services transform the data loaded from
   source systems
   

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7. How is Primo different from the old
   Quest?
   

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8. Aleph
   Quest OPAC
   Quest was part of Aleph, our old ILS
   

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9. Aleph
   Quest OPAC
   Patrons searched Aleph directly using the OPAC
   Data was not exported or transformed
   

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10. Alma
    Alma replaced the Aleph ILS
    

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11. Alma
    Alma doesn’t have a patron-facing search interface (no OPAC)
    

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12. Primo Alma
    Primo and Alma are separate systems
    Primo does not search Alma directly
    

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13. ??? Alma
    Alma can work with other discovery services
    

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14. TAKEAWAYS:
    Alma and Primo are separate systems
    Primo does not search Alma directly (not an OPAC)
    Primo loads records from multiple sources
    

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15. How does Primo work?
    

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16. Search
    Books
    Articles
    Primo searches two separate buckets of stuff
    

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17. 5 million books 1 billion articles
    

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18. Primo searches
    93,565
    ARTICLES
    199, 791
    BOOKS
    

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19. What is in the Books
    bucket?
    

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20. Books
    Books bucket
    and more..
    eScholarship
    Digitool
    Alma
    

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21. Books
    Books bucket = Local Catalog
    We load the records
    We control the metadata
    

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22. What is in the Articles
    bucket?
    

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23. Article metadata
    from lots and lots
    of publishers
    Articles bucket
    

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24. Articles bucket
    And Lots
    more…
    

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25. Articles
    =
    Primo Central
    Index
    Articles bucket = Primo Central Index (PCI)
    We do NOT control the metadata
    Ex Libris (vendor) loads the records
    

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26. Articles
    Articles is NOT the same as Library databases
    

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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
    

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28. Example of article in both EBSCO and Articles
    

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29. Articles
    List of everything in Articles is on Library Wiki
    (or ask us)
    

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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
    

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31. How do Book records get
    into Primo?
    

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32. Let’s take a look…
    

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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
    

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34. We use Normalization Rules to configure:
    Display
    Search
    Facets
    Links
    and more…
    

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35. Questions?
    librarysystems-ggroup@bc.edu
    

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