Library Answers: Los Rios Common Questions

In our shared Alma set up, we need to exercise care so that each college's users can easily discover and access the electronic resources they are entitled to. In addition, we need to follow standards to avoid confusion when locating and interpreting resources in Alma.

Clarivate lays out the general principles we are working under in its online help page Configuring Distributed Access to Electronic Resources. Below are some details of how we've implemented things at Los Rios.

What are group settings?

Group settings help us make adjustments when access differs in any way from college to college. Proxied access is the most prominent example. Without group settings, only one proxy prefix could be used throughout our various Primo sites. With group settings, users of different Primo VE views will be sent to the proxy mapped to that Primo VE view.

Our inventory management groups (also known in areas of Alma interfaces as inventory network groups, or even network inventory groups) have the following codes: ARC, CRC, FLC, SCC. Each of these groups has a single member: an Alma campus with the same code.

Campuses are slightly confusing because they have implications for both electronic and physical resources. Here they reflect users who should have access to a college's set of resources, i.e. students who are taking at least one class at the college and employees with an assignment at the college. While our campuses don't always include all Alma libraries associated with the main college (because of certain concerns related to physical fulfillment), this absence does not cause any deficits in access.

In addition, our user records include a campus field, but this setting does not have any relationship to access to resources in our setup. Resources will not be shown to or hidden from students based on the Campus field in their user record.

In the Alma ERM world, inventory management group and campus tend to be used interchangeably. Campus is used more because, well, it's just one word.

When do we use group settings?

We use group settings when

• linking (including proxy prefix) differs among the four colleges, or
• we want particular electronic resources not to show up in all of the college views (in most case because not all the colleges are licensed to use the resource).

We have a lot of open-access electronic collections, and these do not have any group settings, because they don't go through a proxy server and (so far) we all want them to show up in Primo.

Adding group settings will prevent discovery of the resource in for any colleges that do not have a group set. So resources that are intended to be available to all should either have four groups, or none.

What is "set" in group settings?

Proxy. In most cases, the only thing we set in the group is the proxy. Be sure to set Proxy enabled to Yes, not Resource Default, and include the correct proxy profile for the college.

Note that although EZproxy is our standard access tool, we have certain electronic collections where we do not set the proxy in the electronic service, either because the platform has implemented EZproxy in an idiosyncratic way or (rarely) we have set up access via SAML/Okta. Examples of resources where we do not activate the proxy in Alma are Overdrive/Libby, Kanopy, and ICE Video Library.

Linking parameters. Depending on the electronic collection's parser, they might also include linking parameters. When we use EZproxy, we rarely need them. Gale Literature Resource Center is an example of where we see linking parameters in our group settings. The fields only appear if the service parser specifies that linking parameters can be added. We would typically learn of the need for these linking parameters from Clarivate or the provider.

Notes. Authentication notes (which we rarely use) and public notes that we want to only show up in particular Primo VE views should be added to the group settings.

Be aware:

• if a resource has groups set, and we want the same public note to show up for all views, regardless of group, this note needs to go in the collection editor notes tab, not the service;
• we once had a practice of putting an authentication note in the group settings along the lines of "Access limited to ARC students and employees... [etc]". We no longer do this, since users should only see full text links for resources available to the college associated with the Primo VE view.

Where do we apply group settings?

We normally apply group settings at the electronic service level. When groups are set at the service level, they are inherited by any portfolios attached to the service. This is why, when group settings are applied at the service level and portfolios in the service equally available to the groups listed in the service, group settings are normally not applied at the portfolio level. 

Similarly, when we set groups at the service level, we also do not set groups at the electronic collection level.

In a situation where some portfolios in a service are available to a subset (or all) of the groups, but others are available to fewer groups, the latter portfolios could have group settings that would further limit access. In addition, we sometimes have electronic collections where the full-text service has no group settings, and the portfolios have a variety of group settings. For instance, we have a Swank e-collection for individually licensed titles (outside of our subscription bundles). 

Group settings for CDI

CDI-specific group settings are available on the Electronic Collection Editor - CDI tab. We normally do not set groups on this tab. Availability of CDI resources is normally set according to our full-text services, so group settings in CDI would not have any effect. For instance, let's say we have an e-collection where only ARC has access, and we've set ARC as a group in the full-text service. CDI records connected to the portfolios in this collection will not by default surface in the non-ARC views, since they are not available to the other colleges. So the only effect of setting the group on the CDI tab would be to prevent htem from showing up when the Expand my results toggle is activated, which we wouldn't want, since the intention of activating that setting is to include unavailable resources.

If we had a resource that was CDI-only full-text (i.e. zero-title database) and was not available to all colleges, then we would want to set CDI groups for that collection. But currently we do not have any such resources. 

Linking & discovery vs. access

It's important to remember that group settings influence the linking structure (including proxy prefix) and discovery (e.g. which Primo views display the record), but group settings do not in themselves limit access to the resource. Access is determined in some cases by EZproxy configuration, and in others by our arrangement with the vendor (or these two factors might combine in certain scenarios). So you could limit the groups on a resource, but users from other colleges might still be able to access it because EZproxy is set up to allow this. Or you might set up groups on the resource so that it is does not show in other colleges' Primo views, but users from those colleges who search the database (e.g. EBSCO eBooks, Overdrive etc.), which is specific to their college, can discover and access it on that platform.

If you agree to a license with a vendor saying that access is limited to only by your college, you need to inquire internally as to whether EZproxy and our current arrangement with the platform hosting the content currently accommodates this limitation, and if not, what changes need to be made.

How do we organize our Primo VE views in relation to our inventory management groups?

We have defined custom local data scopes that limit electronic resources to those available to a single campus. So for instance, the local data scope SCC_Electronic includes the condition Electronic Availability – Campus equals SCC.

So only those electronic resources available to the SCC campus / inventory management group will be included. This will include resources where no groups are set, since those are also available to the SCC campus. If a portfolio has group settings but no settings for SCC, it will not be discoverable in views with this scope.

This scope is then included in the search profile scc_everything, so in the default searches in the SCC view, no electronic resources unavailable to SCC users should be shown.

Scenarios

You encounter an Alma portfolio for a resource you know should be accessed via EZproxy, but don't see the proxy selected on the portfolio's Linking tab. The portfolio shows Proxy enabled as No, and the Group Settings tab does not show the "dog-ear" icon, indicating the portfolio has no group settings. However, if you navigate the the Group Settings tab, you will see that the portfolio is inheriting group settings from the electronic service or the electronic collection [add proxy info; screenshot]. This is set up correctly.

In your college's OneSearch view, you encounter a link that sends you to another college's EZproxy. This points to an ERM problem. Find the portfolio that is tied to the full-text service (you can use the Display CTO bookmarklet to identify the portfolio ID). Check the linking tab of the portfolio and the service-level linking tab. Is the wrong proxy profile selected for the group tied to the Primo view? Or, has a proxy prefix proxy has been included there somewhere instead of in the group settings.

A user reports that they are seeing a paywall for one of our subscription resources when they click a link in OneSearch. Here there could be a number of problems; it's possible, for instance, that a Community Zone electronic collection includes a portfolio it shouldn't. But if we do have access when we visiting the resource via campus IP range or EZproxy, then it's possible the proxy is not set up correctly. Find the portfolio (again, use Display CTO if appropriate) and navigate to the full-text service. Groups should be set up, with Proxy enabled set to Yes, and the correct proxy profile selected.

You used group settings to limit an EBSCO ebook to your college, but you learn that the ebook remains available to users at other colleges. Visibility of EBSCO ebooks in EBSCOhost is not determined by anything in Alma. By default, all EBSCO ebook titles purchased by any college are available to the others. We do have EBSCO administrative tools that would allow us to suppress a title in individual EBSCO sites, so these would need to be used. (Note we do not do this sort of college-level suppression in EBSCO currently.)

How are group settings reflected in Alma Analytics?

Analytics includes the dimensions Available for Group and Available for Group Members. Since in our institution the relevant groups only have one member each, these dimensions mean the same thing. Important considerations:

• the values these dimensions return are concatenated, so some resources available to ARC will show ARC;CRC;FLC;SCC and others just ARC
• because we are in a large consortium, there are a lot of groups set at the Network Zone level, and these will also be returned as values of the dimension
• some of our resources have no group settings, so if we filter to a particular group without also allowing for a null value, these resources will not be returned.

As a result, we never use the is equal to / is in operator when filtering this dimension. Instead always use one of the contains operators, or the like operator of which contains is a shortcut, and normally we combine this with is null. [example to be added]