Alma/Primo Down Recommendations

Reporting to the Alliance and Ex Libris

If your library experiences an outage of Alma or Primo, use the Alliance discussion lists to notify other members and Program Managers. The Program Managers for Systems, RSF, TS and DUX are subscribed to all lists and will see these messages.

Once Program Managers determine the scope of the problem, they will advise on reporting to Ex Libris.

  • If the outage affects all members of the Alliance, central staff will submit one case with the priority “System Down.” These cases bypass Support analysts to notify the on-call engineering team (or “24×7 Hub“), and central staff will work directly with Ex Libris managers until service is restored.
  • For an outage affecting only one or some members of the Alliance, use the Support Portal to submit a case for your institution.

The System Status page displays current known issues with Ex Libris products. From this page, you can subscribe to receive notification emails on status changes. See Using the Ex Libris System Status Page for instructions.

After the submission of the central or institutional case(s), feel free to continue discussing the issue with your colleagues on the lists. However, because Ex Libris products are cloud services, only the vendor can resolve a system down event.

Alma Down: Offline Circulation Utility

The Offline Circulation Utility allows staff to perform loans and returns when Alma is inaccessible. The software produces a data file of these transactions to upload to Alma after service is restored. 

Alliance Program Managers recommend installing the utility and training all new circulation staff in its use in advance of potential outages. See the Knowledge Center article Offline Circulation for the download link and procedures for processing loans, returns, and upload jobs.

If the utility can’t be installed on your library’s computers due to institutional restrictions, manual workarounds might work for your staff. For example, to perform loans offline:

  1. Scan patron IDs and item barcodes into a spreadsheet program, such as Excel or Google Sheets.
  2. After service is restored, manually copy each of the spreadsheet rows into the patrons’ accounts in Alma.
    • To process a very large number of transactions, the Create User Loans API can be used to create loans programmatically. Consult with your local developer(s) to determine if this is a viable project.

Primo Down: Alternative Resources for Patrons

When patrons are unable to access Primo, libraries can suggest other resources to conduct research. You may consider publishing a webpage, LibGuide, or other document of suggestions to link from your library homepage during a system down event.

Physical Holdings

All Alliance members use OCLC as their primary bibliographic utility and maintain holdings for titles in WorldCat, with some exceptions like equipment and course reserves (see Policy: Use of OCLC and Record Identifiers). Patrons can search for physical materials at Summit libraries through https://search.worldcat.org/ or your institution’s WorldCat Discovery interface.

E-resource Databases

In addition to your library’s A-Z list of subscription databases, patrons can perform searches of centrally purchased e-resources through these platforms. URLs vary by institution.

  • Academic Video Online (AVON)
  • Oxford Scholarship Online
  • ProQuest Ebook Central

The state libraries of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho also maintain these lists of research databases available to the public.