The NRSG is aware of the following issues impacting data display and user experience in Alliance Primo instances. Due to various circumstances, the NRSG is unable to resolve these issues at this time. See each item below for a short summary of the issue and links to relevant documentation where available.
Resource Types Misalignment: CDI vs. Alma Records
Problem: Currently, CDI resource types include “Archival Materials / Manuscripts”. Conversely, Alma records in the Alliance are categorized as either “Archival Materials” or “Manuscripts”. This misalignment creates problems for Primo users when using resource type facets to filter their search – they have to select all three possible facet values to fully retrieve the result set they want.
Status: The NRSG has reviewed the issue, and received feedback from other Alma/Primo customers. Feedback indicates a wide variety of practices to cope with the issue, but no clear preference for whether Ex Libris should split the CDI resource type into two separate types aligned with Alma or whether the Alma types should be merged into one type aligned with the CDI. Since either change would cause a significant disruption to existing customers, the NRSG has decided that an enhancement request is very unlikely to succeed.
Inability to Edit OTB Search Rules in Primo VE
Problem: Customers are not allowed to edit the OTB (out-of-the-box) search normalization rules in Primo VE. This means that if a customer wishes to add MARC data to an OTB display field in Primo VE, that data will not necessarily be indexed for search. In the case of hyperlinked fields, the data may not be included in the search index used by the hyperlinked field.
Status: The NRSG evaluates each display field change to determine the appropriate workaround for this issue. At times, data may be added to a “catch-all” search field (local field 52) for keyword indexing. For data that is likely to be hyperlinked, a new local field must be defined to serve as the search index for those hyperlinks. In 2024, an enhancement request championed by the NRSG to allow customers to edit OTB search rules was overwhelmingly approved by Primo customers, but rejected by Ex Libris.
Standardized use of 955/960 Fields
Problem: Alliance best practices for local field use state that local fields should be formatted and treated like their corresponding regular MARC fields. Many institutions used MARC 740 (Added entry – Uncontrolled Related/Analytical Title) for local collections prior to Alma. However, 740 is an uncontrolled heading and not suited for hyperlinking. When this mismatch was discovered, the NRSG recommended moving local collection information to 955, which corresponds to MARC 730 (Added entry – Uniform Titles). This field is hyperlinked. However, some issues later emerged from the conflation of local collections with uniform titles used locally for other purposes.
Status: The NRSG has reviewed this issue and discussed the possibility of creating a new local display/search/hyperlink/facet field for local collections. Ultimately, the group has decided that the data remediation that would be required at the institution level for this change is not justified by any current problematic behavior exhibited by the fields in Primo VE since there are few other local uses for 730/955. Therefore, the NRSG recommends continuing to use 955 for the display of local collection titles in Primo. If you also wish to search/facet on 955$a, please use Local Field 6 (created by Clark College) .
Undocumented Behavior in OTB Display Fields
Problem: When attempting to edit some OTB display fields, the NRSG has encountered undocumented manipulation of the bibliographic metadata which is not encoded in the normalization rule itself. For example, the OTB Identifier field inserts line breaks wherever a semicolon appears in the data from the bib record. These undocumented behaviors result in a local field with the exact same normalization rules displaying data differently than the OTB field.
Status: It is currently unknown exactly how many and which OTB fields perform undocumented data manipulation. The NRSG will add notes to their “Compendium” document when a specific OTB display field edited by the NRSG is found to perform an undocumented manipulation.