How do I deal with poor bibliographic records in the CZ?
Answer
Records in the CZ are often more brief, or of poorer quality, than you would like or expect. Sometimes a new record will start out as only a stub, when you'd prefer a better record. This may not have a huge impact on your users, but it can hamper availability publishing and prevent discovery by author or subject heading or other missing fields.
What can you do about it?
- Activate Record from CZ and hope that it gets expanded by the vendor at some point
- Report Record to Data Services in Salesforce and hope that they will either enhance it themselves or encourage the vendor to expand it
- Find a better version of the record in another electronic collection and link to that bib record
- Set up a local portfolio with your own MARC record or manually created record
- Edit the CZ record yourself
Vendor records in the CZ are updated regularly, and what starts out as a brief record may eventually get updated as the vendor sends better data to Ex Libris. The job that updates the records is "Synchronize Changes from CZ," which is usually broken into parts because it's such a big file. These parts may roll out at different times in different campuses, so don't be surprised if the same bib record has different content in different Primos. Also, because of our NZ structure, the content usually needs to be updated in the NZ for it to show as updated in your Primo. If you have an urgent need to see updated content for a particular title, you may submit a ticket to info@sunyolis.libanswers.com and SLS will force the metadata update.
You are welcome to report the poor record to Data Services, but it could take six months to a year for them to enhance the record for you. Individual titles are not high priority, and they're generally dependent on what the vendor sends to them.
Find a Better Version in the CZ
When activating a portfolio, you want to pick the appropriate electronic collection so that your linking will work. However, each vendor sends their own records to the CZ, so if the bib record in your collection isn't very good, you may be able to find a better one in a different collection. Linking to a new bibliographic record won't impact your portfolio linking, just the title metadata.
- From the Edit Portfolio screen, click on the Relink to another bibliographic record button:
- From there, click on Select from a list:
- Search CZ by ISBN or title to find a different Bib record
- Hit enter to pick your record, make sure to switch "Handling bibliographic records without inventory" to delete, and hit confirm
You may add your own MARC record from your vendor or manually create a portfolio using the Add portfolio option in Edit Service, Portfolios tab:
If your local portfolio wasn't initially available in the CZ, you may get a DARA recommendation to link it to the CZ at some later point once it becomes available. It's also possible to connect your local portfolio to CZ for link management while keeping your own MARC record, but this can create some problems with indexing in the NZ so it's not recommended.
See the Alma Electronic Resources Management training guide for more information about adding local content.
You have the ability to edit some fields in a CZ record, but it's easy to create problems for other libraries, so the SLS recommends that you take this step only as a last resort.
You may edit any field except for the 022 because this can affect the link resolution that is dependent on that field. Ex Libris Documentation on Editing Community Zone Records
Note that if you edit the CZ record, it may take time for those changes to be distributed through the Synchronize Changes from CZ job. Because of the relationship with the NZ, you may need to wait for the job to run both at your campus and in the NZ. If you have an urgent need to see updated content for a particular title, you may submit a ticket to info@sunyolis.libanswers.com and SLS will force the metadata update.