Publishing to Libraries Australia

Alma allows you to automatically synchronize bibliographic records with embedded holdings information with the information available for your institution/library in the Libraries Australia (LA) main catalog. The publishing to Libraries Australia (LA) job exports records to a predefined FTP location from which LA retrieves and synchronizes them with their records.

In order to publish to LA, Contact LA and open a synchronization project. This project will be used for data transfer activities between the institution/library and LA.
As part of this project, the following should be agreed with LA:

• NUC code (symbol): each institution that synchronizes its bibliographic/holdings records with the LA must have a NUC code (symbol). Also, specific libraries may have a NUC symbol that overrides the institution’s NUC code
• S/FTP connection to be used
• Holdings information structure to be published from Alma so that LA is able to interpret. See below for more details regarding the holdings information structure.

These definitions should be part of the Alma’s publishing to LA profile. For more information about configuring this  profile, refer to Alma OLH.

The export contains two separate files of bibliographic records with embedded holdings information. One file contains the new and updated holdings, and the other file contains deleted bibliographic records. These can be identified by the following naming convention:
<NUC_CODE>-<B for bib and holding records, D for deleted records>.D<sequence>

The sequence is a running number of file uploads. The numbers are recycled after reaching the upper limit (99). The last sequence number used is saved as part of the publishing profile. When the sequence number reaches 99, it restarts with 00.

Example: NCLN-B.D66

Field 984 in the bibliographic record is used to contain the holdings information. Specifically, the 984 $a contains the NUC code; and the 984 $c may be configured to contain a call number or a label such as HELD (to indicate that the library has holdings).
The system creates one 984 field and all the associated holdings information for records that have both electronic and physical holdings with the same NUC code. For example:
984 $a NSL $c M Q823.912/ W187.1/ 4 $c Online: Not available for loan

The first $c holds the physical information, and the second $c holds the electronic information. Since the electronic holdings do not have call numbers, only the label is published in $c for the electronic holdings.

For more information about holdings mapping, refer to Alma OLH.

The following table summarize the publishing to LA options: