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Alma Acquisitions Resource Guide

This guide covers all aspects of the Acquisitions process, which includes setting up funds, ordering, receiving physical items, activating e-resources, and invoicing. This guide also covers Serials patterns and arrival/check-in.

SUSHI Harvesting in Alma

SUSHI Harvesting in Alma

Alma can collect and report on e-resource usage statistics information supplied by content providers in COUNTER format. Access to these reports provides librarians the ability to analyze and understand e-resource usage and cost within their institutions by configuring COUNTER subscribers and enabling SUSHI vendor accounts in Alma to automatically harvest usage data and view and download reports in Alma Analytics.

The SUSHI protocol stands for Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative. It allows you to harvest e-resource usage data from your subscribed vendor platforms without the time-consuming manual collection of usage data reports (logging into the vendor admin portals to collect usage stats). 

SUSHI harvesting is designed to work with COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources) reports. The current report type is COUNTER Release 5. Although not all vendors provide COUNTER reports, a majority do and you can review a register of COUNTER-compliant vendors and publishers at the COUNTER Metrics Registry site.

Review this guide for how to set up SUSHI Harvesting in Alma.

 

Alma Roles Required

The following roles are needed to set up SUSHI harvesting in Alma:

  • Vendor Manager- allows you to access the "Usage Data" tab of the vendor record to set up SUSHI vendor account details, and assign report types that you'd like to harvest. 
  • Usage Data Operator- allows you to manually upload or delete COUNTER data for any vendor, manage the uploaded data files, and view usage data.
  • Acquisitions Administrator- allows you to access Acquisitions configurations in Alma to set up the automated SUSHI harvesting job, and assign email addresses as people to notify of the scheduled job reports. If you do not have the Acquisitions Administrator role in Alma, please email help@flvc.org to request the job to be enabled and provide a list of users/ email addresses to add as a notify of SUSHI harvesting job reports. 

Adding SUSHI vendor accounts to Alma vendors

  1. In Alma, search for the vendor that you'd like to set up SUSHI. Click on the vendor record.
  2. Click the Usage Data tab > Add SUSHI Account > Release 4 or Release 5 (it  will most likely be Release 5 since that is the current standard):
  3. On the SUSHI Account Details page, search for the name of the vendor/ platform in the SUSHI Account drop down. This will populate the vendor URL field. You do not need to select a Subscriber from the drop-down, unless you have more than one subscriber (this is uncommon). Verify that the Status is Active. In the Request Details section, enter the requirements of the SUSHI connection according to the Ex Libris SUSHI Vendor Lists Special Instructions. Most requests require just the Requester ID and Customer ID, some requires an additional API key. Click "Test Connection" to test the your credentials that you entered. After clicking Test Connection, a file will download that is in a JSON format. When viewed, it might open in a word document and will state if the connection is "true" meaning it's active and correct or you may receive an error in Alma saying "Connection Failed". If the connection is failed, there is likely an issue with the credentials entered or a system error with the vendor platform. Success Example: Failure example:
  4. If the connection is successful, in the Usage Report Types section, click Add Report Type. find the report type in the list, and click Add (if there are multiple you'd like to add) or Add and Close if there is only one report type you want. > Save.  

Harvesting Usage Data

To harvest usage data for your SUSHI accounts in Alma after accounts have been set up, set up the SUSHI harvesting job in Alma Acquisitions Configurations. For any reports that you'd like to harvest prior to setting up the automated job, a custom harvest can be executed in the vendor record Usage Data tab. 

Setting up the SUSHI Harvesting Job:

This requires the Acquisitions Administrator or General System Administrator role. If you do not have either of these roles, please email help@flvc.org to request for FLVC staff to enable the job for you. There is also an option to add subscribers for email notifications of the job report once the job is run. 

  1. Click Configuration at the bottom left hand corner of the Alma screen.
  2. Click Acquisitions > Acquisition Jobs Configurations > SUSHI harvesting job. 
  3. FLVC suggests keeping the default Schedule of "On the 25 of every month at 20:00", verify that status is Active. 
  4. Click Email Notification if you'd like to add users to notify once the harvesting job runs to receive a report. 

Running a custom harvest job in the vendor record:

  1. Search for the vendor, click the Usage Data tab. For the SUSHI account that you'd like to harvest data for, click "..." > Custom Harvest. ​​​​​
  2. Add Harvest Date Range > select month and year from the calendar picker. In my experience, if harvesting multiple months at one time (example: January 2024-May 2024), the harvest  may fail. I recommend submitting one month at a time to harvest. > Add if you would like to submit another date range, or Add and Close if you are done adding dates > Harvest. the job will be submitted, and once complete, the files will appear in the Uploaded Files section.
  3. The reports in the Uploaded files section are in a JSON format, and are not easy to read. To view the reports, access Alma Analytics the following day after the reports are run. If you'd like to view the JSON format reports, click on "..." next to the report > Download. 

Monitoring monthly harvest jobs

Monitor if a harvest is successful for a vendor or platform in Alma by clicking Acquisitions > Load Usage Data > Monthly Usage Data tab. On this page, you can sort by year and platform. At a glance, this table view will tell you if certain reports were not harvested/ failed in any given month per platform. 

Accessing Alma Analytics COUNTER usage reports

To access Alma Analytics, you must have either the Design Analytics, Analytics Administrator, or General System Administrator role.

Recommended reports and dashboards to review COUNTER usage. Do not edit these reports, unless you copy it to add to your institution's reports:

  1. SUNY's SUNYLA-SUSHI Monitoring Dashboard, path: Shared Folders > Community > Reports > Consortia > SUNY > SUNYLA-SUSHI Monitoring Dashboard > SUSHI Monitoring Dashboard. 
  2.  CARLI's COUNTER 5 E-Resource Usage Report Folder, path: Shared Folders > Community > Reports > Consortia > CARLI > Shared Reports > COUNTER 5 E-Resource Usage.