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**Alma/Primo VE Main Resource Guide

This guide is one-stop site for everything related to FLVC's integrated library system (Alma) and discovery tool (Primo VE). Included are sections on training courses, basic functions of Alma, access to test environments, managing staff accounts, and more

Alma/Primo VE Enhancement Process

The Alma and Primo Enhancement Process

Overview

The Ex Libris Users of North America (ELUNA) has an agreement with Ex Libris whereby the user group will identify enhancements to certain major products and the vendor will agree to implement them. These products include Alma and Primo, both of which FLVC currently has licensed on behalf of all 40 institutions. Because of this agreement, ELUNA has developed a process that allows members to recommend enhancements throughout the year and then annually vote on which enhancements should be implemented.

Who Gets to Participate

Only Institutional and Consortial members of ELUNA are allowed to directly vote on enhancements. Institutional members are libraries who pay an annual fee (currently $380) to become voting members of the user group. Consortial members (such as FLVC) pay an annual fee (currently $815) and are also a voting member. Consortial members represent all libraries affiliated with their consortium.

The Process

The Enhancement process begins in January and continues until the summer. It typically follows the timeline below:

  • Late January to early February - A call is made for new enhancements to be submitted.
  • Early February to mid-March - The ELUNA Enhancement Team reviews the list of enhancements, catergorizes them, dedups them, and verifies the ballot for the first round of voting.
  • Mid-March to early April - First round of voting occurs by the ELUNA membership.
  • Mid April - Enhancement Team reviews results and sends the top 20-25 enhancements to Ex Libris for Pointing
  • Mid-April to mid-June - Ex Libris assigns a point value to each enhancement
  • Mid-June to late June - Second round of voting occurs by the ELUNA membership.
  • July to August - Enhancement Team tallies the results and negotiates with Ex Libris on how many enhancements will be implemented and when.

Note: There is a separate process for Alma and Primo, but both follow a similar timeline. There is also an enhancement process for RapidILL and the Central Discovery Index (CDI), but they typically have a different timeline.

 

ELUNA Membership Status of Each Institution

As of 3/4/2025, there are 20 Institution members (10 SUS, 10 FCS), one Consortal member (FLVC), and 20 Consortium Only members. (Consortium Only members are NOT permitted to vote.)

Institution ILS Coordinator (ELUNA Representative) Membership Status

Broward College

Craig Amos Consortium Member Only

Chipola College

Jane Stephens Consortium Member Only

College of Central Florida

Carole Thompson   Consortium Member Only

College of the Florida Keys

Marcos Gonzalez Consortium Member Only

Daytona State College

Elizabeth Martino Consortium Member Only

Eastern Florida State College

Ashley Olund Consortium Member Only

Florida A&M University

Ernestine Holmes Consortium Member Only

Florida Atlantic University

Hansy Ambroise (colldev@fau.edu) Individual Institution

Florida Gateway College

Christine Boatright

Consortium Member Only

Florida Gulf Coast University

Danielle Rosenthal (Same) Individual Institution

Florida International University

Jacqueline Radebaugh (Dalvys Perez) Individual Institution

Florida Polytechnic University

Marcie Hoecker Consortium Member Only

Florida SouthWestern State College

Richard Hodges (Peter Van Leeuwen) Individual Institution

Florida State College at Jacksonville

Madeline Sims Consortium Member Only

Florida State University

Valerie Boulos (Same) Individual Institution

Gulf Coast State College

David Russell Consortium Member Only

Hillsborough Community College

Diann Smothers (Lei Steelman) Individual Institution

Indian River State College

Alexis Carlson Consortium Member Only

Lake-Sumter State College

Kevin Arms (Katie Sacco) Individual Institution

Miami Dade College

Angel Hernandez (Same) Individual Institution

New College of Florida

Jeff Thompson (libraryadmin@ncf.edu) Individual Institution

North Florida College

Windy Gamble Consortium Member Only

Northwest Florida State College

  Consortium Member Only

Palm Beach State College

Robbie Allen Consortium Member Only

Pasco-Hernando State College

Kayla Kuni (Ingrid Purrenhage) Individual Institution

Pensacola State College

Maria Goodspeed Consortium Member Only

Polk State College

Shannon Schane (Christina Fullerton) Individual Institution

St. Johns River State College

Victoria Morris Consortium Member Only

St. Petersburg College

Josh Brown (Marina Coelho) Individual Institution

Santa Fe College

Jenna Miller (Same) Individual Institution

Seminole State College

Morgan Tracy Consortium Member Only

South Florida State College

Lena Phelps Consortium Member Only

State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota

Theresa Smith-Ennis (Meg Hawkins) Individual Institution

Tallahassee State College

Sila Lott Consortium Member Only

University of Central Florida

Tina Buck (Same) Individual Institution

University of Florida

Todd Digby (Same) Individual Institution

University of North Florida

Jim Rickerson (Jennifer Murray) Individual Institution

University of South Florida

Bonita Pollock (Same) Individual Institution

University of West Florida

Liza Campbell (Stephanie Clark) Individual Institution

Valencia College

Ruth Smith (libacq@valenciacollege.edu) Individual Institution

Florida Virtual Campus

Wendy Ellis Consortium (26 to 50)

Voting for Enhancements

Remember, only libraries that are institutional members of ELUNA are entitled to vote on enhancements for the products that have ongoing licenses. For most FLVC libraries, that will be Alma, Primo, Central Discovery Index (CDI), and RapidILL. Information on how to join ELUNA as an institutional member can be found on their website at https://el-una.org/.

Voting is done using the Community Enhancement Requests and Voting (CERV) which is a website operated by the International Group of Ex Libris Users (IGELU). This site used to be called NERS, but it was renamed when they changed the interface. At the beginning of a voting round, the staff member designated as the contact person for each institution will receive an email message with a link to the ballot. The list of enhancements will display. Simply select an enhancement and choose how many points to put toward it. Each ELUNA member is given a total of 100 points, so a member can put all 100 points toward one particular enhancement or spread them out over several enhancements. When you are finished, click on Submit to lock in your vote. Once you submit your ballot, you cannot go back and change it.

If you have any problems or questions about voting, please contact ELUNA using this form.

2025 Alma Enhancement Timeline

  • Jan 18: Deadline to submit enhancement requests to the Enhancement Portal
  • Jan 30 - Mar 5: Enhancement team reviews requests and sets up ballot in NERS
  • Mar 10 - April 9: First round of voting
  • Apr 9 - 10: Team Reviews results & sends to ExLibris for pointing
  • Apr 11 - June 6: ExLibris pointing process
  • June 16 - 29: Second round of voting on Pointed enhancements
  • September:  Accepted enhancements announced

Central Discovery Index Enhancements

Here are the voting results from the CDI Enhancements vote, in order of highest to lowest number of votes. Ex Libris is currently discussing next steps for implementing the enhancements with the highest number of votes. 

The enhancement with the highest total votes (11,078) was #8722, the ability to hide undesirable CDI records. Second was #8829, allowing CDI full text availability matching on volume and issue, with 9,715 votes.

New for 2024, a range of CDI enhancements have been proposed to allow for increased competition with Discovery user interface and configuration enhancements. Any active member institution that licenses CDI via Primo or Summon can participate in the vote. 100 points will go to CDI, reallocated from Primo/Summon.

Here is a link to the 2024 CDI Enhancements Ballot.  The enhancements recommended by the UISC are noted on the spreadsheet.

  • Primo/Summon Working Groups will extract unsuccessful enhancement requests from the 2023 ballots and forward them to ExLibris to determine if any are CDI-related by the end of Jan 2024.
  • The Content Working Group will issue a 1st round CDI ballot via NERS  - date TBD
  • If necessary, a 2nd CDI ballot with development pointing will be issued
  • The highest voted enhancements will be selected for development until the 100 points have been reached
  • During July 2024, ELUNA/IGELU will review to determine the required process improvements.

2024 RapidILL Enhancement schedule and submission process

July 1 Last chance to submit new enhancement requests for this year’s voting in NERS
July 2 - 26 The Enhancements Team reviews, dedupes, scopes, verifies, transfers to other NERS when necessary, and sets up the vote
July 29 - Aug 30 First round of voting
Sep 2 - 6 The Enhancements Team reviews the results, and prepares them for Ex Libris to assign complexity points
Sep 7 - 13 Break for IGeLU Conference
Sep 16 - 27 Ex Libris adds complexity points to the top voted results
Sep 30 - Oct 9 Extra time assigned for clarification with Ex Libris
Oct 10 -31 Second round of voting
  The NERS agreement states that Ex Libris will develop the accepted enhancements within one year

2024 New method for submitting requests, https://enhancements.exlibrisusers.org (Portal powered by Aha).

Process to update your software profiles in the ELUNA membership directories, please complete by Friday, July 27

Check RapidILL Roadmaps for planned enhancements before submitting: https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Rapido/Product_Documentation/RapidILL/RapidILL_Ideas_for_Development

Submission Process:

New Submission Method:

1 - Go to: https://enhancements.exlibrisusers.org

2 - Click "Don't have an account? Sign up"

3 - Create an account with username, email, and password

   (Password requirements: 8+ characters, 3 of 4 types: lowercase, uppercase, numbers, special characters)

4 - Log in and click "Add a New Enhancement" button

Second round of Rapido/RapidILL Enhancements ended on December 8, 2023

The first round of voting for ELUNA/IGELU NERS Rapido/RapidILL Enhancements ended on October 17th.  You can download the list of enhancement submissions here.

Note:  Your institution must be an ELUNA member to vote & all voting institutions must have a signed Rapido or RapidILL contract with ExLibris.

The following four enhancements have been included in the 2024 Roadmaps.  ExLibris will have one year to complete the developments.

RapidILL Enhancement Finalists
Request Title Description Proposed Solution Product Req. ID
Add “Conditional” to RapidILL

Sometimes libraries need to communicate things to each other that aren't citation issues. For instance, if a library has an HTML version of an article instead of a PDF with page numbers or a different edition of a book than the one listed in the request, that library might want to ask the borrower if that's an okay version for the patron. Right now the only way to communicate between libraries is through Bad Citation, and that doesn't allow libraries to respond to such queries. Adding a "Conditional" status that allows libraries to ask and answer questions that aren't citation problems would help patrons get the items they need instead of requiring libraries to guess at whether what they have is sufficient.

 

We can create a new Rapido action which will provide the ability to send an email to a partner library directly from within Rapido. The email will then be stored in the Rapido borrowing/lending request for later reference. RapidILL/Rapido 8558
Configuration option for mandatory fields in the Rapido request form Currently, there is no option for customers to set fields in the Rapido request form as mandatory (mark them with a red asterix, form can only be sent when field is not empty). However, it is not possible for libraries to fulfill requests where certain information is missing (e.g., no page numbers in digitization requests). We would appreciate if customers would become able to set any field in the form as mandatory such as it is already the case in the GetIt request forms in Primo VE.   Rapido 8484
Prevent multiple requests from a same borrowing library within a short period of time

Within a same day, we sometimes receive (in Alma) several RapidILL requests coming from a same institution for a same book or journal issue (native electronic materials or scans from physical materials): usually one request per book chapter, one request per article, etc., but sometimes, some of these requests are for multiple chapters or significant portions of a work. We assume that in most cases, these multiple requests come from a same requester, associated to the borrowing library.

In addition to copyright issues that multiple request raise, it is unreasonable to expect a lending library to expend spending a lot of time to scan significant portions of a work.

We don't expect any systematic mediation from borrowing libraries. This would increase the turnaround time, make the process heavier and slower for end-users and be in contradiction with encouraged integrations like Alma/RapidILL and Alma/Rapido. Instead, we would like lending libraries to have the possibility to limit the number of requests they receive from a same borrowing library for a same book or journal issue within a given (short) period of time.

Example of configuration: "Maximum XX requests in YY hours for a same book or journal issue from a same borrowing library", where 'XX' and 'YY' would be numeric values to select from a drop-down list.

Possible values for XX and YY should be defined in collaboration with the RapidILL and Rapido WGs.
In case the values for XX or YY would be reached:
1) Any new request matching the limits should be assigned to another lending institution that owns the requested material.
2) The borrowing library should be informed that there is a risk of multiple requests from a same requester. The library could reach the requester, explain the resulting copyright issues and/or decide if possible to acquire the highly demanded material.
3) If no other library can provide the material, request should be cancelled and associated with a new 'Request Cancellation Reason' code in Alma. It is important that Resource Sharing requests that would be cancelled for such reasons explain the requester that requesting a too large part of a journal issue or book is not without consequences or risks.

Development is for point one only: 1) Any new request matching the limits should be assigned to another lending institution that owns the requested material.

We can develop lender configurations to support this.

RapidILL 8530
Ability to query RapidILL lending library from Alma

Sometimes we need to contact the library that supplied a RapidILL request to query the copy they provided. For example, supplementary material that was requested was not included, or the incorrect article/chapter was uploaded and sent to our user. At the moment, we need to find out the institution and send them an email. It would be much more efficient if we could query the 'completed' request via Alma to the Library. This functionality should update the request status and record the communication with the request.

There is a Resupply request feature included in Rapido but is not currently possible within Alma Resource Sharing, so a similar solution would be useful.

  RapidILL/Alma 8487

 

2025 Alma Enhancements

First Round of Voting (Posted: March 11, 2025)

The first round of voting for Alma Enhancements opened on Monday, March 10, 2025 and will close on Wednesday, April 9, 2025. ELUNA's Alma Working Group released 238 enhancement requests for Alma that can receive votes. This first round of voting is designed to narrow the list of enhancements down to about 25-30 requests. A link to an Excel spreadsheet with a detailed description of each request is listed below.

Libraries who have an Institutional Membership with ELUNA are able to vote on enhancements. FLVC is a Consortial Member and will also cast a vote on behalf of the organization. FLVC staff will share with all the libraries which enhancements they support by March 20th. Typically, FLVC chooses 4-5 enhancement requests from the list. That list will be posted here.

2025 Alma Enhancements - Round 1

2025 Primo Enhancements

First Round of Voting (Posted: March 11, 2025)

The first round of voting for Primo Enhancements opened on Monday, March 10, 2025 and will close on Wednesday, April 9, 2025. ELUNA's Primo Working Group released 90 enhancement requests for Primo that can receive votes. A link to an Excel spreadsheet with a detailed description of each request is listed below.

Libraries who have an Institutional Membership with ELUNA are able to vote on enhancements. FLVC is a Consortial Member and will also cast a vote on behalf of the organization. FLVC staff will share with all the libraries which enhancements they support by March 20th. Typically, FLVC chooses 4-5 enhancement requests from the list. That list will be posted here.

2025 Primo Enhancements - Round 1