Feature updates for Primo VE are released quarterly in February, May August and November.
With input from the User Interfaces Standing Committee, we are highlighting some of the most interesting updates.
Support for HTML coding is spotty. With this release, the working group has selected a set of codes that allow HTML coding, including the <href> tag for linking.
To see which codes HTML support has been added to, please see the full documentation and scroll down to “Support HTML Coding in Additional Labels.”
Subject terms are received in various formats and styles from providers and aggregators. To address reported issues, incoming subject terms are now mapped to a controlled vocabulary, which is based primarily on LCSH and MeSH. The outcome of this mapping is the following:
Subject field (Normalized) – This indexed field includes only subjects that match the CDI controlled vocabulary. They are deduplicated and normalized.
Keyword field – This new field includes all subjects that could not be mapped against the CDI controlled vocabulary. These subjects are considered keywords, which are also indexed and searchable.
When enabled, only the normalized subjects appear for the Subject/Topic facet and the Subject display field. When performing a search in CDI scopes, both the Subject and Keyword fields are searched to ensure that nothing is lost (since not all subjects can be mapped to the controlled vocabulary).
This enhancement enables you to embed a visual carousel of records. The Primo VE Showcase utilizes Primo VE searches with pre-filters, conditions, and facets to dynamically display results. For example, it can show new books about a specific subject that were added to the catalog in the last 7 days using a subject filter and date facet. As new records are added that match your search query's parameters, they automatically appear on your website.
Users can now establish an access model at the collection level, with all portfolios within that collection automatically adopting it.
This functionality is especially advantageous for libraries employing auto-activated collections, ensuring that each new addition seamlessly inherits the access model.
You can specify access models such as single user, multiple user, 4 concurrent users, unlimited access, and more.
Electronic Collections Editor > General tab:
Previously, citation trail results were filtered only by availability, which meant that citations were not included if the citations belonged to CDI collections that did not have access to full text.
With this enhancement, users can enable/disable the expansion of citation trail results. In addition, you can set the default setting (filter or expand results) for your views. The default setting is to filter out CDI collections that do not have access to full text.
Set whether searches that return no results will automatically expand the search to include CDI collections that have not been activated in Alma.
Users will be notified when their searches have been expanded automatically. When enabled and searches are not already expanded for CDI, the following message appears if a search in CDI first returns no results without expansion:
You can now activate the Unpaywall collection in the Alma Community Zone. The CDI manages and prioritizes Open Access (OA) full text links for Unpaywall records and displays them with the other Link in Record OA links in Primo VE. The CDI will be updated weekly.
This is Ex Libris’s preferred integration for Unpaywall, but you can still use the other methods.
Resource Type field has been modified to allow you to assign a secondary resource type either to All or to one or more main resource types, not just a single resource type:
Two Enhancements:
Can set whether the email address and description following fields are mandatory or optional on the Give Us Feedback form.
exclude CDI eBook records only for collections that have portfolios in Alma.
Allows records to be found using facets and search pre-filters.
Previously, the ability to exclude full text matches in CDI defaulted to the following option for new and existing views: Search in FT: Yes (Always). With this enhancement, new and existing views now default to the following option, which does not search full text in CDI: Search in FT: No (Always).
Users can now go directly to full text from the full record instead of being taken to the View Online section to choose from the listed providers.
Set the preferred order of links to the electronic full text in CDI (Link in Record and Quicklinks) if more than one link is available.
About Unpaywall:
"This free service locates open-access articles and presents paywalled papers that have been legally archived and are freely available on other websites to users who might otherwise have hit a paywalled version."
There are two methods for setting up Unpaywall.
METHOD 1: Checkbox
This will show Unpaywall link on the brief results page.
Configuration Menu > Discovery > Display Configuration > Configure Views
Check the box in the General Tab:
METHOD 2: API Integration
This will allow Unpaywall API Services to appear in the "View-it" of a Services Page.
Configuration Menu > Fulfillment > General > Other Settings
To enable the Unpaywall API Integration, the "enable_open_access_services_from_unpaywall_api" Customer Parameter must be set to "true". This will allow Unpaywall API Services to appear in the "View-it" of a Services Page.
LABELS Customization (new May 2022):
*Links and General Electronic Services Labels code table -- fulldisplay.unpaywall.PDF
Configuration Menu > Discovery > Display Configuration > Label
*Full Display Labels code table. - fulldisplay.unpaywall.PDF.tooltip
Configuration Menu > Discovery > Display Configuration > Label > Full Display Labels
*aria Labels code table - nui.aria.unpaywall.PDF
Configuration Menu > Discovery > Display Configuration > Label > Aria Labels
The CDI Quicklinks feature enables you to embed links to the PDF and HTML full text directly into the brief display to provide a convenient way for users to access full text from CDI.
These are the PDF and HTML icons as seen here:
Configuration Menu > Discovery > Display Configuration > Configure Views
Set the Display Quick Links parameter to true on the General tab
Outside Tool allows a library to place a link on every PubMed record. This link points back to a link resolver offered by the institution for their users. Only one Outside Tool can be set up for each link resolver software unique base URL.
To best serve users, NCBI tries to avoid “blind” links that do not provide useful and directly relevant information for the specific PubMed record. Therefore, to register an Outside Tool in PubMed, an institution must demonstrate that their link resolver software can provide relevant Web-accessible resources for all PubMed records.
NLM requires that the link resolver menus include either a link to the article or a link to an ILL form so the patron can request the article. NLM also requires that the ILL form be pre-populated
bX recommendations
bX recommendations are the articles on the right in the full record display.
FLVC asked Ex Libris if it is possible to select/filter the content that appears as the result of bX - and the answer is it's not possible.
This can cause issues because some of the recommendations lead to articles your institution doesn’t subscribe to. These result in broken links and if your institution doesn’t have an article ILL form configured, there isn’t an option to “Request this article on Interlibrary Loan”.
To hide these recommendations, add this code to your CSS.
/* Hide bx recommendations */
prm-recommendations { display: none; }
code credit to Santa Fe College
In Primo, when you click on an Available Online link, by default you go to the full record and see the service or services listed that provide access to the content in open access repositories or subscription databases. With direct linking enabled, you can click on the Available Online link and go directly to the content in the database.
Alma Configuration > Fulfillment > Discovery Interface Display Logic > Direct Linking
The User Interfaces Standing Committee has gathered useful code that institutions can add to their Alma/Primo.
Visit the Guide to find useful code.
The Expand My Results toggle defaults to off when you have Filter by Availability checked. You can suppress the toggle from showing in the menu. See the link to the Code below.
Filter by Availability – Select the checkbox if you want to display only CDI records that have full text. After performing a search, users may select the Expand My Results option in Primo VE to display the other CDI records as well.
Configuration Menu > Discovery > Search Configuration > Search Profiles
Previously, the only options for availability status on the Primo Brief Record display were Available, Not Available, Check Holdings.
With this enhancement, the statuses such as the following will replace the Not Available status when this functionality is enabled: Not available - Loan, Not available - Requested, and Not available - Lost.
This option is disabled by default. To enable, navigate to:
Configuration Menu > Discovery > Other > Customer Settings and then change false to true
If you'd like to edit the language on this screen:
Go to :
Configuration Menu > Discovery > Authentication > User Authentication > Login labels tab
Would you like to customize your browser tab?
Here are some examples - some institutions have just changed the text (Chipola and St Pete), others have added an image/favicon.
Changing your favicon:
Using the customization package: (preferred method)
In the customization package, place the customized image in the img folder. Make sure it is named 'favicon.ico'. Zip the files and upload the updated package to Alma and save.
In Primo Studio, Only use this option if all your edits have been made in Primo Studio. Select Choose favicon and then choose the image file to be used for the favicon. The favicon files must be of type ICO and use the following naming convention: <filename>.ico (for example, favicon.ico).
Changing browser tab text: (see below link for "change tab text:
