Optimising workflows and utilising Alma APIs to manage our Institutional Repository in Alma Digital
Kate Sergeant, University South Australia

Used DigiTool as an interim solution with a long-term plan to move to Alma. For a while used the electronic resource component to manage metadata, with a local filestore. Last year finally moved everything properly into Alma Digital.

In early stage needed to generate handles and manage files. Phase 2 – development of templated emails to enable requesting outputs from researchers. Phase 3 last year – workflow management, data validation, author management, license management….

Get records submitted directly by researchers; harvest from Web of Science and Scopus APIs combined with Alma APIs for adding bib records. Land in Alma as suppressed records – often hundreds. Try to prioritise manually submitted stuff; and easier (eg journal articles) stuff. Make sets of incoming records.

Alma native interface doesn’t always show all data needed so use their own dashboard using the Alma APIs, which pulls out the things they care about (title, pub date, author, resource type, date added). Then have canned searches (eg Google title search, DOI resolver, DOI in Scopus, ISSN in Ulrichs, prepopulated interloan form…) . Look at metadata eg for authors/affiliations (links into Alma metadata editor for actual editing; links through to public profile). License information in Alma’s licence module. Shows archiving rights, version for archiving, embargo period – with links to copyright spreadsheet and to Sherpa/Romeo.

Would often forget to un-suppress the record – so added that ability at the point of minting the handle. The handle is then put into the record at the same time; and mint a DOI where relevant (eg data for ANDS).

Finally composes email based on templates to research – eg post-print required – built in delay for the email until after the item has actually gone live which often takes 6hrs.

Dashboard also includes exception reports etc; record enhancement facility with eg WoS data; publication/person lookup.