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Introducing the WEST Technical Support and Expertise Forum

November 20, 2017 Author: Alison WohlersCategories:

The past six months or so—marked by disclosures of archived titles and collecting files of unarchived holdings—have demonstrated that many of our members are managing ILS transitions and other technical shifts that can delay or complicate WEST activities. At the same time, WEST members have a depth and breadth of technical expertise that is ever-growing and of great value to our community. Hoping to support the connections we have as a program, the WEST Project Team has introduced a Technical Support and Expertise Forum on the WEST wiki.

The Forum is space for any WEST member to pose questions, introduce topics for discussion, or post about a strategy that might be relevant to the rest of the community. The inaugural post offers a strategy for extracting holdings data from the Alma ILS.

While we have wrapped up two of our more challenging technical processes for the year—disclosures and unarchived data files—other upcoming WEST-related topics that might benefit from shared expertise could include:

  • How to maximize the value of the On Demand Collection Comparison report for journal review.
  • Metadata questions as our archive holders and builders update holdings records with retention information.
  • Associating your holdings with the shared print symbol in OCLC (for example, batch-loading in the WorldShare Collection Manager environment).

WEST members can access the Forum on the wiki here. If you have any trouble with your username or password, or if you need to create an account, please email Alison Wohlers, WEST Collections Analyst, at alison.wohlers@ucop.edu.

Please feel free to also email Alison with any questions, feedback, or ideas!