Placement of Records in Alma Zones Policy

Name: Placement of Records in Alma Zones

Status: Approved

Last revised: August 8, 2022

Written by: Kristen Fredericksen

Policy:

The Alma Network Zone (NZ) is a shared bibliographic catalog of records for use by all CUNY libraries. It provides a foundation for collaborative work, in terms of both cataloging and collection development. It reduces duplication of effort and promotes shared and collaborative bibliographic practices. In order to maintain the efficacy and utility of the shared catalog, only high-quality OCLC records should be placed in the NZ; other records should remain in the Institution Zone (IZ), unlinked to the NZ.

The following types of records should be placed in the IZ:

• Records without OCLC numbers. Examples:
  • Short records
  • Brief order records created by Acquisitions
  • Brief records created by Access Services
  • Inventory control of equipment (e.g., laptops, headphones, etc.);
• Vendor record sets that the library is not allowed to share (e.g., HeinOnline records from Cassidy Cataloguing Services)
• Records created for institutional custom textbooks
• MARCIVE Shipping List records
• Local host bibliographic records for bound-withs

The following types of records should be placed in the NZ:

• Records with OCLC numbers. Examples:
  • Physical materials such as books, DVDs, scores, etc.
  • Electronic materials such as ebooks, streaming video, streaming audio, databases, etc.
  • Professor copies of course reserves
  • Local leisure reading/browsing collection(s), including leased books
• Community Zone (CZ) records that are automatically copied by Alma to the NZ after an institution activates an electronic resource. (It is not possible to unlink these records from the NZ without also unlinking them from the IZ, so CZ records without OCLC numbers are exempt from the Bibliographic Utility Policy.)