Shared Content & Technical Services (SCTS)

The resources below support common ways that library workers across the Alliance perform tasks related to the Shared Content & Technical Services (SCTS) program. Functional work areas focus on cooperative collection development and resource management, including cataloguing, acquisitions, collection development, electronic resources, and open access content.

General

  • SCTS Community Calls – this page is password-protected; the password is shared to the Alliance-ER and Tech Services email lists
    • Join these monthly calls on Zoom for discussions and updates from SCTS groups and program staff.
    • Agendas and login information are disseminated via the Alliance-ER and Tech Services email lists.
  • SCTS email lists – contact Elizabeth Duell to be added to any list
    • Alliance-ER (alliance-er): community building, questions specific to e-resources, troubleshooting
    • Tech Services Discussion (ts-discussion): community building, questions specific to technical services work, especially issues regarding metadata or acquisitions issues in Alma
    • Norm Rules Discussion (normrules): community building, questions specific to normalization rules in Alma
  • Centralized support for recurring calendar links – contact Elizabeth Duell
  • Anonymous Ask Form
    • Use this form to ask a question or share an issue you’d like some help with but are not yet fully comfortable putting it out in front of the community.
    • Please don’t expect individual replies as the form is completely anonymous.
    • In most cases, the SCTS program managers will add the question and response to the next community call agenda, or they may email about it on the Alliance-ER and Tech Services discussion lists.
  • Bibliographic Record Policies
    • The Alliance Council first adopted bibliographic record mandates in November 2011, to facilitate the implementation of a shared library system. The policies below have been revised for the Alma/Primo environment. They are designed to meet national standards and best practices while facilitating work in a shared system. The policies are intended for use in the Alma Network Zone (NZ) and Primo; they do not apply to metadata in systems that do not interact with Alma or Primo. The policies are meant to be used with approved and published operational policies.The policies are presented starting with the most broad (foundational) and moving logically through to those with a more narrow scope:
    • The Alliance Metadata Mandates provides a one-page “cheat sheet” of the seven policies.

Cataloguing

Acquisitions

The Alliance currently does not provide documentation for Acquisitions, since Ex Libris provides documentation on Alma acquisitions. Vendor agents like GOBI provide documentation/training on how to set up connections between their systems and Alma.

Collection Development

Electronic Resources

Open Access Content

  • OAPEN is our only open access ebook collection. The Alliance pays a fee for OAPEN each year, all libraries are included and cannot opt out.
  • Other OA collections are managed locally. The shared NZ collections listed under Ebooks and AVON (requires password) are not OA. There is no Alliance documentation relating to open access resources.