Appendix 4: Extract from RapidILL documentation on the Ex Libris website

This is an extract from RapidILL documentation on the ExLibris website.

Uploading Holdings

(Extract from RapidILL documentation on the Ex Libris website. While this is specific to RapidILL and Alma the general method will be much the same for other combinations)

For all institutions not using Alma, we rely on the institution to send holdings data on a regular basis. One full update per year is required. Institutions see the best results when they update either monthly or quarterly, depending on how dynamic their holdings are. No strict schedule is needed though, and if holdings haven’t changed since the last update, no new data upload is needed.

We recommend that you upload all of your holdings, whether they can be lent to other institutions or not. Knowing what holdings your library has allows us to block borrowing requests from your institution for materials that you have in your holdings and provide your call number and location for local management.

Holdings Data Export

We are working to better document holdings data export from multiple platforms. If you are an OCLC WMS WorldShare Management user, please reference our community-written guides to holdings data export.

Worldshare Print (opens in a new window)

Worldshare Electronic (opens in a new window)

Organizing File Export

The best way to export your data is in separate files or ‘sets’. This means that each file/set should have only one of each of the following characteristics:

Print OR Electronic material

Journals OR Books

Lendable Internationally OR Lendable within your Country OR Local Only

For example:

File 1 would only include Print Journals that are Lendable Internationally

File 2 would only include Electronic Books that are Lendable within your Country

Data Necessary for Holdings Upload

In order to add a record to Rapid we need, at a minimum:

Standard number (ISSN, ISBN, or OCLC number)

Title

Location (usually a physical collection or electronic database)

Call number (for electronic items this is usually replaced by a link to the journal/book)

Years/volumes held for journals, or year of publication for books

File Types Supported

Please export your holdings data as one of the following file types: xml, json, txt, csv, xls, xlsx, zip, gz, tar, mrc and out (handled as mrc)

For print holdings, we suggest using mrc files types.

For electronic holdings, we suggest using xml, txt or csv files types.

For holdings containing non-Latin characters, please use a txt file type.