Alma June 2026 Release Notes

Open Access Availability in Market Search

June 2026 Resource Management

Open access fulfillment options are now visible in market search results for all users with access to Rialto Search. When presenting offers, Rialto now performs real-time checks for open access availability and displays provider-specific links to resources when available.

Open access links appear in the Open Access section under Additional Resources in the right-side panel when inspecting an offer. Each link opens the provider’s website in a new browser tab and directs users to the open access version of the resource. Multiple providers may be displayed for a single title.

This enhancement improves visibility of open access content and enables Rialto Search users to easily access freely available materials directly from market search results.

Electronic Matches in Retention and Deselection Projects

June 2026Resource ManagementURM-252440, URM-315033, URM-306275, URM-314553, URM-325045, URM-326679

Rialto now identifies whether recommended print titles in retention and deselection projects have electronic matches within the institution or its Network Zone.

A new Electronic Matches step has been added to project creation, enabling users to control how electronic matches affect recommendations:

• For retention projects, users can exclude items with electronic matches or limit recommendations to items without perpetual electronic access.
• For deselection projects, users can focus on items that have electronic matches or limit recommendations only to those with perpetual electronic access.

By default, electronic matches are not considered when creating retention and deselection recommendations.

Identified electronic matches are displayed in a new Electronic Matches section within each recommendation. This section presents key bibliographic details and indicators, including whether the match is from the Network Zone and whether it has perpetual access. Users can also view associated electronic portfolios from this section.

Two new badges have been introduced to support quick identification of electronic availability:

• The Perpetual Electronic Match badge appears when a recommendation has at least one electronic match with perpetual access.
• The Electronic Match Found badge appears when at least one electronic match exists, but none provide perpetual access.

Additionally, two new facets,Electronic Match Found and Perpetual Electronic Match, enable quick filtering of recommendations based on electronic availability, which is helpful when working with large result sets.

This update helps libraries make more informed retention and deselection decisions by showing when recommended print titles have electronic equivalents. For details, see Electronic Matches in Retention Projects and Electronic Matches in Deselection Projects.

New Courses Recommendation Rules Configuration Page

June 2026Resource ManagementURM-324695

Previously, recommendation calculations for retention and deselection projects considered all courses, regardless of their status or year. With this update, institutions can now define whether inactive courses are considered in projects and limit the time range of courses considered when generating recommendations.

A new Courses Recommendation Rules configuration page (Configuration > Collection Development > Workflows > Courses Recommendation Rules) enables institutions to define which courses are considered during recommendation calculations. The following settings are available:

• Include Inactive Courses– Determines whether inactive courses are included in recommendation logic.
• Course Years– Defines which course years are considered.

Once set, these settings are applied during the recommendations generation process, and only items included in courses that match the selected criteria receive the Courses badge. Access to this new configuration page is limited to users with the Rialto Administrator or Repository Administrator roles.

This enhancement provides greater control over recommendation logic, helping institutions tailor results based on course relevance and lifecycle. For details, see Courses Recommendation Rules.

Collection Development Now Respects Excluded Process Types

URM-325632

Collection development workflows now take into account the Exclude Process Types from Publishing mapping table in Alma when generating retention and deselection recommendations. This configuration prevents items with specific process types (for example, lost or missing) from appearing in discovery, ensuring they are not shown as available in the catalog.

With this update, items assigned one of the excluded process types in the Exclude Process Types from Publishing table are also excluded from collection development analysis. This enhancement improves the accuracy of recommendation results by applying the same item-level exclusions used in discovery.

Extended Reports for Internal Comparison Projects

June 2026Resource ManagementURM-324693

Until now, the extended report creation was available only for external retention and deselection projects. With this update, libraries can now generate and download a detailed report for internal projects (currently available only if specific libraries are selected in Compare To during project creation; planned for all internal projects in July).

Creating a report produces a single-sheet XLSX file that includes active recommendations from the institution and item-level details from selected internal comparison libraries, such as status, locations, call numbers, policies, labels, and badges. The Export Extended Report and Download Extended Report options are available in the project actions list.

This enhancement improves the comparison workflow by enabling libraries to generate detailed reports for internal retention and deselection projects. For details on how report generation works, see Creating and Downloading an Extended Project Report.

Compare to Specific Locations in Internal Projects

June 2026Resource ManagementURM-324611

Internal collection development projects now support comparison at the location level, in addition to the institution and library level. Previously, users could filter by library, but could not directly compare holdings to specific internal locations within a library.

Users can now select a specific institution, library, or location within a library in the Compare To and Scope sections when creating or editing a collection development project. This enhancement enables more targeted comparison workflows and more precise project planning.

The UI of the Compare To and Scope sections has been enhanced to surface a structured overview of selected comparison targets, including institutions, libraries, and now specific internal locations.