Page Comparison

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• Holdings and items together are called "inventory" in Alma. 

  • To help understand how Alma Inventory is structured, Ex Libris has created these diagrams – you may remember seeing this structure of Alma inventory in your Intro or Search & Sets class.  

    • Trainer can show images on this page / draw something similar on the board, as needed: Items & Holdings

• In Alma, anything with a holding is referred to as a Physical Title or Physical Inventory.  
  • Most holdings and items represent physical pieces in our collection. 
  • A difference from Aleph is that most electronic resources will not be represented by holdings, instead they will be represented by Electronic collection and portfolio information. 
• In Alma, all items are attached to holdings. This is a core difference from Aleph, where creating a holdings was not required. 
  • Alma will not allow you to create an item without a holding. 
  • When creating an item, Alma will also create a holding if one does not already exist for that library/location.
  • You may be wondering – what about the things in Aleph that didn't have holdings?
    • Aleph items that were not attached to holdings were attached to holdings in Alma during data migration.
      • During migration, Alma either attached the item to an existing holding (when the library/location were the same) or, if they were not, Alma created a new holding.
• In Alma, a holding may or may not have an item.  
  • Examples of a bib that has a holding without items: are an analyzed monographic series, a multipart work, or an older serial.  (Trainer, 3 examples below if you want to show one, two or all)
    
    • • a monographic series: Conduct an "All Titles" search for MMS ID 990091802930203941 (Archaeological studies Leiden University) 
      • a mulipart work: Conduct an "All Titles" search for MMS ID 990074312040203941 (Oxford history of art) 
      • older serial tiles do not have items : Conduct an "All Titles" search for MMS ID 990051690120203941 (Quarterly digest of statistics (Accra, Ghana : 1959) 

• Alma allows setting of Temporary locations values, which can be helpful for some materials, such as Reserves and Serials.
  • When temporarily moving items from one location to another, staff have the option of inputting an end date for the temporary location in Alma. 
    • On this date an automated job will warn staff to return these items to their regular location.

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• First, we must do a search.
  
  
• To **view** items, 
  • You can do a Physical Title search – Trainer demo this using the title created in the prior section
    • you will see hyperlinks for the holdings and items at the bottom of the search entry, as well as "Items" and "Holdings" in the ellipsis menu.  
      • Clicking on either of these will take you to the item list first
      • Then you can click View under the ellipsis menu.
  • You can do a Physical Item search – Trainer demo this using the title created in the prior section
    • And there is NO way to View the item from this kind of search.  If I click on the hyperlinked barcode, or "Items" in the ellipsis menu, those both take me to the screen to EDIT the item.
      • So if you want to view an item, do a title search.
        
        
• To **edit** items,
  
  • You can do a Physical item search – Trainer demo this using the title created in the prior section
    • you can choose Edit Item right from the search results page, and it will take you right to the Physical Item Editor form.
      
      
  • If you launch a Physical title search - Trainer demo this using the title created in the prior section
    • you will see hyperlinks for the holdings and items at the bottom of the search entry, as well as "Items" and "Holdings" in the ellipsis menu.  
    • Clicking on either of these will take you to the item list
    • Then you can click Edit under the ellipsis menu, or click on the hyperlinked barcode, and then you will be on the Physical Item Editor form.
      • So if you want to edit an item record, doing a Physical Item search cuts out two extra steps.
        • In short – use Title search to View items, Use Items search to Edit Items
          
          
• On the Physical Item Editor page, there are lots of fields you can edit.
  • Select one or more fields on the different tabs to view or make changes to the physical item’s information.
  • There is a list of the required fields in the Alma documentation – Trainer show top of this page: https://wiki.harvard.edu/confluence/x/2J5dDQ
    • Trainer select a few item record fields to edit
• Click Save when changes are complete.

Practice time (show instructions on screen): Now let's try searching for an item via a Physical Title search or Physical Item search, make some , viewing an item, making edits to the item, and save saving your edits.

Deleting (withdrawing) an item - overview

A withdrawal is the process of deleting items from the catalog to ensure that the catalog is up to date and represents only those items that are actually in the collection.

Although withdrawn items do not appear in Alma and are not published to Primo, staff can view a historical record of these items in Analytics reports.

While withdrawing an item, you can delete or suppress holdings records that do not have any other items.

Withdrawing one or more items - steps

Search for the item(s) that you want to withdraw.

Depending on the type of search that you initiated and what's available in your inventory, clicking Items may display different results.e  For example:

If you selected an All titles search or a Physical titles search and there is only one holdings record – example: Nefertiti's face

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Click on "Items" in the expanded view below, or in the row action item (ellipsis) menu.

You can either withdraw one item at a time by selecting "withdraw" from the ellipsis menu at the end of each row; or you can check off multiple items and select "withdraw" at the top of the page.

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If you selected an All titles search or a Physical titles search and there are multiple holdings records – example: Bossypants

• Click on "Items" in the expanded view below, or in the row action item (ellipsis) menu.

• You can withdraw one item at a time by selecting "withdraw" from the ellipsis menu at the end of each row.

  • It is not possible to check off multiple items.    

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• You will get a pop-up confirmation message.
• Select "confirm".
• You will see a confirmation message "Item has been successfully deleted".
  • If the item is currently on loan, Alma will ask you to address the loan before withdrawing the item.

If the last item was removed from a holdings record, the Last Item dialog box appears.

Image Removed

Best practice is to choose: Delete bibliographic records that have no other holdings . 

• This option will delete the bibliographic record with which the item is associated if the bibliographic record has no other holdings. 
• In this case, both the holdings record and the bibliographic record with which the item is associated are deleted.

Practice time (show instructions on screen): Let's try deleting the items you create during the quick cataloging process.

Additional documents about Items

Before we move on to holdings records, I want to show you some reference documents on the LTS wiki regarding items:

• Items - Material types for reference
• Item Policies for reference
• Item Statuses, Process Types, and Fields – has migration info, and a link to a full list of all item fields, with descriptions, at the Ex Libris documentation site.

Holdings

We will now turn our focus to holdings records.  In this portion of the class, we will walk through viewing, editing, and creating holdings records.

Viewing holdings

• First, I'll search for a title using either the all titles search or physical titles search: keyword search (can use Bossypants).
• I'll open the hodling by clicking on "holdings" in the expanded view below or using the action button.
  • if there are multiple holdings, you will get a list.
• If I click on the holdings record number, I can view the holdings. 
  • In Alma, you can view a record or edit a record.  If I click on edit, the Metadata Editor will open. This holds true for Bibs as well. 

Editing holdings

To be able to edit a holding, you have to be either currently viewing the full holding in view mode, or you have to be in the Metadata Editor.  You can click on "edit record" from the view mode to open the Metadata Editor.

There are other ways to open a holdings records.

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• here you will see the list of holdings, and you can either view or edit
• Alma will keep also keep track of holdings that you are working on. These will display on the left hand pane. You can click on any holdings in your left pane to display and edit that holdings.
  • When you open things to edit (bibs or holdings) they become locked to you.  Make sure to release them when you are done.  Otherwise they are locked for editing (view-only) for 7 days after your last edit. More information about using the MD Editor can be found in the MD Editor Overview documentation.

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Additional documents about Items

Before we move on to holdings records, I want to show you some reference documents on the LTS wiki regarding items:

• Items - Material types for reference
• Item Policies for reference
• Item Statuses, Process Types, and Fields – has migration info, and a link to a full list of all item fields, with descriptions, on the Ex Libris documentation site.

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Holdings

We will now turn our focus to holdings records.  In this portion of the class, we will walk through viewing, and editing holdings records, like we just did with items.

Holdings are different from items in an important way - we edit them in the Metadata Editor.  

• You may have seen already how if you open a bib or holdings record in the Metadata Editor, it will be locked to you for editing for 7 days unless you "release" it.  
  • This is the opposite of what we encountered in Aleph.  In Aleph, if you had an Item record open on your screen, other staff would get a pop up about the record being "locked by another user".
  • Item records will never be locked in Alma – but both holdings and bibs will be "locked" from editing if another staff member has it open or hasn't released it yet.
• So in the case of holdings, it's important to note whether you want to just **view** a holdings (which won't open it in the MDE or lock it to you), or if you need to **edit** a holdings.

Viewing holdings

• First, I'll search for a title using either the all titles search or physical titles search: keyword search (can use Bossypants).
• I'll open the hodling by clicking on "holdings" in the expanded view below or using the action button.
  • if there are multiple holdings, you will get a list.
• If I click on the holdings record number, I can view the holdings. 
  • In Alma, you can view a record or edit a record.  If I click on edit, the Metadata Editor will open. This holds true for Bibs as well. 

Editing holdings

To be able to edit a holding, you have to be either currently viewing the full holding in view mode, or you have to be in the Metadata Editor.  You can click on "edit record" from the view mode to open the Metadata Editor.

There are other ways to open a holdings records.

• If you are already in the Metadata Editor looking at a Bib record, you can click on the View Inventory icon, or type CTRL + (letter i)
  • here you will see the list of holdings, and you can either view or edit
  • Alma will keep also keep track of holdings that you are working on. These will display on the left hand pane. You can click on any holdings in your left pane to display and edit that holdings.
    • When you open things to edit (bibs or holdings) they become locked to you.  Make sure to release them when you are done.  Otherwise they are locked for editing (view-only) for 7 days after your last edit. More information about using the MD Editor can be found in the MD Editor Overview documentation.
• You can add or delete fields using the Edit menu. 
• Use the Save icon when your edits are done, and then release the record using the File menu. 

Deleting (withdrawing) an item - overview

A withdrawal is the process of deleting items from the catalog to ensure that the catalog is up to date and represents only those items that are actually in the collection.

Although withdrawn items do not appear in Alma and are not published to Primo, staff can view a historical record of these items in Analytics reports.

While withdrawing an item, you can delete or suppress holdings records that do not have any other items.

Withdrawing one or more items - steps

Search for the item(s) that you want to withdraw.

Depending on the type of search that you initiated and what's available in your inventory, clicking Items may display different results.e  For example:

• If you selected an All titles search or a Physical titles search and there is only one holdings record – example: Nefertiti's face

  • Click on "Items" in the expanded view below, or in the row action item (ellipsis) menu.

  • You can either withdraw one item at a time by selecting "withdraw" from the ellipsis menu at the end of each row; or you can check off multiple items and select "withdraw" at the top of the page.

    
    

• If you selected an All titles search or a Physical titles search and there are multiple holdings records – example: Bossypants

  • Click on "Items" in the expanded view below, or in the row action item (ellipsis) menu.

  • You can withdraw one item at a time by selecting "withdraw" from the ellipsis menu at the end of each row.

    • It is not possible to check off multiple items.    

• Click "withdraw" on the row action item.
  • You will get a pop-up confirmation message.
  • Select "confirm".
  • You will see a confirmation message "Item has been successfully deleted".
    • If the item is currently on loan, Alma will ask you to address the loan before withdrawing the item.

If the last item was removed from a holdings record, the Last Item dialog box appears.

Image Added

Best practice is to choose: Delete bibliographic records that have no other holdings . 

• This option will delete the bibliographic record with which the item is associated if the bibliographic record has no other holdings. 
• In this case, both the holdings record and the bibliographic record with which the item is associated are deleted.

Practice time (show instructions on screen): Let's try deleting the items you create during the quick cataloging process.

Adding a new holdings

When you place an order for a physical item, Alma will automatically create a holdings and item for you.  There may be some workflows where you need to create a holding record manually, perhaps when processing a gift book.

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