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General statement
If Harvard owns a physical item, or has online access, the records should be active (not suppressed), and exposed in the catalog. Exceptions are outlined below.
If Harvard no longer has a resource, the item, holding, bib records should be removed from Alma.
User expectations / Impact
Users (including library staff) expect HOLLIS to reflect what we actually hold on our shelves. Omissions (where we hold the item but there’s no record in HOLLIS) are commonly understood to be the result of errors or backlogs that we hope to eventually resolve. Information about the conditions for access is helpful and should be included in a note, but access should not be controlled via suppression of information.
RTL staff frequently get questions from both Harvard users and non-Harvard users asking for help interpreting HOLLIS – does this mean we have it? Or that we definitely don’t have it? I found x book that claims there’s a fragment of it in Widener’s collection, is that true? Is the copy at Penn the only one in the world? – and we rely heavily on what we find in HOLLIS to answer those questions. If an RTL staff member saw a microfilm copy but no original they would tell the patron that it’s likely that Harvard no longer has the original.
(statement provided by the Discovery to Delivery Working Group, Jan. 2023)
When to Withdraw Items / Delete Bibs & Holdings
The deletion of items, holdings and bibs for withdrawn resources is especially important in Alma. Otherwise, the
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ources are assumed to be parts of the collection that need to be managed. System functions for managing the collection continue to apply to suppressed records, such as authority control processes.
Reminder: you can view information about withdrawn items and deleted bibliographic records and holdings records in Alma Analytics. Also, POs, POLs, and Invoices continue to exist in Alma with limited bibliographic information even when the associated bib is deleted.
When items are removed from the Harvard collection
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