Suppressing and Deleting Bibliographic Records

Owned by Jennifer Koerber (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Jan 09, 2023 by Amy ArmitageVersion comment
2 min read

Make sure you're familiar with the policy on when to suppress vs. delete a bib record: Collection Management - Policy for Suppression and Deletion

Suppressing Bib Records

A record that is suppressed will remain in Alma and be available to staff to view and edit, but will not be published to Primo/HOLLIS.

Records in Alma should be suppressed in cases in which we retain ownership of the resource, but do not want the resource discoverable in other systems such as:

  • HOLLIS (Primo)
  • WorldCat/OCLC
  • Data stores such as LibraryCloud

 Examples where it may be appropriate to suppress bibs/holdings:

  • Resources used in tech services departments that are not available to patrons
  • Newly received archival materials that are not ready to be exposed to the public
  • Bib records used to pay for memberships to organizations


To suppress a bibliographic record:

  1. Open the bibliographic record in the main pane of the Metadata Editor

  2. Select Record Actions >> Suppress from Discovery (Alt+Shift+S)

To unsuppress a record, follow the same steps as above, but uncheck the box next to Suppress from Discovery.


A record that has been suppressed from discovery will appear in Alma search results with an eye with a red line through it (the suppressed icon) to the left of the title:

 


The same icon will replace the house icon next to the record name in the left pane of the Metadata Editor:


Deleting Bib Records

A deleted record will be removed from Alma entirely. However, it will continue to be present in Alma Analytics, for audit trail/lifecycle reporting purposes.

The deletion of holdings and bibs for withdrawn resources is especially important in Alma. Otherwise, the resources 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 - using up valuable staff time for manual review of jobs and server processing time and space.

Refer to the "Deleting Holdings" section of the "Holdings - Creating, Editing, Suppressing, and Deleting" document for information about correctly deleting holdings.

To delete a bibliographic record:

  1. Open the bib record in the Metadata Editor
  2. Select Record Actions >> Delete Record (Ctrl+D)
  3. Click Confirm