This is the Alma Inventory Model section of the searching module of the Alma Overviews course. The video is at the top of the page, followed by the script.

In this video, you'll review:

In this video, we will review the Alma Inventory model – how Alma stores and organizes materials records in the database.

In order to search for materials effectively in Alma, it’s helpful to understand how Alma structures materials records. In particular, understanding how physical inventory records – bibliographic, holdings, and item records – are related to each other will help you choose the most effective Search Type for your search.

Types of Materials Records

First, let’s go through the three types of materials records in Alma:

Physical materials are resources in all physical formats and the records for the digitized versions of those materials.
Electronic materials are eResources that are stored and managed outside of Alma by outside vendors.
Again, Harvard is not using the digital materials collections, but Digital materials are digital resources that would be managed and/or stored inside of Alma. Note: This does mean that Alma has the capability to act as a digital repository itself, but since Harvard has many existing repositories, we haven’t subscribed to use this feature. But because Alma is a hosted system, you will still see some references to Digital resources in Alma.

Let’s take a closer look at this with some visual aids.

The Inventory Model

Alma’s inventory comprises three levels:

There is an intellectual entity level, usually (and almost always) the bibliographic record.
There is a middle level of some kind, which is called by different names depending on the format.
And then, there is an item level of some kind – again, called different names depending on the format.

This purple MMS record is the system record. These records are managed strictly by Ex Libris, and we don’t have direct access to them. When you’re looking at the MMSID or system number for any record, that’s what it’s referring back to, is this kind of hidden system record.

The intellectual entity level is almost always, for our purposes, the bibliographic record.

As I mentioned, the middle level changes its name depending on the material and format type.

For physical resources, the middle level contains the holdings information such as the Main library or Law library holdings.
For electronic resources, the middle level contains electronic service information such as full text or selected full text and the vendor information such as EBSCO.
Again, we’re not using digital resources, but for digital resources, the middle level would contains the representation information (such as master copy or derivative copy).

Finally, the item level is for fulfillment and usage, and that’s the physical item, the electronic portfolio, or digital files.

Examples of the Inventory Model

Let’s look at a couple of examples.

Example #1. For War and Peace, the intellectual level is that bibliographic record for War and Peace, for that particular edition. The holdings records would then hang off of that bib record, and then the item records would hang off of the holdings records. If there were more than one copy of an item, they would hang off of the single holdings record for one library that all the copies were at, and then additional items would be at other libraries.

As another example, we have a physical journal record. So, TriQuarterly is a physical journal, and we see its bibliographic information. It has one Holdings, the periodicals department, and then each issue is an item within that.

Things only start to get a little strange when you get into things like online journals. For eResources, the title level, or bibliographic-level record, is actually held within the system. We’ll learn more about this in the Community Zone video that’s coming up next. We, at Harvard, manage the Collection-level records, so the vendor and the service type, and then the individual portfolios for the actual issues within that particular journal. So, the same journal Adult Learning might be representing in a Sage collection for the years 2002 to 2013, or in Academic Search Premier (full-text) from 1997 to 2011. So, it’s a slightly different way of organizing those records.

Searching for Materials Using the Inventory Model

Now, if we go back to Alma, when you’re searching, it’s important to know what kinds of records you want to find:

If you want to find bibliographic records, search for Titles, either All Titles, Physical Titles, or Electronic Titles
If you want to find individual item records, search for Physical Items or for Electronic Portfolios, or possibly Electronic Collections.

You can’t search directly for Holdings records, but you can get to them from either the related bib or item records.

You can search for Electronic Collections (e.g., everything we have from Springer) directly, however, using the search bar. Choose Electronic Collection, choose the Interface name such as Springer Link, to see all of the electronic items that we have through Springer.

Related Alma Wiki Pages

Items & Holdings Overview

Items - overview and best practice on when to create item records

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