Itemizing a Logical Set - Sets Module

Owned by Jennifer Koerber (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Dec 03, 2018

This is the sixth section of the sets 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:

Converting Logical Sets to Itemized Sets

One last way to create a new set is to convert a logical set – that dynamic set – into an itemized set. This is effectively a "Save As" function - it will retain your original logical set and your search query and it will save the current results as a new itemized set.

"Itemizing" a logical set would be helpful to:

  • Take a snapshot of the current set of results of a query, to compare with results at a later date (for collection development or order monitoring for a particular vendor or fund)
  • You can itemize a logical set and use that query to find most of the records that you want in your set, and then itemize it to be able to add individual records that a query wouldn't find or remove unwanted records from the results
  • Finally, itemize a logical set to create a public version of a snapshot of the results of a saved query, by itemizing it and saving that new itemized set as public.

Again, lots of different possible uses.

To Itemize a Logical Set:

  1. Go to Manage Sets and find the logical set that you want. Click on the row action items icon. We can go with our Spanish-Language Books at Widener.
  2. This time, click on Itemize.
  3. You’ll see the Set Details page again, with the original set name and it will add the word "itemized" and then the date and timestamp to the Set Name. If you want to customize the set name further, you can do all that on the Set Details page here.
    1. I, in particular, take the timestamp off because that’s not as relevant. I might leave it in the Description, though.
    2. I could change my Description, I could change my Note, I could change it to Public at this point if I wanted to, but I’ll leave it as Private.

Now, when you’re ready to save this new itemized version of our logical set, you’ll notice that instead of Save, it says Submit. Go ahead and click on Submit and when the pop-up confirmation message comes, it’ll say >>>>>. This count is actually a great double-check that your new itemized set will contain all of the results from your logical set that you expect it to. That’s about the right number, so I’ll go ahead and hit Confirm.

It says >>>>. Also, for a fairly small set like our 1500-record set, that will take place pretty quickly. So, if I just refresh the page or go to Admin and Manage Sets again, you can see Spanish-Language Books at Widener and Spanish-Language Books at Widener – Itemized on 11/27. A large set will take time for the itemization job to run, and then will appear. You can click on Manage Sets to refresh the page, or use your browser’s refresh icon.

To see the members of my new itemized set, I just go to the row action item list, click on Members, and the members of my set will come up.

Now, if I wanted to (there’s my 1522), I could Remove selected items (click in tickybox and click Remove Selected) or conduct a search and Add additional items. Again, I used my search query to get the bulk of the records into the set, and then itemized that logical set into this specific itemized set and now can fine-tune it by adding or deleting records from the set. Nice, flexible option.

Again, click on Done when you’re done and you’ll go back to the Manage Sets list.