In this video, we’ll review searches that are relevant to Fulfillment functions, especially at circulation and other service desks. We’ll quickly cover how to look up patron information, then move on to searches for physical materials, and view the pick and hold shelf lists.

We’ll start by looking up a patron.

Looking Up a Patron

For most Fulfillment functions, you will look up a patron using the Manage Patron Services menu option. There is a search type for Users in the persistent search bar, but it’s only available to senior staff.

To look up a patron using their ID:

Make sure your location is set to a Circulation desk. Check the menu bar for your current location setting and change it if needed.
Go to the Fulfillment menu
Click on Manage Patron Services
Scan in their library card number/ID number (I’m using an imaginary patron)
Hit Enter or click Go

The patron’s record will appear on your screen. For security reasons, this screen will reset to the search box after 5 minutes of inactivity; you’ll still be logged in to Alma, but the session with that patron will end.

In the patron record, you can view Loans, Returns, and Requests, both transactions from the current session and all transactions on the record. We will review the patron record in more detail in the Fulfillment module.

Let’s move on to materials searches.

Looking Up a Title (or Creator or Subject or similar criteria)

There are a few ways to look up items for a patron and each method gives you different information.

First, if a patron wants to know about materials in both Physical and Electronic formats (they’re interested in both books and eBooks, for instance), choose an All Titles search type. Choose your criteria – such as Title or Creator – and then conduct your search. Records for physical and electronic materials will display. Use the facets on the left to limit by material or resource type and look for the green dots to indicate which items are available. You can expand additional item information by clicking on the double caret.

If the patron is only interested in physical materials, use the Physical Titles or Physical Items search types. Choose Physical Titles for bibliographic information, and holdings and items at all Harvard locations, and for placing title-level requests. Use this when you want the broadest amount of information about a particular title, creator, subject, or other criteria.

Use the Physical Items search type to see the status of specific items, get the barcode or call number for them in particular locations, or place item-level requests. Use this when you want the most specific information about a single item or related items.

Two notes about searching by the title of an item:

Articles like “the” can affect the search results display, especially if the sort is set to Rank. Compare the following:
- If I search for Physical Titles > Title > Way, it finds one direct match and then will display additional matches down below
- If I search for Physical Titles > Title >The Way, again it lists direct matches first and then additional records, but notice that the direct matches are different for Way than The Way.
For a title search, you can also search by Title or by Keyword.
- If you’re sure of the title, choose the Title criteria, which tries to directly match the title.
- If you’re not as sure, try Keyword. which will pull first from the title field but then add a keyword search of the entire record.

You might also notice that Alma uses “Creator” rather than “Author.” This recognizes the diversity of types of materials in our collections, from books to music to maps to photographs. Choose Creator when you want to search by the person who created a work, regardless of format.

Now for something a little more straightforward.

Looking Up a Barcode

If you’re looking up a barcode, you usually want information about a particular item, so:

Choose Physical Items as your search type
Choose Barcode as the criteria
Type or scan the barcode in to the search field and hit Enter

You’ll get specific item information.

If you have a barcode but want to see the bibliographic record for that item – to quickly view all available holdings, for instance – simply choose Physical Titles instead and then the same search.

Next, a call number search.

Call Number Search

In the persistent search bar, select Physical Titles or Physical Items, depending on whether you want bib records or item records for your results. We’ll choose Physical Titles.
Choose Permanent Call Number for the criteria. If you forget that it starts with “permanent,” start typing in call number and it will display the criteria you want.
Type in the call number, such as PN1996 (screenwriting)

If you want to search a broader range of call numbers, use an asterisk at the end of the call number to replace whatever portion of it you want. For example, PN199* covers a broader range of motion picture topics than just screenwriting, as we can see by the number of results.

If you’re searching by call number, use your sort options to put things in order, especially lists of items records that can be sorted by call number.

Browse Shelf List

If you want more of a browsing experience, or to view a shelf list for a single location, use the Browse Shelf Listing feature.

Note that Browse Shelf Listing will take you into the Metadata Editor, and may not be available to all staff depending on your permissions. If you’d like to learn more about working in the Metadata Editor, watch the Metadata Editor video module of the Alma Overview course.

To view/browse a range of call numbers at a particular location:

Go to the Resources menu
Click on Browse Shelf Listing. You will notice that it defaults to searching your Current location – Lamont Library here, Lamont Library here – but you can choose to search any Harvard Library.
This will open the Metadata Editor with five search choices:
1. Call Number Level to choose between permanent and temporary call numbers (if used)
2. Library by code and then name
3. Call Number Type to choose which type of call numbers you’d like to browse (LOC, HCL, Harvard-Yenching, Tozzer, etc.)
4. Location within that library, either specific collections or area studies, which you do not need to specify
5. A Call Number field to enter a specific portion of a call number to search by
Enter all of the fields you want to search by and click Go

And, you’ll see a browsable array of call numbers. Clicking on the title in the Description column will open the bibliographic record to edit; clicking on the word Holdings at the right will open a holdings record to edit.

Now that we’ve reviewed searches for patrons and materials, let’s combine this information and look for requests and reserves.

Looking Up Requests

There are a few ways to view requests, depending on where you’re starting from:

If you’re in a patron’s record, you saw the Requests tab to see their outstanding requests.
From a title or item record, you can click on the number next to Requests to see all the requests in the list for that title. Note that this includes both patron- and library-initiated requests like work orders or transits.
In the search bar, you can use the Requests search type and any available criteria to search for a specific request.

Looking Up Course Reserves Lists

There are three ways to see course reserve lists or items on course reserve lists, and which ones you use depends on your permissions.

Item/Title record: If you’re in an item or title record, you can click on Other Details to see related information. Look for Courses: with a number next to it; if the number is something other than zero, click on the number to see all courses that have that title on the reserves list.

Browsing. If you want to browse, go to the Fulfillment menu, then down to the Course Reserves section. We see Courses, Reading Lists, and Citations.

Click Reading Lists to bring up the Reading Lists Task List, defaulting to display lists assigned to you. (I have none, so we’ll look at the Unassigned tab.) You can now look at those lists, or act on them using the row actions item list.
Click Courses to display a list of all courses with reading lists, and use the row action item list to work with that course’s list.
Finally, Citations will display all items assigned to any reading list.

Searching. You can also search for reading list information. Use the persistent search bar to find Reading Lists or Citations. You can search for Reading Lists by the code, course, the name of the list, or the Owner or staffer working on it. You can search for Citations by course, creator and title, reading list name, and a few unique identifiers.

Pick Lists and Hold Shelf Lists

Two last places to find Fulfillment-related information is under the Fulfillment menu, for the Pick List or Hold Shelf Lists.

To view the pick list for your location, make sure your location is set properly and then click on Pick From Shelf under the Fulfillment menu. The full pick list will come up, with facets to limit the list by request type, collection location, call number range, destination, and so on. You can sort by call number to make it easier to walk the shelves.

To view the Hold Shelf lists for your location, go to either Active Hold Shelf or Expired Hold Shelf, depending on which one you want to view. The active hold list just lists active holds, and you can manage each hold from the row action item list in that row. The expired hold list has tabs that automatically separate expired holds by what has to happen to them next: reshelve at your location, send to another circulation desk at your location (this will often be used for HD materials), send to a different location, or activate the next hold at your circulation desk.

Again, you’ll learn much more about the pick lists and hold shelf lists in the Fulfillment module of this course.

More Information on Fulfillment

In this video, we’ve demonstrated a variety of Fulfillment-related searches and we’ve introduced some of the basic functions in the Fulfillment area. For more, please review the Fulfillment Overview module in the Alma Overviews online course and any Fulfillment functional training you need for your work.

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