Introduction and Basic Search - Searching Module

Owned by Jennifer Koerber (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Feb 21, 2019Version comment

This is the first 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:

Introduction

Hello, and welcome to the Searching Overview module of the Alma Overviews online course. In this series of videos, we will introduce different ways to search in Alma: using the persistent search bar, using functions in the Metadata Editor, and some functional “searches” available from the menu bar. We’ll walk through a basic search, then we’ll review the results list and how you can customize the display. Next, we’ll practice with advanced searches, then learn more about the Alma Inventory Model and the Community zone. Finally, we’ll run through a variety of searches to answer questions from all library functional areas.

Basic Search

Let’s begin with the persistent search bar. This search bar appears at the top of every page in Alma, and is a starting point for many processes.

The Search Type

The first drop-down box contains the Search Type options. This indicates what kinds of records you want to search for. Most options are self-explanatory – Invoices, Reading Lists, Authority records – and they are grouped together by functional area.

For materials, each Search Type identifies the format and record type that you’re looking for, and the search type you choose depends on what you're trying to do or the information that you need.

  • An All Titles search will look for bibliographic records for materials in all formats.
  • Physical Titles and Physical Items searches will display bibliographic and item records respectively for physical materials in all formats. (Not in video: Physical Titles will only find bib records that have holdings or holdings/items records attached; bibs without holdings will only be found by an All Titles search.)
  • Electronic Titles are bibliographic records for electronic materials, including ebooks and online journals.
  • Electronic Portfolios are item-level records for electronic materials, such as instances of an ebook or issues of an online journal. Electronic Collections include the service or vendor through which we have access to an electronic item, such as EBSCO full-text.

A Reminder that Harvard is not using the Digital features of Alma, but since all Alma customers use the same interface, we cannot remove these from the list.

We will look more closely at the relationships between all of the material type records more closely in the Inventory Model segment of this course.

The Search Criteria

Next, in the white drop-down manu, you’ll choose what criteria or field you want to search on. This is a context-dependent menu: when you tell Alma what kinds of records you want to find, it will let you choose from the criteria available for those types of records.

Alma will remember and highlight the last criteria that you searched on for that type of record at the top of the list with the “clock running backwards” icon. In this case, the last time I looked for Physical Titles, I searched on Title, Subject, Keywords, Barcode, or ISSN. This makes it easy if you usually search using the same kinds of information, such as invoice numbers, barcodes, or titles.

The Search Box/Terms

Next is the big white box. This is where you type or paste in what you’re searching for. Again, once you click in the box, Alma will suggest the most recent searches you’ve made. This can be helpful if you need to go back and work on something that you worked on previously.

A Few Notes About the Search String

  • In your search terms, you may either include or no include initial articles, such as “a,” “and,” and “the.” Alma will display both direct and partial matches in the search results, but including the article may help with Ranked sort results, as we’ll see in a moment.
  • All ISBNs should be in ISBN-13 format.
  • Generally, special characters, such as a hyphen, dash, slash, and so forth, are ignored.
  • However, one wildcard character is supported in Alma. You can use an asterisk (*) at the end of the search string for many search criteria or, in the case of funds codes, at the beginning and/or the end of a search string. This (code), for instance, would retrieve any fund code that had 504013 in the middle of it somewhere.
    • That said, you cannot use a wildcard when the string already contains a dash, such as in some OCLC numbers and old Aleph order numbers.
  • You may use standard English characters to search for characters in other languages with diacritics.

For more on search terms and special characters, click on Help for This Page after you’ve conducted any basic search – here under the Help icon – and that will bring up the Ex Libris document on search and resource lists, including an entire section on Searching for Special Characters.

The Magnifying Glass

As you may have noticed, the way to finish your search is to either click on the magnifying glass icon or hit the Enter key on the keyboard to conduct your search.