Introduction to Sets - Sets Module

This is the first 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:

Introduction

Hello and welcome to the Sets module of the Alma Overviews online course. In this module, we’ll take the information from the Searching module a step further and learn how to save sets of records, either as a saved search or as an itemized list.

First, a quick review of Search. In the persistent search bar, the first drop-down menu has the search type, where you tell Alma what kinds of records you want to search for. The second white drop-down is where you choose your search criteria, and then you enter your search terms in the main box.

Advanced searches are available for many, but not all, search types in Alma. To conduct an advanced search, choose the search type you want, click on Advanced Search, and then construct your search query using multiple rows of criteria. When you’re done, click Search.

Any time you conduct a search, Alma will present you with a Save Query button, and that lets you save any search query to re-run again. Let’s start there to begin talking about sets.

About Sets

First, what are sets?

• Sets are groups of records that are saved in Alma to be used as reference lists, collection development aids, acquisitions tracking aids, or resource management tools.
• Sets can be created manually, record by record, or dynamically (as we saw) as the result of a saved search query.
• In addition to just being a list of things, sets are used to manipulate a number of records at the same time – for example, to publish metadata in bulk, move a group of records, or run batch jobs/processes.
• Sets do not have a size limit, though if you want to export your set to Excel file, that limit is still 50,000 records.

There are two types of sets:

• Logical sets contain the results of a saved search query, and are created dynamically each time the search is run
• Itemized sets are manually created. They are static sets of individual records called members

You can create sets for the following record types:

• PO Line (or order) records
• Vendor records
• User records
• Reading List records
• And all materials record types: Physical Items, Physical Titles, Electronic Collections, Electronic Portfolios, Electronic Titles, and Authorities records

Most sets can only contain one record type. However, a set of Titles records can contain both Physical and Electronic titles (or bib records), if you have used an All Titles search or All Titles content type when creating your set. This will make more sense in a moment.

You can see all of your sets, and any shared Public sets, under the Admin menu, where it says Manage Sets & Jobs.