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A&M Consortium: Deletion Guidance

Basic Guidance for Deletion

Generally, in Alma/Primo, delete records instead of suppressing them. In Alma, the term "withdraw" means "delete."

 

When should I delete a record from Alma?

You can safely delete the following bibliographic records:

 

When should I suppress a record but not delete it?
  • Books missing less than six months
  • Lost books needed for fines management (generally if lost less than five years, depending on institutional policy)

 

When should I delete an item and not the bib record?
  • For bibliographic records that have active holdings, for example a set with only one missing volume or multiple copies with one lost item, you may only want to delete the item and not the full record.

 

How do I identify records for deletion?

 

I am ready to delete - how do I proceed?
  • Please review the Deletion Processes tab for instructions on deleting items, holdings, and bib records either manually or in batches (as a job).

 

What if I accidentally deleted something I meant to keep?

 

  • Restoring Deleted Records: You can restore sets of deleted records that contain less than 10,000 records. For more than 10,000 records, Ex Libris will have to restore them for you via a support ticket.

 

Fully Suppressed Records

Delete records that are fully suppressed. This can be done individually or as a batch (see tab: "Deletion Processes").

  • Please note: suppressed records do not count toward Alma statistics.

 

 

 

Deleting Missing Book Records

Delete rather than suppress records for books missing longer than six months. If a missing book is found after six months, create a new record for that book.

Deleting Lost Book Bib Records

For books lost for more than five years, bib records are deleted rather than suppressed.

  • Lost more than five years: delete
  • Lost less than five years: suppress

Periodically run a batch job to delete records lost more than five years.

Reports & Saved Sets

The OSU Stillwater Library has created reports and saved sets for consortium members as recommended by Ex Libris for cleaning up bibliographic records. Not all reports will apply to your institution. OSU Stillwater staff is available to help refine these reports or provide training on how to create new reports. These are available in Alma and Alma Analytics at the following location:

Saved Reports
  • Shared Folders/Oklahoma State University – [your institution]/Reports/Inventory Optimization
  • Coming soon: Physical Items Suppressed In Repository by Library and Location
  • Coming soon: Physical Items Not Suppressed In Repository by Library and Location
  • Screenshot of saved reports in Alma Analytics

 

Saved Sets

All Titles

  • Inventory Optimization - Bib Records Without Inventory
  • Inventory Optimization - Suppressed Bib Records
  • Inventory Optimization - Number of Bibliographic Titles

Electronic Titles

  • Inventory Optimization - Institution Zone Electronic Collections
  • Inventory Optimization - Standalone Portfolios
  • Inventory Optimization - Institution Zone Electronic Portfolios
  • Inventory Optimization - Missing or Null URLs
  • Inventory Optimization - Number of Unique Electronic Journals

Authorities

  • Inventory Optimization - Number of Authorities

Digital Titles

  • Inventory Optimization - Number of Digital Resources (Alma D only)

screenshot of Saved Sets in Alma

 

Manual Deletion (see below for batch deletion jobs)

Before bibliographic (bib) records may be deleted, their related items and holdings need to be deleted.

 

Items
  • Withdrawing Items (You can also delete holdings as part of the item withdrawal process)
Holdings
Bibliographic Records
What if I accidentally deleted something I meant to keep?

Batch Deleting Records (Jobs)

 

Delete Holdings records with no Physical items (AKA Empty Holdings)
  1. Use the existing set "Inventory Optimization - Bib Records Without Inventory" OR find items and create a new set:
    • Do an advanced Physical Titles search with index of Has Items equals No
  2. Run the "Delete Holdings records with no Physical items" job.
  3. Select the set from step 1. In step 3, be sure to select "Do nothing" under "How to handle bibliographic records" unless you know for sure that you want to delete those bibliographic records.

 

Delete Bibliographic records
  1. Create a set of records that you want to delete.
  2. Run the "Delete Bibliographic records" job.
  3. The first time you run the job, in step 3:
    • DO check "Do not delete if related to other records" and
    • DON'T check "Delete all associated inventory resources"
    • This will tell you, in the error log, which records have associated records or inventory. If, after reviewing the error log, you would like to go ahead with the deletion of the associated records/inventory, rerun the job and check the second box only.

 

Delete Electronic portfolios
  1. Create a set of records that you want to delete.
  2. Run the "Delete Electronic portfolios" job.
  3. The first time you run the job, in step 3 (see screenshot above):
    • DO check "Do not delete if related to other records" and
    • DON'T check "Delete all associated inventory resources"
    • This will tell you, in the error log, which records have associated records or inventory. If, after reviewing the error log, you would like to go ahead with the deletion of the associated records/inventory, rerun the job and check the second box only.