Successfully working with Alma’s Shelf Report tool Kate Cabe Scholarly Resources Analyst Collection Management and Assessment Western Washington University July 13, 2016

Reference collection: Is small (approx. 7000 items) Has been moved multiple times in past few years Noticeable discrepancy between number of titles on use reports and what was on shelf Immediate need for accurate use Need coincided well with the December rollout of the new functionality.

The not great news Alma offers two inventory options--by Set or Range, but Shelf Report by Range still doesn’t work Ex Libris says they are working on a fix (again), set for Q4 of this year Documentation does not reflect that Range is not working

Successfully working with Alma’s Shelf Report Set tool So this presentation will focus exclusively on inventory by Set.

Shelf Report functionality According to Ex Libris documentation: “…allows staff to manage the library’s Physical Inventory in order to track if items are in place, misshelved* or missing.” * Alma only seems able to identify if items are shelved in the wrong location. It cannot tell you if an item is in the wrong call number order.

To get started… 1. Scan barcodes into txt file 2. Create a logical set of items in the location you are working with Duplicate barcodes in your txt file will cause the report to fail (although you will get no indication as to why it failed). Suggest deduping your barcodes if you initially get an error.

Creating your report

Interpreting your results Love that you can do your scanning and then get a report you can manage when it fits with your schedule—action does not need to be taken at the point of scanning. Items in place—good Missing items but marked in place—items have a status of in place in Alma but they were not scanned during the inventory. We re-searched all of these items, found some (had been on loan when inventory was scanned) and changed others to Missing Items on shelf but marked not in place—in our case, most were items in a transit status; got them “in place”, but we had a handful that had been charged to Missing status—nice to find these Known items not in place—good Items on shelf but out of range/set—searched stacks, retrieved items, shelved in correct location or changed location in Alma, as necessary Barcodes with no matched item—see next slide

Barcodes with no matched item report Did not expect this to be a string of numbers—had to manually determine the barcode breaks, then go back to my original txt document to find what items were shelved around these, retrieve the items and update the Alma record with the correct barcode. Not ideal, but doable.

Even with current limitations and lack of reliable Range Shelf Report functionality WWU has been able to successfully use the Alma Shelf Report tool for specific projects However, we are anxiously awaiting the Range Shelf Report because we won’t be able to do inventory of our general stacks until that time.

Thank you