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    Question about removing a sublibrary from Aleph

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    • Article Type: General
    • Product: Aleph
    • Product Version: 20, 2,1 22, 23

    Description:
    One of our sublibraries is currently in storage but the future plan is that they will only keep a reference book collection and a smaller journal collection. I have a few questions.

    1. Can we suppress this sublibrary and it’s holdings for circulating books and journals from displaying at the OPAC until I can get all the database changes made? If yes, can you let us know what needs to be done.

    2. Removing records - Do I have to remove each record individually from the database? Or if I know that they are going to get rid of all the circulating books, is there someway to quickly remove all circulating books for this sublibrary?

    We have another sublibrary that may close completely is there some what to remove the sublibrary and all records associated with that sublibrary quickly?

    Resolution:
    Suppressing items for a particular sub-library from display in the OPAC is relatively easy; it is done in tab15.eng, column 10.

    Actual record deletion is a different matter. There are definitely services in the Cataloging module that can be used.
    manage-33 is the most complete deletion service. It deletes a specified set of Bib records and all other records associated with those, like Holdings, Items, Orders, etc. But you want to be sure that you aren't deleting Bibs that are shared by both the obsolete sublibrary and one that is still active.

    If you want to just delete the Items in this sublibrary, the service is item-11. You would first run ret-adm-01 (General Retrieval Form) to identify the records to be deleted.

    There are also ways of logically deleting or suppressing Bibs and Holdings. From your OPAC. For Bibs, add an STA field with a subfield $a value of either SUPPRESSED or DELETED. For Holdings, add an STA field with a subfield $a value of SUPPRESSED. Addition of these STA fields can be done in batch mode using service manage-21 (Global Changes).

    One site recently contracted with us to completely remove the entire collection for one of their sublibraries. Because of the integrated nature of their collection, shared bibs, etc., they decided this was something they wanted Ex Libris to do.

    • Article last edited: 10/8/2013