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  6. Best Practice Toolkit: Resource Inventory Optimization

Best Practice Toolkit: Resource Inventory Optimization

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  1. What is it? 
  2. Why Resource Inventory Optimization? 
  3. Before You Start 
  4. Resource Inventory Optimization  
    1. Step 1: Calculate the number of Unique Electronic Journals 
    2. Step 2: Calculate Number of Bibliographic Titles and Authorities 
    3. Step 3: Calculate Number of Digital Resources (Alma D only) 
    4. Step 4: Compare the results based on your Alma subscription agreement and optimize resource inventory by using the following tools: 

What is it? 

Directions for optimizing the library’s inventory and checking specific amounts of bibliographic titles, e-journals, and digital resources based on Alma institution subscription parameters. 

Why Resource Inventory Optimization? 

Optimizing the amounts of resource inventory provides an overview of the library’s bibliographic data and frees up space in Alma to accommodate the amount of content based on Alma inventory licensing subscription parameters below: 

  • Number of unique electronic journal titles 

  • Number of bibliographic titles (including e-books and local authority records) 

  • Number of digital resources (Alma D only) 

Before You Start 

Make sure to have the following User Roles required to manage inventory: 

  • Physical, Electronic, and Digital Inventory Operator – required for adding and editing resources 

  • Physical, Electronic, and Digital Inventory Operator Extended – required for delete operations 

  • Repository Manager – required for authoritative inventory-related actions 

  • Catalog Manager, Catalog Administrator – required to run specific jobs 

 

Note: ignore the Alma D references if your institution does not subscribe to the service. 

Resource Inventory Optimization  

Follow the below Advanced Searching steps at Institution Zone while noting down the number of results: 

 

Step 1: Calculate the number of Unique Electronic Journals 
  • Search for Electronic titles where the (Electronic Portfolio) Material Type = Journal 

Graphical user interface, text, application, email

Description automatically generated

Step 2: Calculate Number of Bibliographic Titles and Authorities 
  • Search for All titles according to MMS ID > 0

Graphical user interface, application

Description automatically generated

  • Search for Authorities where MMS ID > 0 

 Graphical user interface, text, application, email

Description automatically generated

 

Step 3: Calculate Number of Digital Resources (Alma D only) 
  • Search for Digital titles where Title: MMS ID > 0 

 

As the subscription parameter for bibliographic titles is calculated by excluding unique e-journals and digital resources (if the institution subscribes to digital), you would need to add the amount of All titles plus Authorities together and subtract from the total amount the number of unique e-journals (then add digital resources for Alma D only), see below example: 

 

(2,308,077 + 907,004)               - (132,989 + 9,200)                  = 3,091,292 

(all titles + authorities) - (unique e-journals + digital resources) = bibliographic titles 

 

Step 4: Compare the results based on your Alma subscription agreement and optimize resource inventory by using the following tools: 
  • Identify duplicate bibliographic records with the same data by running the Duplicate Title Analysis 

  • Use Merge Records and Combine Inventory tool to merge duplicate records 

  • Consider using Merge Methods when Importing and Searching from External Resources 

  • Identify overlapping titles that can be canceled using Overlap and Collection Analysis 

  • Identify mismatches between bibliographic material type

  • Review and consider deleting bib records without inventory to prevent discovery issues 

  • Clean-up electronic resources by deleting unused eResources 

 

Additional Information 

  • Alma Subscription Licensing Model 

  • Resource Management Advanced Tools 

  • Working with Merge Rules 

  • Managing Search Queries and Sets 

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  1. Article type
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    Community Content Type
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    Content Type
    Documentation
    Language
    English
    Product
    Alma
  2. Tags
    1. inventory optimization
    2. optimization
    3. resource inventory
    4. resource inventory optimization
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