Best Practice Toolkit: Resource Inventory Optimization
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:
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Number of unique electronic journal titles
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Number of bibliographic titles (including e-books and local authority records)
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Number of digital resources (Alma D only)
Before You Start
Make sure to have the following User Roles required to manage inventory:
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Physical, Electronic, and Digital Inventory Operator – required for adding and editing resources
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Physical, Electronic, and Digital Inventory Operator Extended – required for delete operations
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Repository Manager – required for authoritative inventory-related actions
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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
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Search for Electronic titles where the (Electronic Portfolio) Material Type = Journal
Step 2: Calculate Number of Bibliographic Titles and Authorities
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Search for All titles according to MMS ID > 0
- Search for Authorities where MMS ID > 0
Step 3: Calculate Number of Digital Resources (Alma D only)
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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:
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Identify duplicate bibliographic records with the same data by running the Duplicate Title Analysis
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Use Merge Records and Combine Inventory tool to merge duplicate records
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Consider using Merge Methods when Importing and Searching from External Resources
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Identify overlapping titles that can be canceled using Overlap and Collection Analysis
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Review and consider deleting bib records without inventory to prevent discovery issues
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Clean-up electronic resources by deleting unused eResources
Additional Information