Physical Items search in Alma with Item Material Type = ‘Other’ returns all kinds of material types for migrated Voyager data

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Product: Alma

Description

Physical Items search in Alma with Item Material Type = ‘Other’ returns "Visual material" and other material types besides ‘other’; why?

Resolution

Alma has a BIB-level material type and resource type that displays from a title search.
Both are created in migration based on the BIB’s LDR 006/007 positions, 006 and 007.
The Voyager to Alma Migration Guide and the ExLibris Online Help have links to the tables used to translate the BIB tag values into fairly generic Material and Resource types for BIBs.
The Resource Type of the BIB is then used to create the item level Physical Item Material Type (which is only retrieved with an Item Level Search).
So, the facet of Material Type displayed depends on the type of search (title or item) performed.
Voyager sites prefer to migrate Voyager's Item Type to Alma's material type because Voyager's item type is so specific.
However, the Voyager item type is actually migrated to Alma's Item Policy.
The Alma Material Type is then computed from the Voyager BIB's LDR type/BIB level, 006 and 007 tags, which are interpreted into a Resource Type which is then used with the Physical Item Material Type table to determine the item’s migrating material type.
You may ask: why do so many items have the ‘other’ material type?
Because a resource type of ‘visual material’ could become a number of different item material types (dvd, video, streaming media, etc.)
When the Alma table cannot determine a specific media type, ‘other’ is used.
It’s up to customers to use post-migration sets to assign a more correct item physical material type.
This is fairly normal cleanup for a Voyager site as they cannot control the mapping of the material type.
Customers usually use a combination of location and item policy to build sets and select a correct material type.