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

2. Reference collection:
Is small (approx 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.

3. 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

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

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. Creating your report

8. 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

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. Thank you