Predicted serial item cleanup (deleting unneeded not received Items)

Alma role needed: Physical Inventory Operator Extended

Important disambiguation of the term Withdrawal as used in Alma: In Alma, withdrawing and deleting an item are the same thing. These procedures cover scenarios where the item records are unneeded for retention purposes, not for what we have traditionally considered as Withdrawals.

There are times when we have predicted Item records for serial issues that have not been received and need to be deleted.

Possible scenarios for this include: 

• A duplicate set might have been created by accident in the predicted items creation process
• The publisher decided to combine two issues unexpectedly and now you’ve got an extra Item for an issue that will never exist on its own
• The publisher reduced frequency after we predicted on the old frequency
• Title ceased (SEC or full cease) so we need to remove predicted issues that won’t be published under this record
• Title was canceled mid-cycle so we need to remove predicted issues that won’t be received
• We exhausted our claims efforts and don’t want the predicted Item to show as pending receipt in the system anymore because we’re sure we’ll never get it
• Item was received in error because the publisher continued sending on a closed order (unpaid issues cannot be retained). This is the only situation in which it’s okay to delete a Received issue, because really, it shouldn’t have been received and was never legitimately part of our collection

In these cases, serial receiving staff with the Physical Inventory Operator Extended role can delete these never received predicted Item records. There’s also a case for using delete when binding around gaps in the set. Please see Dealing with unreceived or missing issues during binding for those directions. These guidelines are only for deleting Not Received predicted serial issue Items (with the exception above about mistakenly Received extra issues sent by publisher after cancellation). If an issue was legitimately Received, but has gone missing or is being removed from the collection, you will follow a different process (forthcoming).

Unfortunately, Alma does not allow you to delete item records from within the Receive module. You can only delete item records from within a List of Items. To delete the predicted serial item record you need to delete according to the acceptable uses mentioned above:

1. Search Physical Titles by Title or ISSN to pull up the serial in question
2. Click on the Items link in the Physical Holdings or, depending on your customized view, either click on the Items button or choose Items from the ellipses More Actions menu
3. In the List of Items, to avoid accidentally deleting any actually Received Items, change the Receive Date filter to Not Received
4. You can use other filters to narrow down the list of Items to choose from, for example using the Year or Volume filter to show only those Items that fall in the range you’re looking for
   
   1. To delete a single Item
      
      1. In the List of Items, find the Item you need to delete
      2. Make sure you’re choosing carefully because you will not be given details about the item you’re deleting in the Confirmation message
      3. From the ellipses menu select Withdraw
         1. If the confirmation message reads simply “Are you sure you want to withdraw the item” click Confirm
         2. If you get a different confirmation message, such as one that says the Item is in a Work order, you should hit Cancel and investigate the situation before deciding if you really should delete the item
      4. If you have clicked Confirm, you should see a green message pop up on the right side of your screen saying “Item has been successfully deleted”
      5. The Item should have disappeared from the List of Items
   2. To delete multiple Items
      1. Check the box to the left of each Item you need to delete (Note that you will not be given a warning list of the Items you’re about to delete, so make sure you are very careful about which Items you’re marking)
      2. Click on the Manage Selected link at the top of the page and choose Withdraw Items
         1. If the confirmation message reads simply “Are you sure you want to withdraw the item” click Confirm
         2. If you get a different confirmation message, such as one that says the Item is in a Work order, you should hit Cancel and investigate the situation before deciding if you really should delete the item
      3. If you have clicked Confirm, you should see a green message pop up on the right side of your screen saying “Item has been successfully deleted”
      4. The Items should have disappeared from the List of Items

A rare, but possible situation:

If you’re deleting all of the Items on a Holdings (e.g., all earlier volumes of the title have been stored at NRLF and you find that the publisher changed frequency for the current volume after issues were predicted based on the old pattern so you want to delete those and start again), you get a popup confirmation window with a question asking what to do about the Holdings.

Your options will be:

• Don't change the holdings record
• Delete the holdings record
• Suppress the holdings record from discovery
• Delete bibliographic record (unless other holdings are present)

In the vast majority of cases, when you’re going to predict items again, you’ll want to

1. Have the “Don’t change the holdings record” button checked
2. Click on Go

If, you’re in a situation where you accidentally added predicted items to a closed Holdings (for example, the earlier title that’s been through an SEC and is now operating under a new title but the old Holdings without any items attached was never suppressed),

1. Click on the “Suppress the holdings record from discovery” button
2. Click on Go

It has been Berkeley tradition to suppress closed and itemless serial Holdings rather than to delete them, so do not use the second option to Delete a holdings record (unless you just accidentally created a duplicate Holdings record). If you find a situation where you believe a Holdings should be deleted refer to Marking records for deletion.

DO NOT USE THE LAST RADIO BUTTON OPTION. You should never delete a Bibliographic record yourself; instead refer to Marking records for deletion.