CUNY Aleph Catalog Optimization Projects: Holdings & Items Linking

The Suppressed Records Clean Up project should resolve most holdings records without items. The Duplicate Holdings project will decrease holdings records with no item records. Once these projects have been completed there will still be some records with unlinked items.

If a library still has many suppressed bibliographic records that do not have items:

One approach for a library with many suppressed bibliographic records (that do not have items) is to first focus on those suppressed bib record. It might be better to continue to working from that suppressed bibliographic record listing. Your work should include removal of unneeded holdings as described below for the first phase. IF your library is in that situation, please submit a work order when you ready a new listing of "holdings not linked to items."

An alternative approach for a library with many suppressed bibliographic records (that do not have items) is to focus on correcting holdings that are not linked to items. Part of this work will lead to a number of holdings and Bibs being deleted, which will shrink the list of suppressed Bibliographic records.

This project has three phases:

1. During the first phase, the goal is to fix holdings records identified as not linked to items. Holdings should be linked to at least one item, or deleted if no longer needed. The holdings to be reviewed are listed in orphan_holdings_xxxxx.xls.
   If there are no holdings for a Bibliographic record, then the Bibliographic record should be removed from Aleph as well as having the holdings unset with OCLC. Please note that any Bibliographic records removed before OCLC reclamation will be automatically removed from your OCLC holdings.
   A recommended plan would be to complete the first phase before December 31, 2019.
2. During the second phase, the goal is to link items to a holdings record which matches the items permanent location. (The previous phase should reduce the number of items not linked to holdings, and it is suggested that it be completed before moving to this second phase.) These items will be listed in Task Manager with the name <sub-library>_item_unlink_holding.
   A recommended plan would be to complete the second phase by March 01, 2020.
3. During the third phase, the goal is make sure 852 holdings fields have $b & $c. (In error, some do not.) This is to prepare holdings records to link with an items permanent location during the data conversion. When exporting Aleph data into Alma, the software will match the holdings 852 $b & $c with the item record's Sub-library and Collection location. These will then be converted into Alma Locations & Alma items. Without this step being successful, some materials will be excluded from migration, making this a crucial step in preserving your library's materials. Many of these holdings are already be corrected by previous projects. These titles will be listed quarterly in Task Manager with the nameXX_incomplete_852_holdings.  This was already completed once for every library, but must be re-checked for new errors. A recommended plan would be to complete the third phase by June 26, 2020.

The reports (attached to this page) named orphan_holdings_xxxxx.xls are holdings not linked to items. (Note: xxxxx = 5-letter campus sub-library code.)

From time to time there will be automatically generated reports in Task Manager named<sub-library>_item_unlink_holding for items not linked to holdings.