How do I delete items in Alma?
The process of deleting items in Alma is called "withdrawal." The reason for the different terminology is that items in Alma can be undeleted or "restored," so they're not truly deleted. For bibliographic weeding projects, please send a list of MMS IDs to the Office of Library Services (OLS) after withdrawing records. This ensures proper record management across CUNY systems.
There are two ways to withdraw items in Alma:
Withdraw items one at a time
This action requires the "Physical Inventory Operator Extended" role.
1. Locate the item in a search and click Withdraw. (The screen may look different depending on how you do your search, but the action is the same.)
2. Click Confirm.
3. You may be asked to choose what to do with the holdings and bib records:
- Don't change the holdings record: the item record will be withdrawn, but no changes will be made to the holdings or bib records at this time.
- Delete the holdings record: the item record and the holdings record will be withdrawn, but no changes will be made to the bib record at this time.
- Suppress the holdings record from discovery: the item record will be withdrawn and the holdings record will be suppressed.
- If the bib record only has this holdings record, the bib record will be suppressed too.
- If the bib record has other holdings records, the bib record will not be suppressed.
- Delete bibliographic record (unless other holdings are present): the item record and the holdings record will be withdrawn, plus the bib record will be withdrawn only if there are no more holdings records attached to it. This is the option you should choose unless you are sure you want to keep holdings and bib records that are no longer in use.
Withdraw items in batch
This action requires the "Repository Manager" or "Repository Administrator" role. If you do not have this role, you can create a set and ask your supervisor to run the job.
2. Run the "Withdraw Physical items" job on that set.
3. You will be asked to choose parameters for the job:
- How to handle holdings without items and bibliographic records?
- Keep holdings and bibliographic records: the item record will be withdrawn, but no changes will be made to the holdings or bib records at this time.
- Delete holdings; delete bibliographic records that have no other holdings: the item record and the holdings record will be withdrawn.
- If the bib record only has this holdings record, the bib record will be withdrawn too.
- If the bib record has other holdings records, the bib record will not be withdrawn.
- This is the option you should choose unless you are sure you want to keep holdings and bib records that are no longer in use.
- Suppress holdings from publishing; suppress bibliographic records that have no other holdings from publishing: the item record will be withdrawn and the holdings record will be suppressed.
- If the bib record only has this holdings record, the bib record will be suppressed too.
- If the bib record has other holdings records, the bib record will not be suppressed.
- Delete holdings; suppress bibliographic records that have no other holdings from publishing: the item record and the holdings record will be withdrawn.
- If the bib record only has this holdings record, the bib record will be suppressed too.
- If the bib record has other holdings records, the bib record will not be suppressed.
- Do not withdraw items with active requests
- Do not withdraw items with non-active requests in the queue
- Do not withdraw items with work orders
- Send work order cancellation letter to operator
You do not need to delete your library's symbol from the OCLC record. Alma will send the list of deletions to OCLC automatically.