What are these strange fields in Alma bib records?
Some bibliographic records in Alma contain non-standard alphanumeric tags—such as AVA, OWN, LKR, ITM, or XST—rather than the standard three-digit MARC tags. These fields are remnants from earlier systems or specific configurations, most notably from CUNY’s migration from Aleph to Alma. While not used in current cataloging, these fields can still appear in legacy records. It is safe to delete them.
| TAG |
MEANING |
| AVA |
Used for publishing to Primo classic. No longer relevant now that CUNY uses Primo VE. |
| ITM |
An Aleph field, likely used during migration to link items to their bibliographic records. |
| LKR |
Represents links between records in Aleph; functionally similar to MARC 77X linking fields. |
| OWN |
Indicated the owning library in Aleph. This was transferred to the item’s provenance field in Alma. |
| XST |
This field is related to the "Union View" that was used by CUNY in the early 2000s. |
