In Alma, a search is often the first step in any activity. You search for and then find a record, then begin to do work on it, whatever your task may be. Knowing how and when to effectively search can help when doing a multi-step workflow.
There are three types of search in Alma:
Each type of search works in a similar way, but with different options and possibly a different scope. This guide introduces you to all three, and offers tips and tricks for each.
Navigation in Alma is when you use the menus, buttons/icons, on-screen links, and drop-down options to navigate from record to record or results list to record. The Alma interface is a website, and these all work as you'd expect them to on a website.
Where I Do I Find Things in Alma?
Navigating in Alma is the same as navigating on any website - use side and menu navigation to get to pages, and follow links on the page to get to related information.
Main Menu (Left Panel)
The menu across the top of every page in Alma allows you to quick shift from one function to another. The menu is organized by functional areas and has the following links:
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Acquisitions - Purchasing physical and electronic materials, as well as everything related to orders, invoices, funds and ledgers, vendors, and electronic resource licenses. Resources - Cataloging and inventory management for all materials, regardless of format. Includes import and publishing functions. Fulfillment - Any function that fulfills a patron or library request: circulation, resource sharing, course reserves, temporary moves and deposits, and more. Admin - Most staff will use this for Managing Sets and Managing Jobs, but it also includes system/functional area administrator functionality. Analytics - Use to run or subscribe to existing reports and dashboards, or access Alma Analytics to create analyses. Quick Links - If you want quick access to certain pages in Alma, you can set them as Quick Links.On the main menu, you can identify Quick Links for a few functions that you use often or use so infrequently you can never find them
Show MDE - This is how you open the Metadata Editor to edit individual bibliographic records, holdings records, normalization rules, & record templates. You can find these categories by clicking on their tabs at the top left of the editor
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Side Navigation and Facets
In Alma, there are two kinds of navigation available on the left side of a page:
Facets are available on search results pages and monitoring lists to limit to the records by type, status, or other information.
Left navigation is available in the Metadata Editor, Alma Analytics, and Alma Configuration to guide you to specific locations to work on or in.
Linked Information in Records
Many records contain links to related information, identified by blue text instead of black. Click on the link to go to the related information or records.
Some examples:
Item records - click on the Barcode to edit the item record or view its history; click on other links for the Title record, related requests, course reserve lists, and orders.
Order records - click on Invoice, Vendor, Fund, or Title information to see those records
Fund and Vendor records - click through to see related fund, transaction, invoice, and vendor records
Regardless of where you are in Alma, there is a persistent search available near the top of the screen.
The persistent search bar has up to six parts:
Search Type (blue drop-down): This sets the kinds of records you want to find.
Criteria (white drop-down): This chooses the field you want to search in those records. This changes depending on the Search Type you choose.
Search term (blank box): Enter the search term(s). This will almost always be a keyword search, and Alma will suggest non-exact matches if possible.
Zone (icon drop-down): Choose whether you want to search the Institution Zone (house), Network Zone (hierarchy boxes), or Community Zone (people)
Search button: click this to search or hit the Enter key
Advanced search: If an advanced search is available for that search type, click here to open the Advanced Search box. Not all Search Types have advanced search.
The Search String in Basic Search
Tips on using the search string in a basic search:
Building on everything in Basic Search, Advanced search adds power, flexibility, and granularity through:
To conduct an advanced search, choose a search type and click on Advanced Search on the far right.
Not every search type has advanced search. Search types with Advanced Search are:
How Do I Perform an Advanced Search?
To perform and advanced search in Alma:
Additional Criteria
To keep Basic Search basic, it includes a limited number of criteria. Advanced Search provides access to all the available criteria for each Search Type.
The best way to explore the additional criteria is to choose a Search Type, click Advanced search, then scroll through the list of criteria.
For materials searches (Physical or Electronic), these criteria will include fields from all three levels of related records:
Working with Alma Search Operators
In Basic Search, the default operator on the criteria is "keywords" or "includes." One reason to use Advanced Search is to get access to additional operators.
Is Empty - One of the most useful of these additional criteria may be Is Empty. By choosing Is Empty, you can search for records in which that field is empty/contains no information. For example, empty barcodes, call numbers, order numbers, URLs, proxy information, etc. Read the Ex Libris documentation on Searching for Items Without Specific Information for more.
Starts With - To conduct a more precise Title search, use the Starts With operator.
Additional number-related operators - If you're searching by publication or other dates, Advanced Search gives you access to "greater than (>)," "less than (<)," "greater than or equal to (>=)," "less than or equal to (<<=)," "Before," "After," and more.
Date picker calendars - For some number entries (such as Activation date), you can choose from a calendar
Date ranges - Include one row with a Before date and one with an After date to search within a date range
Multiple Terms and Rows
Multiple Terms in One Row
Some criteria - such as Permanent Physical Location (Holdings) - allow you to add more than one search term to the same row, usually from a drop-down list. To do this:
Click the X next to any term to remove it from the list.
Multiple Rows of Criteria & Terms
To add another row, click on the plus at the end of the first row.
To delete a row, click on the X at the end of that row. Note that you can only delete the first row after you add a second row.
You cannot re-arrange the rows, but you can insert rows by clicking on the plus sign for the row above where you want to add one.
To duplicate a row, click the "copy page" icon at the end of that row. Do this to add multiple subjects to a search, or other criteria that don't allow you to enter multiple terms in the same row.
And/Or Operator for Rows
The default setting for Advanced Search is to link all the rows by AND. (Subject AND Item status AND Location AND Publication Year)
You can change the row operator to OR between two rows, but you need to organize the search query to make sure your OR is in the right place. If the search doesn't work, delete and re-add rows to get the OR into a better place in the query.
In these three screenshots, look closely at the search fields and then at the query logic below them.
In addition to the persistent search bar at the top of every page, many lists offer a search box or filters to narrow down the records listed on the page.
These on-page options either use a single index or a small number of indices you choose in a drop-down menu. The options will change depending on the list you're searching.
The Manage Sets page has both a search box and filters.
In the search box, you can search by the set Name or who it was created by (if you were searching Public Sets).
In the filters, you can choose from the drop-down options to limit the list by Content Type or Content Origin.
There are several great training videos on how to Search Alma, both from Ex Libris and several other organizations and institutions. Here are a few good ones:
