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Alma Fulfillment Resource Guide

This guide covers all aspects of the fulfillment process. This includes maintaining all patron records, loaning materials, returning/renewing loaned materials, managing lost items dealing with fines and fees as well as course reserves.

Fulfillment Basics

Fulfillment Functions and Tasks
Fulfillment - Managing patron services, as well as courses and reading lists, resource sharing with other libraries, and other patron requests.
View a status of an item Check - Out and Check - library materials Place holds on items
Regulate loan rules is established by the item type Adjust loan periods Add new patrons and edit current patrons
Renew library materials Manage fines/fees Send notices to patrons

 

Fulfillment Vocabulary

Alma Uses Some Fulfillment Vocabulary to Mean Very Specific Things:

  • Claimed Returned items were checked out by a patron and the patron claims they have returned the items.
  • Lost items were checked out by a patron and are either extremely overdue (and assumed lost) or were declared lost by the patron.
  • A Found item was marked Claimed Returned or Lost and has been found either by the patron or by staff.
  • Missing items were not checked out by a patron. They are supposed to be in place on the shelf and are not.

Circulation Desks and Fulfillment Units

Circulation Desks are work location(s) in the library that handle patron fulfillment. You would set this as your Location in the Alma menu (upper right corner) so that materials are checked out and in properly.

Fulfillment Units are shelving locations with similar lending/return policies and blocks.

Institution is the campus that contains a library or libraries.

Library is each individual library in a campus.

Item Policies and Terms of Use (TOUs)

Fulfillment Unit Rules (FURs) are the loaning policies that affect a fulfillment unit. They match lending rules for patrons (terms of use) to lending rules about items (fulfillment policies). So, you can set up terms of use for undergraduate students and fulfillment policies about your general circulating collections that will apply the correct loan period and structure when a student checks out a book.

Terms of Use (TOU) define policies for patrons, and are made up of Fulfillment Policies.

Fulfillment policies define policies for items and are bundled into Terms of Use. In this way, you can reuse fulfillment policies in different Terms of Use for different types of patrons.

Item policies can be defined for specific items, and will override any conflicting fulfillment policies for its location.