Handling Bound-Withs in Alma

Alma has a clunky but workable way to handle cases where bibliographically separate titles have been physically bound into a single volume.

For example, in Tisch Library, each series of The Johns Hopkins University studies in historical and political science has been bound together but cataloged separately.  This was not a problem in the ILS Tufts used before Alma, which allowed a single barcode to be linked to multiple records.  Alma does not allow this.  

To deal with this during the migration, a suppressed host bibliographic record was created for each instance of the problem.  The barcode is linked to a holdings record attached to this bib record.

See example below:

Searching one of these titles in Primo (the public catalog) returns a normal hit list:

But clicking into the record shows an odd result which usually sends patrons straight to the desk:

Tufts has opted to deal with this by using 773 and 774 fields in the bibliographic records for all the titles involved.  In the case of series 10 (1892) of Johns Hopkins University studies in historical and political science, we chose one title from the volume to hold the item record and added 774 fields for all the other titles in the volume to that record.

The Bishop Hill colony : a religious communistic settlement in Henry County, Illinois (MMS ID 991002035169703851) has this list of 774 fields in the record:

The bibliographic record for each of these titles has a 773 field referring back to the title that has the barcode attached:

Causes of the American revolution

This creates a list of Related Titles in the public record:

Each of these is an active link, leading to a bibliographic record for that title with a much clearer Related title link:

Bound-with Cheat Sheet

1. Find a Host bibliographic record

2. Bring all the records listed in 774 fields into the metadata editor

3. Choose one of the titles to be the one to have the holdings and item attached

4. Move the holdings record from the Host bibliographic record to the one chosen

5. Add 774 fields to the chosen record for all the other titles bound into the volume using this format:

774:0 : $$n Container of (item): $$t Causes of the American revolution $$w (OCoLC)00855263 $$5 MMeT

6. Add a 773 field referring back to the record with the holdings and item, using this format:

770:0 : $$n Contained by (item) $$t The Bishop Hill colony $$w (OCoLC)20369698 $$5 MMeT

7. Delete the Host bibliographic record