Skip to Main Content

Alma Training

Training for non-super users

Ex Libris Fulfillment Guide

Fulfillment Learning Objectives

  • Ability to create a check in/check out an item
  • Ability to add a new patron in Alma
  • Ability to create a course record and add a reading list
  • Ability to add a reading list to that course

Checking Out Items

For the purposes of this training exercise, you will first need to review your searching skills for physical items because we need barcodes of items to check out.

Getting Barcodes:

  1. First, make sure your location is a big, main circulation desk (e.g. Main or Memorial)
  2. Using Advanced search for physical items, do a title search for the keyword "the" on the first line and on the second line, search for permanent physical locations matched to that library/location.
  3. Select and write down five barcodes of items whose status is "......"

To check out an item to a patron:

  1. From the fulfillment menu, choose "manage patron services" and the following screen comes up
  2. At a real desk, you would scan the patron's card.  Today, we will select the list icon and browse for a suitable person to check out our items to.
  3. The list icon launches the following pop-up box
  4. Click on the "Public" tab
  5. Select any active undergraduate patron listed and double click on their name. 
  6. This will close the pop-up window and bring their name back to the search box on the patron identification page.  Click the "Go" button.
  7. In our test sandbox almost everyone has expired, so it's even odds that the next thing you'll see is
  8. Click on the button with the three dots to renew.
  9. Now you're at the check-out screen:
  10. Type in or copy the barcode of the first item your patron will check out and click "Go". 
  11. Depending upon which student account you chose, you may need to clear another block or renew the account again at this point.
  12. Once you have successfully checked out the item, the screen will look like this:
  13. Check out the rest of your barcode choices to this patron so we have some items to return in the next section.
  14. Explore the tabs and action buttons (e.g. "Edit User Info"). 

Returning Items

Having just checked out some items above, we will now return them:

To check items back in:

  1. From the fulfillment menu, choose "return items" and the following screen comes up
  2. Type or copy in your first barcode and click OK.
  3. Ta Da!

Manually Adding a New User

Most users will be automatically loaded through a process of pulling record information from Banner or other campus source.  These are classfied as "internal" users and their data will be overwritten/updated with each load.  If you change information manually for an internal user, whatever is in the next load may overwrite your manual change.  

But should you need to add a new patron who is not automatically loaded, classified as an "external" user (such as a community patron) here is the process:

Adding a User:

  1. From the admin menu, choose "manage users" and the following screen comes up
  2. Click the Add User link above the list on the upper right side
  3. Depending upon your setup, you might be required to select the account type of the user you are adding:
    • Contact - this is primarily vendors
    • Staff - staff of the library. 
    • Public - Your patrons
  4. For this exercise, select Public.
  5. Create an account for your favorite cartoon character with the minimum information necessary.  You may use anything in this test environment for the "Primary Identifier" field.  Notice how they don't do a good job of marking the mandatory fields, but that clicking "save" will tell you which ones you missed.

Contact

Crumb Library: 315-267-2485
Crane Library: 315-267-2451

Text Us!: 315-277-3730

Social Media

College Libraries

Home

SUNY Potsdam College Libraries
44 Pierrepont Ave
Potsdam, NY 13676