Intro

The end-of-year inventory procedure doesn't have to be long and painful; the Inventory Management window helps make it easy!

The Inventory Management window was designed to simplify the inventory process by providing you with convenient access to all of the reporting and utility tools needed to analyze and organize your collection.

Performing inventory on your collection can be a lengthy process. Once you have begun an inventory, Alexandria will regularly save all of the information entered until you are finished; we call this an inventory “session”. You can stop or pause your session at any time and when you resume, Alexandria will be ready for you to begin again where you left off.

If you're running a Centralized Catalog configuration where each collection is physically housed at a different location, each site is required to perform their own, independent inventory. A single-site configuration can perform inventory in one large or several smaller inventory sessions depending on their needs.

Performing inventory lets you know exactly what you have, where it is, and what is missing. Once you know what you physically have in your collection, you'll be in a better position to make future acquisition decisions.

Each time an item is circulated (i.e. checked in or out) or inventoried using the Inventory ( “I”) or Inventory Bookdrop (“IB”) commands, its Inventory Date[1] is updated.

For collections with only one site, “site” becomes synonymous with “collection”. In a Centralized Catalog environment where each collection is physically stored at a different location, each site is required to independently perform their own inventory.

The Inventory Management window allows you to perform site-based inventory sessions, optionally limited by specific Call Number ranges and/or copy Policy. Remember, a copy's default call number and policy are “inherited” from the title record; they can be manually replaced (or changed) with copy-specific call numbers or policies.

You can create as many sessions as you need to fully inventory your collection. When all sessions are completed, you'll rest easy knowing that your entire collection has been inventoried.

Navigation

To access Alexandria's Inventory Management mode, type “/inventory” at the end of your Alexandria login URL.

The Navigation module is separated into sections or tabs:

• Sessions. Where you set up the number of sessions needed for your inventory.
• Inventory. Where you’ll scan the assets in your collection for each session.
• Exceptions. Examine any “unexpected” events that occurred during a session.
• Review. Prepare and process reports detailing the items inventoried during each session for each site.
• Complete. Run the utilities used to complete each session.