Allow relinking of items to other holdings records via API
The Alma user interface allows cataloguers to relink an item onto a different holdings record, either on the same bibliographic record or a different one. It is not possible to relink an item via the API.
If a library wishes to do a major restructure of holdings records via API (e.g. post migration from another system), it is currently impossible. For example, during migration of our early printed books from our old LMS, Ex Libris craeted one holdings record per location, despite there being multiple distinct items with different shelfmarks and provenance history, which should have separate holdings records. We have the skills to write a script to split these items across new separate holdings records, but the API does not exist to do this. Instead our script will have to delete and recreate items, which would lose the record history.
Matthew Phillips
shared this idea
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Ben
commented
This would be very useful!!
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Ben Gable
commented
Agreed that this would be incredibly useful. This is a limitation that we've run into time after time at Oxford, and allowing relinking via API would unlock a lot of data cleanup that is otherwise not feasible.