Withrrawing item records

Owing to the proliferation of "empty" bib records (bibs with no attached item, order, or checkin records) in the catalog, I think it would be helpful to review withdrawing and item deletion procedures. It seems to me that these most of these empty bib records result when the only item, order, or checkin record that is attached to a bib is deleted, but the bib record itself is not.

This is not an issue if you are withdrawing items from your collection, and there is more than one library attached to a bib record. In this situation you simply delete your item record as usual, leaving the bib and all the other attached items alone. However, if you are the only library attached to the bib record, then you must delete that bib along with the item.

There are several ways to delete records in Millennium without leaving an "orphaned" bib record behind. First, you can go the bib record edit screen, and click on "file" in the upper left corner. Then select "delete bibliographic record" from the drop down menu. Doing it this way will eliminate both the bib record and your item in one step.

If you prefer it, a second method of deleting records is to change the status of your item record to "w" (withdrawn). This is a useful way to keep track of withdrawals if you like to keep a count for your statistics. After you have changed the item status then you can create a list of all your library's items marked "withdrawn" and then use that review list in the "Delete records" mode. This method allows you to globally delete all those "w" item records and the bibs they are attached to if no other libraries are attached. If you are unable to use the Delete records function, please let me know and I will do it for you.

Finally, if you choose to use the "scan/delete" in Delete records for withdrawing large batches of records, please be aware that this will delete your item records ONLY. It will leave empty bibs behind, so for that reason I don't recommend using it except when you really need to