1. Select Manage Patron Services from your quick links located at the top of the screen in Alma or from the fulfill menu located on the left hand side of the screen. This will open the Patron Identification screen.
2. The Patron Identification screen gives you a place to Scan patron's ID or search for patron. From here you will either scan the barcode on the back of an M State ID or you can search the patron by name or StarID. If you are manually typing in a name or StarID you will have to hit the go button to tell Alma to search.
3. After successfully searching for the patron you should see their account open with their name listed on the right hand side of the screen and be prompted to Scan Item Barcode. The cursor should automatically be blinking in the scan item barcode field but if it isn't click your mouse in the box to place the cursor there. At this point you should be able to scan the M State specific barcode into the field or manually type it in if a scanner is not available.
4. An item that is successfully checked out will appear down below in the loan display field.
1. To check an item back into the Alma system, select Return Items from your quick links menu on the top of the screen or from the fulfillment menu on the left hand side of the screen. This will open the Manage Item Returns screen.
2. Scan or type the M State specific barcode into the scan item barcode field.
3. If the item has been successfully checked back in you will see the item record below as well as the patron information.
To renew an item in Alma you will first need to open the patrons record by searching for them in the Manage Patron Services field. Once you have the patrons record pulled up the first screen should be loans where there will be a list of items that are checked out to the current patron.
Locate the item that needs to be renewed and click on the three dots to the far right side that will reveal a drop down menu. Select Renew from the list of options. The item should automatically renew for another full loan period.
If the patron has already renewed the item once but wants to renew it again you might have to override a message that will appear to let us know the patron has already renewed the item. As long as there is no one waiting for the item in question a patron is allowed to continue renewing an item until they are done with it. All you should have to do when this screen pops up is to approve the override.
There will be rare occasions where you might check out a book or item and know a pre-determined due date for example a month out or a semester end. When this happens you can change the due date to a specific date during the check-out process. Follow all the steps to checking out a book, when the book is checked out and displaying in the loans section of the record click the three small dots on the right hand side of the item record.
Select the Change Due Date option, a new screen will pull up where you are able to select a specific date. Once you have selected the correct date, click the blue button marked Change Due Date.
This is the catalog home page which you can access from the library website. From here you can perform a basic search by typing into the Search Anything box - I recommend you search for a title, author, or subject matter and not use a phrase like you might in Google. When you perform a basic search with no parameters in place you might get results back from the entire MNPals consortium as well as some database results, so this is a good route to go when you are looking for what information is out there. If you are looking for a specific item an advanced search might be a better route to try.
This is the Primo advanced search page. This can be very helpful if you are looking for a specific item and you have multiple pieces of information to input into the search fields. When you search this way it should bring back less but more accurate results.
1. A basic search will bring back items both physically in the library and held virtually in our databases. The items in the database are very hit or miss, it is still preferable to do a database search in the actual database for accurate results.
2. If you select Held by library in the Availability menu on the left hand side of the screen it will narrow down the results to physical items that can be found on our shelves.
3. If you want to see the books that are specific to your campus library and not just M State in general you can limit it further by selecting your campus under the Library menu on the left hand side.
