The Vocabulary of a Workflow

One of the projects I’m leading right now is documenting how the library handles lost, missing, and lost paid items in Alma and how those statuses connect to replacement and withdrawal decisions.

I was wrong to assume that the hard part would be documenting the workflow.

First we had to agree on definitions.

What exactly is a “lost” item in Alma? How is it different from “missing”? And how does an item in the “lost” process become “lost paid”?

Those sound like simple questions.

They aren’t.

The answers determine what happens next.

Whether an item gets billed. Whether a replacement gets ordered. Whether a record eventually moves toward withdrawal.

Before we could document the workflow, we had to reorient our vocabulary.

Part of this comes from the migration. Alma didn't just replace Sierra. It replaced part of the language we use to describe our work. Some familiar terms survived the move. Others changed just enough that everyone carried a slightly different understanding of them into the new system. The other part is simply how libraries work.

A lost item moves through Circulation, Collections Management, Acquisitions (for replacement) and Cataloging (for withdrawal or record replacement). Each department understands its part of the process remarkably well, but no one is expected to hold the entire workflow in their head. My role has been to meet with the people responsible for each part of that process and slowly assemble the larger picture.

What surprised me was where the answers came from.

Conversations.

Each meeting fills in another section of the workflow. A decision that seems obvious to one department often answers a question another department has been carrying for years. Just as importantly, the conversations create space for people to ask each other why things happen the way they do, compare assumptions, and leave with a clearer, shared understanding of the policy behind the work.

It turns out documenting a workflow isn’t just about recording what people do.

It’s about giving them a chance to describe it together.