Question about search results

We received the following question and believe others are probably asking it as well.

Question: In "item search and display", when I look up "Summer of 69" by Elin Hilderbrand, and look at the detailed display, it lists 97 copies in the main search window. When I open the record and click on the red book widget in the upper left hand corner, it says there are 53 volumes. I had assumed that to mean that 53 libraries owned it and among them there were 97 copies in the system. I now realize that is wrong because when look up "It" by Stephen King, it lists 25 copies and 33 volumes which doesn't make sense. Could you please tell me how these two numbers factor into the system?

Answer: Here is the breakdown of how items are counted in the system.

Title = the bibliographic/cataloging record - there is only 1 based on edition/format/etc. 

Volume = number of call numbers in the system. To use your example, Summer of '69 - here is the display of volumes in the system:

If you then expand to view the items, here is where the 97 copies comes from:


So one volume can have several copies/barcodes/items attached to it.

For "It", there are 33 call number records, but only 25 copies are available - not set to lost, missing, discard, etc. That is where the number of copies in the results list comes from. 

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