Inventory ControlAt

Hampden-Sydney College Library

Toni HamlettHampden-Sydney CollegeSIUG November 13, 2008

Who We Are • Founded in 1775 (10th oldest college in United States)

• Private (Affiliated with the Presbyterian Church)

• Four-year, independent liberal arts college for men • 1340-acre campus 60 miles southwest of Richmond,

Virginia

• Total Enrollment: 1120, Freshmen: 315 • Student/Faculty Ratio: 11:1 • Residency: 96%

About the Library • New 86,000 sq. ft. library Opened in August 2007

• FTE: 12 (5 Librarians, 7 Para-Professionals)

• Student Assistants

• Approximately 250,000 titles, 300,000 Volumes

• 300 print periodicals

• Online Electronic Resources

Inventory History • Last Inventory in 1986 during asbestos abatement

• 3M Security System obtained in 1991

• Innovative Interfaces ILS obtained in 1995

• Items bar-coded by students as time permitted or as items were brought to the desk for circulation

• 44,824 items remained to be barcoded in 2006

• Smart barcodes were obtained in 2006 and barcoding completed in 2007.

Inventory History (cont.)

• We moved to the new building Summer 2007• We set up inventory procedures in cataloging and

used students to begin the project• The project was transferred to the circulation

department, and is now handled by the night circulation manager as time permits.

• Problems are handled in circulation and then forwarded to cataloging as necessary

Problems Students made many errors when barcoding

– 2 barcodes on 1 item record – Barcodes on books but not in item record– 2 barcodes on one book (1 inside, 1 outside) – Many books still have no barcodes

• Smart bar-coding revealed many missing items– Many barcodes were left after students went

through the collection placing barcodes on items– After inventory, we will do 1 more search– Mark as missing– Replace or Delete

Problems (cont.)

• Smart bar-coding created many problems– Only Records with no item records were sent to vendor for

item/smart barcode creation– If the 300 MARC field showed multiple volumes (12 v.), that

was how many item records/smart barcodes were created.• Sometimes we did not own all the volumes

• Catalog record should show how many we did own in a note

• Students didn’t always notice the problem, leaving barcodes on the sheets that now need to be dealt with.

– If the 300 MARC field showed an open volume field ( v.), then only 1 item/smart barcode was created, even though we may have multiple volumes.

• Students were supposed to bring these other volumes to us to be bar-coded, but may have missed some.

Procedures

• We use Wireless Workstation for our inventory• We use a tablet PC and a wireless scanner

– HP Compaq TC 4400 Tablet PC

– Honeywell 4820 Cordless 2D Image Scanner

Procedures

• Wireless Workstation

Procedures (cont.)

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Procedures (cont.) The inventory date will be placed into INVDA in the item

record

Procedures (cont.)

Procedures (cont.)

• We work in small call number ranges• We create 2 lists when we finish

– Missing Items• Within location specified• Within call number range• Do not have inventory date• Are not checked out

– Items incorrectly shelved in the range.• With inventory date specified• Are not within call number range inventoried or• Are not within location inventoried

Missing Items List Call numbers inventoried: AE 25 – BX 9772

Missing Items List (cont.)

• Sort resulting list by call number• Look at the catalog/item record for clues• Check shelves in other locations where item could

possibly be shelved– Shelved in alternate locations – Faded labels– Wrong call numbers on books

• If not found print out the record and place in a file drawer kept in circulation

• We have inventoried through the F range and found approximately 300 missing items.

Items Incorrectly Shelved

Items Incorrectly Shelved (cont.) These items have the inventory date, but the catalog

record indicates the location or call number do not match the area inventoried.

• Sort list by call number• Shelf read area you just inventoried to find items

Where We AreWhat We’ve Learned

• We have not finished the whole collection

• The clean-up of problems involves many people• • We need to make this an on-going process

• It has gone better than we thought it would and has been well worth the trouble