Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Inventory Survey

One of the things I want to do to start is to create a consortium wide survey using survey monkey. This survey would ask about current inventory practices, problems, and needs. Here are some of the questions, do you have any others?
  1. Do you currently do some kind of collection inventory?
  2. How often do you do inventory?
  3. Do you have a written procedure that you could share?
  4. What is your primary purpose in doing inventory? Look for missing items? Weeding? Value of Collection? Collection Development?
  5. If you don't currently do inventory, why not?
  6. Do you use any special equipment for inventory?
  7. Do you use any special reports? How do you use those reports?
  8. Do you use any software other than Millennium for you inventory?

3 comments:

Helen said...

June,
In our mind, inventory is not about looking for things already coded as missing, or for collection management, but for verifying that what you thought was on the shelf is really there, and that it is coded correctly.

Our purpose for using the inventory module in our previous ILS was threefold. (We used a handheld barcode scanner to store barcodes which were then loaded into the ILS)

1. To identify available items which should be on the shelf in a specific location, but are not. These items were then searched for in other likely places, or if they could not be found, were set to missing.
2. To identify items on the shelf with an incorrect location code or status (as in In Repair instead of Available) We could also set what the loan rule should be for that specific location we were inventorying and any items not having that loan rule would be flagged as possible problems. The flagged item codes would be fixed, or the item reshelved in the location where it belonged.
3. To verify shelving order. The inventory report would list items not in Call# order, so those items could be correctly reshelved.

The report "knew" which items in a location had status codes which meant the item would not be on the shelf. (HOLD, CHECKOUT, MISSING etc.) We got the mis-shelved report after each section of a location was loaded, and the report on what what was not there, but should have been, after the entire location was scanned.

Some libraries may not understand what an inventory module can do for them -- for instance, identify items on your shelf which do not belong to you; or identify items with an incorrect location code.

Should our questions be more specific, for instance:
Does your library print paper shelf-lists to use while shelf-reading?
How long does it take you to do an average location?
How many issues do you have with your shelf maintenance? - How often do you find other library's materials?
Would you purchase a device to read barcodes to use with an automated inventory process?
What kind of information do you expect to get from an inventory module?
How much staff time is currently spent on the eiNetwork reports now (missing, in transit, etc.)? Inventory would find many of these things automatically which are now being searched manually.

Debi@ACLA said...

Both of your questions, June and Helen, are great. I would also like to know who in the library currently does the "inventory", i.e. pages, reference staff, etc.

Debi@ACLA said...

On the Survey Monkey: On Question #3 - can there be a line draw down separating the 1st three boxes from the 2nd three boxes since these are different parts of each question? If not, maybe "check more than one box" is needed here. On Question #4, I think "You may check more than one box" is also needed.