[Sca-librarians] Sca-librarians Digest, Vol 96, Issue 1

[Lissa Underhill]

Stefan-

Shelf Reading (going row by row of books and making sure nothing has been
misfiled) is one way that libraries can find books that have been placed on
the wrong shelf. I work at an academic library, and this is a task assigned
to our student workers.
My library has also  just recently conducted an inventory where each book
was scanned into a computer, and then books which were missing were
identified and either repurchased or removed from the catalog. Again,
student labor here :)

-Lissa


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Message: 4
Date: Tue, 9 Jul 2013 15:49:11 -0500
From: Stefan li Rous <StefanliRous at austin.rr.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-librarians] Barcodes on the OUTSIDE of books
To: Judith Kirk <judith.a.kirk at wmich.edu>,      SCA-Librarians
        <sca-librarians at lists.gallowglass.org>
Message-ID: <6882A168-E586-437E-8DA5-65E43BAB4B72 at austin.rr.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

I'm not a professional librarian, so you can take this for what it's worth.
I do catalog all my books at home though.

Just how do libraries handle misfiled books? Either by the librarians or
the users? When something gets put back on the wrong shelf is it essential
"lost forever"? Or are periodic inventories done to find out, at least,
which books have "grown legs" and walked off or are at the library but on
the wrong shelf. Somewhere.

It would seem like if the barcode was on the spine of the book, someone
could just walk down the shelf, quickly scanning each book and the system
could quickly say if a book was in the wrong position. While this could
also be done by pulling each book off the shelf, opening it up, scanning it
and replacing it on the shelf, this would be a lot more time consuming. As
well as opening the possibility of that leading to mis-filing a book even
if only by one or two positions, as well as being slightly more wearing on
the book itself.

Even if the book is too thin to see the barcode on the spine, having it on
the outside would still avoid having to pull it all the way off the shelf
and open it.

I seem to remember the Dewey decimal or library of congress numbers often
being placed on the spine of library books. I would think that these would
be much more susceptible to wear than a barcode, since you have to wear off
more of a barcode to make it unreadable.

So, what am I missing?

Stefan

On Jul 9, 2013, at 12:19 PM, Judith A Kirk <judith.a.kirk at wmich.edu> wrote:

> Hi all!
>
> We're in the middle of changing our barcoding procedures.
>
> Apparently it's easier for inventory purposes if we put our barcodes on
the back cover, up near the top of the spine.
>
> We -had- been putting them inside the book, along with the date due slips.
>
> But someone decided we needed to make a change, so they ordered new
barcodes that supposedly are heavier duty and designed to be put on the
outside of books and can handle being shelved and reshelved without coming
off.
>
> Do any of you out there already put barcodes on the outside of books in
your library? How are they wearing? Are they coming off or corners curling
or print fading or any other negative bits?
>
> Or has this been a positive change?
>
> Just curious...
>
> Siobhan
> Midrealm
> Not-so-mild-mannered authority control goobette
>

--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
   Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/marksharris
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****








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