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Why do these reports look like this?
The lists of book volumes proposed for storage are generated from the
online catalog from standard, pre-formatted reports and using simple selection
criteria (such as date of publication, and lack of/low circulation or in-house
use). Subject librarians have reviewed these preliminary lists and deleted
items which - for qualitative reasons - should be retained in the
Fondren stacks. The lists you are seeing posted are the result of this
combination of quantitative and qualitative review.
Why is the price listed? And why is it $0.00?
The pre-formatted report we need to use to obtain necessary pieces of
information (each individual volume's call number, item/bar code number, and
number of circulations) also includes this field ... our system,
unfortunately, does not permit us to omit it. This "price" is not the
price of the book, but a field used only when the item has been lost by
a library user and a replacement fine assessed. Since these books aren't
lost, the value is $0.00. Please disregard this unnecessary data element.
How far back does the circulation data go?
Fondren Library has been using a computerized system to circulate books
since 1983. We have been able to retain a total count of circulations for
each book from that first system (CLSI), through our second system
(NOTIS), to our current system (Sirsi).
Some of these books have really recent created dates?
Shouldn't you give them time to circulate?
The "Created" date is not the date when the item was acquired, but
only the date when a barcode was placed in the book and linked to the online
catalog record. (At the risk of repeating ourselves, we cannot omit this
misleading piece of data from our online catalog system's report output.)
The vast majority of books published on these lists were published
before we used a computerized catalog/circulation system - barcodes were not
needed or added to the book at the time of purchase. Since we have had a
computerized system, barcodes have been added to older books when/if they
circulated (as well as all new books as acquired). From 2000 through 2004, Fondren systematically barcoded
and inventoried every book in our 2.3 million volume collection. Many of the
low/no use items on these lists have been barcoded recently as part of this
project.
What about in house use?
Fondren Library has been measuring in house use wherever possible for
since approximately 2003, and this is included in our quantitative screening.
Books collected from library tables, carrels, photocopy areas and
circulation drop-boxes are all 'scanned' to record in house use. We
realize this record is much briefer than our file of external
circulation, but the ability to record this use was not an innate
feature of Sirsi and required substantial programming. We are commited
to recording this use in the future. |
