A book comes to the library… a long and winding trail
The library has lots of books, but exactly how do they get on the shelf? Like most of you, we use Amazon to buy books, but the process of buying a book for the library is more convoluted than what we do at home (My personal system at home is to rip open the box and snuggle up in a comfy chair with my new book and some coffee or other beverage. Repeat as needed.)
Picking and choosing
Librarians use their knowledge of the curriculum and research needs of their patrons to look for new books on appropriate topics to put into the library collection. It’s easy to pick books that we’re interested in, but librarians have to choose books about topics that they may know little about or have little interest in. To select materials that meet the needs of their patrons, librarians read reviews in Library Journal and Choice, and in other resources. We also take recommendations. If you know a book we should purchase, or a topic area in which you haven’t been successful in finding information, please let a librarian know. We want our collection to meet your needs.
Librarians use their knowledge of the curriculum and research needs of their patrons to look for new books on appropriate topics to put into the library collection. It’s easy to pick books that we’re interested in, but librarians have to choose books about topics that they may know little about or have little interest in. To select materials that meet the needs of their patrons, librarians read reviews in Library Journal and Choice, and in other resources. We also take recommendations. If you know a book we should purchase, or a topic area in which you haven’t been successful in finding information, please let a librarian know. We want our collection to meet your needs.
The paperwork begins, along with checking and double checking and triple checking
Once a book has been identified for purchase, we fill out a card with the title, the author, the publication date and edition, the cost, and the ISBN (individual standard book number), and sometimes other information. Before ordering books, we need to check our catalog to verify that we don’t already own the item. After that, we have to check to see that we haven’t already ordered the book, and then confirm that an ordered copy of the book isn’t already here and just not in the catalog. You probably don’t have that problem with the books you order for home, but when you order hundreds of books, you need to double check that you don’t already have the item sitting on a shelf somewhere.
Once we have identified materials for purchase, we go to
Amazon (or other vendors) and order the books.
We have some special considerations that we apply to choosing which
books to order. We try to choose hard
cover books, because they last longer, but sometimes the cost is much more expensive than that for a
paperback. So we have to decide whether
the durability is worth the cost, or whether we would rather buy the less
expensive paperback and maybe have to replace the material later. As a side
note, librarians love when they have
to replace a book because that means it was used.
That means we picked something that people really, really wanted. We also have
to check to make sure that the item is the most recent version. In some
instances we buy books that aren’t new because the item is out of print. Like
you, we group our orders together to get FREE SHIPPING!
Let the e-mail tracking begin!
Our orders can total hundreds of dollars and be shipped in lots of different shipments. We get e-mails from Amazon as each shipment is mailed, causing a flutter of e-mails.
The paperwork in action
As boxes of books arrive, we have an extensive check-in procedure. Each item is compared to the packing slip in the box, to make sure everything has actually arrived. We look at each book to make sure that the items are in good (new, usually) condition. Then we check the catalog again to ensure that we don’t already have the book. We note the date the book was received on the order card that we filled out so many steps ago, and write down the actual ISBN. Then we file one copy of the order card in “Orders received,” which we checked before we ordered the book. We do a little more paperwork, involving noting some information about the order inside the book, then we look up the Cutter number—that’s one of the parts of the call number. It helps give each book a unique address on the shelf, so users can find it. Next we check the WYLD catalog to see if any other library has cataloged it already. If they do, we can save some cataloging time by linking to their catalog record, but that step comes later.
Now we’re getting somewhere
From here, the book goes on the “To be Catalogued” shelf, and some paperwork is taken care of on the computer, noting that the item that had been ordered has now arrived.
The next step is Voodoo, or alchemy, or something like that. Cataloguing Librarians (Susan and Nancy)
enter into a mystical state and find the one true call number for the book, and
do whatever it is that needs to be done to have the online catalog share that
information with us when we search the catalog.
Mere mortals don’t have any idea how to do this. (I passed cataloguing, mostly because the
cataloguing teacher didn’t want me to grace her class anymore. At least I think that’s how I got through…
.) The catalogers manage to get the call
number not just into our catalog, but into the WYLD catalog (which lists almost
all the books in Wyoming libraries) and the massive OCLC catalog (they have
about as many books as McDonald's has served hamburgers).
Finishing touches
Now the book enters the final stages before being put on the shelf for patrons to discover. Student workers prepare the books by attaching the due date sheet inside the back cover, and stamping the book with “John Taggart Hinckley Library” and “NWC Library,” so everyone and anyone can see it’s our book. They then insert security strips and sensitize the strips so the books don’t wander away without creating a ruckus. They check the catalog again, to verify that the label on the spine and the barcode agree. The student workers take the printed label and attach it to the spine of the book, “about a thumb width from the bottom of the cover.” (Check this yourself.) It’s then covered, to protect it. Next, the last of the order slips, the one from the “Orders received” file, is put in the book, and the whole thing is put on the “Review” shelf, where a librarian does a quick quality check, to make sure the cover and labels and stamps are all correct.
It’s SHOWTIME!
Ready for the big time, the book is now placed on the New Books & Media shelves, where patrons can browse the new items. With all the handling they’ve had, you probably think the materials are most of the way to worn out now, but they’re just beginning their journey. . It may seem like all of these steps should make it take a long time to get a book, but generally, it only takes about two weeks to go from deciding to order a book to putting it on the shelf. For the Hinckley Library, it happens about 3,000 times per year.
