Insurance for book inventory

Maxine Johnson Bersch Lovern September 24, 2010 14:11

You will save yourself a lot of time by simply setting a price for non-fiction H.Back and P.Back, and for fiction, the same. You could do the same in the J. section, maybe using different categorization such as Picture book, and N.F. You arrive at that by entering all those prices you have there in your computer accession book for the past year in each category, and clicking plus and then divide by the number of book entries and get an average price, then that is the price to use so you do not have to look up each one. Some of your treasures may be out of print and irreplaceable, so you are keeping them, but this way, you know about what it would cost to buy a book with similar information in it. If you have had much experience you could just say to yourself, Hmmm! I am paying even with 20% off, this non-fiction library copy is at least 22.00. Go to your accession book and look at your entries for the past 12 month, Say you have bought eight in that classification. That is 144.00 divided by 8 = $18.00. You are not far off, you see. So either way that saves you the most time. Time is of the essence and we don't have a lot to spare these days. This is just a suggestion, and you could run it by your staff and let them help you decide. Now, when you go to buy one of these books, you might pay more, or less, but not as much as your time is worth! There are so many things to do! It's like peeling an onion! Mackie

29lnxug2p0k8b September 8, 2010 9:54

Rita's answer is generally what I do.

Most insurance policies are written to indemnify the policyholder, meaning they aim to put you back where you were before the loss, not better off but not worse off. They will generally pay you the amount that the item(s) can be replaced for, regardless of whether they buy it for you or just give you the money to replace it. Sometimes they will use book dealers/stores to get a price if an item is hard to find; a lot of it comes down to negotiation if it is a rare/valuable item. Just slapping an average price on anything without a known cost might not take into account the condition of the item, the age, the rarity, etc. and you may end up significantly over or under the true value.

I use Amazon frequently. You can enter the ISBN to make sure you are getting the same book, and then you will see varying costs depending on the dealer/store. That will give you a pretty good idea of where an insurance adjuster might start looking... Praying none of us ever have to deal with all that trauma!

Pam Whitehead > 29lnxug2p0k8b September 8, 2010 15:33

A week before we were going to open our library at my home church the church caught fire!!!!! We LOST ALL of our books!!! :( HOwever, it had been included in the insurance however they do that. All I had to do was give them an approx. cost based on what the books cost. Since we had just started we didn't have any old books. I gave that info to someone who turned it. Later told me I had the money to refurnish our library from insurance! Until the new church was built our library was on rolling carts that pulled out after or before each service. People still checked out books and we still had our summer reading club. The old fellowship hall survived the fire so that's where we met for a very long time. It worked though! AND look the first go around on setting up the library was just practice! :-) So, it setting up a second time when soooo smoothly!!!!! YES, ISBN numbers are the key!
- Mildred Penn > Pam Whitehead September 8, 2010 16:15
  
  Did you have to give the insurance company a list of your books along with their value or did they just ask for the number of books that you had?

Rita Kirkland September 7, 2010 15:02

Go on line and find the value of the book and list it as the cost. Out-of-print books can still be located with a price.

Rita Kirkland

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Insurance for book inventory

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