We need to do an inventory but know that there are a LOT of books which have been checked out for extended periods of time (possibly as long ago as Covid 2020). We do stamp our books with a 2 week return date, but do not stress this.
We are pondering whether to try to get books turned in first before doing inventory OR do inventory first and then track down the missing books. Your thoughts appreciated-especially those who have been doing church library for a while.
Thanks!
Babs Harris
Replies
I agree with Rhonda and Barbara. Back when our library had more volunteers, I had time to regularly call on overdue books - once a month or so. That was nice because I got a good feel for people's interests, in addition to keeping better track of books. Now there's only two of us so last year I took inventory first, then called on what was overdue. I'm afraid to say that very few of the overdues were returned after my calls last year - so keeping up with the calls definitely brought back more books. Our pastors have always said not to charge for overdues or for lost books because God has the books where he wants them but people sometimes offer to pay for lost books. We use LibraryThing's "Take Inventory" and it works smoothly but you need to have the books in proper shelf order before starting. Then we look at the checkout cards and log books to reconcile and record the findings. Like Barbara says below, we are often happy to find MISSING and LOST books on the shelves. I save a lists of LOST items that have been removed from our catalog because books get returned to us after many years and saving the history of LOST and MISSING can help decipher mysteries.
If think I would do the inventory first. Ideally you would week beforehand but you may not be able to do that. Waiting for books to come back in will lengthen the process.. You might want to announce that you will be doing an inventory and this will usually jog people's memories who have checked out books.
Will this inventory be done by hand or as part of an ILS? If you are doing it by hand and have checkout cards, then make sure that those books are not actually on the shelf. You can print a list if you use an ILS and double check.
Hope this helps.
Rhonda
I would do inventory first because you may find some books that have been returned or shelved in the wrong place. Then try to find the books on your MISSING list. If not found then later mark them in your system as LOST. If you decide to replace the LOST titkes your cataloging is already done for you. Just add a new barcode holding. Then delete the LOST barcode.