Thing Five: Reflective Practice

I have struggled with what to write for my reflective practice entry. And I still don't really know what to focus on. My last week at work prior to the summer holidays was when I conducted my stock check, so I guess I will focus on this.

What?
Each year I conduct a stock check within the library to see how many books have been lost, possibly stolen, withdrawn, etc. It gives me a good idea of what our weakest stock areas are, and gives me chance to clean the shelves and identify stock that may need to be repaired, or may need to be withdrawn.

Scanning the barcodes took me 3 days in total from 8am - 4pm. A few years back we purchased a usb barcode scanner that can be plugged into the library laptop. I used this set up on a wheelie trolley to move around the shelves and scan each barcode. I took each book off the shelf, scanned the barcode on the inside cover, then put the book back on the shelf. The stock check showed we had almost 6000 items - that means I did this 6000 times - omgosh no wonder my arms hurt when I finished!

On the 4th day I uploaded the data and analysed my results.

So What?
From the stock check, I identified roughly 30 books that needed repair, 5 DVDs that needed cleaning, and 200 books that needed to be withdrawn, either due to severe damage to the book, out of date information, or simply because the book hadn't been taken out in 28 years (yes REALLY!)

While going through each book I noticed some barcodes had been stuck a few pages in, under the date label (so that it had to be lifted up before accessing it), or even inside the back pages in some books. Although at the time of cataloguing, the positioning of the barcode must not have seemed like such a big deal to the person doing it (these were catalogued before I worked here), it actually slowed the stock check down quite substantially.

Now What?
When cataloguing in future I will ensure the barcodes are stuck on the first page, directly below the date stamp label for ease of access.

I have set to work on cleaning the DVDs and repairing the books. All stock should be in excellent condition by the time we open again in September.