AM 100.1 Borrowing Procedures Draft
Hello all!
The Borrowing Procedure Research has been up for a while now. We have received no comments or questions, so we feel confident in sharing our draft of the Procedures. Under the first section ‘Borrowing’, you will notice that there are three options on what information a member needs to present in order to borrow materials. Between the three options, it covers the information needed to checkout at a circulation desk (with or without a physical card), at a self-checkout, or checking out digitally. These procedures assume that the person already has a library card in good standing.
Other items of note in the proposed procedures include a definition for what constitutes damage of a library item and that the returning library will handle the damaged items. In the Research document, we mentioned that we are recommending reserving the word ‘damage’ for materials that will be charged to a member and the term ‘aged out’ will refer to materials that were not damaged by a member but need to be withdrawn.
What sort of talking points do you think would be most useful for staff and for members when the proposed procedures go into effect? We look forward to your thoughtful comments!
Comments
While I realize the intent is to give great customer service to local members by taking care of problems at the branch they use most, some members use multiple branches and this might create confusion, especially, if the item returned has multiple parts and they return multiple pieces to various libraries. If a BI member happens to return a 3disc set missing a disc in to NW and they return the missing disc to WA because they happen to be in the area, how are we supposed to reunite the items? I realize that we are supposed to place notes on the account, however, we run across this scenario all the time. I think this problem was why it was originally decided to send all the pieces to the owning library so they could reunite and clear the item. It is just so much less confusing and we have always willingly sent damaged items to any location that requests it for their members to view the damage and pay for the item at their home library.
Hi Denise,
Thanks for your comment! When we were reviewing the procedures for damaged materials, we wanted to have the same process for all things considered 'damaged' to keep it simpler. The definition of damaged in the procedures includes materials that are missing parts. We had a couple reasons for making the returning library the one responsible for handling the damaged material.
Knowing the impact that the CAC will have on this process, do you have any recommendations on some best practices that would help the returning library or libraries deal specifically with missing parts?
I am glad to see that we are no longer going to keep the harmful items in house. Are we going to just dispose of the material or are we going to send them to the Friends?
Sarah,
Great question! Normally, once an item is withdrawn, it belongs to the Friends and they get to decide what to do with it. However, in these circumstances where it is unsafe to keep it on site, the safest option would be to immediately dispose of the materials rather than risk ruining other materials by putting them in the same container.
With the new procedures will we be updating the damage forms? The current ones we have were last revised in 2014, when Carl-X became our ILS. If anything updating the term customer to member.
Thanks again!
Hi Sarah,
Small wave hello from your old crew at NW!
The committee agreed that the damage forms need to be updated. We also talked about how a template similar to the form we mail would be useful for email purposes. From the research document: "Training can include best practices on how to notify members about lost or damaged materials – in writing, in person, via phone or email - including the use of templates developed for this purpose."
Would the training be something that is system wide? I know that procedures tend to differ slightly from location given the demographic. But I believe having a form that would let the staff know the basic info about a damage item (where in the library it was returned, the date, and what is the issue) would be really helpful. I know that we do it at MC and it helps with writing the damage letter without having to print off a lot of information off of Carl.
Sarah,
Yes, the anticipation is that creating this system-wide training will be a role for the new Learning and Development Department. That's why we've listed all of our training recommendations at the bottom of the Research document - to make it easy for that department to see what the training needs are. In that document, we list May-June as the proposed timeline for training in preparation for the Policy (and therefore Procedures) to go into effect on July 1st.
Thanks!