I am pleased Mr. Lester's non-Innopac system does not have this
problem.  The problem I described is insufficiently severe to induce our
systems office to invest in a different system, and I think that would
be the case generally.  Miss Wong is working with an Innopac system.
With regard to technology, I myself am not sure of anything.

        The time of day the data is collected is not of concern to me, but our
director does insist on monthly reports and this is a kink of which one
must be aware if one is not to be presenting one's supervisors with a
very peculiar statistical time series. I couldn't be bothered to do
daily downloads. I have other things to do.

        Courtesy titles are a component of keeping a civil distance from
people, the utility of which remains as it was in 1962, even if fewer
people avail themselves of it.

        We have over 5,000 titles.  I haven't the spare time to be
trolling the aisles looking for missing labels and barcodes.  I do not
know why they were disappearing from the shelves, but they were.  That
in and of itself was a minor problem. We had some superordinate reasons
for junking the previous system which did not have to do with these
physical properties and which were peculiar to this institution.  The
label problem was one I took into consideration in designing a new
system, along with the downloading glitches.

        All of our internal use monitoring is done at a central location, at
stationary workstations, where all books to be reshelved are ordered on
carts.  Our building is not so large that pushing a cart around is so
troublesome.  I have not noticed much systematic association between
where books are found lying about in the building and where they are
shelved, so I cannot see the efficiency gains to be had from
shelving-as-you-go.  At the time we implemented the new system, the
circulation supervisor told me her students preferred the big honkin'
binders to the portable reader.

        Cheers,

                IW

I. Woodward
Serials Office
Colgate University Libraries
13 Oak Drive
Hamilton, N.Y. 13346
USA
Ph:  315-228-7306
Fax: 315-228-7934
iwoodward@mail.colgate.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Lester [mailto:dan@riverofdata.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2002 2:09 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: Re: Percon Barcode Scanner used for Inhouse statistics

Tuesday, December 3, 2002, 6:38:25 AM, you wrote:

IW> inventory.  One difficulty you find with such an implement is that
IW> the Innopac system may freeze as you are attempting to download your
IW> collected data.  In such circumstances, the data you have collected
IW> is lost.

That has never been a problem with our non-Innopac system.  We're quite
sure it won't be with our future non-Innopac system either.

IW> Also, the circulation statistics function credits the collected data

IW> to the time at which you downloaded the data, not the time at which
IW> it was input into the portable scanner.

That hasn't been a problem, since we don't care what time of day they
were used.  I'm not sure why we would care, in fact.

IW> If the monthly statistics are salient to you, you must remember to
IW> download your data within the month you collected it.

No problem.  We do that daily.  And of course same is true for daily,
weekly, etc.

IW>         Our institution used to make use of barcodes on shelf labels
IW> in a matter similar to that referred to by Mr. Lester.

My goodness.  I've not been called that in years.  Mr. Lester was my
father, who died over 40 years ago.

IW> In addition to the troubles noted above, these labels disappear.

That hasn't been a problem.  They're thoroughly stuck on the shelves,
and the library assistant who supervises the current periodicals area
handles the rare problems.

IW> Our student workers do not typically manifest the initiative to
IW> actually inform the staff of anomalies and impediments such as this.

IW> We thus removed these labels and relegated the portable reader to
IW> tasks of inventory control.

We have seven portable scanners and scan all items picked up anywhere in
the building.

IW>         At this point, we have a print title list kept in some big
IW> honkin' looseleaf binders.  For each title, there is a barcode
IW> attached to a dummy item record which functions as a deposit for use
IW> statistics.

We do that for microform sets and serials.

IW> Mr. Lester's system requires such a dummy record as well.  Before
IW> shelving, our student workers arrange the mass to be shelved in
IW> alphabetical order and then locate the barcode for each title in the
IW> register, making one stroke across the appropriate barcode for each
IW> item of a particular title to be shelved.

Then you have to take the issues to a central location to scan, instead
of just reshelving as you go.  Or else you must haul that big honkin'
binder around with you while picking up things.

IW>         Lists such as this do require maintenance.  New titles have
IW> to be added.

True enough.  Just as new titles have to be added to the catalog, the
current periodical shelving area need new labels, and so forth.

Of course either system, and undoubedly some others not mentioned, could
work for a given library.  One of the good things about a list like this
is to see the wide variety of ways a problem can be solved.

cheers

dan

--
Dan Lester, Data Wrangler  dan@RiverOfData.com 208-283-7711 3577 East
Pecan, Boise, Idaho  83716-7115 USA www.riverofdata.com
www.gailndan.com  Stop Global Whining!

I. Woodward
Serials Office
Colgate University Libraries
13 Oak Drive
Hamilton, N.Y. 13346
USA
Ph:  315-228-7306
Fax: 315-228-7934
iwoodward@mail.colgate.edu