This isn't interesting, but I feel like writing about it.
Saturday, 23 April 2016 11:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carose59All Science Is Either Physics Or Stamp Collecting.*
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I work in a closed department of the library in Indianapolis. Virtually all the new material comes in through us, and our job is to get it ready to circulate. We attach barcodes and agency stickers to the back cover of books and security and pockets to their inside back pages. We print spine labels and attach them, and for newly-released books we put date stickers on the spine. We do similar things to CDs and DVDs.
Once the material is ready to go to the branches (there are twenty-four branches—including the central library and the bookmobile station), we distribute it into totes on a conveyor. Because we have a floating** collection, it's important to distribute the material evenly, so the big branches get enough material to fill their shelves and the small ones aren't overwhelmed. For that reason, each day there's a different distribution order. (We don't order a copy of every book for every library. Some books we only order five or ten copies of. So on Monday those five books would go to Central and four other agencies; on Tuesday it would be four different ones.)
The totes are gray plastic, the kind with interlocking lids that you can "lock" closed with zip ties. To one end, a clear plastic pocket is attached, and into that we put a tag—a three by five card with an agency sticker. That tells the drivers where to take the totes. These tags are important the way all small cogs in big machines are important: remove the cog and the machine stops running.
There's a code to the tags. Or something. The stickers are different colors: orange, yellow, purple, green, and pink. The cards are different colors: yellow, purple, orange, pink, and green. I have no idea what the different colors mean. It's got nothing to do with the size of the branches. It's got nothing to do with their locations. But for some reason, it's very important. The system was designed by other people, but I'm in charge of keeping the boxes with these tags filled.
I have nothing to do with the distribution list that tells us how many books will go to the various branches. All I can do is try to work out a system that keeps the boxes properly filled without spending a ridiculous amount of time on it. It has not been easy.
The original arrangement was to give the big branches fifty tags, the medium sized branches forty tags, and the small branches thirty tags. (Central was excluded from this because Central was always at the top of the list.) The problem was this was obvious: the boxes were filled too full. I reduced the numbers, then watched for a while to see how things worked.
The next problem I found was that there were four branches out of order: two branches higher on the lists were getting fewer cards than two that were lower on the lists. So I reconfigured the numbers and watched some more.
The flow was definitely better. But then they reconfigured the distribution lists.
Are you bored? There's more, but I'll save it for tomorrow.
*Ernest Rutherford
**A floating collection is one where the books don't belong to any particular agency. If you check out Wuthering Heights at the branch on your way to work but return it at the one on your way to the mall, it'll stay at the one you return it to. This requires the branch staff to pay attention to what's on their shelves and send excess copies to branches that don't have any. The upside is, books aren't moved around just to send them "home," and this saves staff time and gas. Of course it's all more complicated than this. Everything is more complicated than a one paragraph explanation.
-:- -:- -:- -:-
I work in a closed department of the library in Indianapolis. Virtually all the new material comes in through us, and our job is to get it ready to circulate. We attach barcodes and agency stickers to the back cover of books and security and pockets to their inside back pages. We print spine labels and attach them, and for newly-released books we put date stickers on the spine. We do similar things to CDs and DVDs.
Once the material is ready to go to the branches (there are twenty-four branches—including the central library and the bookmobile station), we distribute it into totes on a conveyor. Because we have a floating** collection, it's important to distribute the material evenly, so the big branches get enough material to fill their shelves and the small ones aren't overwhelmed. For that reason, each day there's a different distribution order. (We don't order a copy of every book for every library. Some books we only order five or ten copies of. So on Monday those five books would go to Central and four other agencies; on Tuesday it would be four different ones.)
The totes are gray plastic, the kind with interlocking lids that you can "lock" closed with zip ties. To one end, a clear plastic pocket is attached, and into that we put a tag—a three by five card with an agency sticker. That tells the drivers where to take the totes. These tags are important the way all small cogs in big machines are important: remove the cog and the machine stops running.
There's a code to the tags. Or something. The stickers are different colors: orange, yellow, purple, green, and pink. The cards are different colors: yellow, purple, orange, pink, and green. I have no idea what the different colors mean. It's got nothing to do with the size of the branches. It's got nothing to do with their locations. But for some reason, it's very important. The system was designed by other people, but I'm in charge of keeping the boxes with these tags filled.
I have nothing to do with the distribution list that tells us how many books will go to the various branches. All I can do is try to work out a system that keeps the boxes properly filled without spending a ridiculous amount of time on it. It has not been easy.
The original arrangement was to give the big branches fifty tags, the medium sized branches forty tags, and the small branches thirty tags. (Central was excluded from this because Central was always at the top of the list.) The problem was this was obvious: the boxes were filled too full. I reduced the numbers, then watched for a while to see how things worked.
The next problem I found was that there were four branches out of order: two branches higher on the lists were getting fewer cards than two that were lower on the lists. So I reconfigured the numbers and watched some more.
The flow was definitely better. But then they reconfigured the distribution lists.
Are you bored? There's more, but I'll save it for tomorrow.
*Ernest Rutherford
**A floating collection is one where the books don't belong to any particular agency. If you check out Wuthering Heights at the branch on your way to work but return it at the one on your way to the mall, it'll stay at the one you return it to. This requires the branch staff to pay attention to what's on their shelves and send excess copies to branches that don't have any. The upside is, books aren't moved around just to send them "home," and this saves staff time and gas. Of course it's all more complicated than this. Everything is more complicated than a one paragraph explanation.