Yesterday was a pretty good day
Yesterday was a pretty good day. After staff meeting on Tuesday, one of our staff members had a suggestion for changing our check-in process that I thought was a great idea. Right now, we have this huge backlog of stuff to be checked in and shelved. We are short-staffed right now, and to make matters worse, we have people on vacation that put in for their vacation long before we lost so many people, so we are way behind. We are the third most heavily used library in Idaho – a huge thing considering we are one of the smaller communities in Idaho. We have a patron base of about 30,000 in our district. We have probably 17,000 active patrons (people who have checked something out at least once in the past three years), and we have an annual circulation of over 500,000. That’s third behind Boise Public Library and Ada Community Library (the district that encompasses the area around Boise). That puts us far ahead of large cities and counties like Pocatello, Idaho Falls, and even Coeur d’Alene, all communities much, much larger than ours. The library district that serves Coeur d’Alene encompasses a county that is over 4 times the size of our district and yet we have a much higher circulation rate than they do. Their circulation is spread over several branches, spreading the workload. Our circulation takes place primarily in our main branch – probably 75% of it. We have about 1500 patron visits each day in just the main branch! So, the workload is heaviest in Sandpoint where we get back thousands of items each week that have to be checked in, cleaned, checked for damage, and re-shelved. Okay, you’re probably bored to tears now. Bear with me a bit longer.
The normal process is that we check the items for damage, clean them, check them in, resensitize them (they have security strips that have to be sensitized and desensitized), put them on carts, and then re-shelve them. The cleaning and checking process is time consuming. That means hundreds and hundreds of items that have been returned sit on a table, waiting to be checked in, sometimes for up to 4 or 5 days after the patron returned them. In many cases, that means patrons appear to have items that are overdue, even though they returned the items on time. Having items overdue means they can’t use our new self-check machine. Without adding more staff immediately, or pulling other staff away from their jobs and press them into service for hours every day to get these items checked in, how do we solve the problem? Well, the suggestion was that we check everything in immediately, then clean, check for damage, resensitize, and shelve items. If we make the goal getting things checked in as quickly as possible after they are returned, that solves a lot of problems. Patrons are no longer inaccurately charged with overdues. More patrons can use the self-checkout unit. Since the person checking in is ONLY checking in, not also cleaning, checking for damage, etc., they will be less likely to make mistakes that result in items not actually getting checked in. With two phases to checking in, the process actually goes a lot faster, it is less complicated, interruptions are less likely to result in mistakes, and more staff members can help out since less training is required for some phases. So, I shared the suggestion with the circulation supervisor, who embraced it enthusiastically. We implemented it yesterday and made amazing progress! We actually got everything checked in by about 3 PM after starting at 10 AM. I worked downstairs pretty much all day, checking in as much as I could, and then shelving DVDs. I’m not “qualified” to do the cleaning and checking for damage because I don’t know all the procedures involved when you run across various forms of damage, missing parts, etc. It would have taken longer to train me in that area than it was worth and I could shelve a whole lot of DVDs in the same amount of time. In fact, I managed to shelve every single DVD that had been checked in – probably 700 of them. It felt great to accomplish so much! I will probably help again today by checking in as much as I can, then shelving videotapes and/or books. Some staff are a little skeptical about the new procedure, but most see how much it actually improves service to our patrons and are very excited about the change. Sadly, we had another terrific staff person resign yesterday. She had applied for our youth services librarian position and didn’t get it. She had told supervisors that she needed more money or she couldn’t afford to continue her education (she is working toward a Masters in Library Science) and that if she didn’t get the YS job, she would probably have to resign. Sadly, she did that yesterday, to my dismay. She really is a great staff person, a hard worker, bright, and provides excellent customer service. Her departure will be felt. That brings to four the number of circulation staff people we will lose in the next three weeks. I don’t know how we will fill those positions in a timely fashion. We are going to feel the loss for weeks and weeks. We need to raise our starting pay or we will continue to lose good people.
Now, off to work.
