It's End of the school year again and for librarians like me, it's inventory time! Best time of the year to do it. Inventory is performed in order to assess which books exist, how many are missing and are damaged. This is also a good way of indentifying the weakness of the collection.
Honestly, if I can have it my way, I would not want to go through the grueling task of the whole inventory process. It is such a hassle especially if you have to do it manually, that is, pulling out each book from every single shelf checking the accession number, call number and the title. But since I am well aware that I cannot get away with it, I thought of what would be the most time-efficient way to do it. Well, like many others, we don't have a barcode reader to scan the books that when you're done the report can be generated right away.
There are three mano-mano ways that I know of to do the inventory:
First is the Shelflist Card approach. Shelflist cards are arranged the way the books arranged on the shelf. During inventory, you insert the card to the book it represents.
Second, by checking the books against the Accession Record or the Accession Approach. All you have to do is check the accession number each book and then put a mark on the same number in the accession record to indicate that the book exist.
The third and the last, is a variation of Accession Approach which is done by writing the accession numbers of the books per shelf. Yes, all you need is a Record Book or a piece of paper (bond or writing pad) where you can record the accession numbers.
Now What?
Because I only know three ways of doing manual inventory, I had to pick one that best suits me. Using shelflist cards I think is time consuming in a way that you'll have to pull-out every single card later when you are done. Then you would need to put it back and arrange it again from the card catalog or to anywhere you are storing it. So, it's a NO.
I have considered doing the second one however I have three Accession Books! And if I have to leaf through the pages the entire time two things will possibly happen. One, at the end of the inventory my Accession Book will be more tattered than it already is and two, aside from muscle pain, back pain I might also get carpal tunnel syndrome. (Um, too bad, that's the humor part of this article. =) ) I put an X mark on this one.
Therefore I employed the third one and tweaked it a little bit. Let me share it with you.
Firstly, I prepared the template on my computer where the Inventory Year is indicated. Then, I added lines where you can put the Shelf number and numbered the paper up to the maximum capacity of each shelf. This is time-saving since all I needed to do is write the accession number in each space provided. I call this inventory sheet. Two inventory sheet fits on one bond paper. Secondly, several photocopies of the inventory sheets were made depending on how many I would need (with extra... just in case).
Before the actual inventory I had to shelf read in order to return misshelved books and of course prior to this- borrowed books we're recalled. I give faculty and staff two weeks notice. Finally, I'm ready to begin! (inventory sheets, check; ballpen, check; ladder, check; Cobra energy drink, towel ...check.)
If one has to follow this, attention to detail and accuracy is important. Since we are only writing numbers and nothing more - there is a tendency to mix 1392 to 1932 or 1866 to 1806.
After all the lifting and writing and lifting and writing; climbing up and down the ladder; counting books per shelf to match what I had written I was finally done! (or so I thought).
The next thing will be encoding the result on your database (excel or access). What I did was arrange my list according to call number. In doing so, I wouldnt have to search each number one by one. Marking each number in your softcopy will be a breeze and you're done in no time! Excel is a gift from heaven that makes preparing a statistical report fast and easy.
I never meant to write a novel, sorry. But just in case you're in the same boat as I am, you can try this. There might be an easier and faster manual way though. Maybe in one year of two years time we can have that barcode reader but while I am without it, it’s going to be the efficient mano-mano way for me.
