A Peek Behind the Curtain...

Submitted by Meredith Causey 

If you're curious about the process behind the curtain here in Oz, I mean, the Materials Department, follow the yellow book road!

Kim, Molly, and Alexa shop for lots of books and make online shopping carts. Melissa, our Acquisitions Specialist, imports those shopping carts into Polaris. As soon as Melissa presses the release order button in Polaris, the books appear as "ON ORDER" in the catalog so patrons can place holds. We receive boxes of books every day. Some days maybe only two boxes arrive. The other day, we received 42 boxes of books! 

We unpack all of the books onto carts. Melissa will then "receive" the books in Polaris and the item goes from "ON ORDER" to "on order" status. So, lower case "on order" means the book is physically here in the Materials Department. She will roll the cart of books over to be processed. Melissa then marks the items paid in Polaris so our budget funds show us how much money we have spent and how much money we have left. Melissa and I prepare financial documents for Support Services who will actually pay the bills.

Our new Materials Assistant will next process books. Right now, EVERYTHING we receive has no processing, so it's just like a book you would buy at the store. It is all-hands on deck and everyone is helping to process the books as quickly as we can to get the books to our patrons and to our shelves. THANK YOU MATERIALS STAFF!!!

The Materials Assistant will roll the cart of processed books over to "cart island" to be cataloged. Our awesome cataloging staff, Daisy, Shane, and Leslee, will catalog the items and check in the items and place them in courier bins. We have a system where we process and catalog items with holds first. If there are timely and/or seasonal items, we will pull those out and process and catalog them after the holds. Then we will process and catalog everything else on a first-in, first-out method. We run a hold report here in Materials, too! The fastest way for a patron to get a new book is to simply place a hold. We will search all the "on order" books on the carts for those holds and move them up the line. It's like a treasure hunt! In normal times when we aren't having delivery issues, and all our ordering profiles are operational, it takes about 3 weeks for a book to arrive here in Materials and out to you at the branches.

Next, our AMAZING facilities staff will pick up the courier bins and deliver the bins to the branches. You are also PHENOMENAL in all the tasks you do when the new books arrive at the branches. It really is a team effort. Thank you, Public Services staff for all the things you do everyday to provide exceptional services to our patrons and community!