Controlling Delivery and Circulation of East Asian Library Video Collections
May 17, 2011
Zack Lane and Sarah Elman
Proposed Change to East Asian Offsite Video Collections
To immediately retrieve and de-accession high-use titles as determined by East Asian selectors. Other criteria may be established to de-accession rare or high-value items that are considered at-risk. All remaining Offsite videos will flip to CLIO Location off,bmc and Item Type resvideo.
The updated CLIO location will allow delivery only to the Butler Media Center. Since the videos will be non-circulating to all patron except Officers, it is necessary to guarantee the delivery location has viewing equipment. BMC is the only department that has this equipment easily available for extended hours.
The location display and ReCAP request form will both indicate ahead of time that the item is non-circulating.
Minimal staff training will be necessary for BMC staff. Staff at BMC evaluate the circulation status of items by presence of a green “Circulating Copy” video. Since none of the videos have this sticker, the CU-prefix barcode will not be a source of confusion for staff.
Background and Purpose
As of Spring 2011, East Asian Library sends all new video collections to BMC or ReCAP--with customer code CV, CLIO location off,bmc and Item Type resvideo. Delivery is limited to Milstein Reserves only and all items are non-circulating (except for Officers who have a 7-day loan).
Previously East Asian video collections were assigned customer code CU, CLIO locations off,eal and off,eax and item type video. Delivery is allowed to all campus locations and circulate to patrons for 7 day loans. Approximately 1,700 titles are encoded in this way.
Preservation concerns for video collections already at ReCAP have prompted a reconsideration of circulation policy. Specifically, staff desire to prevent loss and damage by changing access methods.
Retrospective encoding changes are complex. Large-scale de-accessioning is costly and unlikely to be approved. This document presents a few possible solutions and background information for context.
Proposed Solutions
1)No change at all. There is no evidence to suggest that loss or damage occurs during processing, transfer, delivery or return of Offsite collections. Like other collections, responsibility is transferred to the user at the point of circulation. Library circ staff may be further trained to inspect returned media. Moving forward all videos will have CV barcodes and be deliverable only to Milstein Reserves. All existing CU barcoded videos will remain deliverable to any campus location with current loan periods. [Pro: No additional work. Con: Does not solve the problem with missing discs.]
2)De-accession all titles. Return all titles to campus and use more restrictive encoding. Circulation policy and staff training can be reconsidered for all videos. [Pro: All videos will have the same encoding and circulation policy. Cons: Need to withdraw, reassign call number, and replace barcode for 1,973 items. Not justifiable due to shortage of manpower and other proprieties in the library. May create space problem for ReCAP as well.]
3)De-accession high-use titles. Return all “high-use” titles to campus shelving at BMC Reserve. Library circ staff may be further trained to inspect returned media. Moving forward all videos will have CV barcodes, deliverable only to Milstein Reserves and be non-circ. All existing CU barcoded videos will remain deliverable to any campus location with current loan periods. [Pro: Relatively easy to do—171 titles requested 2 or more times; 74 items requested 3 or more times. Con: Low-use titles may lose discs as well.]
4)Change item type to resvideo for all East Asian owned videos. Item type resvideo limits circulation to only Officers for a 7-day loan (but non-circulating for non-officer patrons). Items will continue to be deliverable to all campus locations. There will be nothing to indicate to the patron that the item is In Library Use Only until the point of circulation. The CLIO location display will appear identical to other circulating collections and there will be no note in the rus notification email that it is non-circ. [Not desirable because the drop-off library needs to have equipment for non-officer patrons to view the discs since they are non-circulating.]
5)Change CLIO location to off,bmc and item type to resvideo. CLIO Location display will indicate that item is non-circ, delivery is only available to Milstein Reserves and items will be non-circ. Customer code will remain CU; barcode-prefix will not change. Because of CU barcodes Circ staff may send emails without In Library Use Only notification and there may be confusion at the point of circulation. [Pros: Can be done systematically without too much manual work. OPAC display is adequate. Drop-off location is correct. Circulation policy will be consistent with other videos. Con: Circ staff need to be trained. Can the notification message be re-configured?]
6)Options 3 and 5 combined? [Pro: Solve all problems with minimal manpower. Con: Custom codes are not consistent, but is this really a big problem?]
Summary of EA Video Collections at RECAP
Accessions: 1,973 East Asian videos accessioned. 1,695 titles.
Requests: 710 requests for 358 titles. 171 titles requested 2 or more times (74 requested 3 or more times).
Retrieval Rate: approx. 14.1%
See chart “Request for East Asian Videos”. Chart indicates that requests for East Asian videos generally fit the pattern of all other requests, in phase with the academic calendar. Request volume is highest in the Fall/Spring, lowest in early Summer/Winter. The chart indicates that request volume has been steady – no dramatic increase in overall usage.
See chart “Destination of Physical Delivery Request.” Pie chart displays the customer code corresponding to the selected delivery location. 70.0% of requests were delivered to the EA Circulation desk, 17.8% were delivered to Butler Circulation, 1.1% delivered to Milstein Reserves, 11.1% were delivered to all other locations.
Types of Encoding
Several encodings control request, delivery and circulation of Offsite collections. Voyager and LAS (ReCAP database) have different encodings that are related but do not directly affect each other.
Voyager
- CLIO Location: controls 1) CLIO Location display in OPAC and 2) drop-down menu options in “REQUEST IT from Offsite” webform
- Item Type: along with CLIO location and Patron Group controls loan period. Options: circ, same, video and resvideo.
LAS
- Customer Code: limits which locations are approved for delivery
Loan Period
Loan period is determined by a combination of Item Type, CLIO Location and Patron Group. Below is a table that presents the loan periods for the encoding in question. Officers (patron group OFF) have more privileges for borrowing from BMC collections.
off,eax / off,eal / off,bmcOFF / Non-OFF / OFF / Non-OFF
video / 7 days / 7 days / 1 day / 1 day
resvideo / 24 hours / 24 hours / 7 days / Non-circ
resspec / Non-circ / Non-circ / 3 days / 3 days
General policies for ReCAP encoding
- Correspondence between CLIO location and customer code: ensures only valid delivery locations will load in request form and communicates in OPAC about loan policy. In this scenario off,bmc corresponds to CV as off,eal/off,eax correspond to CU.
- Correspondence between customer code and barcode prefix: prevents confusion by ReCAP staff about delivery permissions.
- Correspondence between barcode prefix and loan period: prevents confusion by on campus circulation staff about ownership, loan periods and charging. In this scenario off,bmc corresponds to resvideo and off,eal/off,eax correspond to video.
OPAC Example 1. Butler Media Center collections have location off,bmc and item type resvideo. The Location display indicates that the item is “Non-Circ.” Delivery only to Milstein Reserves.
OPAC Example 2. East Asian Video collections have location off,eal and off,eax and item type video. The Location display is standard for circulating collections. Delivery options listed for all campus libraries.