Q & A with Linda Strader
Linda is the director of Philiomathean Free Library in Belleville. The library is open 14 hours per week and has a staff of one person. The size of the library’s collection is 4743 items. They started checking out items on the Circulation System July 25, 2016
Weeding the collection is one of the first steps. Was this an overwhelming task and what didyou do with the unwanted items?
When you look at it all at once - it is overwhelming. But when you break the weeding down into one category & one shelf at a time, things went along easier and faster. Small steps at a time. We boxed up our discards for our annual July book sale. Those that didn’t sell, were given to different groups in the surrounding area.
When did you start barcoding the collection and how long did it take?
Barcode training started on Jan. 28 & I officially started barcoding on 2/1/16. It took us 5 1/2 months to barcode the existing collection.
Who did the barcoding and how many hours were devoted to this?
I did 85% of the barcoding and was helped by 2 other board trustees. I could do most of the work during my regular hours of 14 hours per week. The board allowed 20 hours of overtime also.
Did you find the task of barcoding the collection easy or difficult?
I found the barcoding to go along pretty smoothly. For the items not in the circulation system, I scanned the information emailed NCLS to have the titleadded to the circulation system.
Who trained the staff and where was the training?
Marcia Bulger & Pam Wills from NCLScame right to the library for my training.
How has Circulation System made your daily job of running library easier?
It’s much easier to check out books, discharge them when they come back, easier to place holds for patrons & for patrons to place holds at their home for pick up here. It has substantially increased our interlibrary borrowing & lending.
What has been the feedback from your patrons?
It took some getting used to, but after a while they were comfortable placing holds and looking at their account information online. One feature patrons really liked was the alert I get when they had already checkout the title. They are thrilled that we can borrowed books much easier and they arrive faster.
More comments: The best thing about the automation is at the end of the year, these figures automatically total for the Annual Report. No more manually counting anything. I recommend the time & effort that it takes to barcode your collection to automate!
If you have any questions for Linda Strader, you can contact her by phone or email
315-846-5103 or