Meet me in the library at midnight- I’ll bring the Ghost Hunting Kit! At Michigan Technological University, the JR Van Pelt and Opie library has been experimenting with packing items from its Library of Things into adventure kits and hosting field trips. We found students loved the idea of our Library of Things, but some of the more fun items were often underutilized and overlooked in favor of the more practical calculators, laptops, and cables we lend. Located in the incredibly scenic upper peninsula of Michigan, we saw items such as our GoPros, DSLR cameras, and timers as tools that could do more than just support class projects; these could encourage campus community members to explore our unique area, engage prospective students, and showcase new items.
Join us for a conversation about the logistics of planning field trips, assembling and lending kits on the go with Alma, cultivating partners, and measuring success. We’ll weave in interactive, round-table style brainstorming and conversation on how you can replicate and adapt this at your institution, so that you can leave with a plan!
A misshelved book. LIS migration with no record cleanup. Incorrect call number labels. These are stacks crimes that Tisch Library has faced for years. No inventory of the stacks has ever been completed at Tisch, but one department is determined to close the case file and resolve these mysteries. Using modern API integrations with Alma, our forensic investigators (student workers) systematically examine our crime scene. As they scan items, they are alerted to inconsistencies between Alma and what they see. These investigators pull the items and bring these “clues” to the detectives (Access Staff) who further investigate in Alma what the problems are, resolving what we can, and passing through the Chain of Custody (i.e. technical services work orders) things we cannot. Resolving a variety of "crimes" that have plagued our stacks for years, come hear about the significant progress made in ensuring our shelves and catalog match for the first time in Tisch history. At the end of this presentation, participants will be able to outline the basic components for starting an inventory project. Participants will be able to compare their current inventory processes and identify areas for improvement.
Our presentation details a novel approach to inventory through our ILS' weeding workflows. The workflow functions as a figurative 'lens' through which our holdings are assessed for item and bibliographic-level cataloguing errors or inconsistencies; the proliferation of these for some 16 years prior being a major pain point in the transition to a new ILS. As opposed to typical "snapshot" models of inventory, our method manifests a recombinant teleological and modular process; reporting and data accrual are now continual versus periodic in output, and there is no need for closure. While the procedure is tied to a specific ILS, we believe the broader philosophy and underlying concepts will be applicable to most other library systems.
