I promised in June to summarise the responses to my enquiry about stock
checking policies: my apologies for the delay, but I had a total of five
responses and have been holding on in case more arrived.
One repository bravely admitted that it had never checked its stock. Three
reported that they close for two weeks a year, and another for one week, in
order to check their stock - although two of these admitted that the time is
also used for other tasks which cannot be done when the office is open.
Examples of the latter included "huge sorting jobs using the search room",
major cataloguing, and appraisal in outstores. One repository also checked
one bay of shelving per month, and several commented that producing a
document for a reader is in itself a form of stock check - it proves that it
could be found.
The approach used varies: some tackle specific parts of the collection
(often those which are heavily used) whilst another checked as much as they
could before running out of time.
For the record, here we check 4% of the collection each quarter, having been
told that the results of a 4% sample are representative of 90-something
percent of the entire collection. Half of the sample is generated at random
from our computerised catalogue and the other half is based on location
(e.g. a specific bay). With a team of seven it takes about a day to check
around 1700 items in the library and archives collections: the reading room
is closed but we continue to take telephone enquiries. I'm not suggesting
that ours is an ideal approach, and was trying to get some comparison with
what might be regarded as "standard practice" within the profession.
My thanks to those who responded.
Peter Elliott
Senior Keeper
Department of Research & Information Services
Royal Air Force Museum
Hendon
London
NW9 5LL
Direct line: 020-8358-4850
Switchboard: 020-8205-2266
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