Dear Monica,
We have a very similar situation to yours, at Norwich School of Art &
Design - i.e. Teaching staff have cards with their individual names, which
they insert whenever they remove a slide. They then fill in a form with a
rough record of the slides they have borrowed
e.g. Manet 4,Seurat 6 etc. We do not photocopy the slides that are borrowed
and staff could borrow an unlimited number of slides for as long as they
needed.
Access used to be allowed to the Slide Library when unstaffed, when it was
within the Library building. However, now that the slides are housed in a
separate building it is more difficult. Usually there is a member of staff
here(mainly me), but the Library holds a key which staff can sign out at
times when there is no-one here.
Some staff return the slides promptly. Others, as in your Library, can hang
on to them for up to a year. We tried at the beginning of this term to limit
staff to 150 slides for the period of 3 weeks, but for some staff, with
heavy teaching programmes, this is already proving difficult. I am fortunate
to have someone working with me on a slide project for a year, so the
problem of the unsupervised collection dosn't apply at this moment.
Students can borrow up to 24 slides for the period of a week and they insert
a white 'Student Loan' card each time they take out a slide. They also fill
in a form with details of each slide they are borrowing.
We are shortly starting a new borrowing proceedure, where each box of slides
taken out is barcoded and the number of slides taken is scanned into the
borrower's general Library record. As the Library system generates overdue
notes, we are hoping this will speed up some of the returns. When the box is
brought back the record is deleted and the box used for another borrower. I
hope this makes sense. If it is successful I'll let you know. It will
probably work fine for the students, but already the staff are saying they
would find this system impossible, as they take out so many slides they are
bound to come back in different boxes.
Finally - a bit of background
The collection consists of about 170000 slides, stored in plastic wallets
within filing cabinets. We do not have an automated system, which we are
finding more and more difficult as the collection grows. We have embarked on
a Slide Library Project, which involves employing someone for a year to help
to reclassify the slides and design a database where we aim to catalogue the
slides by wallet. The database design is proving to be more difficult than
we anticipated (we are using microfoft access)though the re-classification
part is going well so far.
May I ask a question in return ? How do you photocopy slides. Is it just a
matter of laying a wallet on the phocopier & recording the titles, or is it
more sophisticated than that - i.e.recording the images aswell?
Hope this information will be of some use to you.
Best wishes,
Gill Doel
AV Librarian
Norwich School of Art & design
St.George St
NORWICH
NR3 3DE
From: [log in to unmask]
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of
[log in to unmask]
Sent: 09 October 2000 15:13
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Academic staff borrowing slides - Advice/help requested please!
Dear Arlis-link members
HOW DO YOU COPE WITH LARGE NUMBER OF SLIDES BORROWED BY TEACHING STAFF?
I should be very grateful for any information, advice or thoughts fellow
slide librarians may have on the subject of issuing slides to members of
academic staff.
At the University of Brighton we are finding the system we use is no longer
practical because it is too open to malpractice/mistakes.
* Teaching staff are issued with a set of cards with their name on it.
They are expected to insert one of these cards for every slide they remove.
When they have made their selection they are expected to inform a member of
the library staff at the Issue Desk how many slides they have borrowed.
* Staff can borrow within reason as many slides as they need (i.e. up
to 300 slides)
* We experience difficulty in getting slides back from teaching
staff.They hang on to them for a year at a time (sometimes even longer).
I should be very interested to hear what other Arlis members do.
* Do you have an automated system - if so which one?
* Do you record (or ask the teaching staff to record) all the slides
they borrow?
* Do you photocopy the slides teaching staff borrow?
* Do you allow access to the Slide Collection when it is unstaffed?
A bit of background
* The Collection is very large, around 159,000 images stored in
wallets in filing cabinets
* The Slide Collection is housed in Library . It is not staffed
throughout the day, but there is access to the Collection during the hours
the library is open.
* Student loans are not a problem. They can borrow up to 30 slides for
one week. We photocopy them for our records and we charge fines if they are
returned late.
* We operate a manual system
*
I'm sorry to lumber you with this query at the start of the new Academic
Year, but I should be most grateful for any thoughts or ideas
Regards
Monica
Monica Brewis
Course Resources Officer and Slide Librarian
St. Peter's House Library
16-18 Richmond Place
Brighton, BN2 2NA
Tel. (01273) 643220. (direct) 643943
Fax. (01273) 607532
e-mail. [log in to unmask]
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|