Access Services Interest Group

Hello Everyone,

I am the only person in the Access Service Department at my university.   I need assistance with best practices for labeling professors' books held in reserve and how to create a course reserve record in Sierra  5.3.0_7.   I have included pictures of how books have been labeled for course reserves. 

My concern is that nothing was documented so I don't know how to create a course reserve record and taping the large piece of laminated paper to the front of the book and the pocket to the back.  

I don't have access to the Sierra Listserv and have yet to receive training on Sierra.  I have submitted to ticket to Innovative about creating a course reserve record in Sierra. 

Hi! I don't have experience with Sierra, but hopefully my experience might help.

I'm unsure if your question is about tracking that the book is a professor's copy or if it concerns how to change the book's shelving location or status to reserves, so I'll tackle both.

As for tracking professor copies, we would keep a spreadsheet of all our reserve texts, and in there note that it was a professor's copy (under a column for call number) and would include the professor's name and date the book was dropped off (and later picked up) further along in the spreadsheet. This proved exceptionally helpful for finding the proper owner of a book that was left with us for years, as the information was carried from one semester to the next (different pages in the same spreadsheet).

As far as Sierra goes, I have a few suggestions. Try (carefully) exploring the record for some of the other reserve items. If you have editing capabilities, see if changing the record in question's status or shelving location or what have you to match what you find works (I recommend taking screenshots before and after, though, so you can change things back if it doesn't work). Also, go on a hunt for other institutions' training guides. I had a number of people reach out to me at my last position asking to use my training LibGuide for ILL because they'd never had training and wanted to earmark it for others, so it is often done in these situations. A quick search turned up this one from WVLS, this one from URSUS, and this one that seems to be from Sierra itself, but I can't be sure if they'll be of any help since I'm not familiar with the ILS.

Finally, do you have a technical services department? If so, they might know more about the system and be able to provide some help.

I hope at least some of this helps and I wish you luck!

Hi Ariana, 

I know this is a few months later, but I was wondering if you figured out how to place them on Course Reserve? Are these titles that a faculty member is making available from their personal library?  I handle the Course Reserves for my institution and have experience with Sierra. 

------------------------------
Alfonso Huerta
Director, Access and Outreach
ArtCenter College of Design
He/Him/His
------------------------------

I haven't used Sierra so I won't be of much help there, but I know with WorldShare there's an option to create a Temporary Item record for stuff like course reserves that aren't being added to the collection permanently, they're not as detailed as a regular record would be, but it does cover the basics. As for labeling the book itself, we typically add the professor's last name to the last line of the Call # sticker so we can tell at a quick glance who the book belongs to.