Hi Maggie,
We run a report annually, and any items that have circulated 3 or more times in the past year get returned, since it costs more to retrieve an item from storage than open shelving. We create a spreadsheet of all items that fall into that category and send it to the unit heads of the different departmental libraries. If anyone would like an item in their collection, they can request it. If not, all items are processed for our main bookstacks. There are some exceptions, such as we wouldn't send a special collections item to the main stacks, or send back one serial volume when the set was in storage, for example. We have not run this report since the pandemic, but we plan to after the new year. If my memory serves me, we typically saw 50-100 items a year returned. I hope that is helpful!
Warm wishes,
Jenny
------------------------------
Jennifer Maddox Abbott
Collection Management Librarian
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
She/Her/Hers
------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: Dec 07, 2022 01:24 PM
From: Margaret Halterman-Dess
Subject: Policies on returning items to main collections from storage
Hi all,
I hope the end of the calendar year is treating you well. Something came up at our libraries recently, and as a result I volunteered to re-evaluate what we refer to as our "Call-Back" policy, aka permanently returning materials to campus from the offsite storage facility. Previously, our policy was to return an item if it had circulated a certain number of times or if a librarian or faculty member requested a specific item. The policy pre-dates the construction of our current storage facility, which is staffed and provides retrieval services M-F.
To my mind, given the continually increasing volume of materials stored out here and ease/speed of retrieval, it no longer makes sense to use number of circulations as a benchmark. For example, I would definitely need to return several titles to our business library using this criteria despite the fact that they no longer keep a physical circulating collection on site.
Do you have a formal policy for returning items from storage? What criteria do you use? I'd really love to hear what others are doing before I resort to creating something new from the ground up.
Cheers,
Maggie Halterman-Dess
Library Annex Coordinator
University of Iowa Libraries
------------------------------
Margaret Halterman-Dess
Library Annex Coordinator
University of Iowa Libraries
------------------------------