Note/Use case from IndyPL employee, Alex Oberhaus:
As I am exploring options for new shelf management systems, I am finding that not all wand interfaces include the call number. We have had our Tech Logic wands since 2018. Their system provides a field for the call number on their interface, which we were able to use with our prior ILS (Horizon). Since our migration to Polaris in 2020, we have been unable to see the item's call number field. With only the barcode and the item's title available, it makes searching for an item on a shelf or cart more time consuming.
A staff member is spending more time reading each spine of the book to match the title, or, in the case of slender children's items, may be pulling out books to read the cover of the book to match the title. If we were to scan items and have the item's barcode, title, and call number, staff have one more key piece of information that will help them locate the title more quickly. The call number is a vital piece of information for helping patrons locate material and for staff to pull and shelve items. Staff eyes are already trained to find items by using the call number (641.5 ROM 2019) to find the general section (600s), then looking at cookbooks (641s), then looking for the author's last name (ROM) and date (2019), and only then, if we have more than one copy, do we look at the item's barcode.
We have 26 branch locations that use our wands on a daily basis. Staff scan our stacks as well as carts of recently returned material to locate items that are local missing, checked out, lost, withdrawn, and claimed returned. With just under five million physical circulations in 2024, it is very important that we process materials accurately. It is not uncommon to also use the wands on our holds shelves as well. A patron may have 15 items on hold and cancelled 2 of them. Looking for these two items spine label by spine label to locate the correct title is time consuming. Looking for two items with an available call number makes locating them more manageable. While it seems redundant, comparing call numbers on a screen with a consistently formatted spine label (horizontal) is much easier to do than to match a title on a screen with a title on the spine of a book (shelved vertically) that is not always easily read due to text size, font, color, or stickers and labels covering information. This enhancement helps our staff to make the most of the tools we are already utilizing and allows us to continue to use our current shelf management system provider in the future.
Jeff Edminster
supported this idea
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Note/Use case from IndyPL employee, Alex Oberhaus:
As I am exploring options for new shelf management systems, I am finding that not all wand interfaces include the call number. We have had our Tech Logic wands since 2018. Their system provides a field for the call number on their interface, which we were able to use with our prior ILS (Horizon). Since our migration to Polaris in 2020, we have been unable to see the item's call number field. With only the barcode and the item's title available, it makes searching for an item on a shelf or cart more time consuming.
A staff member is spending more time reading each spine of the book to match the title, or, in the case of slender children's items, may be pulling out books to read the cover of the book to match the title. If we were to scan items and have the item's barcode, title, and call number, staff have one more key piece of information that will help them locate the title more quickly. The call number is a vital piece of information for helping patrons locate material and for staff to pull and shelve items. Staff eyes are already trained to find items by using the call number (641.5 ROM 2019) to find the general section (600s), then looking at cookbooks (641s), then looking for the author's last name (ROM) and date (2019), and only then, if we have more than one copy, do we look at the item's barcode.
We have 26 branch locations that use our wands on a daily basis. Staff scan our stacks as well as carts of recently returned material to locate items that are local missing, checked out, lost, withdrawn, and claimed returned. With just under five million physical circulations in 2024, it is very important that we process materials accurately. It is not uncommon to also use the wands on our holds shelves as well. A patron may have 15 items on hold and cancelled 2 of them. Looking for these two items spine label by spine label to locate the correct title is time consuming. Looking for two items with an available call number makes locating them more manageable. While it seems redundant, comparing call numbers on a screen with a consistently formatted spine label (horizontal) is much easier to do than to match a title on a screen with a title on the spine of a book (shelved vertically) that is not always easily read due to text size, font, color, or stickers and labels covering information. This enhancement helps our staff to make the most of the tools we are already utilizing and allows us to continue to use our current shelf management system provider in the future.