Thanks to all who sent such practical suggestions for handling this need. I
agree with the person who says Follett should work on this. The advantage of
keeping it within the software is that you can then print reports and keep
statistics. Special thanks to the large number of school librarians from
New York state. You must have a tradition of helping out there that I
admire!
The majority of suggestions were similar to the following:
You might try setting up a dummy patron group called "weeded" or some such
moniker. This patron group could have virtually unlimited privileges, then
each time you weed, or each section, could be a separate patron. Patron
info would then keep track of the "checkouts" to that patron, and your
catalog would show that the titles are out. Of course, then your patrons may
expect to see it back on the shelf eventually, but you could give it a
ridiculously late due date. At worst that would prompt questions, and might
tell you who cares, so you could replace with an updated copy. I didn't say
in the message that all my "library" patrons have a due date of after school
is out in spring, and that way I know it is something different. The
faculty patrons have a due date just before school is out, so I can almost
always spot them as different from library patrons. I also didn't mention
that a large majority of our new fiction books are read by someone in the
school, and I check them out to Unprocessed Books so they
are in the catalog, but not available.
Other good suggestions:
I just keep an on-going excel list for the year. I have columns for call
number, author, title, reason weeded (mildew, outdated, bad shape, etc.)
price, copyright date, date received, whether title is to be re-ordered or
if there are other copies of the same title remaining. I, too, wish there
were a function in Follett to do this, but meanwhile, this does work (p.s. I
have the file saved to my c drive AND to a floppy in case my computer
crashes).
I usually try to weed several titles at one time, using the hand held
scanner. After downloading, a window pops up saying there is an exception
report and would I like to view it? I click on yes and print the report
(you can also save it to a file). That's my hard copy of what I've weeded!
The only way I have found, is if you delete the copy only...not the record.
Then add a note in the record of when the item was weeded. A bit time
consuming - but you can print a report of records without any copies. Good
luck.
Having just attended a Follett users meeting, a similar question was asked.
A solution that I thought clever was this: Before deleting, check out item
to patron named "deleted" That way, you can print out holdings of this
patron and then really delete the copies and titles. Alternatively, you can
create a category of "deleted," or something similar, run a report for this
category,
then really delete . .
I don't have Follett, but our automation system has a patron named DISCARD.
We can check items out to that patron and then batch delete it after we
print it. We can also keep stats on this automatically. Can you create a
patron like this? Maybe not as integrated, but it would at least keep items
together until you want to get rid of them.
Can you create a special material type that cannot be read in the catalog? I
know this is possible in Winnebago. If so, you can store the item their
until you are ready to tabulate your figures and delete, but it will be
hidden away.
I guess we can also make suggestions to Follett for things to include when
they upgrade their software. The fact that the system doesn't have the
capability to keep track of deleted items (even just the amount deleted) is
ridiculous. Good luck.
I use Follett, and it is true that once one deletes something, all records
are gone. What I do is to check a book out to a patron I created called
Discard. I have several patrons for special things, like Repair, Book
Cover, Perma-Econo Replacement, and two Paid patrons. I keep last year's
paid titles in for a year before I delete them, because we found they are
frequently found over the summer and returned, and it was a pain to try to
refund money as well as recreate the MARC record. I keep the Discard file
for the entire school year, first printing the patron checkout list, then
checking them in and then deleting them just about inventory time. Same for
the last year's Paid titles.
I put items like this in the lost books category.
I have Winnebago and came across the same problem. However, I remembered
about creating a patron type that moves all the students who are no longer
in the school to a particular patron type and from which the names of
students who owe nothing can be deleted. So I thought, perhaps when you
delete a book, you can change the material type (one specified as "deleted")
and then in location put NLA (no longer available). Then you would have a
list of what you've deleted; you can print out a list of these titles only.
Does this sound feasible?
Val Metropoulos
Teacher/Librarian
Corvallis Middle School
Corvallis, MT
valm@corvallis.k12.mt.us
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