Physical Locations

Bookrooms work well.  Having the resources in one place makes this possible.  Compactus and/or good and plentiful shelving cut down resource location time to a minimum. It also makes it possible to manage a text book collection!  Chasing up unreturned loans and keeping the books repaired takes up quite a bit of time so don't think you can just fit it in with other tasks... the average textbook costs over $50 so a small collection is worth over $500,000... plan to maintain it!

Plan the room

• Subject at time (leaving some room for expansion)
• Clearly mark shelves and keep abreviations and coding short
• Signs hanging off the ceiling are great for pointing out sections, remember, anyone who looks up a resource in TextTracker Suiteneeds to be able to tell just by looking up the Enquiry module and walking into your bookrom! (You won't always be there...others need to know how to find resources!)

Staffing

• Someone to lend and return books
• Monitor the condition of resources (and repair when necessary)
• Keep track of the need for replacement copies once numbers get below a certain level (It's no good finding out you need two extra copies of a book to make a class set while a teacher or student is standing at the counter waiting to borrow!)
• Chase up unreturned items
• Enter new resource information, barcode and mark resources appropriately

This all adds up to a full time position for any collection in excess of about 10,000 resources.

Text Books are very expensive and need constant maintenance to ensure value for money

Having a photocopier and laminator in the Text Book Area can help to maximise useful time management... but be careful to allow enough time for Textbook related tasks!