In this session, I will discuss the problems that Gardner-Webb University Library has faced in terms of inactive barcodes affecting our inventory reports and procedures. The issue first arose when student workers insisted that they had inventoried books that were still showing up as not inventoried on our inventory reports. This led us to discover that old barcodes that had been replaced were still showing up in our inventory reports along with the new barcodes for those items - and, to make matters worse, different circulation statistics were tied to each of those barcodes. This created a major dilemma in terms of our options for removing the inactive barcodes. More recently, we learned that we have a similar problem with inactive barcodes for completely withdrawn items still showing up in inventory reports. What we have learned is that the withdrawal of LHRs through Record Manager or Acquisitions rather than Circulation does not always remove the records from the circulation system - and this causes significant problems in terms of identifying items missing from the shelves after inventory. While this is a problem that will only affect some libraries, I will talk about ways to identify inactive barcodes in the system, the options available for removing inactive barcodes from the inventory reports, and the statistical consequences of removing inactive barcodes with circulation statistics tied to them.

Featuring:

Daniel Jolley, Gardner-Webb University