Begin again

I got special permission and Alcatraz School hired a friend/ co- worker to work in the summer, part time, to help me with inventory of the library.

Monday I followed all the directions and we divided the list between us and got started.

That's when trouble began. We found all sorts of books that were ON the shelves but that were NOT on the inventory list. I could take one of those books and search it in my library software and it's listed there and all the data about it is correct. I can find these books by title, author, bar code label and often by keyword. But for whatever reason they were not coming up on the master list. Hmmm.

Then it went from one or two books to.... 89. And we only have 6 letters of the alphabet finished. Houston, we have a problem.

So, I called my school system's head librarian and asked her if she could help me. I explained the problem and she had be click around and she couldn't help me over the phone. So she came to see me this afternoon.

She clicked around and did some checking and lo and behold, no one has done an inventory in my school's library since 2006. OMG! 2006?!? Seriously? Well, shit!

Then she hit me with the bad news. If someone had been doing this inventory correctly all along, then printing a master list would've worked out, so I was doing it right, technically. BUT since no one had bothered to inventory for 5 years, I now have to do this the hard way. I have to take every book off the shelf and scan it in our system, in a program labeled, oddly enough: "Inventory". Then, once that is done, I have to run a missing book report to see what is missing and wade through that book by book.

And because we are not fancy nor technologically up to date in our library, I don't own a wireless hand scanner. So, I will have to take every book off the shelf, carry them to the desk top computer, scan each book, then put them away.

Shit.

So tomorrow morning we are starting back over from the beginning.

Gee, this is such a *GREAT* week! Ugh!

Mags