[ALCTS-acqnet] RESPONSES: Turnaround time for books

Hello All

Thanks to everyone who responded about Turnaround time for books.  Here is a recap of what I received

Stacey

Stacey Marien
Acquisitions Librarian
American University
4801 Massachusetts Ave, NW
Library Technical Services
Spring Valley - Room 148
Washington, DC 20016
smarien_at_american.edu<mailto:smarien_at_american.edu>
202-885-3842<tel:202-885-3842>
orcid.org/0000-0003-2608-4559<http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2608-4559>

My original question:

  1.  We get shelf ready books from our vendor - we copy catalog them so some go directly to circ, some diverted to cataloging for further work.  What is your usual turnaround to get on the shelf for titles that fall in that category?
  2.  Books that come in with hold notifies attached to them.  We treat them as rush - what is your usual turnaround for those to get to the circulation desk?
  3.  Books bought for ILL - we purchase books for ILL, they have a hold notify - again what is your usual turnaround to get the book to the circ desk?
(What I failed to mention is that technical services is about ½ mile off-site from main library.  Mail services comes 2x a day to pick up and deliver material between us and the main library)

Answer #1
                We don't do shelf ready (although our vendor supplies paperbacks with Kapco covers), so I can't answer #1.  When we purchase ILL titles we treat them as rush. We are fortunate to have an Amazon warehouse very close by and doubly fortunate to have a cataloging department willing and eager to accommodate rush requests.  Property stamping and tattle-taping are done in-house by student workers.  As a result, we can get rush books to our access services--from order to patron--usually in less than a week and three days is not unusual.  We could trim a day off of that if books didn't have to come through the central mail room on campus.

Answer #2

For shelf-ready approval, we our goal is one week on average. During heavy periods, it may take a month with problems being routed to cataloging. And in the past, cataloging and acquisitions have tackled backlogs that might develop together.

For RUSH books which include reserves, notifies and ILL requests, we aim for a 24 hour turn around once the item is in-house. Occasionally, a difficult item will linger but between Acquisitions and Cataloging we make those a priority.

Answer #3
1. Our shelf ready materials are reviewed for accuracy and then sent, by library courier, to their designated location within 2 business days.
2. Hold notifies are treated like any other materials, once they arrive we receive, catalog, and send them by library courier to their designated location within 2-3 business days. Unless a hold request is marked as RUSH, we treat them like any other order. We strive to have all RUSH requests received, cataloged, and to their designated locations within 1-2 business days (this depends on how quick the vendor and mail service brings those materials to us).
3. Books purchased through ILL are treated as if they are a Hold RUSH request, so we attempt to send the item out with only a barcode attached to the patron within 1-2 business days.

Answer #4

  1.  For our shelf-ready books, they typically arrive 3-4 weeks after we order them. Once they are in the building, I would say that most shipments will make their way out of our technical services department within 2-3 days, and are probably shelved within a few days after that, though it will vary considerably depending on how much other shelving is needed (we generally have a re-shelving back log at the end of each semester that takes a while to clear). During most of the year though, I think things tend to be shelved within a few days of leaving our tech services department.


  1.  For RUSH titles, once the book physically arrives, it will usually be at the circulation desk within 24 hours and often on the same day it arrives. Weekends are an exception, so if a book arrives on Friday and can't be processed that same day, it will be pushed to Monday. The turnaround time might be a bit slower during certain parts of the year (such as at the beginning of the semester when we have a lot of priority orders for course reserves as well), but this generally isn't the case, and I would say that 48 hours would be the longest amount of time someone would have to wait.  If it is of interest, the actual amount of time it takes for the books to get to us after we place an order with our RUSH vendors is generally between 1-3 days; we use GOBI and Amazon primarily.



  1.  ILL purchases are performed by our Acquisitions department as well, so it is generally the same as question #2.