30 Jun 2008
Preparations for the new research centre are continuing apace and we're using this week to audit the library collection that will need to move next year. A library audit is much like a shop stocktake allowing us to confirm what we have before we move any of it. Today, Renee and I along with Nat, Jeremy, Helen, and Heather from the Museum's collections documentation department began auditing the books our store. This involves taking a book from the shelf and entering the item number (essentially our in-house barcode) into our library management system. From the resulting report we'll know which books are where they should be and which aren't.
Obviously auditing one book this way takes a matter of seconds, but it's doing it nearly 9,000 times that's time consuming! That said, we're very grateful for the laptops and Wi-Fi access of IT department has arranged for us. Otherwise we'd be lumbered with the task of creating enormous handwritten lists which we'd then have to transfer to computer - as ever with technology we've had a few glitches but everything is working smoothly now.
I must get back to where we left off before lunch (PBF5546 wasn't it?) but there'll be more updates from the library team throughout the week and the manuscripts team have promised to let us know what they've been working on too...
Gary (Assistant Librarian)