All About Your Library Books

I am not a librarian, although I am often mistaken for one because I work in a library.  Yes, I love libraries, and books, and reading, and excellent illustrations, but I do not hold a Masters degree in Library Science.  Also, I do not currently work in a public library.

    I work in a non-public library as a copy cataloger (I'm a copycat!) which means that I acquire and adjust Library of Congress database records for library books that are owned by and shelved in libraries scattered across four counties in New York State.  If you have ever visited a library's website (ours is www.4cls.org) and searched for a book, the results of your search are the records that catalogers like me create. In a non-public library, we have stacks filled with books, but these  must be requested through a public library, and the book is then shipped to that library.  All of our books are found by patrons who browse our database.

Surely you have met the librarians at your local library, so you have met the people who select what books are purchased by your library, and you have browsed the shelves and stacks.  Perhaps you noticed that each book in your library has a plastic coating, to protect and preserve it, and a number of labels to make it easy to find?

There are a lot of people behind the scenes who work to make library books available to you.  I thought it might be fun to show you how the books are processed.

Books arrive in shipments at Four County, typically 20 boxes at a time, and they are immediately checked to see that all the boxes in each shipment have arrived, undamaged.  After that, the books are unpacked, loaded onto wire trucks (carts), and transported up to our Tech Services department.  Orders are placed through our department, and when the books arrive, Pat and Marilyn will confirm that we have received what the libraries ordered, and bill them accordingly.

On a typical day, we have a lineup of book-laden trucks like this, and we sort them in certain ways.  If a patron has placed a "hold" on a book, or if a book has been ordered on a rush basis -- perhaps it is a new release by a popular author or the book is about an upcoming event or holiday -- it will go onto a rush truck to Sue, who has worked as a cataloger for more than 25 years.  She's fast and accurate, and thanks to her, the books are quickly added to the database. 

We also separate the books between paperbacks and jacketed hardcovers, because the jackets require the extra step of lamination.  Sharon and Sherry will remove all the jackets from the books and while Sharon attaches labels, pockets, and stamps, Sherry will run the covers through the laminator and then set them on the trucks with their books.  The next step is to crease the laminated covers to fit onto the books, and then tape them securely in place.

All the non-rush books go to Pat, Casey, or me, one truck at a time, and we enter the records, one title at a time, into the library database.  Once the record exists, additional copies of that title are easily, swiftly processed, but the work is exceedingly detailed, making sure we have an exact record for each book: title, author, publisher, pagination, size, and ISBN are the essential  requirements, but if we're lucky we can add a plot summary,subject headings, and genre headings to help patrons browse on-line.  If we cannot find a record for the book to work with, a lady named Susan -- a real librarian with an MLS -- has the authority and skills to create an original record for the book.

Audio-visual materials are processed single-handedly by Laura, who holds a school library degree.

Once the books are fully processed, they are sorted into bins assigned to each library (Walton's bin "WA" is visible here) down in the same room where the boxes were received.  The books are packed up in sturdy canvas bags, arranged for easy loading and unloading along the delivery routes, and hauled off to the member libraries in our vans.

So, next time you look up the book you need on-line, or browse the shelves at your local library, perhaps you'll remember that there's a team of people working behind the scenes to make that information and those books available to you.  Happy reading!