[Publib] volunteers checking in

[Knieriem, Lesley]

Oh, dear.  

The first thing that you must tell yourself, repeatedly and firmly, is
that volunteers, no matter how lovely and dedicated, who cause this sort
of problem are HURTING your library, not helping it.  Presumably your
volunteers love the library, and would be horrified to cause harm to its
mission.

Not knowing your system and procedures, it's hard to say exactly where
the problem lies.  But I suspect that fixing it will (at least in the
short term) call for an expenditure of your already limited personnel
resources.

Some possibilities:

1.  A small tweak in your Circulation module may be all you need.  For
example, we had a similar problem with our checkin procedures, because
staff was listening for the "beeps" instead of looking at the screen,
and the beep merely meant that the item had been successfully scanned,
rather than successfully checked in.  We turned off the beeps, forcing
staff to watch the screen, and voila! A dramatic decrease in the error
rate.

2.  It may be just one or two individuals who are causing the problem.
You can track this by requiring "double check in".  When I had to
implement this, I ran off hundreds of slips marked CHECKED IN "date"
"initials" DOUBLECHECKED "date" "initials" "problems".  Whoever checked
in a cart of items would fill out the top half of the slip, and insert
it in the last item they checked;  the next person would scan each item
to make sure it was properly checked in before starting on any
unchecked-in items.  They would then fill in the bottom half of the
slip, noting any errors, and return the slips to me.
   Warning:  My staff HATED this.  HATE HATE HATE.  And it made checkin
take twice as long.  But it not only winkled out the one person with
real problems, but just knowing someone was checking behind them made
them MUCH less sloppy.

3.  Take away checkin from volunteers completely.  See if there are
other tasks they can do that will free up regular staff to check in
materials.  Yeah, they may like check in best.  Yeah, they may stop
volunteering if they don't get to do it.  Too bad.  Remember, once
again:  VOLUNTEERS WHO DO THE JOB WRONG ARE NOT HELPING THE LIBRARY,
THEY ARE HURTING THE LIBRARY.

Lesley Knieriem
Rogers Public Library
Rogers AR


-----Original Message-----
From: Mary Beth Conlee [mailto:maryc at ci.burlington.wa.us] 
Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2008 12:25 PM
To: publib at webjunction.org
Subject: [Publib] volunteers checking in

Hello, collective wisdom,

I've inherited an eight-month-old volunteer program of fifteen lovely
and dedicated volunteers. Their favorite activity is checking items in,
and we don't have the staff to do this without volunteer help. Our
failure rate, as evidenced by the number of books found on the shelves
that have not been checked in, is disturbing and problematic. Patrons
are starting to routinely go to the shelves and find the books we tell
them are overdue.

They volunteers have all been trained at least twice. They are all aware
of the problems, and, at meetings, list preventative practices and
remind each other of vigilance.

Surely we are not the only small library using volunteers in this
capacity and running into this problem (or the only library running into
this problem with paid staff either!). I'd appreciate suggestions on how
to improve accuracy, or even evaluate individual performance, in terms
of checking items in. How do you ask for accountability from volunteers?
How do you evaluate what is a reasonable failure rate to be expected,
and what is unacceptable and requires action?

All feedback appreciated.

Thanks,

Mary Beth Conlee

Burlington Public Library



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