Yours, mine and ours

As referred to in the last post, there are now locations at both the Unley and Goodwood Library desks for UNTAGGED outgoing black box items.

At Goodwood there is a blue trolley under the bench with the dexions on it. The top basket is for untagged outgoing items that belong to other libraries (not Unley owned items), and the bottom basket is for Unley Libraries untagged outgoing items.

Exhibit A

At Unley the bottom basket of the Holds trolley is for untagged outgoing items that belong to other libraries (not Unley owned items), and the bottom basket of the Workroom trolley is for Unley Libraries untagged outgoing items.

Exhibit B

The reason we are differentiating between this, is we are going to encode the tags on the Unley Libraries items slightly differently so they have a special code that shows that they belong to us. This will save us having to re-encode tags later down the track.

The other libraries items have a generic SAPLN code showing that they are a part of the 1LMS network. We want our owned items to have a specific Unley code (which is AU-SA:SUL and is known as an ISIL code for those who like to be in the know).

And for those who have been thinking 'why are we tagging other libraries outgoing items anyways?', well this is because we are one big happy public library family across the state. But there are really two main reasons that are very convincing:

1. Other libraries have been tagging our items for years! So our public library peers have already worked hard to tag approximately 25% of our collections for us already. Thanks guys :)
2. PLS gave us enough tags to tag all our items and then some for FREE. And since a large number of our items are already tagged by other libraries, we can use these free tags (did I say they were FREE?!) to pay it forward and help tag other libraries items too. This helps move towards the immediate goal of all outgoing items being tagged, and also the long term goal of the entirety of every libraries collections being tagged.

So happy tagging trails team.