Hi,
I'm trying to devise a way of doing inventory of our collection using InMagic DBTextworks. We usually do a yearly inventory of our 8,500 books collection and have been using index cards in the past. There's got to be a better, more modern way, yet I haven't come up with anything other than printing out hundreds of pages of book lists from our InMagic catalogue and taking them to the shelves to check for the books. Does anybody have any suggestions for a better way?

Thanks,
Rob Caldwell
Toronto Botanical Garden library

I, too, have to do an inventory with printed shelflists. Such fun.

In my former job, I barcoded all the books, and used a portable barcode reader to do inventory. It took a while, but it is also how we checked items in and out, by scanning the barcode.

We barcoded our collection and now use a barcode reader to update the shelf list periodically. You can get what are called smart or pre-printed barcodes which will save you a lot of time.

The idea is that you pre-assign a barcode label number based on your catalogue unique ID numbers. eg. record 1 could become barcode label 000001 and so forth. That way you do not have to link each barcode to a catalogue record. Just one batch modify will create and populate the barcode number field.

The barcode printer can then send you labels with the barcode number, the library name, the call number and the title of the book on the label for easy matching with your shelf list. All you need to supply them is a file with the field information. A csv file will do. Just remember to sort by call number.

We also have a portable hand held scanner connected to a pda to store the barcodes that we read. We then import the file into our circulation database to update whether the item is on the shelf or not. It is also useful for going around the office and reading labels off of employee shelves and signing items out to them if the are not already signed out. Content Innovations helped us with that piece.

Are your books barcoded? If so you can streamline the process!