We now have our full quota of tagging trolleys for the RFID project. On Thursday we began tagging the serials at EPS library. We have two trolleys at EPS and will have teams of two operating each trolley from Monday to Saturday. We have six trolleys at Central library and for the last couple of days have had teams of two or three operating the trolleys on Lvls, 4, 6, 8, and 10.

One of the issues with the tagging project has been how to deal with group checkouts with multiple barcodes (e.g. items such as musical scores which will often have numerous items, each with their own barcode). So far, as our teams have been gaining confidence with the tagging process, we have instructed them to put them aside. We have started tagging on level 6 where the number of such items is numerous and it’s become clear that we don’t have time to merge these. In addition, putting this number of items asides throws out our reshelving plan so we need to deal with them as we tag. Therefore, we’ve now made a decision that ‘tricky’ items such as group checkouts with multiple barcodes will have a small, round, yellow sticker placed on the spine and will be placed in their new location alongside tagged items.

Other items may also occasionally have a yellow sticker – for example, newsletters that are too thin (1 or 2 pages) to merit a tag or publications on which there is no clear space to put a tag without covering integral text. These will often be in a box and rather than sticker each item, we will just put a sticker on the outside of the box.

The yellow sticker is a clear marker that an item has not been tagged. I am keeping a record of these ‘untaggable’ items.

Fiona T