This is a topic I’ve discussed with a number of you already, but I wanted to make sure I hadn’t missed anyone.
I am proposing we do a ‘flat fee’ replacement price of $50 for pricing lost books and serials. Horizon provides a default figure of $999.99 that appears when there is no price. Instead of that we could change every instance of this to $50.
At the moment Access and Collections staff use a variety of methods to find suitable replacement prices (example). There are some problems with this. We may not know the total replacement cost until the item is actually ordered and this may or may not include freight costs. We prefer electronic access nowadays which normally comes at a different price point. We may not order a replacement at all, for example if the item is no longer in print, not available for purchase, available electronically, or not required. The Library may lose some money eg when really expensive items are lost however there is money provided by the information resources budget to fund replacements.
The $50 flat fee would also apply to any lost items in Horizon where there is a price. The price we paid in many cases years ago is not necessarily an accurate guide of what the true replacement cost is at today’s prices.
There will be lost items that are clearly not worth $50. In these cases, individual staff would have the discretion to go to a minimum replacement charge of $20.
Comments on this proposal most welcome. Likely implementation by mid July.
Good idea.
Can there be a little more discretion? We get free titles from the Ministry of Education. Examples are School Readers and School Journals. While we do have some processing costs, I’d like to think we would not be asking $20 for replacements for these types of items.
Sadly nothing is free, $20 will barely cover the staff costs involved.
Thank you for the comments. I would like to proceed with changing every instance of the default of $999.99 when there is no price to $50. A question was raised about what happens when there is an existing price in Horizon. After some further discussion with Helen I have landed on using the existing price in Horizon when there is one. The main rationale is to save staff having to manually edit the price each time to $50. The ability for discretion for staff to go lower on a case-by-case basis will remain.