Hi everyone,
I really want to get this ball rolling on the damaged issue. I have had two callers this week about damaged items and it's only 9.30am Tuesday!
I've written up a draft procedure for your viewing. There are some comments I have already recieved from support services staff at the bottom:
Damaged items procedure
Circulation staff
1. Check in and hit F9 (item maintenance) change status to damaged through exception pull down list
2. Check blue area of bottom of the screen for last borrower- note name and borrower number
3. Double click name to get to Member Maintenance screen, collect borrower's phone number if possible. If not, collect address.
4. Record all details including your name and the date on a 'Problem item' slip to be kept with the item
5. Refer to branch librarian or supervisor
Branch librarian/supervisor
1. Bring damage to borrower's attention
• At circulation desk if they are still in the library
• Over the phone on the day of return or
• By mail
2. Inform borrower of damage fee ($10 plus processing??) and that an invoice for fines payment will be forwarded to them (if posting letter include invoice?)
Note: if supervisor or BL deems that the circumstances warrant special consideration they may use discretion in either waiving any charge or arranging for part payments to be made until the account has been paid in full.
In such cases clear documentation is to be recorded- BL or supervisors must insert a clear note on the borrower's record indicating decision made and initial it.
3. Send details to Megan in Support Services for invoice to be generated.
Details must include
• Borrowers number
• Item D number
• Description of damage
• Recommended fee?? - this would have to be explained to staff or Megan can work it out
• Branch item is being held
OR
Branch lib/supervisor generate their own invoice based on the template Megan currently uses.
4. Retain item in designated place for further analysis/backup or until fines are paid
5. Upon payment of fines delete item from the collection and mark invoice as paid- retain on file for 6 months??
Responses to common enquiries:
Fines incurred are for the damage to library materials plus associated processing cost.
Damaged items remain property of the library and do not become property of the borrower upon payment of fines incurred.
N.B. Same or similar items offered as replacement will not be accepted.
COMMENTS:
Fine tuning will need to be sorted as to who prints and posts the letters. Megan says she is fine to do this- perhaps the info could be emailed to her. Otherwise, could it be worked out that BL or supervisor could do it... The fees would have to be recorded on the borrowers card too.
The price I have in here is just a space filler, we can work that out properly. Someone up here mentioned that if it were say $10 with $5 processing and $1.50 GST, then the borrower would only need to pay off $6.50 before being able to borrow again. We need to decide if the fee will be a deterrant or a punishment.
That's it for now,
I look forward to hearing from you.
Heather
3 comments:
Hi
I am not really sure how this is different to the existing policy (other than the ammount charged and who sends the letter/contacts the borrower)
Sadly it's not all that easy to speak to a customer the moment they return a damaged item - the logistics of finding them on the spot are a problem (they may have already left, you may not be able to recognise them, they may never actually come in the door etc)
and we will still have issues with people being blamed for damage they haven't done (or that they claim is not theirs) and so we are really not addressing the issue of customer disatisfaction
there's also a problem with storing damaged items at branches with little storage space etc
I would like to stand by my original suggestion that we don't charge at all, just delete the item using the delete-damaged status and review after 6-12 months to see if the losses are acceptable
Cheers
Kristen
I think Kristen's suggestion is a good one. When you think about it the vast majority of damaged books are usually caused by children's drink bottles or little ones scribble. Very little is intent. One day I had an old lady who was at the beginning stages of alzeimers and she accidently put her books in her bin! ( The garbage collector came before she realised! She was so upset with herself and paid up straight away but we were all worried that that left her short of money for the week. She insisted on paying - The poor old thing.
I would not like to see the ringing and organising done at the branch level. I realise it is a difficult job but to keep it central and consistent is important. Different branch librarians would have different empathy with the clients. It is best handled by the same person. Presently we are not supposed to ring clients and we have no mailing facitities to address and mail letters from the branch. It would take a long time to send letters back to admin for postage.
I vote for the no fee solution and see how that goes.
Yeah, I see your points. I was under the impression that we were going to test handling it from a branch level first and that we couldn't just abolish the charge at this stage.
I know that most if not all damage is non intentional, but people do have to take responsibility for items in their care. We charge lost fees for the same reason that we charge damage fees and I'm sure many of these are lost unintentionally. People don't argue with that one though because they can't blame someone else for losing their books.
We still want to reduce the amount of damaged items in the system though. We should be not even letting these go out. And that is pretty much the main issue with the current charges, we ourselves are to unreliable to hold the charges to the customers. What steps can we take to promote a culture of hygienic, readable books, thus improving our quality services?
Heather
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