Comments on: Dynamic / Floating Stock

By: Di Brooker

Di Brooker — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 09:26:12 +0000

Devon looked at this a number of years ago, but the LMS was not flexible enough to allow us to restrict DS to the required level ie: certain stock categories, certain branches etc. Reading the article and subsequent comments seems to indicate that improvements have been made. Roll on our new LMS!!
It will be interesting to see the outcomes of the research and read further feedback.

By: Ivana Curcic

Ivana Curcic — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 06:30:12 +0000

This was before my time, so I don’t know the details. I know that we also tried with dynamic stock but changed to static stock. I suspect we did not create exceptions to categories but moved everything around. I was told that it did not create balanced collections. Working in a small library, in our case, it is easy to know what interests people who borrow many books have. As Tim Coates pointed out, if there is a great interest for a book in our branch library, it is often cheaper to buy it.

By: Tim Coates

Tim Coates — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 10:10:59 +0000

Moving books between libraries in this way is a complete waste of money and effort – aside from some rare special occasions it is much cheaper to buy a new copy of a book and have it sent straight to the library. (or even to the reader’s house)

A fairly rudimentary analysis of the movement that takes place at present and the costs involved will demonstrate this.

Library authorities should not pay for tiny little local distribution networks, with vans and storerooms and people and systems – that is exactly the kind of saving that can be pursued without diminishing service at all.. If something special really has to be transferred, send it in the post (or get a volunteer to take it on the bus, if you have to ).

It’s also much better to share Library Management Systems (and save money) than to try to eek out the use of the small amount of stock that libraries have left. Where do these ideas come from?

By: Anne Nicklen

Anne Nicklen — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 08:09:26 +0000

We tried Dynamic Stock in our county the 2 issues we had were that the more rural branches were overwhelmed with stock and our prime authors would wiz off to a smaller branch then sit on the shelves rather than picking up issues in a larger branch, Then death knell of DS, though, was the introduction of CollectionHQ as the 2 systems seemed to us to be incompatible.

By: Karen Gibbins

Karen Gibbins — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 07:54:01 +0000

We tried this a few years ago but it caused a lot of chaos as we put items in transit between libraries and the two things conflict. I am afraid we switched the feature off again quite quickly. May be we were hasty. I will keep reading any replies. Thanks for sharing.

By: Linda Moffatt

Linda Moffatt — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 07:00:00 +0000

This is one of the reasons why we don’t have dynamic non fiction in Cornwall. But our key achievement from dynamic stock has been to put different stock in front of our customers, in a time efficient, cost effective manner, accepting that we will have to relocate some silo’d stock. We have collectionHQ to do that, which by and large it does. With our current staffing levels, selective use of dynamic stock is essential.

By: Ian Anstice

Ian Anstice — Mon, 11 Aug 2014 17:49:40 +0000

In reply to Booling.

Absolutely. There would still be a need for weeding and transferring books especially if, as you say, a heavy-borrowing specialist messes up the balance of the stock (Suffolk told me this – apologies if we missed it). Of course, under static stock, we’d be doing this all the time anyway so it’s not necessarily an argument against dynamic stock.

By: Booling

Booling — Mon, 11 Aug 2014 08:07:08 +0000

The “self-tailored” stock concept is fine, but in reality it is likely to be individuals who “self-tailor” for a branch. For example, one customer can read, say, one book a week about Japanese history and quite likely their branch will home the authorities complete collection of books on Japanese history within a year or so.
Of course that branch will probably then be spending time reallocating some of these to other branches, using staff time and transport.