By Lisa Moyer

In February of 2013, as a result of renewed discussions regarding collection retention practices, a subgroup for the Access Services Council (ASC) was formed and charged to evaluate and recommend revisions to the Libraries missing items procedures. During initial subgroup meetings, members determined that in order to successfully meet the expectations set, items marked lost would also be added to the group’s original charge. The goal of the subgroup is to create uniform procedures for all libraries to follow concerning the complete processing of items marked missing and lost.

At the September 27th ASC meeting, the subgroup presented the following recommendations to the Council:

• In mid-May, each library should take responsibility for running missing and lost item Director’s Station reports for all items marked missing or lost prior to September 1st of the previous year. (Libraries may elect to run reports more often throughout the year if desired.)
• Library staff should take two months to do final searches on all missing/lost report items.
• In mid-July, all missing/lost items not found, should be referred to selectors for replacement decisions.
• In mid-September, all items still marked missing/lost should be updated to DISCARD in Workflows.

The subgroup recognizes that the issue of floating missing/lost books must be addressed and that the documentation, promotion of and training for this process and its procedures must be determined. These topics will be discussed in subsequent subgroup meetings.

Once the subgroup has comprehensively satisfied its charge, all recommendations will be forwarded by the ASC to the Collections Services Advisory Group for endorsement.

For questions or more information, please contact the missing/lost items subgroup:
Barb Kopshina
Lisa Moyer
Verne Neff
Trish Notartomas