by Annette DeFuso
When most people think of librarians, they usually think of the people they see checking out books, answering questions at a desk, or presenting a program. Many don’t realize that there’s also a team of staff and volunteers working behind the scenes, ensuring that our new books can be discovered through our online catalog and on our bookshelves. Technical Services is a department located within the Adams County Library System at Gettysburg that is responsible for cataloging and processing all of the new books that are circulated at our six branches.
Several librarians throughout the library system select new books to purchase for the library. When they have their orders ready, I’ll upload them into our catalog. Books by popular authors are generally ordered at least a month or more before they are published. This gives us time to receive them and have them ready to check out by their release date– the day on which they are allowed to circulate to the public. I add pre-release, on-order records to our catalog for each new book so that anyone who is interested can place their name on the holds list for it.
When new books are delivered to Technical Services from our vendors, we update the information in the catalog so it’s correct and complete for each title. Each book is assigned a barcode, call number, shelving location, and a branch library where it will begin circulating. For some books, we’ll add extra labels to identify them as belonging to a special collection, such as Large Print or Local History. Novels might have genre labels added to them, such as Mystery or Romance, to help make them easier to find when browsing our bookshelves. If a book was placed in the library for a named endowment or as an honor or memorial, we’ll add a customized bookplate to it.
Then, new books move on to our processing area. We wrap book jackets in plastic covers and reinforce paperback books with additional adhesive tape to help protect them from wear and tear. They’ll last longer and can circulate more times, keeping down our replacement costs. Finally, each book receives a bright yellow sticker identifying it as new. After books have been purchased, cataloged, and processed, they are ready to circulate. Some will stay here in Gettysburg, while others will hop a ride in our orange delivery van to another branch. We display new books for six months, after which they are reshelved into the main collection area to make room for more. Several hundred books travel through Technical Services each month, guaranteeing they’ll always be something fresh and new to read, free of charge, at your library.
Annette DeFuso is Technical Services Director at the Adams County Library.