Recent Manual for Librarians Edited & Written by WRL Staff

Systems Administrator Judith Fuss and Library Director Patsy Hansel with their recently published book.		Recent Manual for Librarians Edited & Written by WRL Staff "Managing Overdues: A HowTo-Do-It Manual for Librarians" made its debut at the American Library Association Conference this June. The book was edited by Williamsburg Regional Library's director Patsy Hansel and includes two sections written by Judith Fuss, WRL's Systems Administrator.
The book presents proven strategies that librarians can incorporate to help manage the overdue problems in our nation's libraries. Hansel states that determining the cost of long-overdue books is much more difficult to calculate than the worth of books that are returned late. She encourages library managers to know the actual extent of the overdue problem in their libraries and offers techniques which provide librarians with additional ammunition in the ongoing battle to be ever-more responsible stewards of public money. Included among the techniques is Judy Fuss' description of the Williamsburg Regional Library's electronic notification system to speed up the return of overdue materials. By use of this system, Fuss not only lowered her overdues rate, but she also reduced the amount of staff time spent on overdues and the annual expenditures for supplies and postage related to overdues. She also details the successful setoff program used by the Williamsburg Regional Library in which money is collected from taxpayers from whom the state owes a refund for tax payments or lottery winnings.

"Managing Overdues: A How-To-Do-It Manual," edited by Patsy J. Hansel, is available through Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc, 100 Varick Street, New York, NY, 10013. The book will also soon be a part of the Williamsburg Regional Library's collection.

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This page was last modified on Monday, 17-Sep-2001 09:52:21 EDT