To begin with, the tagging project was slated to begin just prior to construction beginning in the lobby. Renovations included more self-checkout machines that would use this new technology. As such, we had to have all the books in the million+ item collection tagged before we could go live. Tagging began in late March, early April and march along at a slow, but surprisingly brisk pace. Construction was supposed to begin in early June and finish by late July. Not major renovations, but a full two months worth. Tagging was expected to finish around mid to late July so that everything would fall nicely into place at the same time.
As construction usually goes, it failed to go according to plan. For reasons unknown to me, we did absolutely nothing to begin construction until last week, the second to last week of July, only to discover that the wiring in the wall to which the new self-checkout machine would be affixed did not have sufficient cabling to provide the necessary power. To add insult to injury, the wall isn't even a supporting wall! One would think this would have been discovered in the initial planning so as best to make use of the already limited space. One would think many things.
No worries! We aren't finished tagging anyhow. And I must say, it by no fault of those hired to tag books. We have done our darndest to get those stickers stuck and staying, but many books were checked out when we made out wide sweeps to tag large swathes of the collection at a time. Those untagged are collected as they are returned to be matched with the tags left over from our first sweep.
Now, this is not actually the most inefficient way to go about things. What with the library being a continually functioning entity, it is necessary that some lag occur. What is not necessary is for the project manager to not realize before matching commences that she and one other person cannot do the whole thing on their own. Since I pointed out that I could tag while checking books in (too some extent, as we tagged more, it got more complicated), we have had at least eight people whose primary job was to match books. In addition to the original two.
But! To match, the tags must be organized. And that does not simply happen on the good faith of those tagging. Since we were often spread out, multiple sections would come back at once and it would be the job of two to five additional pages to organize the incoming tags so that the matchers could actually do their job. Knowing this is required did not stop people from poorly labeling the tiny bags we were given, or simply mislabeling or not labeling at all as it suited.
From the ground up, matching was more difficult than necessary. Not until at least three to five weeks in did anyone take the initiative to start writing nasty notes in an effort to get people to label consistently. To no avail. Or minimal at best.
Regardless, organization began to emerge and matching pushed on and we developed new ways to match and use slightly fewer carts stolen from the circulation pool, though we still fight for them graspingly everyday.
At one point 200 tags went missing. For two weeks no one had any idea where they were, so we wrote new tags for those books only to find the bundle of them. Down the drain went an extra $46 at least right there.
Months later, we have settled into a system of organization and matching that at least passably limps along. We're getting by, but certainly not deserving of any organizational awards.
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