[OPLINTECH] Looking for ideas for Staff/Process/Material tracking solution

[Chad Neeper]

Hello collective brain,

I'm not looking to debate the reasons/merits/perils of doing so here, but
one of my small libraries would like a technology solution to track each
stage of the process that each material item goes through as patrons bring
them back and before they get placed back onto the shelf for circulation.
For example, a returned material item may be first placed on a shelf to be
cleaned, perhaps diverted to Tech Services for repair, then moved to a
sorting cart, then re-shelved for circulation.

As the item moves to each stage, the goal is to collect the following data:

   1. metadata (ie. date/time).
   2. the staff member moving the material item into that stage
   3. the stage the material item has been moved into
   4. the barcode for the material item(s) being moved into that stage

Restrictions:

   - Naturally, the solution has to be as least inconvenient as possible.
   - This is a *small* library with no branches. So no, we can't do RFID
   tags, which would certainly take care of the inconvenience thing.
   Translation:  Think $2,000 or less, not $5,000 or more.
   - It seems tracking like this would be best implemented in the ILS
   software. But the ILS software doesn't facilitate this, so they're ok with
   a cobbled-together non-ILS-based solution.



What I'm thinking is along the lines of maybe collecting raw barcode data
and importing it into a program or spreadsheet that can be used to
collate/intreprit the data. ...Like the way we used to to inventory:  A
non-networked portable hand-held barcode scanner that scans and stores all
of the barcodes scanned into it, then the data (barcodes) are dumped to a
computer for importing into the ILS's inventory module. In this case, maybe
the hand-held data collector scans the staff user's barcode, then a barcode
assigned to the stage the item is going into, then the barcodes of any
number of material items the staff user is moving into that stage. Each
scanned barcode is date/time-stamped. Wash, rinse, repeat. Whenever
appropriate, the data can be exported from the scanner/collector into a
spreadsheet for parsing.

Does anyone have any other ideas or has maybe implemented a different
internal material/staff tracking solution that could be adapted?

Does anyone still have any of those old raw handheld data collectors laying
around they'd be willing to donate to a small library, so we can try to get
it to work well enough for their purposes?


Thanks for thinking with me,
Chad





______________________________
*Chad Neeper*
Senior Systems Engineer

*Level 9 Networks*
740-548-8070 (voice)
866-214-6607 (fax)

*Full IT/Computer consulting services -- Specialized in libraries and
schools*
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