Using tablets for stacks searching at the MIT Libraries

Abstract

In Spring 2013, the MIT Libraries centralized the process of searching for missing, billed, and patron claimed returned books across 4 libraries into a small team of student workers. This presentation covers how we streamlined the search process by moving from printed search lists to an Android tablet-based system. I'll show how Google Drive, Gmail, and other free apps have helped us simplify managing of the team's work; how we've used spreadsheet formulas to indicate in real-time when an item has been found to avoid unnecessarily searching for an item in other libraries; and how we use labels in Gmail to indicate the searching status for items claimed returned by patrons. I'll also demonstrate how we've extended some of these techniques to the Libraries' course reserves paging and weeding processes.