Unlocking the Stacks: Tooling Excel for Collaborative Inventories

Abstract

Staff at two small academic library branches utilized custom Excel formulas and engaged with student assistants in order to complete two large, unprecedented inventory projects. When comparing a collections list to our ILS reports, we discovered that there was difficulty in matching up items and no expeditious way to sort the collections lists in Excel. We found and customized an Excel formula for doing this sorting by LCC call numbers which resulted in a more streamlined inventory workflow. Through our efforts, we challenged attitudes toward inventory work in our system and utilized student assistant labor in new ways. Unanticipated cataloging errors from previous projects were also uncovered and corrected. This poster will explore this project and what it revealed along with successes and lessons learned.