What is the daily management of the corporate library?

Book lending can be done in a variety of flexible ways:

The borrower registers in the library system, which then sends a reminder email to the borrower and the librarian, who then takes care of delivering the book to the borrower (door-to-door delivery, picking up the book at the administrator's desk, meeting near the bookcase, etc.). It is a good idea to include in the reminder email that "you will be contacted by the administrator next". In my library management, I often had to answer a question from a first-time borrower: "Hi, administrator, what should I do next?". I've often had to answer the question "Hi, administrator, what should I do next?". But alas, there is no easy way to make changes to the reminder message in the OpenDB system.

The borrower contacts the librarian directly (a word when meeting, a ping on an instant messenger, or a direct e-mail), and then the administrator is responsible for registering the borrower in the system.

If the bookcase is open and unlocked. Then the employee can borrow the book directly with the knowledge of the administrator (after registering it in the system, or contacting the administrator). In this case, the administrator is responsible for verifying the correctness of the book information at regular intervals. Since the area where our bookcases are located is passed by external people from time to time (equipment maintenance staff, external interviewers, visiting visitors, etc.), we have not adopted this approach for ease of management.

Return of books

The return of books is relatively simple, as they are handed to the administrator, who then registers them in the system. A special case is that the borrower has lent the book directly to someone else ("I'm almost done with this book, and so-and-so in the same group is eager to read it, so I'll just give it to him"). In this case, the administrator can make the appropriate changes in the system. Of course, if someone else has pre-borrowed the book beforehand, the administrator will need to coordinate and communicate the conflict.

Renewing books

A good lending system should have a module for renewing books so that borrowers can do it themselves. Unfortunately, OpenDB does not have such a feature. Therefore, we have taken the "talk to the administrator" approach, through the administrator's operations in the system to realize (the book to "return" and then again "loan").

Reminders

A good lending system should have the ability to automatically send reminder emails to borrowers and administrators every day when a book is about to expire or is due for return, and OpenDB has this feature, which can be customized to meet your needs. However, the frustrating thing is that these reminder emails are not always effective, or even mostly ineffective - as an employee, we receive a lot of emails every day, including all kinds of automated emails, and book reminder emails can easily be drowned in the daily emails; meanwhile, because of the irrelevance of the business, book reminder emails are usually of low priority, and therefore difficult to attract attention among the borrowers and administrators. It is difficult to attract the attention of borrowers. In fact, if you look at it the other way around, book reminders are not a high priority for in-house libraries - unlike public libraries, in-house libraries are unlikely to have the kind of queues that occur when books are in high demand. Moreover, strictly enforcing book calls can easily lead to formalism: a borrower borrows a book that's overdue, but he/she still has a few more to read, so if you strictly enforce calls, you'll just end up with a ridiculous situation where the borrower returns the book and then borrows the same one right afterward.

So, under what circumstances should the administrator actively contact the borrower to return the book?

The book is due and another colleague has pre-borrowed it.

The book has been overdue for too long (e.g., several months). In this case, the administrator needs to remind the borrower so that the book is not lost.

Responding to book loss

As long as libraries keep running, book loss cannot be avoided 100% of the time. So what should you do when a book is lost during the checkout process?

Delete the book entry directly from the system and do nothing else. This is more humane, but it is not good for book maintenance in the long run.

Borrowers compensate for lost books. This approach is not wrong, but lost hard.

The borrower buys the same book (second-hand is fine) to compensate.

The borrower donates a book in a similar field and of similar value.