The White County Public Library will be temporarily closed for five days starting Tuesday to review inventory.
Library Director Cathy Farley said the library conducts this review every five years. Farley said that often times books are misplaced throughout the library.
“We are human, and when we shove the books, we may not get it exactly where it goes,” Farley said. “This week gives us a time that we put it in order the way the computer wants it. And then it’s easier for us to find it in the future.”
Farley said reviewing inventory is a long process as it requires scanning barcodes for more than 43,000 books. Farley said closing the library for a whole week was a tough decision to make.
“It’s never an easy decision to close the doors, but we will have extension cords run out across the floor to make the computers and scanners, and things work as we are doing this, so it really wouldn’t be safe to have people in here,” Farley said. “Plus, we are down to nine employees at this point due to the loss of our Title Five UCHRA-funded employees due to federal funding cuts. So there is not really enough of us right now that could keep the front desk running and do this at the same time.”
Farley said she will be the director of the library for 28 years in October and that this will be the fifth time she has gone through this process.
Farley said the library also tends to discover books that are in bad condition.
“If we have a book that the spine is broken, that’s a good chance for us to pull it and decide does the history of check-ins and check-outs justify replacing this book or is this one that we just need to let go,” Farley said.
Farley said the library tends to discover that several books are missing throughout the process. Farley said the library will continue to look for those for the next two to three months.
“When we absolutely can’t find them, we mark them as lost,” Farley said. “That puts them in a separate section of us, where we are continually looking for items that we cannot find at the course of the end of the year. If we still have not found those items, we will go ahead and delete them from the collection.”
Farley said keeping inventory every five years is not required by them, but it is good for the library to do so. The closure will be closed September 2-6.
