Drop Shipments

There's nothing more exciting than to receive brand new books from the book vendors.  Due to budgetary constraints, our administrative branch who handles the main orders are restructuring, shipped staff out to branches, in addition to re-routing the shipping routes to drop at branches rather than the processing center.  


When we were plush with cash, all materials were shipped to Bibliographic services which held the traditional functions of Evaluations with real evaluators, Acquisitions, and Cataloging.  There was a processing team who covered and labeled these items.  


So the new process, due to drastically reduced Bibliographic staff, is to drop shipment at the branches where branch staff will pick up the slack.  To alleviate labor, the system has contracted vendors to physically process materials and outsourced cataloging (I think our catalogers may add details to these records).  


This past year I've been preparing my library assistant to receive such drop shipments.  Our Friends of the Library group have been very good to us, allowing us to order materials we are not receiving.  Because we had evaluators, I did not have to read reviews.  Now that our main budget is next to nothing, I've had to seek good reads for the public.  I'd say I spend about $1500 a month for just the adult fiction as I'd rather aim for circulation with popular reads.