The trip from the return bin back to the shelves exposed!.

Ever wonder what happens when you drop your returned book or other item into the mysterious slots?  If so, prepare to be enlightened!

When the items leave your hand they fall gently into a nicely padded bin.  From there, our crew of check in people (both paid and volunteer--at least 2 and frequently 4 on duty at any given time) will come and take the items from the bins onto book carts.  As we have both an indoor and outdoor drop as well as the daily remote book drops, the emptying of bins is a constant process.

From the carts, items are inspected for completeness (AV ) and condition to be recirculated.  Once inspected, cases locked, etc., each item is checked in  on 2 different scanners to be assured that nothing is missed and that security tabs are re-set.  Things on hold will be "trapped" and set aside at this phase of the process.

After being checked in, returns are then sorted roughly by location, media type, and genre onto carts that will make their way to Recently Returned areas.  Print items are available in the public Recently Returned areas within 3-4  hours of being returned.    AV collections are an exception to the recently returned step,  they are back to their "homes" less than 4 hours after they walk through the door. That's pretty speedy.  New books also fall into the super quick re-shelving category as they are returned to their shelves up to 4 times per day.

Other print materials are taken from the Recently Returned areas on book carts, sorted and re-shelved. Of course, once they are in the Recently Return area everyone has access to them.

Our goal turn-around for return slot to home shelf is 48 hours. Most of the time we are well  ahead of that goal,  exception being  after  a day we have been closed when returns can be exceptionally heavy.

So now you know about the multi-step process designed for accuracy and efficiency to get all those fine materials out to your hands.