Managing bulk loans
Overdues
- This first overdue notice will be a notification of items that will become overdue within the next 7 days, effectively a courtesy or pre-overdue notice. This notice is designed to alert you to the need to either renew items or return the items as soon as possible. The subsequent notice will be issued 28 days after an item was due to be returned.
- The second overdue notice is produced after another 28 days. Books should be returned promptly once this notice is received.
- An account notice is produced after another 28 days. Account notices attract a $6.60 handling fee on each invoice.
- Account notices which include the $6.60 handling fee can be avoided in responding to second overdue notices by:
-
- returning items on shelves immediately
- renewing items on loan to customers
- requesting accounts for any lost or damaged items. These are items you are charging a borrower for.
Renewals
- An entire bulk loan can be renewed.
- Items on loan with a customer can be renewed. Quoting the PLD barcode is preferable when requesting a renewal. If this is not in your record, then the title is the best information to provide.
- If an entire bulk loan is likely to attract accounts before being returned, please contact PLD.
Lost and damaged books
If you know an item has been lost or damaged by a customer, you are able to request an account for it by contacting PLD and quoting the barcode or title. This account avoids the $6.60 handling fee. You will be charged the average book price applying to the item. For current prices please refer to the Average book price list [new window 
32 kb].
You will not be required to pay for items which are returned to PLD damaged as normal wear and tear. Some Languages other than English (LOTE) books in particular are badly bound. Damaged books, loose pages and broken spines can often be repaired by PLD. Please do not repair any PLD items.
Suggested approaches to bulk loan management
- Plan times in the year to rotate stock in collections which are always being used.
- Rotate half of your holdings in a particular LOTE collection if always in use to ensure at least some books are available at all times. There is no need to have completely empty shelves for well used collections.
- Some libraries are able to gather loans statistics for each language. This means the statistics can be scrutinised with a view to requesting appropriate quantities in each language.
- Entering and deletion of records for bulk loans is a time consuming task. Libraries using over 1 000 items each year will need to adequately plan staff time. Some larger library systems plan data entry assistance for their loans librarian on the basis of 2 weeks per year at half yearly intervals. Others allocate all data entry to technical services staff on an ongoing basis.
Last updated: 5th October 2011
Creatively engaging people with information, knowledge and community
