Sign up and start sharing

When you're ready to start using the Shared Reads blog to offer or claim floating item overflow, you'll need to have a Google account. Sign up on Blogger, under "Create your blog now." You don't need to do the steps that create a blog (unless you want to!) Or sign up on Google. It's not too scary.

You'll see the pattern of postings on Shared Reads.

If you'd like to offer some extras:

OFFER: (subject or general description), for example
OFFER: assorted J Disney VHS

If you want to claim them, click "Post a Comment" on that entry. Tell the offerer what you'd like and who and where you are.

When they're gone, the offerer will post:
TAKEN: (subject or general description)

If you branch needs some materials, post:
SEND: (subject or title or general description)

To send materials on to a claiming or requesting branch, check them out to the newly created user account with User ID or User Name "Float Away." (Actually, there are several user accounts Float Away 1, Float Away 2, etc. Use any of them.) Then box or bundle the items, label them for the receiving branch, and send them off to their new temporary homes.

Feel free to participate in the "poaching collection," as well. You all have permission to poach. No MCPLer will be a rotten aristocratic landowner who gets you deported to Australia. Poaching allows you to place item-level holds on titles your branch needs, when those items have not circulated at their current home branch for at least 6 months. If the item is not one of the floating item-types, be sure to edit the owning branch information.

Floating Q&A part 3

These appeared as comments under an earlier post:

1.) It appears that cancelled holds should be returned to the "former"library and not stay at the branch. Is this true? Do we need to edit the materials?
Here's an example of something that did not work the way we expected.
Cathy G is working on an answer to this. In the meantime I would suggest that if the item is not going to go on to fill another hold that you check it out to a located items shelf and check it back in--thus capturing it for your branch.

2.) Should each branch have rubber stamps that include "Montgomery County Public Library" and the Monroe street address? Or just the state of MD? We had to stamp all of the new Reading List Books and all we have is a stamp that says "Montgomery County Library". Is this sufficient?
We hoped that branches would not add more processing to these items. The date due label and the barcode indicate the owning library system (though some older barcodes don't show the state). We did not find a compelling reason for reading list books to add an additional ownership stamp. Please tell us if you think that we will lose significant numbers of these items to thieves who somehow can peel off these two labels. In a related note, we do realize that Large Print items, especially those with dust jackets, may need an ownership stamp. It would make sense for all branches to have an ownership stamp.