(blu-ray)Being a librarian
It makes sense to have a guide on how the librarian should use the administrative bits on here, or more specifically - how to deal with people wanting books out of the library.
Firstly, it's probably best if you read about getting a book out of the library as that's where everyone has to start. It's also worth making sure you're logged in too, as there are lots of extra features within the library that only appear then.
The way the whole taking books out things work is done over a series of stages
- They reserve the book
- You take the book out of the library
- You hand the book over to them
- You get the book back off them
- You put the book back into the library
So the first place to look is at the reservations page as that will be where it tells you who has reserved what book. It also tells you where (in theory) to find them.
It lists where to find it for each copy of the book we have and ideally you should mark off the right one, but in 99% of cases, there's only one copy so it shouldn't be an issue. You can mark books as having been taken out of the library or unreserve them.
Once you've taken a book out of the library, it then appears in the next section on that page which lists what books are "in transit", namely in your possession on their way to a member. In all likely hood, you'll have taken the book out and handed it straight to the member, so you'll usually do this bit at the same time.
Time passes, the member (hopefully) reads the book and eventually returns it to you.
You can track what books are in the hands of members on the withdrawals page. When you get given a book back, you can mark it off as having been collected. At which point it's back in your possession and "On it's way back" and will appear in the next section of the page. When you put return the book back to the library (it even tells you where it should go), you mark it off on there and the book now is available for others to borrow.
If there is already someone waiting for a book, there's a "Quick transfers" section that lets you skip things and re-assigns a book to someone else who has it reserved.
Assuming you still have the book though, it then enters the final stage of being returned back to the library. Again like taking the books out, you'll most likely be doing this in one step too.
