Jackie,
I have not had to face auditors yet but for our inventory purposes, the
fiscal control office is content with an estimate of the number of volumes
and an estimated average value per volume. I am currently using the
approximate going rate for a new treatise as my estimated value per volume.
It is a little high for reporters but I do have some rarer books which ups
the value of the collection and I sure don't want to have to check
antiquities catalogs to place values on these materials one by one!
I do have a pretty accurate inventory list for the majority of our
collection so my volume count should be fairly close. I did this when
I did some in-house cataloging of our active collection to make a book
catalog for the District and County Judges (not all have computers)
and few have any sort of Chamber Collections. I keep this up to date as we
add and pull books. I have also done the majority of our "Old book"
collection (Old editions we have kept for historic research--many date
to the mid-1800's) (and yes, they are occasionally used!). I have a
small miscellaneous collection and several tiers of old British works
yet to work with (although I have done a quick list to know what
is there). When I get done with several projects of higher priority, I will
finish listing these few sections. I used a little cataloging program
called Librarian's helper. I purchased it so that I could make labels for
supplements without having to go on-line with OCLC. This purpose alone
had the program paying for itself in no time at all but I have found so
many other uses for it that I am thnakful I purchased it! It does have a
few drawbacks (length permitted for title doesn't always cover the massive
titles they used to use and sometimes I need more than 5 lines on a call
number) but these are the exceptions and not the rule so I can live
comfortabley with it.
I hope this is what you were interested in.
Kathy Carlson
Wyoming State Law Library
(307) 777-7509
<kcarlson@csn.org>
On Mon, 29 Nov 1993, JACQUELINE S. WRIGHT wrote:
> Dear netters,
>
> Our auditor is not satisfied with our method of inventory
> control. We now use a simple "IN-OUT inventory" where we
> count the number of books coming in and subtract the number
> going out. He wants us to count the collection (which we
> need to do anyway), use an average price to give it a value,
> then when each book is added, add the new price, and deduct
> an old average price whenever we discard a book. He said
> that this is the standard government audit.
>
> This does not make a lot of sense to me (or the auditor) so
> I would like to know what the rest of you are doing - and do
> you have any forms, databases, etc. to make the job easier?
>
> Please reply to me. I will share my summary.
>
> Thanks,
>
>
> Jacqueline S. Wright
> Arkansas Supreme Court Library E-mail: SCLIBRARY@UALR.EDU
> 625 Marshall, Justice Building Phone: (501)682-2147
> Little Rock, AR 72201-1080 Fax: (501)682-6877
>
>
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