Advances in technology make it easier to track library’s 850,000 volumes

This is a tale of two books.

Both have been in the Greenville County Library System since the 1930s. But one is about to be retired permanently while the other remains on the shelf.

Their brightly rebound covers and penciled-in notes tell secrets of the past while their bar codes give them a place in the present. Together, they illustrate the challenges of managing a collection of more than 850,000 items.

The first book is a biography of Edwin Arlington Robinson, published in 1927. Penciled notes, almost lost, say that it was added to the collection in September 1935. The pocket at the back of the book still has a card in it, with names and numbers, both handwritten and stamped.

The book is falling apart and is in the process of being removed from the collection.

The second book, still in circulation, was published in 1938 and added to the collection that same year — “The Buccaneers” by Edith Wharton. Like the Robinson biography, it’s been rebound at least once. But it has weathered the years better than its old friend.

In the Wharton book, penciled notes tell the date it was added to the collection as well as the price the library paid for it, $2.20. The back pocket is empty, but it bears the number assigned to the book long before the era of bar codes.

“Buccaneers” was rebound and saved over the years because of its ongoing value, due largely to the Wharton’s reputation.

Still, if the book deteriorates — and some pages do have small tears — it won’t be rebound again.

“It will probably end up being a mass market paperback next time around,” said Tracy Anderson, technical services manager for the library system.

That is, if it’s replaced.

If that sounds harsh, take a peek into Anderson’s daily world of decisions.

Books and other materials come into the library through the acquisitions department, which Anderson oversees. Orders are placed, received, invoiced and cataloged. Every item gets a call number and a bar code.

Anderson’s team members are the power brokers when it comes to library holdings.

“We select everything for the whole system,” she said.

Some “selections,” though, aren’t really. The library has a six-page list of authors whose new books are ordered automatically, 11 copies for the permanent collection and more on lease for the first few months of publication, when demand is highest. Think John Grisham and James Patterson, for example.

“Then a month or two later, they [patrons] want the next one; they don’t care about the last one anymore,” Anderson said.

When the rush is over, leased books are returned to the leasing company. Still, with new books coming in by the dozens — and finite space on shelves throughout the system — Anderson’s team has another job: “weeding.”

The library runs regular circulation reports to identify materials that haven’t been checked out in two years. Showing up on the list isn’t an instant eviction notice, but it does mean an item is scrutinized and its long-term value weighed carefully.

“I think of it as more of an art than a science,” said Barbara Yonce, access services manager, who will have been with the library 29 years in May.

Books leave the system another way, too — when they are simply too old or damaged to be usable, like the Robinson biography.

In the middle of the last century, rebinding was a common practice. Binderies made regular visits to libraries to pick up books that needed a new lease on life. The original books were sewn, and the new bindings often were sewn, too. Books were printed with a wide enough “gutter” — white space on the inside of pages — to allow for trimming and rebinding.

New books tend to have narrow gutters and to be printed on cheaper paper. If a title is worth keeping in the collection, it is almost always replaced instead of being rebound.

Rebinding — usually in a very bright color and often with a vibrant pattern on the front and back — makes the library’s oldest books easy to pick out on the shelves, especially at the Hughes Main branch.

“We have the luxury of more space to hang on to older things,” Yonce said.

Keeping track of all the movement in and out of the collection is a high-tech job. But it wasn’t always that way.

The oldest books in circulation still hold marks of earlier organizing systems, right alongside their 20th-century bar codes.

Before the codes, each title was assigned a unique number in the collection. The numbers were assigned in order, so book 80500 was added 20,000 items after book 60500.

The classic card catalog was supplemented by librarians who knew every book in their section of the library.

“We had some remarkable staff who were like walking encyclopedias of their collections,” Yonce said.

She joined the library system just as it was implementing a microfilm catalog.

“I wanted to be where they were moving forward with technology,” she said.

Moving forward at the time meant putting the catalog on terminals that held less data than an inexpensive thumbdrive today.

But there still were significant limitations. The library’s collection grew every year, but patrons only knew of items on the shelves at their branch. There was no way to track a book. Holds were placed, but using an imperfect hand-written system.

The library first barcoded materials in 1986. Since then, it has switched twice to better-integrated online systems. Each time, when the materials were moved into a new online system, they were recorded as entering the library system that year.

So every item the library owned prior to the last update, in 2011, is recorded as being added to its collection in 2011.

That means there’s no way to know which books are the oldest in the collection. Pencil markings in books such as the Wharton novel and the Robinson biography are clues, though. They often give dates the books were acquired and the price the library paid for them.

The library was able to carry over circulation data with each computer system change. Yonce can find out in a moment how many times an item has been checked out since 1986. Wharton’s “Buccaneers”: 56 times.

Now the library is poised for its next major advancement in managing the collection: a radio frequency identification, or RFID, system.

Sometime this year, librarians will begin a months-long process of putting new RFID tags on every item — yes, including the 1938 Wharton book. Every branch will have new checkout stations and security gates.

The new system will offer significant advantages in keeping materials organized on the shelves. Right now, librarians regularly do time-consuming “shelf reading,” making sure items are in order and in the right place.

“If something is out of position, out of order, then it’s lost,” Yonce said.

With RFID tags in place, librarians can use a special wand to scan quickly down a row. A signal will let them know if something is in the wrong place. The system also simplifies checkout at both the circulation desk and self-check stations.

It’s a long way from pencils and stamped cards. And Yonce is excited to be around for it, as she was for each past development.

“It’s made being a librarian interesting,” she said.