• Receiving is the process we use to formally "accept" library materials that we have ordered.

• Receiving is the process we use to formally decide if we should pay for the library materials.

This is all just common sense if you think about it in terms of what you do when you get a package at home. Receiving involves asking and answering the following questions.

If you fail to answer these questions correctly while receiving:

• We may accept and pay for materials we never wanted.

• We may be over charged.

• We may pay for materials we never received.

We do have checks in place to insure that these things don't happen. If all the checks work, receiving errors will be caught. However, once we have answered "Yes" to the four questions above and formally received an item, it becomes very difficult and time consuming to fix the mistake. It may take staff hours to fix a single careless mistake.

Student Receiving Tasks

• Online receiving--Creating invoices and receiving material in the library system.

• Sorting materials attached to an orders and putting them where they need to go.

Vendors

• Blackwell North America (BNA)---Our primary vendor; we purchase 90% of our materials from them. They have an online database called Collection Manager which departmental liaisons use to request materials, and which we search. If we find a record for a book in it which states that the book is available, we automatically send the order to them.

• We also order materials from numerous other vendors as required.

Order Types

• Web orders are submitted via the world wide web and printed from a Microsoft Access database.

• Collection Manager orders are submitted via Collection Manager and printed from Collection Manager.

• Form orders are pre-printed slips, a form of ordering which is now obsolete.

• BRF's (Book Request Forms) are print forms which information is written or typed onto. These are also now obsolete.

Common Receiving Problems

When doing any kind of receiving work, these are the types of problems you should be looking for:

• Titles don't match.

• ISBN's (International Standard Book Numbers) don't match.

• Two identical books (we almost never order two of the same book).

• No order slip on file (it probably is misfiled--try under the author's name).