Accession of new instructional materials at SRCSA

Cataloging is essential to tracking available resources

Friday was another active day for this Instructional Materials Technician, who regularly makes deliveries to classrooms at Santa Rosa Charter School for the Arts.

From “Textbook HQ” inside SRCSA Library, I checked-in new arrivals, which included tubs of games that support the math curriculum. I delivered these to their intended destination after logging them into resource-inventory.

I also processed social-science textbooks that I’d requested from the district: verifying quantities-received against those needed in each classroom.

An important component in keeping track of materials is the automated resource catalog. By saving/creating a record for a title and inputting the number of copies, I am saving myself the work of having to re-count copies whenever I need that information. (Records will need to be updated, of course, to reflect new arrivals, or — heaven forbid — to account for copies that are lost or damaged.)

A “location” field lets me specify where on campus each of these copies reside, which is helpful when needing to verify that classrooms have sufficient quantities.