Communicate
- WITH STUDENTS
- Some libraries get creative with reminding students and staff to return their materials. St. Joan of Arc had a count down to help the whole school see how many books were still out. It also demonstrated how responsive students were to their library’s request for help, and it showed how much the library had been used.
- Our office will post lists of books still out every morning beginning May 9th.
- See the bottom of the page for instructions on converting your spreadsheet into a document that has a page for each student and their lost books.
- To create your own letter for students, here’s some sample text to modify for your own note home. You might copy and paste relevant information from the spreadsheet. Note that the consequence for not returning books on time is different at every school!
As of today, our records show that your family has the preceding item(s) marked “lost” or “checked out” from the library. If you would like to see what the cover looks like, you can look up the title at www.indypl.org. Usually these books are found under beds, car seats or in a locker!
All books need to be returned by [date] at [time], [sample consequence] in order for your child to participate in Field Day. If the book is lost, it will need to be paid for by [date] at [time] Please make checks payable to [school] and write “library books” on the Memo line. Remember, we would always rather have the book back than the money!
Thank you for your assistance in getting ALL of our books back.
- Requests will be cancelled
- We cancel all Shared System borrower requests after your last day of school. Please show students how to pause or cancel their holds if they want to pick their books up when schools starts back up.
- BiblioCommons will let patrons change their pick up locations. If you have students who want to pick up their holds over the summer, show them how!
- Exiting students
- make sure you let students who are graduating know they need to take their library card with them to their local branch to get set back up. We will expire their library cards in mid-August if they are graduating.
- If you are in LT or IPS, you will only expire cards if you know students are moving out of the district.
- Collect debt for any materials checked out at your locations from graduating or departing students and staff
- Waive debt more than 8 years old (incurred before 6/1/2017) on expired students.
- After all debt collection efforts have ended, quietly waive remaining debt incurred at your location from graduating students. Please do not waive debt incurred at other locations.
WITH TEACHERS
- Some teachers assume they should be actively hounding students for their materials. Most teachers have plenty of other things to do. Ask teachers to assist you by passing out notes to the students with materials out, and by allowing them (or a library helper) to return all library items every day. (If books are returned every day, collecting them all is a lot less work!)
WITH FAMILIES
- Here’s an End of year sample letter from St. Barnabas. Modify it to fit this year’s dates at your school, and make sure it goes home early! Ask that the information be included in teacher and school newsletters, email announcements, and website posts.
WITH US!
If you know now that you will have new staff next year, please get them signed up now on this form for training. Training now takes place on two separate days. The first day will be offered sometime Monday through Thursday the last week of July and the first week of August. The second day will be offered about four weeks later. (Dates have not yet been set, but you can fill out the form and we’ll notify you as soon as they are set.) We know plans change, so keep this form handy over the summer. Once dates have been established and selected, we’ll send out a follow-up email with more specific information to the address you indicate on the form a couple of weeks before training begins.
Plan ahead
- Have a discussion with your administrator early in the second semester about how you will handle students who do not return their library materials. Some schools, while they make repeated attempts to get the items back at the end of the year, allow these lost items to accumulate until graduation when they must be paid for in order for the student to graduate.
- You should have a conversation with your administrator about how to handle this money. It usually goes into a library fund and is used to purchase new materials for your library. Remember, you will collect money for all materials checked out at your location, not just your own materials.
- You will be asked to set your last due date by filling out this form. Most schools set it about two to three weeks before the end of the school year. Most schools also make exceptions and override the final due date so students can continue to check one item out at a time if they are desperate.
- Talk with your administrator about putting a blurb in the student handbook about the school library. Use this as an example.
DATES TO REMEMBER
End of Year Due Date:
Set your last due date by filling out this form.
Request Processing:
All locations except Holy Cross Lutheran and Riley Children’s Hospital will be removed from the list of pick up location on Sunday, May 12th.
Your items will be non-holdable the evening of Friday May 2nd. We will make things holdable two weeks after your first day of school.
Students will need to change their pick up locations or suspend their holds 14 days before your last day of school. If the holds are still active for your school on that date, we will cancel them.
On Monday, July 22nd, IndyPL will put all Shared System locations back on the list of pickup locations. This should allow teachers especially plenty of advance time to request materials to be on hand when classes begin.
Changing these parameters actually involves three IndyPL staff people – it’s pretty complicated – so we had to choose dates that would fit the majority of you for the pickup locations dates. .
Merge instructions
Below are instructions for the Merge Templates. There is a Merge Template to use with the Checked Out spreadsheet, and another to use with the Lost spreadsheet. We regret that the Grad Yr/Homeroom field does not print on either merged document. It does show up on the Checked Out spreadsheet, though, so you may use that as a reference. (You should receive both spreadsheets via email.)
Note 5/14/2024: the Lost spreadsheet does not include book costs.
Note: 5/14/2024: the first merged record in the Revised Merge Template for Lost Books will need to be edited manually by you using information from the spreadsheet.