Tip for April 15, 2019

Do you perform inventory? (Silly question.) Do you weed items? (Another silly question.) Do you do those things at the same time? You can.

We talked recently about Spring cleaning—Weeding old items which gave you some methods to identify items to weed. You could pull those items separately, but since you'll be working in your stacks to do inventory anyway, you could also use the Check Out utility to select a group of items and check them out to Discarded. 

1. Navigate to Tools > Utilities and locate the utility. 
   
   • v6 – Check Out 
     
   • v7 – Check Out to System Patron
     
     
2. Make your selections. Enter a "Copy last used date" range to select items that haven't been used in a long time – try a date in the far past, like 100 years ago, to something more recent, like 5 years ago. Or you could enter barcodes from your weeding list. (Note: Coming with version 7.18.11, you'll also be able to select by items not inventoried.) 
   
   • v6 – Select By Barcode List
   • v7 – Check Show Additional Selections
     
     
3. Set your options. 
   
   • v7 – In the Options tab, choose Discarded from the Check Out Selected Copies to dropdown menu.
   • v6 – in the Selection tab, set To Patron to 2-Discarded Copies.

As you're scanning items during inventory, listen for the alert sound that tells you when something unexpected happened – like if you scanned a discarded item – so you can set those books aside.