Report by Mike Morten (Mike has now left Westminster Libraries)


Preparation

1. It was important to get our Cataloguing Services staff on board before the start of the project. This helped them to plan their workload and make necessary arrangements.
2. Equally important to speak to our systems unit at the same time to make arrangements for statistical evaluation.
3. Also, to inform participating sites about the project. They need to know what to do when mysterious packages start to arrive! In general, give as much notice to anyone involved as you can!

Circulating

1. Useful to involve all sites for maximum use of stock.
2. No perfect model for circulating but my instinct is that it's probably best to do it in rotation rather than at random. This makes it easier to build up a core of readers at each site who come to expect a BOTM to appear regularly at their library. The only downside is that some sites will enter the scheme at a later point than others. 

Delivery point 

It's easier for publisher and bookseller if there is one delivery point and you distribute.

Cataloguing and processing

1. It was useful to send schedule and Advance Information to cataloguers in advance so they could plan their workload. Changes of title are not problematic if enough notice is given. 
   
2. Processing and mounting displays very time-consuming. Grab any admin and site support you can for both!

Longterm scope of the project

It also occurs to me that we have never discussed the long-term practicalities of the project. Ideally we are creating a model that other publishers and booksellers can adopt but this does raise questions about the workload of cataloguing departments if they come to deal with something on a much larger scale. This is one of the first questions our own cataloguers asked and we may want to think of this in more detail.