Home → Resource Sharing → Resource Sharing Policies and Best Practices → Policies

1.1. Policies

Last Updated 09/23/2024

Introduction to Resource Sharing

The NC Cardinal consortium consists of multiple counties and their libraries joining forces to offer better support amongst their peers, offer more material for their patrons, and to create everlasting results that make each library valuable.

NC Cardinal’s mission is to provide, maintain and continually develop an efficient, sustainable ILS for public library users and library staff within North Carolina. The establishment of the NC Cardinal consortium promotes a single vision for providing library services and access to library materials for North Carolina library users.

The Resource Sharing section is to provide guidance and best practices for NC Cardinal's resource sharing aspect of the consortium. This is a live document that may need to be amended in the future as the consortium grows into a larger entity.

Policies and Procedures

General Policies

• Circulations will follow the policy of the library where they are checked out, regardless of whether they are owned locally or obtained through resource sharing, in order to provide a consistent experience for patrons.
• When thinking of Cardinal resource sharing, it is important to remember that an NC Cardinal patron is a patron exactly like your local patron.
• Holds may be placed on books, videos, audiobooks and music from any NC Cardinal library. Each library system within NC Cardinal can designate specific item types to be non-holdable. These non-holdable items can be defined as 1) never holdable or 2) non-holdable for a specific length of time, for example, six months. 
• If a patron presents the on-hold item for checkout before it is retrieved for the requesting hold patron, the in-house patron with item in hand receives preference; a circulation supervisor will override the hold and check out the item to the in-house patron. The requesting hold patron will remain in line for the item. Patrons whose NC Cardinal cards are “blocked” or “barred” will not be allowed to place holds until their card privileges are restored.
• If you would like to put something on hold for one of your Staff or Outreach accounts that have a longer circulation period, check with the lending library first before checking the material out for an extended period of time. 
• If one of your patrons lost an item that was borrowed through resource sharing, it is best to check with the owning library whether they prefer payment or a replacement copy. Several libraries have provided instructions on what to do if one of your patrons loses an item borrowed through resource sharing. You may wish to refer to this page for these instructions before contacting the owning library, but it is recommended that you still contact the library as a courtesy, even if instructions are provided. If a patron replaces a lost or damaged item with an exact copy (same ISBN), send that new item to the library system that had the original item. In most cases, the library that receives a replacement copy allows the patron to keep the damaged copy.
• It is always preferable to put the patron in contact with the owning library so they can pay that library directly for the lost item, since payments can't be transferred between member libraries. It is however acceptable to receive payment of a damaged or lost item owned by another system. 
• Patrons may return any borrowed item to any member library for transit back to the owning library.
• If a patron places a hold on an item, and their account is subsequently blocked due to unpaid bills or other blocking scenarios, their hold will still be targeted when it becomes available, but staff will not be able to capture it. This is a feature of the Evergreen software that is unlikely to change. In such situations, it is recommended that library staff suspend the hold for that patron so that it does not continually target, set the activation date for one month from the date of the suspension, and then add a note either to the patron's account or to the suspended hold explaining the situation.

Best Practices

• It is best to have at least two people who understand what your library’s daily resource sharing procedures entail. You never know when your contact person will be sick for a long period of time or on vacation. This way, your backup will know how to get into your FedEx account to make labels. Regardless, there must be one person who is the contact. The contact person should also be located at the library system’s hub, if at all possible. 
• Even though messages or alerts may pop up once an item is checked in, make sure that you still look to see what the message or alert tells you. Check to see if all DVDs are housed in their case or any multi-media is attached to a book.
• If there is an issue with an item that comes to your location, you can always contact the owning library’s resource sharing contact for information or help. Printing off the contact list is helpful in that sense.
• If a damaged item or an item missing pieces is sent to your system, be mindful of all the ways you can deal with the item. You can send the material back to its owning library with a note while retargeting the hold for another library. You can place notes in your system describing the issue with the material while allowing your patron to check out the material. If something is missing (DVD has 5 discs but missing 1), you may call the owning library’s contact to see about locating the missing disc. You can also use the template. Please do not use scotch tape or masking tape on material as that can damage covers.
• If an item appears to have gone missing during consortium-wide borrowing, you need to let the contact person of the owning library know so the copy status can be updated in the catalog. 
• Do not tape, paper clip or otherwise attach the transit receipt to the item. Inserting the transit slip into the item with the branch destination is best.
• Use the Cardinal Resource Sharing Basecamp Group (https://3.basecamp.com/3986049/buckets/17916141/message_boards/2838762917) for any questions you have or need consensus information about resource sharing. 
• Cleaning other library's DVDs: If a DVD needs cleaning, either upon receipt or return, it is acceptable to clean it. However, we recommend that you include a note to the owning library that the disc was cleaned.
• Special care should be taken when packing audiovisual materials like DVDs or audiobooks (this also includes audio-enabled books like Wonderbooks or VOX books), as these can be easily damaged in transit if packed in with books without suitable protection.  Placing them in smaller boxes or padded envelopes, or wrapping them in bubble wrap, will help protect them from potentially being crushed by heavier materials like books.

Packing Materials

• Reuse any packing material that you can. Boxes work the best.
• Before reusing a box, check the corners for signs of splitting. Consider using tape to reinforce the corners if they are weak.
• If there is room between the top of the box and the top of the material, consider a smaller box or use enough stuffing so that the box does not collapse if something heavy is stacked on top of it.
• Consolidate items into as few packages as permitted. Don’t overweight your boxes (no more than 40 pounds a box) or cram a box to the point of bursting at the seams, but be mindful of how much stuff is placed into your shipping packages. At the same time, do not send one item at a time whenever possible.
• When selecting boxes, it is recommended that you avoid using boxes that previously held cleaning materials (especially if the cleaning materials in question are these). The odor of the cleaning product has been known to be absorbed by the pages of books, and any scent-sensitive staff or patrons will be unable to handle the materials until the smell dissipates. The materials will often have to be quarantined until such time.

Shipping and FedEx

• Use the address forum within FedEx to keep your contacts up to date. Also, you will need to incorporate the hub library into the receiving address field for shipping.
• You may want to print off a list of all the library system’s hubs and branches. There are guides, how-to’s, library member listings, etc.
• Designate a single place or Library Hub for FedEx for your packages to be dropped off/picked up. Library systems should have their own internal courier system for moving materials between branches in the library system.

Library Hubs

• In NC Cardinal, each library system has a “hub” library, usually the main branch of that particular system. The hub handles all material to be sent out to other library systems’ hubs and any material coming to its own library system. Within multiple branch library systems, resource sharing is already prevalent amongst the branches, so a courier service of some sort is present. This courier service will still be used within each system and material being requested from a consortium branch library will be sent to the hub for shipping. Time differs with each system as to when courier services are used during the week (some systems have courier runs on Mondays and Thursdays while others have it Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday).
• The hub of a library system will also usually house the contact person who is in charge of shipping/receiving consortium materials. The contact person works with the mail service NC Cardinal uses for its handling of material. At this time, we are under contract with FedEx. Each library system should have a backup in case the contact person is not present for a long period of time.
• Each hub should have a space that is designated to accommodate for the shipping/receiving of consortium materials. Some hubs have a room that is used to process these materials while other systems may not have a large space to perform these daily tasks. It will be left up to the hub to decide on how this is arranged. Shelving can be a great way of storing the day’s pull list items or even separation of library system’s requests. If possible, a table of sorts can work nicely as a base for a scale, packaging tape, and other materials. A computer with a printer should be nearby to create your package labels.

Tracking Spreadsheet Templates

Excel Format - attached to this page, below, for download

Google Sheets Format