Kudzu-Ops Mailing List: Lanter Labels -- Best Practices. Please share with your co-workers.

[John Burger (jburger]

Hey folks:

 

Earlier this week, the “Lanter Label Task Force” – an august, blue-ribbon group of dedicated librarians J -- met for our first (and possibly last) conference call.  The purpose was to discuss ways to ensure labels used on Lanter courier bags facilitate speedy service. 

 

We’ve noticed that some sites have, over time, created their own labels for Lanter shipments that are formatted differently, sometimes omitting information necessary for efficient sorting by the Lanter folks.

 

1)       It appears that over time, some folks may have forgotten that ASERL provides standardized labels for each participating Lanter site – see http://www.aserl.org/programs/kudzu/address-labels/.  These use standard Avery address labels (#5163) and can be printed from any standard printer.  Please be sure your staff, students, and any others who handle outgoing ILL shipments are aware of these labels.

 

2)      If your library prefers to use labels printed from ILLiad (version 8.0 or higher), please make sure the templates contain the Lanter routing code and all other information found on the labels above.  Attached is a sample ILLiad template provided by U-Miami – you’ll see the sample label (addressed to U-Alabama) on the right (top) side of the page.  If you’d like some quick tutoring on how to configure ILLiad to use these labels with the necessary information for Lanter, please let me know.

 

Note that Lanter labels only contain the “To” information – the address of the destination library.  They do not contain the “From” info – the address of the library sending the items.  Including the “From” info may result in your items being sent back to your library, rather than to the library that requested the loan.

 

The sorting processes used by Lanter are pretty basic – the workers look for codes, and bags get sorted into piles left or right.  If the workers cannot easily determine the destination, bags can easily get misrouted and go far astray.  (This reminds me of the classic Bugs Bunny cartoons where Bugs finds himself in weird situations and says, “I knew I shoulda turned left at Albuquerque!”  For a quick laugh  see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8TUwHTfOOU. )

 

The Lanter Label Task Force will keep an eye on the items they receive over the coming months to see if the use of these best practices improves delivery times.  If needed, we can work with individual sites as needed to identify ways to improve processes that can improve services to users.  In the meantime, please let me know if you have any questions about the above information.

 

Happy holidays, all!

 

 

 

--jeb

John Burger, Executive Director
Association of Southeastern Research Libraries

ASERL has moved! As of July 1, our address is:
   ASERL
   Box 90182 / 411 Chapel Drive
   226A Bostock Library
   Durham, NC 27708
   919-681-2531 – telephone
   919-681-0805 -- fax

 

Attachment: Sample Lanter ILLiad Label.docx
Description: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document