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Observed While Running Notices
December 31, 2008 04:06 PM | ILSJonya Pacey, Help Desk Manager
I’ve had the opportunity to run notices while Corrine has been on vacation and have been watching the number of notices that go out via email this week. I’m curious if the numbers will go down since we have begun running pre-overdue notices. This would only be on the email notices, of course, since pre-overdue notices are only going to people with email addresses. However, I have noticed an interesting thing.
Some of our Online Libraries send out more email notices than crash mailers. A year ago, only two of the nineteen libraries with notices on January 1st had more email notices than crash mailers. Of today’s run, seven of the thirteen had at least as many email notices as crash mailers, and three of those Online Libraries have almost three times the email notices as crash mailers. This is a ratio that has gone up significantly this past year and I hope it continues to rise as email notices are free, are delivered to the patron’s email server instantly, and also allow a patron to get pre-overdue notices if the Online Library has decided to have SELCO staff run them. I feel this must add up to a significant savings over a year’s time. I realize local policy about delivering a physical notice to an overdue patron is also in play here, but I thought I would mention the strong increase in email notices during the last year in hopes it might encourage other libraries to make an effort to reduce costs by asking patrons if they could respond to email notices as well as they do for mailed ones.
