Preparing Materials

Cleaning and Housing 

Materials must be cleaned and appropriately housed before they are transferred to ReCAP. All items should be brushed or vacuumed to remove loose dust or debris. Items that have fragile edges or contain loose materials must be in storage enclosures approved by the partners preservation offices. 

Records Preparation

ReCAP does not maintain a bibliographic database of its holdings. Partner libraries are responsible for maintaining a suitable bibliographic record and associating that record with the barcode placed on the item. ReCAP will associate that barcode with the item's location and management information, so that barcode serves as the common key between the systems used at ReCAP and the Partner libraries. ReCAP regularly sends each partner library a manifest of all barcodes accessioned so that mismatches can be identified and reconciled.

This practice ensures that bibliographic data is created an maintained by staff with appropriate expertise in the prevailing metadata standards and practices and the research needs of their library users. Likewise, information about storage locations are operational details are restricted to ReCAP's operational team.

Barcode Placement

Container Type	Recommended Barcode Location
Bound materials	Upper left corner, approximately 1/4" from the edge Option for artifactually significant items, use a barcode wrapper.
4-flap folder/portfolio	Upper left corner, approximately 1/4" from the edge
Phase box	Upper left corner, approximately 1/4" from the edge
CD & DVD Jewel Case	Back of case, upper left corner. If CD & liner notes have separate item records, they get separate barcodes.
Audio Discs [LP album covers]	Upper left corner. Options for artifactually significant items, use a barcode wrapper.
Audio Tape Cassettes including DAT	Front, top (short end)
All Open Reels stored in boxes stored on edge	Adjacent sides of a box in the upper left corner
Video cassettes	Upper left corner
Microfilm boxes	Top or bottom edge of box
All Open Reel film in cans(stored on edge)	On the edge
Document boxes [legal or letter size, 5" or 2.5" wide]	Adjacent sides of a box in the upper left corner
Standard Box [Paige/Record cartons] These are stored directly on shelf, no tray.	Adjacent sides of a box in the lower right corner
Flat box/pizza box. Other terms used to describe such a box: clamshell, telescoping, newspaper. These are stored flat directly on shelf.	Adjacent sides of a box in the lower right corner

Packing Materials for Transport

Carts

Carts are preferred for delivery of large quantities of materials. For bound volumes, books should be shelved upright with the spine facing out, or laid with the spine facing down, against the shelf. Oversized bound volumes should be laid flat on their back cover. Boxes and containers should fit entirely within the perimeter of the cart and the cart should be stretch wrapped to ensure the contents are secure during transit. 

All carts must be labeled with the customer code of the depositing library. When multiple libraries are included on a single cart, place separators between each group of materials, label the sections according to the depositing library, and include a drawing with the cart showing how the depositing material are arranged on the shelves. For example:

Bins/Totes

ReCAP materials may also be sent in totes with a closed lid that can be secured with a zip tie. These should be packed with high-density foam on the bottom and all four sides, and should not exceed forty (40) pound in weight. The ReCAP totes used for physical delivery (see below) are an example of this. 

Customer Codes

All incoming materials must be clearly labelled with a customer code from the depositing library. This information must be displayed on the shipping container or cart so that ReCAP staff can sort materials for intake and verify that materials are associated with the correct customer to set their use conditions.