The California State University (CSU) Libraries understand that the COVID-19 crisis has disrupted the lives of CSU students and faculty in many ways. Hence we want to make it as easy as possible for you to return library materials to us with minimum stress. Here are the basics about returning library books during the current crisis.
Background:
The intent of advertising courtesy returns is to give students who live closer to a CSU other than their home campus the ability to return their materials.
This is not meant to place an additional burden on staff and libraries so these items do not require special treatment or expedited processing.
You are not expected to check-in items returned to you from another library, just to send them back to the owning library via the CSU courier for them to check in locally. The courier has resumed service to certain campuses. Please refer to this spreadsheet to see which campuses are able to receive items.
Best practices and procedures for handling courtesy returns:
Route all non-local campus returns to the appropriate department to be returned to the home campus via the Unity courier.
Continue your campus practice for checking in locally loaned CSU+ and ILL items before routing to the appropriate department.
Handling of non-CSU items:
If you receive ILL materials where you are not the lender and another CSU is listed as the borrower on the strap/sticker, send the item back to the borrowing library via Unity so they can process the return and send back to the owning library.
If you receive a non-CSU item without a strap/sticker that was not loaned out from your library, send an email out to the ULMS Access and ILL listservs with the subject line, “Return of non-CSU item without a strap/sticker” and include the title of item and owning library. You may then send the item back to the owning library.
Courier Bags:
Quarantine incoming bags per the RSFC Quarantine Guidelines.
You will likely be short on courier bags. There is no urgency in returning these materials. You may wait until you have bags available.
Boxes and bins may also be used to send materials via the courier.
Courtesy returns do not need to be tracked. If patrons have questions about the status of their return, they should contact their home campus and not the CSU where they returned the material.
Contact the FFC our RSFC if you have questions.
FAQ from COLD
When do I need to return my CSU library books?
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