LOWFORD, Minnesota — The library board has asked for a recount of last week's circulation figures after staff found nine more books in the return slot than the lending system recorded as borrowed. The discrepancy has not closed the building or delayed ordinary loans, but it has held up a monthly report used to plan desk hours and request county funding.
The first mismatch appeared on Thursday, when an evening assistant emptied the slot before locking up. Two books bore Lowford property labels and intact barcodes, but neither showed an open loan. Unrecorded returns are common enough, director Helen Sorrell said. A patron can return a donated book by mistake, and older items sometimes keep labels after they leave the collection.
By Monday, seven more had appeared. Staff compared each title with the acquisition ledger and found that all nine had once belonged to the library. Six had been withdrawn during past stock reviews; three were still listed as available on shelves where employees could not find them. The board authorized a physical check rather than adjusting the return total to match the computer.
The matter is small in the library's annual accounts, but a count that cannot be reproduced is a practical problem for the people who maintain it. The county asks the branch to distinguish loans, renewals and returns when it applies for shared-service grants. Desk supervisor Mira Penn said a missing transaction can also leave a patron with an overdue notice for a book already handed back.
Penn and a volunteer spent Monday morning checking the nine barcodes against the local catalogue and the older paper accession cards. One number had been assigned twice in 2008. A software migration in 2016 may explain two more, Sorrell said. The library has asked its circulation vendor for the original transaction files and will not assess late fees on the affected titles while the review continues.
The remaining six have a more orderly record. Their accession numbers, titles and edition dates agree across the paper cards and the current database. What is absent is the loan that would have put each book outside the building. The return log records all six at the slot, not at the desk, so staff cannot say who brought them in.
A hallway camera faces the slot, but its view ends at the exterior door. Footage reviewed by the Register shows several residents returning books on Friday and Sunday; the titles cannot be read from the images. Sorrell said the pictures are useful for estimating when the slot was used, not for identifying a borrower, and the library has not asked police to review them.
The nine books are now in a labeled box behind the circulation desk. Each carries the branch's familiar oval ownership stamp. On four, the stamp sits beneath a later repair label; on the others it is plainly visible. None of the volumes has a note, unusual marking or apparent damage. A children's atlas is the newest of the group, published in 2014.
During the recount, Penn found that the system had also produced a checkout for that atlas at 4:12 p.m. Monday, several hours after she placed it in the box. The entry gives a card number and an ordinary three-week due date. The card is active and belongs to a resident who told Penn she had not visited the branch since Saturday. Sorrell said a delayed transaction is possible, though the vendor's receipt includes Monday's time.
The box had remained behind the desk in the meantime, according to three employees on that shift. It was not sealed, and the staff do not claim to have watched it continuously. They opened it again Tuesday morning and found the atlas inside, bearing the same barcode and a small stain across the county map on page 17. Penn photographed the stain before contacting the vendor so the physical copy could be distinguished from another printing.
At Monday's board meeting, trustees voted to keep the original counts in the public report with a note explaining that they are provisional. The monthly grant request can wait until the vendor responds, board chair Daniel Rohe said. The library will continue counting returns by hand for the rest of the week and will reconcile the two lists each morning before opening.
As of Tuesday, the vendor had not found a duplicate record for the atlas. Its checkout remains active in the system, and the return entered the previous morning remains there too. Staff have left both entries in place. The book itself is still in the box, available for inspection but not for loan.