At the heart of all libraries is the idea that materials should be constantly moving through a cycle and that the way these resources move should be controlled as to not lose any. The policies and procedures of circulation in any library are vital to the use of a collection, as it is through these practices that libraries keep their resources constantly moving and creating engagement with their patrons.

These practices that have been adopted and changed by libraries and similar institutions are important because they impact the need for such organizations to exist in the first place. In other words, if a library has no moving collection or cycling of old and new materials, they are unlikely to have patrons and therefore no purpose.

Furthermore, if a library has no method of controlling the circulation of their resources, they can easily go missing and can be costly to replace or even irreplaceable altogether. By having policies in place that create patron-types and specifications for accessing certain parts of a collection through a Library Card, these organizations can limit who can request and remove what from their collection.

The first assignment of this unit was to visit a local library and identify the process by which the circulation of materials in the organization's collection is limited and controlled. Upon identifying some of the common practices and methods, we would analyze their use and explain why they were important and what purpose they served.

During this assignment, I recalled multiple visits to my local Public Library as well as the general practices I had learned and picked up working in that same branch a month prior. Upon doing so, I was able to identify four distinctly different and important parts of the Circulation Control practices used by the Public Libraries and describe how they worked to keep the Circulation System running.

Small details such as the restrictions on the borrower type and the fine print policies in a libraries' contract with a patron can be extremely important to this process too, and parties on both sides of the counter must be knowledgeable of these practices.