Auditor's Role in Library

[Nidhi Kumari]

Dear friends,

Greetings!

Kindly tell me the role of the auditor's in the library.

Is it their role to check the entry and shelving of books?

[Siddhartha Shankar Ray]

Dear Ms. Nidhi Kumari,

Thanks for your post.

The purpose of audit is to check

(1) whether the functioning of the particular section is being done in accordance with the financial rules of the government

(2) whether there is any lapse in payment & receipt activities

(3) whether the unit/section is making best use of funds

(4) whether the unit/section is maintaining proper & valid records of all the transactions be they monetary or administrative.

(5) whether the unit/section is functioning conveniently.

These above mentioned five points broadly accommodate all necessary important aspects.

The Auditors routinely ask for Accession Registers so that they can check the expenditure incurred in a particular Financial Year (or a few years, as the case may be) and whether there is any deviations with  the statement received from the finance & accounts section. They check the base & net prices of the books because the total of net prices of the books are actual expenditure incurred. In case for some books (like govt. publications or short discount titles) no discount were available, they checks those items and ask for clarification unless it is clearly written in the corresponding "remarks" column in the Accession Register.

They often visit the Library to check whether the books (specially the number of copies) are actually bought and they want to ensure "physical existence" (for instance, suppose the accession registrar exhibits purchase of 50 copies of a particular title, they want to ensure of "physical existence" of the number of copies. If they observe that 23 copies are there in the stack. They will ask the Librarian about the remaining copies. the Librarian then presents the borrowing records and produces the reference copies kept in the reference which are separately located from the main stack. As the audit party gets records existence & transaction of the remaining copies, they become satisfied and put their signature & comments  at the last entry of a particular year they are checking.

This signature & comments are reflected in their report. 

The Auditors generally do not check shelving of books (as generally they don't have enough time) unless there are internal complains or gross mis-arrangements.

I hope I could clarify your points.

Sincerely,

Siddhartha S. Ray. Calcutta 

[Nidhi Kumari]

Thanks a lot, Sir!

Your information is really very useful for me.

Once again thank you.