When to stop the search.

Recently, while working at my local library, an attempt to help one of our loyal patrons turned into a lengthy event. This young patron had waited too long to start on a homework assignment and was now facing immediacy with gathering information. The material that this person was requesting was Cd's, (most of which had been placed on a shelf to be re-barcoded and entered into the new system because our old barcodes were not accepted into the new system.) I actually had to manually search each Cd in 4 different areas. (Of course, this was not the patron's fault). After locating 2 out of 3 items that our patron desired, I was faced with a dilemma. How could I check this material out to our patron when there was no record in our computer? Also, I could not just add these materials because I had not yet received certification on the new system. I went against policy and checked these materials out to this patron anyway using the most descriptive information that I could. My patron left happy but in the meantime, my wonderfully patient coworker was forced to assist everyone else that came in and we were pretty busy. How do we know when to stop the search?