The oober library (Seattle Public Library) – RFID meeting

After popping to the Washington State Convention Centre to register early for tomorrow’s Educause conference, I went to a pre-planned meeting at the Seattle Public Library.

 

(note the glass cleaning truck that seems to live there!) 

It’s definitely an oober library! Today’s meeting was with Jackie Zajanc.  On the way, I popped into Seattle’s’ Finest Coffee to get whatever the guy recommended – which happened to be a large Maple White Mocha with an extra shot, whipped cream and sprinkles.  You can safely assume that I was UP THERE by the time I arrived at the library.  I arrived with my coffee cup (there are hardly any bins in Seattle) but was not alone as everybody in the library seemed to be carrying one… (a coffee cup, not a bin!)

Anyway, the large security guard (seated a long way from the exit) called my host who came within a minute.  This person was instantly engaging, with a sparkling sense of humour and witty rapport that frankly made my caffeine induced zeal appear somewhat introverted in comparison!  She typified the fresh, helpful and engaging nature of the whole building and I instantly felt at home.

Straight into the RFID then – I wanted to know the bad points and the things to avoid if/when we go down the RFID route within our new City Centre Campus at the mighty University of Wales Newport.

We began at one of the entrances – there are several and none of them have desks nearby them, which represents the first problem.  No physical barriers means that when the buzzer sounds, people can still just walk through – and in fact, when I was there on Sunday, somebody did (no – it wasn’t me!)  They feel that they do not lose any more stock than they did before RFID but they don’t really know. Anecdotally, some of their branch libraries actually turn the exit gates off because (I assume) it avoids having to not do something (or rely on the volunteers) when the buzzer sounds.

My utopian vision of RFID was a system that would allow a simple scan of the entire building to indicate what stock was mis-shelved and/or what was missing.  Not so – well, not automatically with their system any rate.  It would be possible to go along each stack manually scanning with a handheld device using their system, but they haven’t tried doing this yet. What’s more, their barrier sensors don’t pick up the detail of any tags that go through – only whether it has been deactivated or not – shame as they instantly know what had gone out this way.

They have an issues / returns desk but it is fairly small as 90 per-cent of their users self issue.  This works pretty well – bearing in mind that the system is now some 4 years old at least and we won’t be going live until 2010 – giving us about 7 years extra technology to do the things I want it to!

Since going live, a standard has emerged for the tags – and they are slowly moving across to the new standard.  They are also moving across to copper tags instead of aluminium (why do people in the US drop a vowel on that word?). The alu ones apparently aren’t too robust – yet to see about the copper.  Interestingly, one user (a member of staff) borrowed a paperback and, finding that it smelled musty, did her normal trick of putting it in the microwave – you can guess the rest!

At the start, it was hard to get people to use the self issue – and interestingly, the staff demanded that the barcode be retained! This was because it made it easier to look up a book when re-issuing over the phone.

The staff have also found other problems – namely, that users are making more of the reserve function and being able to monitor it over the web, now demand their books to be trolleyed and ready for pick up in a much shorter time than was the case before RFID etc – gobbling up much of the freed up staff time from self-issue.

We then went to look at the returns sorting function.  Now this is a piece of work!  It used to sort onto trolleys but that didn’t work too well so they recently replaced the trolleys with purpose designed bins – where do they get all the money? CyMAL take note   The drop bins automatically sort via the conveyor belt and RFID into appropriate bins for trollying and shelving by hand.

I overcame my British reticence (not) to talk to several people – staff and students – within the library.  They were from all walks of life, culture and society – using the library as simply a place to be and/or drink coffee/chat – or else, to use its resources, even if this extended only to sitting with a laptop and ripping CDs

It’s easy to see why people fall in love with this place – I did in a very short period of time – which is very much unlike me. Maybe it was the coffee, but I don’t think so.