Ohio Launches Next-Day Book Delivery

For the first time, students in Ohio schools will be able to order a book from any school or public library in the state and have it delivered to their school as early as the next day. The service is called MORE (Moving Ohio Resources Everywhere), a new statewide delivery service that will carry books, videos, and other materials between public and school libraries. It is a statewide service unheard of in many parts of the United States.

How does it work? Simply click the local online catalog's MORE icon, and a statewide search of library catalogs is activated. Then, when the desired item is found at another library, users enter their library card number, and the item is shipped, via U.S. Cargo, to the requesting library.

Although MORE began as a joint project between the State Library of Ohio and OPLIN (the Ohio Public Library Information Network), members of INFOHIO, a network that serves the state's K–12 schools, and the Ohio Educational Library Media Association wanted to make certain that schools were included as well. Cynthia Hustead, a project assistant with INFOHIO, says that some state library and OPLIN officials thought that because all participating libraries are required to pay an annual fee, many cash-strapped schools would be reluctant to join MORE. "But we studied 29 school districts, and they felt they'd participate if it's a cost they could afford," says Hustead. To make membership more affordable, the fee structure was changed to allow schools to pay for services only when they were open, and they were given the option of having the delivery truck come one to five days per week. For example, a year-round school that wants the delivery truck to stop five days a week pays an annual MORE fee of $2,800, while a school open the more standard 34 weeks a year pays $1,800 for five-days-a-week service. The least expensive fee, for deliveries once a week for 34 weeks, is only $370. For details, visit www.moreforohio.org.

The most radical thing about MORE, say its officials, is the ability of many automation systems to talk together. What looks and sounds simple to the user requesting materials from the library catalog actually required a tremendous amount of work, says Carol Roddy of OPLIN, who manages the technological side of MORE. "We had the challenge of figuring out how to handle more than 20 different automation systems," she says. Although many bugs remain—users cannot yet cancel their own requests, for example, and the delivery routes are still in flux—Roddy believes that MORE is the kind of service that today's library users want. "Empowering patrons remotely is what libraries should be doing," she says. "It's a brave new world, and we're plunging forward. We're in the very early stages right now."