A Do-Everything Card
New library cards pay fines, reserve computers, and more
By Walter Minkel -- School Library Journal, 6/1/2004
The Brooklyn Public Library's (BPL) new library card puts a Swiss army knife to shame. Although the multifaceted Access Brooklyn Card can't uncork a bottle of Bordeaux, it does just about everything else. For starters, the versatile library card lets users reserve a public computer up to two days in advance. Plus, it lets patrons add cash to their existing library accounts to pay for printing, photocopies, and library fines—and by next year, faxes and image scans will also be part of the package.
The access cards debuted in early April at the Central Brooklyn Library and six of its branches, and after just two weeks they're a big hit with everyone. Ginnie Cooper, BPL's director, says that the best thing about the cards is that they let kids and adults quickly do things that used to require a lot of time or the assistance of staff members. "It's easier for people to do business with us, and the staff is elated," she says. Since staffers no longer have to manage computers and printers, explains Cooper, they now have more time to help patrons with their information needs. And when the cards are introduced at all of BPL's 58 branches this fall, Cooper says, the library system will become more "cashless," meaning that the staff won't need to handle as much money as it does now.
The new card system, which uses software and hardware from Xerox, Pharos, and Gateway, works like this. To reserve a computer, users simply swipe their cards through a terminal slot at any of the library's 62 account kiosks, enter their PIN numbers, wait for the number of the assigned computer to appear on the screen, and they're in business. If none of the computers are available, users are given a code number (sort of like at the neighborhood deli counter), put into an electronic queue, and—in eight library locations—wait for their number to flash on one of BPL's 48-inch plasma monitors. Using the computers is, of course, free. But printing costs money. So at the end of each session, users swipe their cards once again at a reservation terminal, select "Printing" from an onscreen menu, and they are told how much it will cost to print their pages—BPL charges 15 cents a page—and the amount of money in their library accounts.
The cards have also eliminated a longstanding problem. "Some of the kids would sit down at a computer and wouldn't get up unless we were always after them," says Deloris McCullough, BPL's assistant division chief for youth services. "But now there's no more policing." That's because kids now get 30 minutes—measured precisely by the computer, with frequent on-screen notices of how much time remains. "They know they can't argue with the computer, so they get up [and let another child sit down]," she says.
BPL isn't the first library system to use this technology; other public libraries have had similar cards in place for the past year or two, including those in Boston, New Orleans, and San Francisco. But Brooklyn is the first to put a bar code and a magnetic strip on a single card, and the first to have a kiosk that lets users manage their own library accounts.
The systems are big investments, starting at about $100,000 for a bare-bones system and ranging up to $8 million for a system like BPL's, which serves two million people. A few school districts, however, are getting into the act; Liverpool (NY) Central School District, for example, has installed a Xerox print-and-copy-management system, similar to BPL's, in its high school. But Liverpool High School's system doesn't use cards. Its students use wireless laptop and desktop computers to log on to the system and to send their print jobs to the school library's two printer/copiers. The students are allowed 400 free pages of printing or copying per school year, at the librarian's discretion; after that, they are charged 10 cents a page.
Despite the sizable cost of systems like these, they're worth the investment. Bonnie Ladd, Liverpool School District's director of technology, laughs when she describes what happened when administrators from nearby Fayetteville-Manlius School District visited the Liverpool High Library. "There were two or three sheets of paper in our recycling bins, and they said that theirs were always overflowing" with sheets students had printed free and tossed away. "Now they're using a system like ours in their high school," Ladd says, "and piloting it in their middle schools."
For more information, visit www.xerox.com/go/xrx/template/020v.jsp?view=Industry_Library&Xcntry=USA&Xlang=en_US.
