[Publib] Chicago-area libraries to try online orders

[anthony auston]

Libraries to try online orders

By Robert Channick
Special to the Chicago Tribune
Published January 23, 2006, 9:45 PM CST

Taking a page from online retailers, three suburban libraries are
venturing into cyberspace with plans to offer books, movies and other
material for home delivery.

Beginning Feb. 1, patrons of the Arlington Heights Memorial Library,
Skokie Public Library and Indian Trails Public Library in Wheeling may
browse the libraries' holdings and borrow material online.

"By no means are we trying to discourage people from coming to the
library," said Lynn Stainbrook, executive librarian at the Arlington
Heights library. "But if you have a time crunch or you're more
comfortable trying to work at something in your pajamas at home, we
want to be able to offer you services too."

The six-month pilot program, called Library Express, is funded by a
$50,000 state grant. Orders placed through the libraries' Web sites
will be shipped based on availability. Each library will use a
different delivery method--the U.S. Postal Service, UPS and a private
courier--but all three will charge $4 per item.

The three libraries have 160,000 cardholders combined.

To facilitate the foray into e-commerce, online credit card payments
will be accepted at Arlington Heights and Indian Trails. Skokie is
exploring that option.

"Ordering from Amazon and Netflix is our competition these days," said
Carolyn Anthony, Skokie library director. "Everybody's busy, and we've
got to make it easier for people to use the library services."

While books-by-mail services for homebound residents have existed for
years, Library Express is the first program in Illinois to offer
online home delivery to all library users, officials said.

"I think it is an important evolution," said Greta Southard, executive
director of the Chicago-based Public Library Association.

"Libraries are trying to look at how they can continue to offer the
services and the products and the programs that their communities
want."

Patrons must return the materials by shipping them at their own
expense or taking them to the library or a library drop box.

Some details have yet to be worked out.

The Skokie library, which will use mail delivery, might add three days
to each checkout period to accommodate the transit time, said Tobi
Oberman, head of circulation. She said the library would discourage
mail returns because of the availability of 24-hour drop boxes, but
fines and fees will be evaluated on a per-case basis during the test
period.

"This is an experiment, and we want to see how this checks out," Oberman said.

Online checkout has become a reality at only a few of the nation's
more than 9,000 central public libraries, Southard said.

One of the older and larger programs is run by the Orange County
Library System in Orlando, which offers online ordering and free
shipping to all of its 350,000 patrons. Started in 1996, the service
delivered more than 600,000 items last year, making it as busy as any
of the library's 14 branches but at a lower relative cost, officials
said.

"I think we're already the library of the future," said Mary Anne
Hodel, Orange County Library chief executive, who cited faster
turnaround of reserved material among the service's many benefits.
"It's a great service, and it's definitely stood the test of time."

With the Arlington Heights, Indian Trails and Skokie libraries all
undergoing major renovations in the last decade, officials are not
ready to abandon their facilities, but they acknowledge that coffee
shops, conference rooms and exhibitions may play a larger role than
book browsing in years to come.

"The traditional concept of library as place is changing and
broadening to becoming more of a community meeting center," Southard
said.

Inside the Indian Trails library, staff members wearing Library
Express buttons have been handing out free delivery coupons, hoping to
spur interest among people checking out the old-fashioned way.

"The world out there is changing fast," said Tamiye Meehan, Indian
Trails director. "We've got to change or we're going to be dead in the
water."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-060123library-story,1,5847878.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

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