Central Library Implementing New Initiatives, New Technology

Guest post by Irvington neighbor Sharon Eldridge.

If you have been to downtown’s Central Library recently, you may have noticed something: fewer library staff and no DVDs on hold in the lobby checkout area. And what was the checkout isn’t even the checkout anymore. Now, we're supposed to use self-checkout stations in the center of the lobby to check out our materials.

All hold materials are now kept in the southeast end of the Popular Library; DVDs and books are now intermixed. In this repurposed section of the library, you might see lost-looking patrons having a staff member explain to them just what is going on here.

Bess Piñón, Program Coordinator of Library Outreach Services, recognizes that “the move to self checkout might be a big adjustment for library patrons.” It certainly is to library patron, Pamela B.: “I purposely never use [self-checkout machines]. To me, it represents the loss of a job and the loss of a human connection; we’ve already got too little of them.” Piñón says that the “project" is "intended to help staff, not eliminate them; I think it’s important to note that no staff were laid off in the transition to self-checkout.”

The Multnomah County Library’s web site seems to acknowledge the dismay of some, with a section about the transition, entitled, “Why is this happening?”:

In the last 10 years, use of your library has increased explosively. Checkouts and renewals have more than doubled, and holds have more than tripled. Here in Multnomah County, you and other library patrons check out or return more than 51,000 items a day.

“I have a lot of respect for the people who work at the library and have to deal with difficult people and have to be nice about it, unlike you might be in a bar or something,” says frequent and long-time Central Library patron, Morty Lonn. “But it seems like they have to interact with the public just as much, trying to guide people through using this new system.”

“Don’t we rely enough on machines already?” queries Pamela B. “I wanna relate to people.” It would seem that those 51,000 items a day are making that impossible. Bess Piñón says that the library has offered self-check for many years and refers to the move to self-check as an “improvement.”

According to the web site, one change in the transition involved: “Moving all DVDs to public shelving to make them accessible without staff intervention.” You can now browse DVDs in the Popular Library (perhaps finding such gems as the fifth season of Dallas). This, I think most could agree, would qualify as a good change. But it would seem to make the DVDs less secure: with no staff to guard them, couldn’t people just walk off with the DVDs?

That is where the RFID (radio frequency identification) tagging comes in: existing self-check stations at Central Library have been replaced with self-check stations equipped for RFID. “RFID tags will double as security tags for the library’s new theft detection system,” the web site says. There are, or will be, RFID security gates installed in certain libraries.

Though generally against the automation of checkout of any sort, Morty Lonn is “glad if it saves [library staff] from repetitive motion injuries.” According to the web site, “A study by one library showed that items with RFID tags require 80 percent less handling than items with a barcode and a magnetic security strip.”

There are still library staff available to assist patrons, but they are less visible, and the average library patron might feel out there on his or her own. Except, perhaps, when it comes to privacy: “It kinda bugs me to have to type in my secret code in front of God and everybody every time I check out a book,” says Morty Lonn.

The web site relates that, “The use of RFID technology […] was recommended last year by the citizen-led Access Policy Advisory Committee of the Multnomah County Library Advisory Board.” So, it was (some) citizens who asked for this change. Maybe, down the road, all this now-new technology will seem only natural… Maybe.

See http://www.multcolib.org/about/projects/rfid.html for more information about the library’s recent initiatives.