The Latest Wave

Ten years ago during a period of rapid growth and increasing circulation, Jefferson County Public Library (JCPL), CO, cut the total volume of all material moving among its libraries by 67 percent. Last year, Hennepin County Library (HCL), MN, cut the number of videos going through delivery by 75 percent. This year, Gwinnett County Public Library (GCPL), GA, made high-demand collections more available without buying more copies.

Each of the above libraries has achieved such results with floating collections, which they implemented to help control delivery costs and increase the availability of materials.

The concept is tried and true for several libraries—a few Canadian and U.S. libraries have been floating collections for years; Fraser Valley Regional Library, BC, and Pikes Peak Library District, CO, both have been doing so for over 25 years. However, in these times of escalating costs and shrinking budgets, more and more librarians are intrigued by the cost-saving potential of a floating collection management process.

In most libraries, borrowed items must be returned to an owning location. Floating collections turn this basic concept on its head. The tenet of a floating collection is simple: one system, one collection. Materials "float" freely among system libraries rather than being "owned" by a specific location.

When a patron returns a circulating item, it is shelved at the location where it was returned instead of being sent back to the location from which it was checked out. Upon checkin, the location is automatically updated in the library catalog to show where it now resides.

Rather than a "home" location serving as the trigger for moving material among libraries, patron requests become the trigger. Only materials patrons actually want to use pass through delivery.

While the concept behind a floating collection is uncomplicated, implementing it can be difficult. It requires a paradigm shift in the way service is delivered, and changes in the library's integrated library system (ILS) take work. Librarians, used to viewing a library system's holdings as a series of discrete collections, must reject a sacred cow of library service when they turn away from the belief system behind the practice of returning items to an owning location.

Institutions willing to take up these challenges and convert to a floating collection will see many benefits. They will be able to respond faster to public demand, provide more equitable access to materials, stretch the materials budget, reduce ergonomic strain on staff, and dramatically cut the volume of delivery among libraries.

The physical size of the library becomes less of a limiting factor since the collection is constantly refreshed through patron activity. Patrons at even the smallest library help select the items that reside on the shelves. Since holds trigger the movement of material, the library serving patrons who have a heavy interest in horses will end up with more material about horses in the collection, while the library down the road might have fewer such items.

It is also true that all ten copies of the local book club's selection will end up on the shelves of one library. From the patron perspective, this natural drift can be a positive. Since only the items actually being used by patrons are moving through the system, more material is available on the shelves.

These service benefits are complemented by savings on the physical objects. Lessening the number of times an item goes through delivery reduces wear and tear, extending circulation life. For audiovisual materials, where packaging can easily be damaged, this is a real boon.

Libraries that choose to float their collections often change their selection practices. For instance, staff members charged with ordering may reduce the number of copies they purchase, knowing patrons will have an opportunity to browse the material currently at different libraries as it floats through the system. Because fewer copies of some titles need to be purchased, more dollars are available to bring in new formats, increase the number of copies of high-demand items, or expand the breadth and/or depth of the collection with a wider variety of titles.

Every library system that moves to a floating collection tailors the concept to meet its own needs. A library system might choose to float a new collection of DVDs to gain maximum exposure for a small number of titles. Another, using bookstore-type displays, might want to make sure the additional nonholdable copies purchased for the displays are kept out of the float. Some libraries might exclude language, genealogy, and local history collections from the float because they require special care or shelving, while others might particularly want their special collections to float to increase accessibility in a geographically large system. Some libraries exclude entire locations from the float. For example, a combined high school/public library's usage agreement might prohibit the location from floating its collection, or a system will want to protect a start-up collection in a new library for six months.

Whatever an individual library system's unique needs, a basic infrastructure must be in place in libraries that choose to float their materials: a fast delivery system, a convenient request system, and software support from an integrated ILS vendor. Channels for internal communication among facilities help the process, as does centralization of materials selection, acquisitions, cataloging, and processing.

Once an infrastructure is in place, libraries must focus on two areas to insure a successful transition: the ILS and the staff. Libraries interested in converting to a floating collection should consider appointing a library representative who has in-depth knowledge of the circulation system and the database functionality to work directly with the vendor on the technical changes required to track floating materials. The objective is to end up with a product that automatically updates the location of an item when it is checked in and produces an automated trigger to send material back to an owning location if it is not part of the floating collection. Although Innovative Interfaces Inc. and DYNIX have developed software to handle a floating collection, because implementation is dependent on local database codes, each library's situation will be unique, requiring software customization. Before working with a vendor, a library should have a good idea of the collections it intends to float and the items and/or locations that should be excluded.

To ensure the maximum flexibility to alter aspects when service needs to change, the float program should be fully integrated with all ILS modules, and the library should retain the ability to limit by item type and location.

Beyond the technical issues, emotional issues must be addressed. Librarians who have spent their careers thinking of and relating to a series of individual branch and special collections within a library system may have a challenging time transitioning to the concept of one collection.

Library users, in general, have always thought of library holdings as one collection, and the advent of the virtual library reinforces that perspective. Many patrons now regularly set foot inside a physical library only to pick up holds. With this pattern, the physical location of material is less important, and an imbalance in the collection occurs only when the system owns no items on a topic. For those who come to the library, the serendipitous joy of browsing is enhanced by a continuously refreshed collection.

For staff members, the anxiety level can rise as they start switching to the idea and practices of a shared collection. Before moving into this phase, administrators would do well to evaluate the situation and dust off their copies of Managing Transitions by William Bridges. Common concerns that emerge during this transition relate to perceived collection imbalances, redistribution of materials, and holds activity. Staff task forces often gather information and establish new procedures to address these issues. It is important to acknowledge the issues and provide substantive answers to staff questions.

At JCPL, we chose to gather information by piloting floating collections for a three-month period in 1994. Just before the start of the pilot and again three months in, we conducted customer surveys on the availability of materials and charted the number of holds and deliveries moving through the system as well as the number of shelves per subject category in each library.

Through testing the process based on areas of staff concern, the library gained important information:

• Thirty thousand items a month were returned directly to the shelves instead of being placed in delivery.
• The increase in holds was negligible (less than half of one percent), and shelf variance was less than two shelves per library.
• Surveys showed that patrons were unaware that collection management practices had been altered. Thus, the library chose not to publicize the internal procedural change to library users.
• Anecdotal information indicated patrons were pleased with the increased number of "new" books on the shelves.
• Library managers estimated that the conversion to a floating collection saved 20 hours per week per library of circulation staff time.

Once staff saw the positive impact of the change on workflow and customer service, they recommended permanently adopting a floating collection.

Floating JCPL's collection alleviated the need for an additional delivery driver and vehicle, an expense the library system had been contemplating before the conversion. The library was able to redeploy 160 hours per week of staff time to other activities, and worker's compensation claims dropped significantly.

HCL also saw dramatic changes in activity level when it tested floating adult VHS material collections in 2003. According to Judith Friedrich in Hennepin's Collection and Bibliographic Services Department, HCL counted only the material shifted from branch to branch for reshelving and found there was a 75 percent reduction in delivery traffic—the 250 items before the collection started to float dropped to 60 items per day. There was a slight rise in reserves, 150 to 180, but staff members were unsure whether it was owing to a seasonal trend or the floating collection.

Staff worry about the natural drift that occurs in a collection when materials have no home base. They fear a need to shift material endlessly on the shelves to adjust the fit. The reality is that redistributing material becomes a normal and easily manageable part of collection maintenance.

Different libraries have developed different methods to handle the process. Most rely on simple, direct communication among staff. At JCPL, the head of circulation in one library will email the circ units at all the libraries, asking for a response if a library has room in a specific Dewey range. Once the response is received, staff pull material from the overcrowded area and ship it off.

If too many copies accumulate at a branch at Gwinnett, staff simply toss them into bins for delivery to other locations. When there is a noticeable shift in demographics, the branch managers work with materials management to correct the quantities ordered and/or the initial distribution.

HCL has developed a semiautomated method that identifies surplus and deficit collections based on system-supplied shelf counts. The float manager software directs staff in designated libraries to pull a specific number of materials and route them to specific libraries—based on item count, not content. HCL's Friedrich comments that "on any given day, there are just a handful of libraries requested to either pull and send material or receive material."

During the conversion to a floating collection, staff members fret that they will lose their close, personal knowledge of the collection and that the collection will no longer reflect the community's interests and needs. In practice, staff gain a deeper, more global knowledge of the collection and have the opportunity to learn more about a community's interests. Trends that might remain unnoticed by staff dealing with questions at the service desks are revealed through the holds activity of patrons who never ask a question.

Developing collection management practices that work within a floating environment is essential. A library with a history of centralized collection management may find the transition to a floating collection easier than a library like JCPL, where the management of the collection was decentralized.

To cope, we developed new procedures for everything from the allocation of the materials budget to the types of specialized labels children's librarians place on books. The system started allocating the materials budget by category and material type rather than by individual library. Acquisitions staff piloted formula-based distribution, using the number of copies and the size of the library to develop the formula. Cataloging staff instituted a procedure to pull older editions of reference materials when new editions arrived. And a training program was developed and delivered on effective weeding techniques for a floating collection. In essence, the library moved to a form of centralized collection management.

Floating collections might not be the solution for every library. But for those that can use it, the practice has exciting potential. Libraries that have implemented it tell the tale—with greatly improved access and service to patrons while holding that precious line on rising costs.