Boopsie Rolls Out Mobile Checkout App Feature

Self-check on smartphones, an idea that has long circulated in library-app circles, debuted last week. Boopsie announced that its new feature, BookCheck-which allows patrons to scan a barcode on a book or other item with their mobile phones and check it out from anywhere in the library-is now available at the 28-branch Cuyahoga County Public Library (CCPL) system based in Parma, OH. It's the first smartphone-based self-check system ever to be made available to library patrons.

The app feature is currently available for Android and other devices. An iPhone version of BookCheck is expected to be available within the next few weeks.

According to Robert Rua, assistant marketing director at CCPL, the library staff brought the BookCheck idea to Boopsie. "It was about the user experience for us," he told LJ. "We wanted to meet our smartphone customers on their terms-and allow them to use our services on their terms."

The company already had built a mobile library app for CCPL last year that enables users to remotely check their accounts, search the catalog, and more.

"Based on conversations with customers, we recognized a mobile checkout feature would be the next step in efficiency for libraries," Boopsie CEO Greg Carpenter told LJ.

Tech issues
Carpenter noted one technical problem that had to be overcome for BookCheck to work properly: CCPL and many other libraries, he said, use barcodes with the Codabar format, while other libraries use Code 39, Code 128, and other formats. Codabar is more difficult to read using a smartphone, he said, due to the camera's image resolution and focus capabilities. "We did some work on the Boopsie platform to avoid false results," he said.

BookCheck interacts with integrated library systems (ILSs) through a SIP2 interface, allowing it to be compatible with many different systems.

As with other self-check systems, it could potentially be hard to verify whether a patron has actually checked out the books he or she is carrying out of the library, although RFID (radio frequency identification) tags and security gates can mitigate this. At CCPL, however, there are no security gates; they were taken out after a cost-benefit analysis a few years ago deemed them unnecessary, as materials losses were minimal. "It's not something that I think will be an issue," CCPL's Rua said.

In the first few days of BookCheck's availability, he said, more than 100 items were checked out at CCPL libraries using the feature.