In Minnesota, Uniting Two Great Loves: Hockey and Libraries
By Michael Kelley May 13, 2011Leave it to Minnesotans to figure out a way to bring slap shots and library services into the same space.
A few years ago the Carver County Library and the Washington County Library were looking for access points in underserved communities that were unable to build a bricks-and-mortar library but still wanted library services.
One such community was Victoria, MN, which boasts the Victoria Recreation Center, home to a popular hockey rink.
"So we put 20 lockers in at the ice hockey rink in the recreation center, which is open 110 hours a week," Melissa Brechon, the Carver County director, told LJ. The library also installed a book return unit and a computer terminal.
"People just love it," Brechon said. "They say it's the best use of their tax dollars they have seen."
A patron accesses the library's catalog from home or via the terminal at the rink, and they reserve materials. Three days a week a delivery service brings the material from the Chanhassen Library, about ten miles away, and the lockers are loaded up with the requested materials. The patron receives an email notifying them that the materials are ready for pick up (and will remain so for 48 hours). The next time the patron is at the rink, they punch the last four digits of their library bar code into a keypad and the appropriate locker door pops open so they can take their materials. They can return them at the book drop.
Carver County installed the 20 lockers in Victoria in July 2010, and in January it expanded to add another "Express Library" in the lobby of City Hall in Cologne. Washington County followed suit, installing 20 lockers in a portico outside the Hugo City Hall in July 2010 and adding 20 more in January at the same location. It is now considering installing lockers at three more locations.
"We have had all kinds of wonderful customer comments," Pat Conley, the director at Washington County, told LJ. "It's outside 24/7 and we had a huge amount of snow this past winter and the lockers worked consistently well all the time."
From July 2010 through December the Library Express at Hugo City Hall had 1900 circulated items. In the first four months of 2011, it has already circulated 1700 items.
The system is particularly helpful, since four out of the system's nine libraries are open only 20 hours a week.
"As we have to pull back staff and reduce hours we still want to provide access to our collection and this is a marvelous way of doing this," Conley said.
Both Conley and Brechon emphasized that the service did not in any way result in a staff reduction and was not intended as a replacement for a library.
"The issue was access. This was never to replace a library in Victoria," Brechon said.
The only complaint has been that sometimes 48 hours is not enough time for some patrons to get to the lockers and pick up their materials. And one part of the service was not as necessary as initially thought.
"When we started this project we thought we would have to have a terminal, but what we found is that with the emergence of the smartphone and tablets as long as we have wireless we don't need to put in a computer," Conley said.
The locker systems have been paid for through a $140,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services that the library systems jointly applied for, and the manufacturer is LEID Products in Auburn Hills, MI.
