How One Library Saved $130,390
By Michael Kelley Jul 7, 2011When the Urban Libraries Council (ULC) unveiled its list of Top Innovators at its annual member meeting on June 25, the winner in the collections category stood out for its detailed accounting.
The Johnson County Library in Kansas won for its initiative to streamline materials handling that resulted in $130,390 in annual savings.
Donna Lauffer, the county librarian, recently explained to LJ how the library did this and why.
"We took a hard look at all of our processes because we sensed there was unnecessary movement in what we were doing," Lauffer said.
The library hired a production consultant from a local community college to evaluate the mechanisms in place for processing, circulation, and selection across the system's 13 locations.
"They said 'you are doing it 13 different ways,' " Lauffer said. "We were not standardized at all."
Lauffer and her staff set about eliminating redundant and unnecessary operations, which also coincided with a need to economize as the library's budget began to shrink. The library was in a downsizing mode, having lost ten FTEs in 2010 and four FTEs in 2011, but the streamlining operation helped pinpoint 8.25 FTEs worth of staff time most suitable for elimination.
"Because of this project, we were able to keep up with increases in circulation and usage of library at the same time we were losing staff. Our timing was perfect," Lauffer said.
Here are the measures the library took:
The library did away with postcards to notify patrons of overdue materials. "Enough people are comfortable with email that we could go to email or phone notifications, and this saved $72,000 in mailing costs," Lauffer said. There has been a slight pushback from older patrons about this change, but they have been mollified by the phone notification option.
The library also began floating its collection, meaning items are not reshelved at the loaning branch but stay where they are returned until checked out again. As a result, the library reduced the material it needed to move around via courier service by 29 percent.
"It also made material available a lot sooner, because they were not somewhere in a truck in transit," Lauffer said. This change helped refresh material available at smaller branches.
The library next developed a memo of understanding with the Friends of the Johnson County Library group under which the Friends would use book sale proceeds to run a courier service to pick up books that people wanted to donate to the library.
Previously, library staff had done this, and they had also spent time sifting through the donations to find books that could be added to the library's collection. All this has stopped, resulting in a savings of $1000 in supplies and 6.5 weeks of courier staff time and 62 weeks of branch staff time, Lauffer said.
"Our branches were pawing through all the donations to see if there was a book to add to the collection, but the cost of accessioning it far exceeded the reasonableness of doing that, and we often got a book that was not a library edition," Lauffer said.
The library hired J. Huber & Associates to redesign the circulation workflow at all locations so that the procedure was the same regardless of the branch. In particular, the company devised a page labeling system that automated the writing of the slips that are put into book holds, rather than having the staff write them out longhand.
The library also used Unique Management Service, a collection agency based in Indiana, to zero in on the collection of small fine balances (between $15 and $24.99). This "small balance program" generated $9,180 from the 817 patron accounts that were submitted in January 2010. The program helped make patrons more aware that once their fines totaled more than $25 they lose their borrowing privileges, Lauffer said.
"It's not a hard core collection agency where they are real nasty, but yet they still get stuff back," she said.
Library patrons frequently had to wait nine to 12 months to borrow a bestseller before this project got under way.
"There's always a balancing act of how many copies of bestseller to buy, and we were not doing a good job," Lauffer said. "So, we allocated more resources to fulfill bestsellers and we now run weekly reports on hold ratios. For every four holds we get we automatically order another copy," she said.
The library also automated its weeding process so as a bestseller's popularity begins to wane it appears on a monthly weed list that indicates what can be pulled off the shelf.
"We now know we don't need to have 20 copies on the shelf, and it standardized and simplified it so volunteers can do the weeding," Lauffer said. "In all the decision making for these routine kind of things we can introduce efficiencies," she said.
More time can also be spent maintaining the actual collection because the library set up custom profiles with vendors so that materials that fit the profile are automatically ordered.
"We can pay more attention to the collection and make sure it's in good health," Lauffer said. "We didn't have time for that before because people were too busy writing out things," she said.
The ILL staff was also merged with the collection staff. The introduction of a single portal for an ILL transaction eliminated a lot of paperwork and also helped improve communication about whether material that is subject of an ILL request should be added to the library's own collection.
The acquisition function of the library's SirsiDynix system has also been integrated with the county's financial system. This software bridge has eliminated the need to keep a double set of books on acquisitions and provides more timely information about invoices.
The library has also streamlined its cataloging, and is not planning a retroconversion for the next edition of Dewey.
"We were doing a lot of customizing of our catalog that probably wasn't necessary," Lauffer said. "We were taking the Dewey number way too far out because we could," she said. The library has also accepted Baker & Taylor's genre designation.
Lastly, the library is in the second year of a three year RFID conversion.
An unsuspected benefit, Lauffer said, was that all the change "has created an environment where people think we can do something differently here."
"We have got the culture to adjust to the idea of continuous improvement," she said.
