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Library directors are nimble creatures, wearing many hats throughout each day and turning on a dime as needed. Sometimes, it’s not a hat as much as it is a large, inflatable shark costume. This is what Spanish Fork Library Director Scott Aylett donned in the hour leading up to a conversation about his new brand-new library and its Bibliotheca RFID, automated materials handling (AMH) system, and self-check kiosks.
“We needed someone to stand in as the shark, so I was the shark for story time today,” he explains.
Let’s back up a bit. Spanish Fork is a thriving community in the Provo, Utah area, less than ten miles south of the city. Nestled in a captivating landscape, Spanish Fork is surrounded by mountains and replete with outdoor activities. Celebrations occur year-round while colorful hot-air balloons dot the sky, it boasts fine dining recognized by top food blogs, and it has a robust live music and arts scene. On top of all that, the people of Spanish Fork demonstrably treasure and support their public library in its brand-new, beautiful building.
Originally built in the 1960s for a community of 6,000 residents, the library was renovated in the 1990s to double its size for the community’s (at that point) 12,000 residents. Fast-forward a few decades, and the thriving community is now approximately 45,000 residents. The library needed more room in order to properly serve Spanish Fork, and so the city decided to build a brand-new facility. The result is a spectacular, spacious library that was awarded the Most Outstanding Community/Cultural Project by Utah Construction & Design.
“We have a lot of residential growth in this particular part of the county,” Aylett shares, “and we have seen extraordinary response and participation and use of the library since opening our new building last year. We had been underserving our community for a long time, in a space that was built for a really small population. We didn’t have any onsite parking and there were other obstacles to library use. Having this new space, in our first year we had 5,000 new library card signups. Patrons are up, program participation is up—everything is up, and we love it.”
As part of his vision for the new library, Aylett wanted staff to have time to be able to walk the floor and engage with patrons without being tethered to one spot, something that the dated technology in the old library made difficult.
“In our old building, it was all old-school. We would manually scan each bar code as we checked items out. And as everything came back in, we were scanning each bar code. On an average day, we were checking-out a thousand items and checking-in another thousand items.”
Adding to that, in a phenomenon that most libraries will recognize, patrons often arrived knowing that they had reached their borrowing limits and could not borrow again until the items they returned were checked-in. The patrons would stand in front of library staff and watch and wait as they individually scanned each barcode by hand, checking-in items so that they could borrow more.
“I had a staff member pretty much all day long sitting there scanning materials, and it was very cumbersome,” Aylett says. “At the time, we had a self-checkout kiosk through our ILS host, just a computer with a barcode scanner, but only about 1% of all transactions went through that kiosk. Most people came up to the desk.”
Keeping the mission of the library top of mind, Aylett and his staff always focus on embracing innovation, embracing patron feedback, and implementing as best as they can. “Because it’s not my library, even though I’m the director,” Aylett says. “It’s not my staff’s library, even though they run the building. It’s the patrons’ library, and we want to do whatever we can to make it a place that fills their needs.”
“In 2021, we knew we were building a new building. As part of that, we were really interested in including an AMH system, so that staff wouldn’t have to manually check items in. As part of that AMH system, we realized that we needed to convert to RFID. And so, in the fall of 2021, we started that conversion process.”
At the prospect of RFID, Aylett recalls, “One of the first questions that we were asked when we launched this with our staff was, ‘Does this mean that we’re reducing staff?’ And I said, ‘In no way at all, and, if anything, this enables you as a staff member to have to worry less about the technical side. Now, you can focus on the patron side, because I don’t need you scanning books. Now, I can have you doing reference services and programs, you can be roaming the floor, approaching patrons and focusing on them.’”
They converted to RFID at the same time as their new building was being constructed, almost two years before they moved in. That was intentional, Aylett explained, so that library staff and patrons could become accustomed to using RFID well before services moved to the new building. During that time, both staff and patrons experienced firsthand the rewards of a fast, simple, smooth borrow and return process with RFID.
The library originally budgeted for an AMH in its construction costs, but in order to convert to RFID two years prior to opening the new building, they applied for and received an IMLS grant through the Utah State Library. The grant funded the first of their self-check kiosks, plus the RFID conversion cart and initial batch of RFID tags. Library staff took advantage of training sessions from the Bibliotheca team, and they included library volunteers in converting over 75,000 items. “Volunteers came in, we taught them how to RFID tag,” Aylett explains, “and they went through and tagged with us. It was awesome.”
Since converting to RFID, the self-check kiosks average a whopping 76% of transactions, a far cry from the prior 1%. Aylett believes that as younger generations grow up with these and similar technology solutions, self-check usage percentages will continue to rise.
“We’ve been really pleased with the transition over to RFID and AMH,” Aylett says, “and we’ve been really pleased with the support that we get from Bibliotheca, especially the AMH team. Their support is fantastic, we love working with them. And we like that we don’t feel like we’re just another number. I see Bibliotheca reps at different conferences and whatnot, and they know us, they remember us. Our rep was here recently, and we spent time with him. We appreciate that Bibliotheca is a global company, but we don’t feel like it’s global because of the kind of the attention that we get when we need it.”
That care and attention from Bibliotheca means that Spanish Fork Library staff can concentrate their energy on serving their community in the new building, using its expanded spaces to offer specialized programming and other robust services. When they were planning the new building, they knew that some of their neighboring communities were serving patrons with autism spectrum disorder by providing sensory story times.
Aylett says, “We thought, if they can do it, and we know that we’ve got a demand for it in our population, why can’t we? And it’s been great. We love hearing from families that say it’s hard to bring their autistic child to a typical story time, where there’s sensory overload and the expectation that they’re going to sit in their seats. Here, there are no expectations. If kids need to get up and go out, that’s all good. If they want to spin around or flap their arms, it’s totally good. We’re here to provide an accommodating space.”
Now that they’ve settled into the new building, with its AMH and RFID and self-checks keeping materials humming along, Spanish Fork Library staff have more time to spend on what they do best: making the patrons the center of attention.
“It’s been the busiest year that we’ve ever had in the history of the library,” Aylett proudly explains, “and we welcome the busyness. We love every day seeing new people come to the library. As we continue to see our community grow, we don’t expect, nor do we want, to see our library services plateau. We welcome the growth—bring it on. We want this to be a space that everyone can come and be a part of, regardless of where you come from, who you are, political persuasion, social persuasion, any of that. We want you to be a part of the Spanish Fork Library, and we hope that we’ve got something on the shelf that interest you, and that we’ve got a program that’s meaningful to you, and that you come and make connections with others and help us build community here in Spanish Fork.”
All building images courtesy of Matt Winquist Photography ©
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