Challenge
Solution
Result
accessible library experience for the community across the entire district.
Nicknamed “City of Lights” for being the first in the U.S. to illuminate its streets with electric streetlights, Aurora, Illinois continues to deliver remarkable services to its community. Located on the Fabulous Fox Water Trail forty miles west of Chicago, Aurora is easily reachable through five interchanges and offers locals and visitors plentiful outdoor exploration, historic districts and landmarks, reputable schools, a zoo, the 325-acre Phillips Park, internationally-known outlet shopping, and vibrant local shops and cafes.
Shining brightly among it all is the Aurora Public Library District, an anchor and treasure trove dedicated to supporting and inspiring the diverse community through access to fun and informative resources and experiences. With an enormous, state-of-the-art main location, two busy branches, an outreach van and a brand-new bookmobile, the library aims to serve every resident, near and far, and continues to expand services through well-received innovations and solutions.
Miriam Meza-Gotto, Director of Marketing and Communications, shares, “We’re very community-driven and agile. I think the pandemic really showed that, in the way we pivoted very quickly to what the needs were, and we continue to do that. We’re not fearful of making changes to better serve our community. And we make sure that we’re connected and getting feedback from our community, so that we continue to evolve to their needs.”
One way Aurora Public Library District has demonstrated that it listens to and meets community needs is by implementing Bibliotheca remoteLockers at the corner of a large community of townhomes (the library sought and was awarded a county grant that fully-funded the lockers). Aurora covers a substantial geographic area and the nearest branch serving the townhome and surrounding neighborhoods is set to undergo renovation, so lockers offer residents a convenient option to pick up and return library materials. Not only that, a small, browse-and-borrow collection will be housed inside the lockers, giving the community even more library immediacy.
Yiota Piraino, Senior Manager of Circulation, adds, “We’re already getting feedback about the pickup lockers. They see the sign that says coming soon, and we’ve gotten a lot of questions. People calling, asking us at the desk: Oh, when is that open? They’re excited.”
“We’ve had Bibliotheca solutions for a while now,” Piraino continues. “Being involved with the community, we found customers needing self-checks, not wanting to wait in line just to do a checkout when, really, they could do it themselves. And we’ve got open+ as well, as a way to count people coming in and out the door and track in real time. How many people are inside of our building? What are our peak times? When is it busiest? We can make decisions on how to better serve, and better staff our desks and locations. We hope to use open+ for extended access in the future, especially as we consider our branch remodels.”
The library also uses Bibliotheca’s flexAMH with bulk separator, recently upgraded from a single induction point, so that borrowers can drop off armloads of books and other materials at once, without the time-consuming wait of feeding each item in, one by one. While Yiota agrees it was a bit of a learning curve for those who like getting receipts, she said that people have evolved past needing a paper receipt printout, especially since the library went fine-free.
Staff were receptive to the new flexAMH, Piraino explains, because the leadership team took the time to talk with them and present it exactly as it is: a faster solution. Aurora Public Library District circulates nearly one-million items per year, so to say that they are busy is an understatement.
Piraino says, “Even on the staff side, they were putting items in one by one, but now they’re able to also use it as a bulk return. So, they like it, it was just a matter of getting used to it, as it is for anything new. We had a virtual training with one of the Bibliotheca engineers, who helped guide us through the project.
Ever mindful of the library experience, they also updated their door count software to Bibliotheca’s open+ when they removed their dated, restrictive security gates, giving more room to visitors, especially those using wheelchairs and strollers, and big groups of people. Piraino shares, “Customers were excited that they didn’t have to bump into the gates, because we had older gates that were much narrower and closer together. We replaced them with the people counter with the open+ software, and we’ve had a lot of feedback that they appreciate the gates because they’re not in the way of things.”
Meza-Gotto says, “I’ll add that with the new people counter and gates, the change is also the change in the perspective of customers not feeling like they’re going through security. And the self-check, from a marketing perspective, has also been really helpful as we educate our customers about multilingual options; that they can press a button and it’ll translate the kiosk for them, so that they can navigate it themselves.”
They note that 88% of people use a self-check instead of the desk, and that their bulk sorter processes upwards of 30,000 returns every month. And while those statistics bring the library crew a lot of joy, they in turn have brought another kind of joy to the community in unveiling their first-ever library mascot. It’s a fox of a reader named Rory and is part of a recent rebrand. Rory is now a welcoming and instantly memorable emblem of the library and its service to, support of, and dreams for every single member of the community. Just like its city nickname, the Aurora Public Library District proudly continues its long history of lighting up the world for people of all ages.
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