Self-issue at the Library and information show
Spent an interesting day yesterday talking to people about their self-issue machines, in-between having freebies thrust into my hand by my enthusiastic colleagues!
Most of the machines have a very basic format. A touch screen, a reader – either RFID or barcode scanner – and a receipt printer, and yet they are so different. The distinguishing characteristics – and here distinguishing means “not the sort of thing I would touch with a barge pole” – are those that make the machines look like the result of a brief for the machine shop, along the lines of; “make me a kiosk stand that holds a screen, a scanner and a receipt printer, but don’t bother attempting to make it look pretty, just make sure that all the wires are hidden”, and even then I could still see the wires.
To say that the machines were down right ugly is to compare an IBM pc from 1984 with an iPhone. There were a couple of machines that almost passed the critical ITO eye, but were still somewhat dalekian. Why don’t you hire a designer? Work with a local art college or design school even? But don’t let your engineers decide how it looks.
And that is just the physical presence of the machines. When you look at the screen to see whether the software will be inviting to the user, there is a vast range of styles. One machine in particular I looked at with incredulity, it was a grey form – in the style of a basic Microsoft Access Database form – with big utilitarian grey bevel edge buttons with tiny text on each button. Pictures? Nah.
And then there was the complete opposite on another stand – this machine aimed at children – with graphics that might be considered ‘flash’ but where incredibly simple; an animal with associated noise for each issue/discharge/renewal function, on a background of a grassy field. Eye catching entertaining and easy to use/remember.
But what really surprised me was one machine for securing the external drop off of books at a closed library. It looked like an early 1980’s ATM machine, with a grey plastic vacuum formed front, a mouth that you wouldn’t dare to put your hand anywhere near, and a screen using – no, not a touch screen with friendly graphics – but a green character display such as you might see on an old cash till, deep set into the face of the machine so that it looked like a glowing demon’s eyes. I won’t be buying one of those.
April 20th, 2007 at 12:55
Hi Tim
Not sure if the comments will allow me to paste images, but here goes…
We’ve had the Paragon RFID units since September and our users (and staff) love them — they’re incredibly easy to use. The bottom photo is Sarah (one of the librarians at the Barnsley LRC) giving her Paragon a quick clean
April 20th, 2007 at 13:57
Thanks Dave,
The paragon units are the ones on my shopping list – except I am not keeper of the purses, which could be a problem.
How was the change over to RFID – apart from being a mass unshelve-stick-scan-save-shelve operation?
April 20th, 2007 at 18:54
Hi Tim
We converted around 300,000 items in less than 11 weeks, using 4 portable workstations (which were really tables on wheels with a PC plonked on top) with a team of 3 or 4 students per workstation.
The workstations were wheeled close to the shelves and then 1 or 2 students would load book trolleys, another would add the tag, and then the student at the PC would program the tag by scanning the barcode. Once they got into the swing of it, they were able to go like the clappers!
We asked Intellident to modify their software so that it logged the barcode of each converted item into a CSV file. Then, when the conversion was complete, we were able to identify around 18,000 items that were down as being available on the catalogue, but weren’t handled (i.e. it’s likely they have gone a.w.o.l.) — seeing as we’d never done a full stockcheck before in the last 10 years, that’s not a bad figure.
We had the Paragons set up on the main counter for about 2 weeks before we went live. In the end, we had to cordon them off, as the students were attracted to the neon blue light like flies to a bug zapper
We’ve always pushed self-issue since we implemented 3M units about 5 years ago, and we regularly got in excess of 85% of all circ transactions via self service even with the slow 3M units.
That figure has gone up a little since we implemented RFID, but what has vastly improved is the speed of transactions. With the 3M units, it was common to see 10 to 20 students queuing at peak times, but I can’t honestly remember seeing more than 5 queuing at a time since the Paragons went in.
Another big plus is that fines can be paid off with the units.
We had concerns about the accessibility of the full sized units, so we also purchased one of the shorter units (which was the one running the animal icons at LiS). Strangely, our wheelchair users seem to prefer using the full sized units, and able bodied students seem to like the using the shorter unit… it does like kinda cute and maybe the students feel sorry for it
Actually, now I think about it, it’s more likely that the students are just being lazy — the shorter unit is the closest to the exit!