Klickatat and all that

PLA in Portland and the home of the Quimby family.    Lots of new ideas to think about and its always good to wander amidst people who have the same interests as you so when you suggest something wacky, at least they have a context.

One idea that struck me in these tough economic times was if we have to limit our collection spending than we need to be as fast and efficient as possible getting items back on the shelves.   The session on "leaning your library " covered this area and reminded me of Frederick Taylor's  time and motion studies, plus the recently in vogue ISO 9000 certification.  Ask at your library, how many people touch an item before it is back on the shelf?  Can you get it back to the shelf in less than 5 touches?

Unfortunately the LITA top ten tech trends was not their best work.  If you think about time, convenience, and independence as the new currency, how can libraries assist our patrons make the most of their daily lives?  Can technology help?    Can technology help us form better relationships with our patrons?

Some good and reasonably priced stuff in the vendor areas as well.  I was pleased to find web based scheduling software for our whole system would cost about $330.  What do you think, would you like centralized scheduling of all staff?

Also thanks to some good questions, it dawned on me that if patron reviews of books is to succeed (be used by other patrons) in our catalog, we need a lot more reviews and multiple reviews per item.  Which brought me to chilfresh a company that can insert those reviews and comments from patrons around the work into our catalog.

Visiting vendors also helped clarify the path so that our patrons can pay their fines by credit or debit card from within the library and from home.  

Thanks for the invitation to post on the WMRL Learning blog.
Please share your comments and ideas here or my blog.