By Paul Thompson

Northeast News

February 24, 2017

KANSAS CITY, Missouri – Over the past week, the North-East Public Library (6000 Wilson Ave.) temporarily closed in order to upgrade its checkout system and re-tag roughly 30,000 items to work with the new software. What’s more, the North-East branch managed to complete this work from Feb. 21 to Feb. 23, finishing a day early and re-opening to the public on Friday, Feb. 24.

Mick Cottin, Delivery Services Supervisor for the Kansas City Public Library, told the Northeast News how the new system is expected to benefit library patrons.

“With the new tags, we’ll be able to keep better statistics on everything that moves in and out of the building,” said Cottin. “In addition to that, it’s just much easier to check items out.”

Perhaps the biggest perk of the new checkout system is that it can register multiple items simultaneously. The key to the system are the little square tags that library staff spent three days placing on all of its materials. The tags have a miniature antenna that wraps around the inside, along with a small chip.

“Essentially, it’s just another type of bar code, but instead of having to place it underneath the scanner, you can just set it in an area that has an RFID pad and it can read all of these at the same time,” said Cottin.

The Kansas City Public Library began re-tagging its materials back in November, and Cottin estimated that somewhere in the neighborhood of 800,000 items have been tagged thus far. After the installation at the North-East Branch, eight of the nine branches in the Kansas City Public Library system have now been fitted with the new technology. As demonstrated by Cottin, checkout can now be accomplished in a matter of seconds.

As a result of the new system, library branches are expected to have more time to interact directly with patrons. Cottin indicated that once the public gets used to the technology, it will allow staff to spend less time at the front desk of their respective branches. At the North-East Public Library, Branch manager Claudia Visnich already has some ideas about how to utilize that additional staff time.

“We’d like to expand our computer classes to include Facebook, maybe Instagram, and maybe even do something with Pinterest,” said Visnich. “We’d like to try an online book club.