Action for Libraries
Forward Focus: Delivering the Goods
By Brenda Bailey-Hainer, Executive Director
With creative writing degree firmly in hand, my first job after college graduation was managing a pizza shop in a small university town. In addition to worrying about food inventory, inebriated college students in the dining room and churning out thousands of pizzas ordered by rabid hockey fans after games, each night I also managed the delivery side of the business. I routed 10 or more pizza drivers in a motley assortment of vehicles all over town, campus and nearby farms. Armed with only a map of the city, a clock on the wall and an internal sense of how long it took to drive from point A to point B, I dispatched drivers with stacks of pizzas, all destined to be delivered - theoretically still piping hot - within 30 minutes.
Later on, I moved into less messy kinds of delivery-related positions in many different venues: an interlibrary loan service in a college library, an early document delivery company that scanned and faxed scholarly journal articles within 24 hours, an organization whose software had become the de facto industry standard for interlibrary loan, and finally, a state library agency intent on developing a locally hosted technology solution for resource sharing among all sizes and types of libraries statewide.
Every one of these jobs centered on delivering to consumers what they wanted. Early on it was to ravenous consumers of pizza; later, to equally ravenous consumers of information. And despite the advances in technology and materials that have been digitized and webified, each year there are still millions of objects loaned by libraries that must be physically packaged, picked up and schlepped from point A to point B - and often back again. Saving time and money to deliver them using the most efficient methods possible is still paramount.
Despite the perceived unsexy nature of driving courier trucks around, there is keen interest in the library community in issues related to delivery. Several key themes are beginning to emerge: 1) the need for a clearinghouse of information on delivery and a forum for ongoing discussion; 2) a growing interest in home delivery; and 3) exploration of the potential for a national courier service.
Delivery Information Clearinghouse
In September 2006, the Colorado Library Consortium, BCR and the Colorado State Library cooperatively held the first event devoted to physical delivery of library materials in more than 15 years. Called Moving Mountains, it attracted librarians and commercial carriers from throughout the U.S. as well as a few folks from Canada. The last such event was held in 1990 as an ASCLA symposium and resulted in published conference proceedings.1
The 2006 symposium spawned a continuing forum for discussion. The Moving Mountains Web site, hosted by the Colorado Library Consortium, gathers together information related to delivery. It includes presentations from the symposium, lists of commercial carriers, best practices, sample RFPs and other information. One of the attendees from SWON Libraries, a multi-type library consortium located in southwest Ohio, volunteered to host a listserv devoted to the topic of delivery. Information on how to sign up is included on the Moving Mountains Web site.
Home Delivery
Home delivery is part of a larger trend in libraries to provide greater convenience for users, but it's not a new idea. In the 1960s, the Council on Library Resources funded a pilot home delivery program in San Antonio. Several books were published in the 1970s that outlined the results of various home delivery pilots either to homebound patrons or to any patron who requested materials.2
Currently, hundreds of libraries across the country provide free delivery service to the homebound. Others offer the service to all patrons, either free or for a nominal fee. Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library has been supporting home delivery for many years and finds that it is one of its most popular services. Last year, the library mailed more than 146,800 packages to users at their homes.3 OCLC and selected libraries in Montana have partnered on a home delivery pilot that started in late May 2007 and during the first month generated around 200 patron requests for home deliveries.4
The Rethinking Resource Sharing initiative (see Rethinking Resource Sharing article) has created a new working group devoted to the topic of delivery. This group has discussed starting various pilot projects, including creating a national brand for all home delivery services provided by libraries. This is an important concept given that several competitors to library information delivery have sprung up. As NetFlix is to DVDs, so burgeoning book rental companies hope to be to books. BookSwim charges $19.99 per month, has a stock of 150,000 titles and offers free shipping both ways. BooksFree has plans that start at $9.99 per month, has a stock of 79,800 books and 18,000 audiobooks and offers free shipping. If libraries are to retain customers by providing the services they want, libraries must be vocal about the services they offer.
National Courier Service
While home delivery is an exciting concept, for many years to come there will still be a need to move materials cheaply between libraries. The most cost effective means of doing so is a dedicated courier service with a standard route. Various studies have shown that dedicated delivery route service can be much more cost effective than using the U.S. Postal Service or commercial on-demand services like UPS or FedEx.5 At the current time, there is at least one statewide, regional courier or localized service located in at least 42 states. One of the discussions that arose at the 2006 symposium related to the potential for creating a service that links couriers throughout the country into a single courier service. Valerie Horton, Colorado Library Consortium executive director, has continued to investigate this idea.
The 2007 ALA Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., included a program devoted to the topic of delivery. By all reports, requests for the delivery of materials have increased by thousands of percents over the last decade. Horton, who was one of three speakers on the program, reported on the results of her investigations about what a nationally linked courier service might look like. Coordination and agreement on standards between all of the different delivery services involved will be key to moving forward on this idea. Presentations from this session will be made available through the Moving Mountains Web site.
Other Delivery Developments
BCR recently signed an agreement with Velocity Express, a commercial carrier that has offices in 42 states and operates in 48. Like many carriers, Velocity Express has an interest in expanding into new markets since volume in some of its traditional markets, like transporting camera film for developing, is dwindling. In exchange for BCR's assistance in helping it enter the library market, Velocity Express is eager to participate in innovative pilot projects related to delivery. Such pilots can only help improve awareness of libraries and their services throughout the country.
Do you now know more about delivery than you ever dreamed of? If overseeing the delivery of library materials interests you, please sign up for the Moving Mountains listserv. If your interest is now piqued about finding new ways of using delivery to provide more convenience for your patrons, volunteer to be part of the delivery working group through the Rethinking Resource Sharing initiative. Watch for upcoming announcements - there's much more in store for helping libraries deliver the goods.
1 Keith Michael Fiels and Ronald P. Naylor, eds., Delivery of Information and Materials Between Libraries: the State of the Art, Proceedings of the June 1990 ASCLA Multi-LINCS Preconference (Chicago: ASCLA, ALA), 1991.
2 Robert T. Jordan, Tomorrow's Library: Direct Access and Delivery (New York: R.R. Bowker), 1970; Choong H. Kim, Books by Mail: A Handbook for Libraries (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press), 1977; Mary Jane Reed, Books by Mail Services: Moving the Library to Disadvantaged Adults (Morehead, KY: Appalachian Adult Education Center), 1974; San Antonio Public Library, Books by Mail: An Experimental Project Sponsored by The Council on Library Resources (San Antonio, TX: San Antonio Public Library), 1970.
3 Statistics provided by Paul Brennan, Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library.
4 Information on the Montana home delivery pilot provided by Cheryl Snowden and Jennifer Pearson, OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc.
5 The Library Research Service conducted a study in Colorado in 2003 that showed significant savings (www.lrs.org/documents/fastfacts/191_courier.pdf) and an unpublished study conducted by the Tampa Bay Library Consortium in 2006 indicated the same.