300 libraries across southern and central Illinois make up the Share automation consortium which provides access to more than 8 million items. To get one of these items, all you have to do to is log onto Share at your library or online through the website or app.
From there the book travels through the system, previously being sorted by hand at a hub in Champaign, Edwardsville, or Carbondale before heading to your library.
Colleen Dettenmeier with Illinois Heartland Library System, explains the challenges of that system, "The one thing we've kind of realized is how much we were incorrectly sending an item to the wrong library and even to maybe another hub before it got back to that library and it said, 'Oh, it was supposed to actually go to this other library.'"
That's changed this fall after 6 years of planning. Heartland unveiled new automation systems at each hub this fall. Now, once books get to these hubs they're routed using a scanner that reads barcodes or RF ID's before sending them out.
Mason Melville with Lyngsoe Systems explains the opportunities the automation provides, "You're reassigning their day-to-day tasks to do more hands-on IT kind of stuff. So less the manual processes, more how can we add value to the overall system that trickles down to patrons?"
Dettenmeier says system will improve accuracy reducing extra handling of the books, "We spent a lot of time looking at the paper receipt thinking that was the correct status, whereas now it's checked in through the machine and the machine knows the real-time status and sends it based not on the label, but on where it is in the item."
