The Future Is Upon Us!

When someone asks you to imagine a public library, I don’t know what pictures pop into your head but I’m willing to bet that, like most people, the image involves dusty stacks of books and oppressive silence patrolled by scowling shush-meisters in cardigans.
With elbow-patches.

Whatever does leap into your mind, I generally find that no-one imagines the library as a futuristic community hub burning with cutting edge technology that you need to visit just to keep up in this fast-paced world.

Which is a shame - because we are, and you should.

Can you imagine a library where the shelves know what books are on them and can guide you to the one you want? What about a way to browse through an e-book just as though it were a real book?
How about keeping the library catalogue on your phone or tablet?

These aren’t vague ideas summoned to dazzle you. They are realities. They exist right now in libraries round the world.

Have you ever looked at a book on a shelf and wondered if you could get it at the library.
Yeah OK, but how do you know if we’ve got it? Or if it’s available?
Well, before you reach for your wallet, try downloading a free app onto your smartphone.
‘Library Anywhere’ lets you use the camera on your phone to scan the barcode on the back of the book, then looks it up and tells you if there are any copies at Masterton Library (or any SMART library) available to borrow. Go one step further and reserve the book right there and then. I’m guessing a two minute walk up the road isn’t going to put a tremendous dent in your day.

What else you might ask? A lot of people are starting to become interested in e-books, but find there’s no way to look at the cover or read a couple of chapters. And how else do you decide if you want to read it?
Masterton Library has thousands of free e-books available to you right now, and the next generation of our software promises to let you scan through those e-books on a screen in the library as though you were browsing it on a shelf.

As you may already know, Masterton is a founding library in the SMART libraries scheme. This allows you as Masterton residents to borrow not just from 60,000 local items but from half a million items across the 23 SMART libraries - at no extra cost. Make a reserve from Masterton, and within twenty minutes your book is fetched and sent to you from Kapiti. Or Weltec. Or Wainouiomata.
We’ve lent nearly two million books this year alone.

Better yet, in the next year we will be installing RFID tags into all our books and once this is done many things will be possible. RFID is a little chip that can communicate wirelessly with nearby sensors in the same way that the new ‘contactless’ bank cards can make payments by waving them over a scanner.
Our first plan is to install ‘Self-Issue’ desks so that customers can avoid a queue and just issue the books themselves. Then Returns can just be replaced by a slide and the same set-up in reverse.
After that, who knows?
Smart shelving can be installed to keep track of RFID stock; hand scanners can save your catalogue search and guide you to your book. All this is possible, right now. The future is already upon us.

You don’t need us to tell you that the world is changing fast - you can see it all around you. But where do you go for advice on all this stuff? Who can you trust to explain it all and not try to sell you something afterwards?
Try the Library. We’re free, we work for you and there isn’t an elbow-patch in sight.

Science fiction isn’t just a genre for us; it’s an instruction manual!

We've just passed the SMART six-month mark and celebrated half a year of collaboration and catalogue sharing between 6 major libraries. To commemorate the occasion there were two celebratory breakfasts held at Weltec and Whitireia.

Free food ensured that they were exceptionally well attended.

Some absolutely astounding statistics came out of them though...

Interlibrary reserves since Oct 10th = 31,889

Total reserves since 10^th Oct = 179,117

Total SMART loans since 10^th Oct = 1,792,614

That's in just six months! It's quite possible the world could run out of books before we hit a full year...

SMART Libraries' Six-Month Celebration - Weltec

So for the second time running a car full of yawning librarians braved the Rimutaka incline for the sake of a free brekkie and a SMART-branded nametag.
It was Good-God-o’clock in the morning and this time we were headed for WelTec, whilst praying that Mary had ordered plenty of caffeine from catering. Despite all this though, the mood was cheerful when we arrived. There was a good mixture of people from all around the Spydus libraries & thankfully, the coffee was present, piping hot and plentiful.

It was quite impressive to see a group of folk, essentially strangers to one another, fall so easily into conversation, rather than break up into clannish huddles with their own people (as one might expect). The difference, it seemed to me, was the thing that had brought us all together that morning – SMART.

Not only was it a denominator common to all, but clearly was something we were enthusiastic to discuss with each other. Consequently, the room appeared to be full of library managers, chatting to IT geeks who in turn were listening to Civica executives: traditionally, these are tax-brackets that don’t rub elbows all that often!
It was egalitarian. It was unifying. In fact, it was very SMART.
The informal part of the gathering went surprisingly quickly and it seemed like only minutes before we were gathered together for the presentations.

Presiding, as we all do, over small corners of our library network, it is always slightly humbling to examine the full scope of what we have achieved in such a very short time.
As Annette spoke, it became clear that our successes go a great deal further than swapping a few library books. What we’ve managed to do and, importantly, how little we’ve managed to do it with are of immense interest to a number of people.
That our borrowers are pleased is readily apparent, our customers are almost unanimous in their delight. And of course, where there are happy voters, happy town councillors have inevitably followed.
But as each library manager told us their impressions and each SMART group elaborated on their future plans it became obvious that we have succeeded where many better funded and more regimented efforts have failed.
SMART is now of interest to libraries up and down New Zealand, our collaboration a model for the future, rather than an ignorable aberration.

Annette’s invitation to speak to the Chief Librarians conference in the UK makes one thing plain for all of us: The world is watching SMART - Try to look busy!