You Can't Be Serious

Every once in a while I get a call from someone with an idea they want to explore that just makes no sense at all. At least not at first. The latest zany idea a client brought to me is a concept they dubbed, “pure central processing” and although my first response was, “You can’t be serious” it is definitely growing on me. Their idea was to eliminate check-in at each of their branches entirely by letting people return things but instead of checking them in there, the items would be taken elsewhere for check-in and then brought back later. They weren’t talking about moving from a staff check-in experience to a self-service check-in experience. They were talking about eliminating the check-in transaction and associated workflows from public service library staff and the library environment entirely.

Above is an excerpt from my latest column in Collaborative Librarianship.  Want to read the entire article?