Home delivery is not new to libraries. Specialized homebound delivery services, bookmobiles, deliveries to nursing homes, and other similar services have been around for some time. Academic libraries have been delivering to distance education students for many years. A few public library systems, such as Orange County in Florida and Topeka and Shawnee County in Kansas, have figured out how to provide direct home delivery to their patrons and have done so for years. But home delivery has not become the norm in public libraries as was predicted in a 1970 by Robert Jordan in Tomorrow’s Library.1
In this chapter we look at how patron expectations have changed as a result of social networking and Internet shopping, and how patrons are now driving the demand for home delivery. Patrons are saying, “Well, if Netflix and Amazon can deliver, why can’t the library?” And the answer is that libraries can deliver to the home, economically. We also offer details about Orange County’s successful home delivery service. Home delivery is no more expensive than maintaining a mid-sized branch library and is routinely evaluated by patrons as the library’s best service. The only things stopping home delivery from becoming a norm across the country are the perception that it is too expensive and a lack of knowledge among librarians about how to manage such a service.
Have you ever wanted something, gone out to the store to get it, but found the store did not have your item in or know when it would become available? When that happened, what action did you take? Did you choose to wait for it, or did you try another store? Let’s assume you decided to wait for it and you put your name on a waiting list, even though you have no idea when the item will come in. Now imagine, the store calls you and says it is in and you should come get it right away. In fact, if you don’t come and get it within seven days, the store will sell the item to someone else. I think we could all agree that this store would not get the highest marks in customer service.
Yet this is how the current system of holds works at most public libraries and, though holds are popular, theirs is not a very good service model. It leaves the customer in limbo, not knowing when an item will be available. And it expects the customer to do too much of the work involved in getting the desired item.
It is time to treat library users more like the valued customers they are and to acknowledge that their time is scarce and valuable. Adding the option to home-deliver holds, instead of relying on the “come and get it” model, is one way to extend the fulfillment options available to library users. Other fulfillment options that should be considered include direct delivery, such as special delivery to any specified address, personal delivery, expedited delivery, and e-delivery.
Libraries do not offer direct delivery of holds for several reasons: it is expensive, it is labor intensive, and it could result in keeping items out of circulation longer (when shipping time is accounted for). Some say that library customers enjoy coming to the library and would not want to have material delivered to them, or that library users are less likely to return material received via mail. Another drawback is that today’s ILSs are not designed to support home delivery.
There are also many reasons to offer direct delivery of library material to our customer’s home or office or vacation getaway. As twenty-first-century consumers, we don’t wait for things. We are more likely to choose something “good enough” rather than wait for what we really want. In most cases, there is almost always another choice that will result in our immediate satisfaction. For example, there are many ways to get information—books, music, movies. Libraries are just one option among many.
Today’s library users, like everyone, expect fast and efficient service. They expect to be able to find what they want. They expect to be able to get it when and where they want it. They do not expect to wait and wonder when an item they have requested will be available. They do not expect to do a lot of work to get items they have “ordered.” Understandably, they expect libraries to operate like most twenty-first-century businesses.
Libraries began allowing customers to place holds on items several years ago. They began doing the work of bringing material to the customer’s nearby library branch rather than expecting the customer to travel to another branch to get it. Library users loved the service, and the number of holds skyrocketed. Libraries then began allowing customers to pick up holds and return material at any branch. Again, customers responded with enthusiasm. They loved the convenience of the service.
Libraries soon began to suffer from the burden of their own success. Material transfers between libraries overwhelmed library circulation staff as they tried to keep up with all the holds that needed to be pulled, routed to the right location, and prepared for the hold shelves. Shelving units of browsing material were converted to hold shelves and interlibrary delivery volume doubled and tripled as these popular services were rolled out.
The primary reason library users prefer to place holds and pick up and drop off material at the library branch of their choice is convenience. Customer convenience is more important than speed, privacy, and sometimes money. Convenience trumps everything.
People generally have either time or money but not both. A 2006 ALA study found that 90 percent of library users taking out books had incomes between $15,000 and $35,000.2 These people do not have a lot of money. They are using the library because the material is free. Even if they have to wait to get what they want, they will. They do not complain too much if they have to wait for weeks or even months to get a popular DVD. They do not complain that they have to come to the library (possibly at some cost and possibly great inconvenience) to pick up their requested material—because it is free, and that’s critical. Despite the inconvenience, some customers accept the “cost” of doing business at the library.
What about the people in higher income brackets; where are they getting their books and DVDs? These are the Amazon.com and Netflix users whose time is more precious than their money. In many cases, these people would like to support the library, but they cannot afford to wait for items to find their way to a library branch. These users prefer to purchase the book (new or used) and have it delivered to their home or office. For them, it is preferable to pay for the book and the shipment in exchange for the convenience of getting the item delivered and knowing when it will arrive. Amazon.com customers do not have to leave home to get what they want, and they know exactly when their material will arrive. Many used book stores are offering the same convenient online services, and the material can be purchased very inexpensively.
Netflix relies on the same appeal to convenience and takes the service one step further. Not only does the item arrive in the customer’s mailbox, but it can be returned the same way. Further, the customer can queue up several requests and not have to bother requesting items one by one. They just magically arrive. Watch one movie, return it, and here comes another one from the wish list. What could be more convenient than that?
According to the aforementioned ALA study, 63 percent of Americans owned a library card in 2006. The same study reported that 25 percent of people with a library card had not visited the library in the past year. In other words, everyone loves the library—in theory. They want to support libraries. They take pride in having a library card. But most of these library supporters do not actually use the library. Perhaps it just is not convenient enough.
It is time to develop a service commitment that works for most people, a service model that respects every customer’s time and makes the library an easier choice for everyone to make. Ultimately, by providing high-quality, convenient services, our libraries can build a stronger base of support and bring in more funding. As long as libraries are seen as a public good but one that higher-income users do not use, they run the risk of losing the support of those higher-income users. Expanding library services to include fee-based (if necessary), convenience-oriented services will address some of the needs of a category of users who currently do not use the library.
Although convenience is the holy grail of customer service, turnaround time matters too. Our concept of an “acceptable wait time” continues to shorten. Before word processing and fax machines, wait time was measured in days. Today we think in minutes, not days and certainly not weeks. Many baby boomers use e-mail every day and expect responses to their messages the same day. People in their twenties do not use e-mail because it is not instantaneous enough. They operate in Instant Message increments.
The younger you are, the shorter your acceptable wait time. Kids today are unfamiliar with concepts like photo finishing, where you have to wait to see your photos. They can watch a TV show any time because they have pay-per-view or TIVO (a popular brand of digital video recorder). As these young people grow up, the slow turnaround times considered acceptable in libraries will no longer be acceptable. This generation of library users will not care about the intricacies of ILL and the effort made to get the item they have requested—they just want the result. Already, books and other library material are commodities. Libraries are not the keepers of a scarce number of tomes. Libraries are just one option for getting an item that is readily available from any number of places. So, if the turnaround time does not fit the need, users will go elsewhere.
Users value convenience and expect fast turnaround times. They also expect everything to be readily findable. Researchers’ experience with search engines is that they can always find an acceptable answer. They can identify a decent restaurant, learn about possible vacation destinations, get answers to simple questions, or find an essay or blog post or podcast on any topic of interest. Increasingly, search engines are also helping them find books and other library materials. Libraries are benefiting from the work of OCLC to make library material discoverable through search engines like Google and Yahoo. Google and Yahoo users can simply install a plug-in that allows them to use their regular search engine to search all the holdings in OCLC’s WorldCat for library material. From the WorldCat interface, they can then borrow it from their own library or order it from Amazon.com.
The ability to discover more easily the material available in libraries everywhere will create yet more demand. What OCLC has done with WorldCat is take advantage of the network effects of aggregating the supply of all library material (that is represented in WorldCat), thereby expanding the number of potential users. As more users discover library material using their preferred search tools (vs. the library catalog), more requests will be made for interlibrary transfers and loans.
Library users appreciate and value the convenience of placing their own hold requests and being able to choose where to pick up and drop off library material. All libraries providing these services are struggling with the delivery challenges associated with moving material from branch to branch and library to library. Sending out material from a library directly to the library user solves many problems for the library and creates an even more convenient service for the user.
To fill user requests, most libraries pick items off the shelf, scan them to put them into transit, and prepare the material for their courier. Their courier picks up the requested material and the receiving library has to scan each item to trigger the hold, prepare the material for the holds shelf (label it with the customer’s name), and then put it on the holds shelf. When the item is returned by the customer, it must again be scanned to determine where it belongs and possibly be put into transit again.
For the customer, the transaction requires two trips to the library. For the library, it requires several scans of the bar code and up to two trips via courier and the requisite label printing for putting the item on the hold shelf and routing the material from library to library. That’s a lot of overhead. In addition, the customer placing the hold may not know when her held item will be available and may not even want it by the time it hits the hold shelf. Libraries report that 10–20 percent of holds are never picked up. Most libraries allow a week or even ten days for holds to be picked up (and this does not include the circulation period), so requested items that do not get picked up also do not circulate or fill pending requests for over a week.
If libraries shipped items directly to the customer, the transaction would eliminate at least two and possibly as many as four trips between locations (two library-to-library trips and two patron trips to the library) and would ensure that library material was circulating with customers instead of sitting on shelves or in vans. If the library used USPS Media Mail, the item would arrive at the customer’s home within a day or two and the cost to the library would be less than $2.00.
Ideally, the library could offer a range of choices to library customers. The Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library mails all hold requests by default, but customers who prefer to pick up their material can simply enter their phone number in the comment box and be notified when the item is ready for them.
Local businesses might be more inclined to use library resources if they could get material as quickly as they need it. Law firms, medical offices, and other businesses pay personal messengers to deliver documents every day. If direct delivery services were available, they would be more inclined to use the library as a resource for articles, books, and other research material. But waiting for the slow wheels of ILL to turn does not work well for today’s businesses. Business customers and higher-income customers are among those who would be more likely to use the library if it offered a service model that made sense for their lives, even if it cost them more money.
Although some people do not use the library because it is inconvenient for them, some “digital natives,” people who grow up comfortable with technology, are making extraordinary use of the library without ever entering the building. Downloadable audio books and e-books are popular with users who have not used the library before. Online databases, digital repositories, digital libraries, and other online services have created this new category of library users, whose home branch is the e-branch. These users would be more inclined to use nonelectronic library materials such as books and DVDs if they could browse, discover, download, or request these items online too.
Even for those library customers with more time and less money, home delivery may provide cost savings in certain situations. For example, if a customer has to pay $2.00 to ride a bus to the library, it may make more economic sense to pay for having the item mailed to their home.
According to William Sannwald, the author of Checklist of Library Building Design Considerations, the current cost of building a library is $400 per square foot (fully loaded building cost).3 Libraries report their success in terms of total number of circulations (total number of check-outs) and collection turnover (total number of check-outs divided by holdings). The more time library material spends on book carts, in transit, and on hold shelves, the less that material can circulate and the greater the cost of storing that item.
Unless a library was built in the past few years, it is likely to have too little space for current demands. Library users want more from their library space than rows of books and quiet study areas. They still expect room to read quietly, but they also want spaces for the kids to interact and play games, plenty of public access computers, meeting rooms, cafes, display areas for browsing current popular titles, and quick and easy-to-use self-service options for checking in, getting one’s holds, and checking out. Older library spaces cannot effectively accommodate these mounting needs.
Reducing the space dedicated to hold shelves by offering direct delivery is one way to expand a service that customers value while getting back some of the library space in-library customers appreciate. Instead of filling public spaces with hold shelves and extra self-check machines to accommodate those people who just want to get in and out, enable those customers to receive and return their material via direct delivery. The shipping process happens in staff work areas or, even better, at central library fulfillment centers, where a collection of material is stored in high-density file systems and is specifically targeted to the e-branch users, eliminating the need for branch-to-branch transfers and freeing up valuable public areas.
Providing direct delivery service involves the following components: an appropriate software interface, packaging, and a courier or shipper. It may also require a change in attitude about what constitutes a library user.
The biggest hurdle for today’s library is the software interface. None of the currently available library systems provide a direct delivery module designed to support a high volume of material. Many library systems provide a patron module that tracks items shipped to individuals who qualify as “homebound.” But when offering direct delivery as an option for everyone, libraries need to be able to generate shipping labels with bar codes, choose between delivery services, and offer the customer control over how to use (and possibly pay for) the service. To take advantage of special rates and special services (address verification, Saturday shipment, next-day service, second-day service, tracking, etc.), the library must output patron data to third-party shipping software (e.g., Endicia, United States Postal Service Shipping Assistant, Dydacomp Mail Order Manager) or integrate these features into an existing ILS module. Fortunately, the new open-source library system products are much more conducive to this type of integration, but it is not supported by many of today’s non-open-source ILS vendors. As a result, it is more labor intensive than necessary to ship items via the USPS or other commercial shipping vendors.
The software should be easy for library customers to use too. Customers must be able to set up direct delivery as the default choice or request direct delivery on an item-by-item basis. Customers must be able to verify the shipping address, authorize payment (if applicable), and cancel direct delivery requests that have not been filled. At this time, these features are not part of any of the software interfaces available from ILS vendors.
Packaging can become an impediment for libraries that would like to offer home delivery. The packaging requirement depends on the material being shipped, the vendor being used, and the way the item will be returned to the library. The Orange County (Florida) library system uses basic jiffy bags with simple address labels printed by its ILS. It has been able to minimize the work associated with packaging because it delivers material via a contracted courier service. All the sorting is done manually by the couriers. A library that wishes to automate the sorting of material needs to be able to sort material automatically, and this generally requires a bar code. Libraries using automation or outsourcing the shipping to a commercial shipper may be better off using the shipping contractor’s labels, envelopes, and boxes.
Ideally, packaging is streamlined with as few variations as possible. For example, perhaps the library offers two levels of service, such as next-day or Media Mail. These choices depend on the library’s goals. If the goal is to cover the cost of shipping by using a low-cost delivery service, USPS Media Mail may be the best bet. If the goal is to get the material to the user as quickly as possible, USPS First Class mail or next-day UPS or FedEx may work better. Some libraries may attempt to meet both goals: provide a free, low-cost service and a fee-based expedited service. Ideally, libraries offering more choices will find a fulfillment center that can prepare and package material as needed. If libraries are packaging and shipping out of their own facilities, it is important that they keep the necessary supplies to a minimum and avoid using tape and staples (which increase the handling requirements) as much as possible.
Most libraries use UPS or FedEx for sending and receiving ILL material between library systems and a courier service for deliveries within a library system. These two provider types are good choices for those applications. But for direct delivery to library customers, neither the local courier nor UPS or FedEx are a good fit. Couriers do not have the ability to add new locations to their route and still stay on their 24-hour turnaround schedule. UPS and FedEx are not a good fit because of the high cost of single-item, short-distance deliveries. Although UPS and FedEx may offer competitive pricing with the USPS when it comes to larger volumes or longer distances, the USPS is ideal for delivering small packages to lots of nearby locations. The USPS delivers to everyone in a library’s service area every day, and its specialty is very small packages (e.g., letters, magazines). For this reason, it can offer better pricing for the service than UPS and FedEx. To the extent that a library can bundle items destined for the same zip code, the pricing becomes very attractive. Although it is unlikely that the cost for direct or home delivery will ever compare to the per-item cost of a scheduled courier service (generally under fifty cents), it can be kept under $2.00 per item on single shipments and possibly less (per item) when several items are shipped at once.
One of the biggest hurdles to offering direct delivery as a service option is the perspective that, if the customer does not come into the library, then his or her use of the library does not count the same as one who does. Although there are many good reasons for customers to come to the library, many of those reasons do not apply to some people. For example, the great children’s programs offered at libraries are not a draw for working adults with no children, but they may enjoy getting DVDs or CDs to use on their own home theater system. Quiet, public reading places may not be a draw for someone who commutes four hours a day to work, but that same person would appreciate the steady supply of audiobooks available from the library.
Some libraries are starting to recognize the importance of the e-branch user and offering e-cards—a virtual library card that verifies the customer’s address but does not require a driver’s license or other physical form of identification. E-cards can be used however the library chooses; most libraries limit e-cardholders to electronic resources until the e-card is converted to a full library card.
Like e-card users, direct delivery customers may be another untapped pool of library users with unique needs: they want to use physical library material but do not want to come to the library. Many libraries refuse to offer fee-based services, believing that they create a two-tiered system of users. But by not providing services that are convenient enough for the lifestyles of many potential customers, the library is choosing not to address their needs. Is a two-tiered system worse than ignoring the needs of a whole category of potential library users?
Some potential users may support the library and see that it fills a public service, but they do not necessarily see the library as relevant to their lives. It would be nice if people with more disposable income, or no children, or jobs that involve very long commutes also benefited from library services. Why not give these users even more reasons to vote for those library bonds.
Home delivery has proved to be a popular service for every library that has offered it for free. Orange County citizens report that the home delivery service is one of the most valued services the library provides. The library offers the service for free, arguing that the cost of the service is comparable (actually cheaper) than operating another library outlet.
There is no doubt that free direct delivery would be popular with every community, but if the library cannot offer the service for free, why not consider charging a small fee for the service? Direct delivery offers a way to meet some of the needs of potential customers (and voters) currently underserved by the library. For libraries that decide to offer fee-based or convenience-based services, it is important to ensure that paying the fee is as convenient as the service itself. Therefore, libraries may need to find ways to debit the user’s library account, credit card, or PayPal account automatically. For libraries that choose to offer direct delivery for free, it will likely be necessary to limit the number of items that can be sent out within a given period so that customers do not overwhelm the system.
One of the changes happening in libraries today is automation replacing manual systems for moving and sorting material as well as some circulation functions. This trend began with automated self check-out systems, and we can see the continuing trend with automated self check-in systems. With automated check-in, the material is checked in and removed from the cardholder’s account and then sorted to a tote or trolley for shelving or additional processing.
Automated check-in, check-out, and sorting are done much more easily and with fewer errors using an RFID-based system. RFID tags can also be used to store information the library system writes to the tag. Whereas first-generation RFID tags are being used as glorified (and very expensive) bar codes, next-generation tags will be used to aid in materials handling and ILL processing. For example, in a few years, it will likely be common for information about holds and pickup locations to be written to the library material’s RFID tag so the item can be more easily found on the shelf and routed to the desired location. Standards for what to write on the library RFID tags are still being developed. These standards will also ensure that customer privacy is protected so that the tags can be used to store information beyond a simple bar code.
As library sorters become more common (and library spaces are designed to accommodate larger sorters), library material will be automatically sorted not just to trolleys or carts for reshelving and totes for delivery but also to destinations that support other delivery mechanisms. For example, sorters can be equipped with discharge locations for “direct ship” items presorted by destination zip code so that staff can easily bundle groups of ten items to take advantage of USPS bundle rate pricing. Printers can be configured to print out the right labels (e.g., routing labels for couriers, USPS Media Mail labels for direct delivery) automatically to match the items’ delivery mechanism. There are many unexploited avenues available to libraries that are committed to offering direct delivery.
It is worth noting that another way to implement direct delivery is scan-ondemand. With the new high-powered scanners, it will soon be practical for libraries to digitize library material and e-mail it to their library customers, or perhaps make it available online. As demand for electronic versions of material grows, this will be an important delivery option to provide customers as well.
Much of the technology needed to support direct delivery approaches (e.g., direct delivery and scan-on-demand) is expensive and requires a fair amount of space. More and more libraries should be thinking about creating service centers that optimize the library’s ability to fill these orders. These service or fulfillment centers can be used to sort material for the library system (or consortium) and to separate out items for direct delivery or perhaps e-delivery processing. It is not practical for individual libraries to own scan-on-demand equipment or to install high-volume, high-speed sorters. This approach does, however, begin to make sense for larger library systems or library consortia that can distribute the cost of the equipment among several libraries.
Using large warehouse spaces for materials handling functions is cheaper for the library system than using up valuable public areas and staff areas at each of the libraries. As libraries grapple with increasing volumes of material being circulated and moved around their library system, we will see more and more library systems establishing service centers to support materials handling and request fulfillment.
The Orange County Library System (OCLS) serves a community of 1.3 million people across a thousand square miles in central Florida. Founded in 1923 as the Albertson Public Library in downtown Orlando, today OCLS includes the Orlando Public Library (main library) and fourteen branch locations throughout the county. The OCLS service area is all of Orange County with the exception of two municipalities. The population is diverse and spread evenly across age groups. OCLS maintains a circulating collection of 1.5 million items and has more than 450,000 registered borrowers. In fiscal year 2007, the system circulated 9.3 million items. Approximately 8 percent of those circulated items were delivered to patrons via the popular home delivery service—MAYL (Materials Access from Your Library).
Over the past several years, OCLS has emphasized providing a variety of programs, computer classes, and technology-focused products. Positive attendance figures and digital statistics show that these products and services are well received. But it is MAYL, now in its fourth decade of operation, that consistently rates as the library system’s most popular service according to patron surveys.
OCLS initiated its home delivery service in 1974. In the early 1970s, as the impact of Disney World began to transform central Florida into a major tourist destination, the library system consisted of the main library, nine small branches, and an aging bookmobile. The population of Orange County was 350,000. As development stretched in all directions, OCLS director Glenn Miller wanted to replace the bookmobile and still provide meaningful library service to residents throughout the entire service area. A books-by-mail service was the answer, connecting people to the library by bringing the library to them. Resident cardholders could call and request titles, and the library would mail the books to their homes at no cost to the patrons. OCLS would devote resources to provide the service just as it provided resources for branches. Home delivery was the library-without-walls.
In 1975, the first full year of the service, 9,000 books were mailed to patrons. Growth was slow but steady throughout the remainder of the decade. In the 1980s, as the main library was expanded to three times its original size and the network of branches began to reach more distant communities around Orange County, home delivery started to emerge as one of the library’s most popular services. Processing the requests for home delivery became the responsibility of the Special Services department. The requests were maintained on handwritten cards that doubled as mailing labels, a process that continued for the first twenty-two years of the service. Known simply as Books-by-Mail through these formative years, the home delivery service was dubbed MAYL in the late 1980s. The acronym originally stood for Mailbox Access to Your Library. By 1990, volume was averaging 18,000 books per month.
Though OCLS possessed an AV collection throughout the home delivery era, it was not until 1990 that AV materials were made eligible for request. By 1992, 10 percent of MAYL volume was AV material. Overall growth accelerated through the early 1990s. Monthly circulation was 23,000 in 1994 when the system faced a new dilemma. The USPS announced a 70 percent postage increase for library book rate. In June 1994, the Orlando Sentinel ran a story about MAYL and the impending postal increase, reporting on the library’s search for home delivery alternatives.
After reading the Orlando Sentinel article, friends Rick Bennett and Dennis Clay created a proposal for OCLS. Bennett had worked for FedEx and Clay for the USPS. They were confident they could start a company to provide the library with quick delivery, at a competitive cost, with less-intensive package preparation for library staff. In his letter to OCLS, Bennett wrote, “You do have an alternative. One that I feel could be mutually beneficial for all involved.”
In early 1995, the library began a trial run with Bennett and Clay’s fledgling operation, Priority Express Parcel (PEP). Initially delivering to a few selected zip codes, PEP quickly demonstrated a high level of reliability and efficiency. Charging $1.35 per package regardless of weight, PEP offered a rate slightly less than the average USPS Library Book rate. But along with that favorable rate, PEP delivered packages within two days. USPS delivery typically took (and still takes) up to seven days. The small roster of PEP drivers proved to be dependable and courteous, and the company was soon delivering requested items to homes throughout most of the OCLS service region. MAYL became Materials Access from Your Library, the word “mailbox” conspicuously dropped.
By 2000, PEP had ten employees and was delivering 88 percent of requested OCLS items. That same year, OCLS began outsourcing interlocation delivery to PEP, another alternative that continues to be mutually beneficial nearly a decade later. Today PEP delivers 92 percent of OCLS requests (the remaining 8 percent are delivered via USPS or picked up by patrons). Package cost has increased fifty cents, to $1.85, in the thirteen years PEP has delivered MAYL for OCLS, a rate that still compares favorably to the current average USPS Media Mail rate. To keep up with the prolific growth of MAYL over the past decade, PEP has doubled the size of its staff. Most deliveries are still made within two days, and none take longer than three days.
MAYL volume has risen tremendously over the past ten years. The OCLS website was introduced in May 1998, and that year 2,500 requests were made by patrons via the Web. In May 1999, the number was 8,500. By 2002, 17,000 requests monthly were originating from the website, representing 50 percent of requests systemwide. In May 2008, 69,000 holds were placed online, 85 percent of all requests.
Clearly, MAYL is perfectly suited for the online world, almost as if it was conceived all those years ago with the digital age in mind. The service initiated by the library during the nation’s first gas crisis now helps OCLS stay relevant during the nation’s most recent energy crisis. The library-without-walls first envisioned in the 1970s has become the system’s third-highest circulating agency, checking out 720,791 requested items in 2007. In 2008, MAYL circulation neared 800,000 items.
The MAYL process has always been about making adjustments. From learning to operate postage machines and sort canvas mail sacks to negotiating three computer system migrations in less than two decades, library staff working with home delivery have had to manage significant change and accommodate substantial growth.
Today, OCLS uses a paging list process to locate requested material that should be on the shelf. Staff use these location-specific lists daily to search for the requested items and send found copies to Special Services for processing. If all owned copies of a requested title are checked out, staff are prompted to send the item to Special Services during the check-in process. The main library’s daily regular paging list is typically 500–700 items, with 150–250 lease books and DVDs appearing on the daily floating list. For branches, regular paging lists fall in the 75–200 item range, and floating lists are anywhere between 25 and 100 items. Today, 60 percent of OCLS requests are for books, 20 percent for DVDs, 10 percent for music CDs, and 5 percent for CD books.
Special Services received its name many years ago, back when, in addition to Books-by-Mail, the department also handled ILL and talking books. The focus became exclusive to processing MAYL material in the early 1990s. The Special Services staff currently consists of one full-time manager, one full-time coordinator, eleven full-time clerks, and six part-time clerks. The department occupies a 10,000-square-foot portion of the basement floor in the main library, a space large enough to conduct all MAYL activity and store all related supplies.
Chief among department supplies are the padded mailers used to ship requested material; four different sizes accommodate all types of items. Patrons are encouraged to return the mailers for reuse; the mailers have “Reusable—Please Return” printed on one side. Approximately 80 percent of requests are sent out in mailers that were previously used. Whenever possible, multiple items requested by a patron are placed together in one padded mailer. When staff begin to recognize a particular patron as a heavy user of MAYL, a note is placed on the patron’s account that directs everyone in the department to set aside that patron’s items until the end of the day. All items for the patron are then packaged together.
With 92 percent of MAYL items being delivered by PEP, sorting packages for distribution mostly means placing them in one of several large bins wheeled in and out by PEP drivers throughout the day. About 4 percent of MAYL patrons still receive material through the postal service; this is usually because the mailing address is a P.O. box or the patron’s residential address is too remote for inclusion in PEP’s delivery area. Special Services has its own postage machine in the department. Staff post 100–150 packages a day and place them in a postal wire sent out the following morning. The remaining 4 percent of packages are picked up by patrons at an established OCLS location. This is typically arranged at the request of the patron, but a small number of pickup arrangements are initiated by the library after patrons report two or more failures to receive delivered packages. Items for pickup at the main library are delivered by Special Services to hold desks within the building. PEP gathers the packages being picked up at branch locations to be included in the following day’s interlocation delivery.
PEP headquarters is two miles from the main library. Most of the building, approximately 650 square feet, is devoted to sorting. The fenced-in parking lot provides space for the fleet of vehicles, sixteen small pickup trucks with toppers and two 18-foot box trucks. MAYL packages are delivered by couriers using the pickup trucks, and interlocation delivery is divided by two drivers using the box trucks. Each courier drives about 100 miles a day. Combined, they make approximately two thousand stops daily, using an average of 100 gallons of gas. The delivery drivers stop at thirteen of the fourteen branches six days a week; the fourteenth branch receives delivery via a courier delivering MAYL packages in its neighborhood. Together, the interlocation delivery routes cover 175 miles each day.
Including Bennett and Clay, PEP employs twenty people. All PEP staff members wear company shirts (polo style or T-shirt with logo) and black shorts or pants. Additional uniform items provided include baseball hats and jackets. Staff are salaried, which allows for individual scheduling flexibility and promotes a sense of ownership of the routes for drivers. Health insurance is provided for employees. PEP suffers little turnover; most of the staff have been with the company more than five years.
The interlocation drivers begin their routes at 8:00 a.m. One driver delivers to six branches north of the main library. The other driver delivers to seven branches to the south. Along with returning items owned by the main library to the shelving staff and turning over interoffice mail to the mailroom, the drivers deliver requested material found at branches to Special Services.
The MAYL package-sorting area at the PEP warehouse is a large rectangular room. All along the perimeter, fifteen built-in wooden sections, approximately 3 feet deep, represent each of the courier routes. Throughout the day, full bins are wheeled into the center of the room, and packages are sorted into the appropriate sections by the employee stationed at the warehouse and any driver who happens to be there at the time. After completing their deliveries for the day and returning to the warehouse, the couriers further sort the packages in their sections and prepare their routes for the next workday.
All routes are split in half and completed over two-day periods. The couriers alternate between one side of the route and the other from day to day, resulting in the great majority of items reaching the address within two days of being checked out in Special Services. Couriers set their own daily schedule, the only rule being that deliveries not be made in the dark.
The couriers are instructed to observe the elements when making deliveries. PEP provides reusable plastic bags to protect the packages. Depending on weather conditions and the amount of shelter provided at the door of the residence, couriers decide whether or not to use a bag. For deliveries to gated communities, Special Services staff contacts patrons to obtain gate codes that are passed along to the couriers. Driveways are avoided, unless there is no safe place to park on the road. When delivering to a fenced residence, the courier puts the package in a bag and twists it shut on the gate. By contacting the library or calling PEP directly (the company lists its phone number on the bags), some patrons give specific instructions for the delivery of packages. These instructions are printed with the address on the mailing label, prompting couriers to place packages in containers near doors, to leave them at leasing offices, to always knock when delivering, or to follow any number of other directives.
It is not officially part of PEP’s service to deliver material from MAYL patrons back to the library. However, when making a delivery, couriers will accept library items and padded mailers presented by patrons and deliver the material to Special Services the following day. This courtesy reflects the company’s commitment to customer service. Bennett and Clay long ago established the understanding at PEP that each employee serves as an ambassador for the library, and that philosophy is exemplified each day by the PEP staff.
One undeniable truth about MAYL is that an increase in delivery volume means an increase in the overall cost of the service. The enormous growth of MAYL over the past ten years is seen not only in circulation figures but also in the OCLS budget. Including Special Services staff salaries and benefits, MAYL operations costs in 2008 were projected to be $1,867,000. This represented 4.4 percent of the library’s anticipated budget expenditures, up from 2.9 percent in 1998. Cost of delivery in 2008 was projected to account for 3.1 percent of anticipated expenditures.
Despite the inevitable increase in overall cost that comes with the service’s rise in popularity, a cost-per-unit comparison of MAYL with the costs of OCLS physical locations indicates that the service is one of the library’s most cost-effective operations. Dividing the overall cost of the service by the volume of checked-out requests shows that each MAYL transaction costs $2.46. This figure has increased only nine cents over the past ten years. Only four of the library’s fifteen locations have a lower cost per checked-out item.
To appreciate the value of MAYL fully, it is important to consider other factors that help measure the return on investment for both the individual taxpayer and the community as a whole. For the individual, there is the obvious savings in time, gas, and other associated driving costs. The convenience offered by MAYL cannot be underestimated. The service makes it possible for someone new to experience the library in a tangible way without leaving home.
From the library website, Orange County residents can register for a library card. If the registration process is successful, patrons receive their library cards in the mail within ten days. They can then request items from the online catalog, and the MAYL service puts the material in their hands without them ever actually visiting a location. Though OCLS is proud of its locations and provides a great variety of programs and services to draw visitors, there is also the recognition that a significant portion of customers prefer to use the library virtually. A 2005 online survey about MAYL, taken by 1,600 patrons, revealed that 33 percent utilized the library exclusively through the website and home delivery.
The individual also gains from the benefits MAYL provides to the community at large. Just as the service was ahead of its time by being so well suited for the Internet, MAYL was also a green service before anyone knew what that meant. Simply put, home delivery helps keep cars off the road, which in turn lowers fuel emissions and reduces wear and tear on roads that the taxpayers help maintain.
To illustrate these benefits more specifically, current Special Services head Jo Ann Sampson recently used statistics provided by Bennett and Clay to measure the service’s positive environmental (and economical) impact on the community. Consider the two thousand deliveries the fleet of PEP couriers make each day, and the 100 gallons of gas required to make those deliveries. Then imagine residents from those two thousand households getting in their vehicles and driving to the library to pick up requested items. Allowing for a five-mile round-trip, these patrons will drive a combined 10,000 miles. The U.S. government reports that the average mileage for today’s vehicles is 23 miles per gallon. Using that average, the 10,000 miles traveled by patrons picking up requested material would use 435 gallons of gas. In other words, the two thousand deliveries made by PEP take less than 25 percent of the fuel it would take for patrons to pick up the material from the library. At $3.50 per gallon, PEP spends $350 daily. The cost for patrons would exceed $1,500. Spread that out over a year (260 workdays), and you see a difference of $299,000.
Back in 1974 when OCLS started the home delivery service, the vision was clear. Books-by-Mail was a way to replace an old bookmobile, a way to reach distant sections of the library service area that might not have a nearby branch. But it was also about rethinking the traditional process of filling requests for patrons, and about redefining what it meant to provide good library service. Traditionally, the patron made a request for a title, the library eventually secured the title for the patron, and then the patron had to take action to collect the item. One of the central values intrinsic to MAYL is that it takes the onus off patrons to do anything else once they request a title. The responsibility of completing the transaction is built into the process. If this was forward thinking in the 1970s, it is paramount to remaining relevant today. Consumers have become increasingly accustomed to services that cater to their schedules and make convenience a top priority. As public libraries continue to examine their ever-changing role in the lives of their residents, it is important that they recognize models such as Amazon.com and Netflix as the standard against which they are measured.
To initiate a home delivery service, a library must be willing to overlook apparent obstacles. The logistics of carrying out the service can be considerable, but they are certainly manageable with proper planning and research. The most significant hurdle is the perception of cost. When discussing home delivery as an option, most objections are based on the sense that the service is a luxury. There is a common misconception that a home delivery transaction costs more than one taking place in a physical location. However, as illustrated by our MAYL cost-perunit comparison, that simply is not the case. The organization must consider the cost of operating the physical branch, including overhead, building maintenance, and development and sustenance of the collection. By contrast, a home delivery operation may be housed within an existing location, and the collection, whether for a single-location library or for a system or consortium, is already in place. Instead of facility and collection costs, the home delivery service expenditures are directed toward delivery costs. It goes without saying that the commitment of leadership within the organization is vital to the success of a home delivery service. Understanding the true cost by transaction of the service and weighing that cost versus patron satisfaction will prove to be valuable tools for the library’s administration when questioned about the viability of home delivery.
Challenges to home delivery’s viability are likely. But it is also quite likely that patron support for the service will be strong and vocal. Two public library models of home delivery besides MAYL—one a recent operation in a neighboring central Florida county, the other a twenty-year veteran of home delivery in the country’s heartland—both report tremendous customer satisfaction.
The Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library (TSCPL), Kansas, has been operating a home delivery service since the mid-1980s. Paul Brennan, collections manager for TSCPL, oversees the service. Brennan indicates that the origin of the service can be traced to a cost/benefit analysis conducted by TSCPL administrators about adding parking for the library. Instead of constructing a parking garage, TSCPL decided to initiate a home delivery service. TSCPL’s home delivery of requested items is free to all cardholders, and material is sent through USPS using library book rate. All circulating material in the collection is eligible for home delivery. The service is extremely popular with TSCPL patrons and, reports Brennan, “pretty central to what we do. There is complete buy-in to the service from the top of the organization.” Brennan believes the service reaches people in the county that otherwise would not use the library. Critical questions about the service are few, but typically they center on the cost the library incurs by offering the service. Like OCLS, TSCPL can point to cost-per-unit statistics to illustrate the value of the service.
In 2007, TSCPL mailed 153,438 items to customers, representing 4.2 percent of the library’s total circulation. Provided the title is available, it takes two to three days for a requested item to be checked out for the patron, and two to three more days for it to be mailed. Two full-time staff members focus on processing the requests once the item is checked out to the patron. Patrons are responsible for the return of material, either by paying return postage or returning the items to the library or to one of the drop boxes located throughout the county.
Polk County, Florida, is southwest of Orange County and has approximately 560,000 residents spread across more than 2,000 square miles. The Polk County Library Cooperative (PCLC) began a home delivery service called B-Mail in 2006. Material requested through B-Mail is mailed via USPS library book rate. Though 75 percent of PCLC patrons still choose to pick up requested material, B-Mail has experienced remarkable growth during its brief existence. Tina Peak oversees the B-Mail operation for PCLC. She reports that, in May 2006, 300 items were mailed to patrons. In August 2008, nearly 5,000 items were mailed. There are seventeen libraries in the cooperative. Within the subset of PCLC libraries that circulate 10,000 or fewer items monthly, B-Mail ranks second or third in circulation each month. Print books, audiobooks, and movies are available for home delivery, although some libraries in the cooperative do not make their movies eligible for B-Mail.
The B-Mail service operates in a room within the Lake Wales Public Library, where three full-time employees process the requested material. As expected, customer satisfaction among B-Mail users is very high. Peak indicates that there has been little negative feedback about the service, and, as expected, misconceptions about the cost of the service are generally at the heart of any criticism. Citing that there is little overhead involved, Peak explains the cost-per-transaction statistics of the service to those few who do question the viability of the service. The PCLC website features a survey for B-Mail users. For the question “Why do you use B-Mail?” most patrons choose “I prefer to search for my library materials online 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
For all the differences in library size, history, and volume, the stories of home delivery at TSCPL and PCLC have key points in common with MAYL at OCLS. The organizations feel strongly about the value of the service, and they can also point to cost-per-unit studies of the service to illustrate cost-effectiveness. There is also the high satisfaction level of customers, who continually remind the organizations how home delivery helps make the library such a meaningful part of their lives.
1. Robert T. Jordan, Tomorrow’s Library: Direct Access and Delivery (New York: R. R. Bowker, 1970).
2. KRC Research, “ALA @ your library Household Survey Results” (2006), www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/ors/reports/krcdetailedslides.pdf.
3. William Sannwald, Checklist of Library Building Design Considerations, 5th ed. (Chicago, American Library Association, 2009), 149.