Library's high-tech gear means quicker checkout

PROVO — Little, red-headed, 4-year-old Anna Naef gained a little confidence when she pushed a pile of children's books onto one of the new check-out scanners at the Provo City Library at Academy Square.

"I'm good at this," she told her mom, beaming.

The computer agreed, booping and dinging as it sent a radio frequency through the stack and automatically checked out the books sitting idly on the scanner. When one pile was done on Thursday, Katy Naef put them in her bag and handed her daughter more books.

The high-tech checkout system does more than boost preschoolers' self-esteem. Since Provo installed the $500,000 radio-frequency IDsystem in October, check-out lines have been nearly eliminated, returned books are back on the shelves faster, and librarians have more time for other jobs.

The system is cutting-edge for libraries. In Utah, only the Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County library systems and Utah State University's campus libraries have radio-frequency technology.

Orem's library is next. Last week, the city was awarded a $264,000 federal grant to switch to radio technology. The city will combine the new cash with other grants and donations to pay for the system, library director Louise Wallace said.

Katy Naef used to stand in long checkout lines with little Anna and her 2-year-old sister, Elizabeth, after the popular morning story time for preschoolers. The lines snaked out into the middle of the library, just as they did at the 6 p.m. closing time on Saturdays when customers were checking out DVDs, CDs, books or magazines for the weekend.

Even with the maximum of five librarians checking out books, the old one-at-a-time, bar-code system was painstaking.

"It was horrible," Naef said. "Now it's much better. There are still a lot of people checking out books after story time, so sometimes we have to wait two minutes, but that's it."

Now only one or two librarians check out books, but there are eight self-checkout scanning stations easy enough for a clever 4-year-old to use. Just scan the library card and the items, and that's it.

Short lines aren't the only benefit.

For example, patrons can use a debit or credit card to pay overdue fines at the machines.