If you have put a hold on materials at the Edmonton Public Library in recent months, you may have noticed them taking longer than usual. “My daughter waited two-and-a-half weeks for a book,” said EPL user Anya Campbell. “We found it available without the hold and went and grabbed it.” Campbell also noted that sometimes when she would put a book on hold, she would be notified that it was in transit, and then again saying the hold was cancelled. “I don’t find it’s usually longer than a week … Waiting two-and-a-half weeks when you’re eight years old is really tricky,” Campbell told CTV News Edmonton. In April, EPL was the first library in Canada to implement the Intelligent Material Management System (IMMS), which automates tasks such as shelf reading and reshelving while aiming to reduce the amount of time staff handles materials. Vicky Varga, executive director of collections and technology at EPL, said the transition to IMMS has influenced the delay in holds that some users have experienced, but that circulation typically increases over the summer. “It is our busiest time in terms of materials handling, and there were a few changes we made to IMMS as well as we learned the nuances of the system that these sort of things collided together,” said Varga, adding they anticipate returning to same-day processing in October. Branch staff have received complaints about how long holds are taking, confirmed Varga, but recently increased resourcing at the sorting location will provide more throughput, she said, speeding things up. Varga said the transition to IMMS would not reduce the number of staff, but would give staff more time to interact with and help customers. “We’re not actually anticipating savings, and that wasn’t the purpose of doing this,” Varga told CTV News Edmonton in a recent interview. “We certainly expect that there are savings in terms of staff effort, but we committed to staff when we announced this project that this would not lead to a reduction in total headcount.” While staff expressed some reservations, Varga said there was a lot of excitement when IMMS was announced. “It is a change to workflow and such, and certainly, any sort of large change as an organization, there is concern about it, and that’s just a part of the human experience,” said Varga. “From what I’ve heard, most people see the clear benefits of it.” How does IMMS work? Rather than the collection be sorted at each individual EPL branch, materials are sent to a warehouse where they are processed by a sorter. Drivers then pick up bins that are labelled for the destination and then deliver them to the respective branch. Varga says one capability of IMMS that EPL is looking to integrate is paperless holds. “It is somewhat a radical change for libraries because if you have 40 holds, for example, it does change that experience,” said Varga, adding that paperless holds could result in tens of thousands of dollars a year in savings for EPL. EPL intends on piloting the “chaotic hold system” at one of its branches in the new year once IMMS has steadied. “We want to get through the stabilization process and such before we start experimenting with the other capabilities of the system,” said Varga. The chaotic hold system would send users an email telling them what shelf and section their held materials are located. The current system puts a paper slip on the held materials indicating who it is on hold for. While IMMS has allowed for EPL to centralize its collection sorting, it also provides data-informed insights that Varga says will mold the collection. “It actually provides us with the tools to help shape the collection to the individual needs of the community in a way that is, I think, far better than an individual human looking only at what’s on the shelves,” said Varga. “I think that’s a bit of a naive view of what a human is able to shape individually without access to bigger data sets to understand how people are actually using the collection and what’s wholly represented within it.” The one-time cost for the IMMS software from Lynsgoe Systems Library Solutions came to just under $200,000. The purchase of the large central sorter as well as shelving in the warehouse came out to nearly $600,000. Varga said the project was funded through EPL savings.
