This article originally published in Self-Service World magazine, April 2007.
The Fern Creek branch of the Free Public Library in Louisville, Ky., occupies a corner of a suburban strip mall that it shares with a large grocery chain and a gas station. So it made sense to branch manager Sally Suter, who scans her own foodstuffs and swipes her own credit card at the gas pump, to allow library patrons to scan their own books.At the end of 2006, Suter parked the self-service checkout computer prominently on the library's front counter. It has piqued the curiosity of most patrons, she says — although some have gone away disappointed that the new device is not more entertaining.
"One little boy asked if it had cartoons," Suter said. "He thought it was a television." Suter laughs off such sacrilegious talk — quietly. Like any librarian, she admits she's in the book biz because she loves to read, but she isn't averse to things other than books, necessarily, as long as they are efficient.
"I was excited about it," Suter said of the new self-scanning device, "because we're always busy." With the new self-scan device, patrons actually can do more in less time, she said.
Lunchtime readers who pop in for a quick book have availed themselves of the new self-scan as a way to avoid long lines. No surprise that teens and young adults take to it intuitively, according to Suter. But even seniors have delighted over the "new and improved" technology, she said.
What difference the new scanner has made at Fern Creek is difficult to discern. Certainly it hasn't replaced librarians. Behind the screen, Suter said, "I still interact with people." In fact, she says sometimes the self-scan precipitates more conversation than usual because the same patrons who stare dumbly at an actual librarian often will become emboldened to speak as they work through the self-scan. "They want to know how it works," Suter said.
As a librarian, Suter delights in answering questions — although her passion lies in deeper questions. "Someone once came in three minutes to closing and needed to know the national dance of Japan," Suter said. She told them, "No." (That's the name of the dance. It's been handed down for a couple thousand years with wild gesticulations and costumes.) Suter headed right for the 809s, for literature describing the geisha gala.
Clearly, Suter's true love remains stacked on shelves, listed by call numbers. That pandering to papyrus was at the root of her career choice. And it extends beyond the gummy smell of ink and paper and book bindings to the philosophical matter of truth.
"With the Internet you can find 40 or 40,000 answers to the same question," she said. "With library reference books you can feel pretty certain that it's the truth."
Suter will take an encyclopedia over Wikipedia every time. But even with the technology of self-scan, that book labeled "REF" won't be checked out because, in the words of a once-famous movie, "You can't handle the truth."
