Working With Innovators
March 15th, 2007 Brian HerzogOne of my coworkers was recently recognized by the Northern Massachusetts Regional Library System (NMRLS) for his work in making library life easier.
Chris Kupec (Assistant Director at Chelmsford) and Dean Baumeister of the Memorial Hall Library in Andover, MA, developed some free software to make the printing of routing slips possible for libraries using SirsiDynix's Horizon product.
To understand the benefit of this, you really need to get into the nitty-gritty of working at a circulation desk. But the bottom line is that this software literally saves hours worth of effort each day. The software automatically prints routing slips that accompany books for interlibrary loan requests, which is a huge improvement over the prior method of writing out a slip by hand.
There's been some buzz about this project for awhile, and it is slowly spreading throughout our consortium and the rest of the state. We've had it in place for about five months, and the staff cannot even imagine doing their jobs now without it. Even though ILS' may not do exactly what we need them to do, it's nice to know that librarians out there are picking up the slack.
So good job, Chris and Dean, and all other innovators out there. Anyone interested in meeting Chris in person can do so at the Computers in Libraries conference in Washington, D.C. - and I'll be there, too.
