Dispensing With the DVD Circulation DILEMMA

HEADNOTE

The Mediabank dispensers we bought have virtually eliminated disc theft, and they reliably handle the entire circulation cycle for 8,000 to 10,000 DVDs per month with very little staff involvement.

Richmond Public Library (RPL) is a four-branch

suburban library with the highest per capita circulation of any comparable library in Canada. Circulation growth has consistently outpaced the growth in our budgetary resources, so productivity improvements such as self-checkout and self-pickup of holds have been essential to keep pace with that growth. Having achieved a 93% selfcheckout rate, we've already picked circulation's low-hanging fruit and are now having to get on the stepladder for additional gains.

While DVDs naturally fit into RPL's emphasis on popular material, circulating them using the standard model proved problematic: Long hold queues built up, DVDs idled on the hold shelves, and the circulation staff was kept very busy routing, labeling, reshelving, and dealing with snags. Thieves quickly found that they could help themselves to the self-pickup holds, and a $40,000 starter collection largely evaporated within a year.

What remained of the collection was put behind the desk, and we suspended DVD purchases while we tried to figure out how we could give the public what they wanted without regressing into the morass of staff-mediated circulation.

Conceiving a Solution

Years earlier, I had seen a video store use an ATM-style device in its afterhours-accessible foyer for dispensing VHS tapes and wondered about the possibility of adapting such equipment for library use. In 2003, through Google, I found two equipment manufacturers in Israel and two in Italy, contacted all of them, and received a positive response from one of the Italian companies, Gamma s.r.l. The reps said they had no experience with libraries and had only a few of their machines located in North America. I suggested that they work with Libramation (www.libramation.com) in Edmonton, Alberta; that vendor could help them integrate and sell the system in the library market.

The most important change required to create a library application of the system was adding a session initiation protocol (SIP) software interface so that the system would appear to be a generic self-check device to any ILS. The writing of the SIP interface was initially contracted out, but after significant delays, the Italian company's programmers ended up writing it. RPL's first machine was put into service in September 2005, and Libramation retained its original name, Mediabank. It was discounted from $30,000 to $25,000 for the pain and suffering we were to endure as a beta site. Our second machine entered service in December 2006.

Info From the Spec Sheet

Capacities of the machines range between 500 and 3,000 DVD/CDs, but a machine with a capacity of 3,000, for example, could manage a collection of 6,000 assuming that 50% of the collection was in circulation at any one time.

The system contains a generic PC running MS Windows. The local user interface and various administrative tools are Windows GUI applications. Firebird, an open source database, is used to store the local bibliographic and circulation data. I've installed a Firebird open database connectivity (ODBC) driver on my workstation and use Microsoft Query to view and manipulate the database remotely. All of our circulation reporting is done through our VTLS Virtua ILS though.

The web interface is written in PHP and runs on the Windows port of the Apache web server. The use of PHP has afforded us the opportunity to make improvements to the web interface ourselves. Remote maintenance is handled using virtual network computing (VNC).

Mechanically, the system consists of stepper motors to precisely position a disc-handling robot laterally and vertically within the enclosure (see photo) and to allow the robot to handle the cases. The machine uses optical sensors to detect the position of cases both within the robot and at the door used for pickups and returns. The machine can be configured to use an interior drop box or rear ejection port for overflow or for discs with unreadable bar codes.

In both the web catalog and in the local interface, patrons can choose from a wide variety of (mostly European) languages. Language strings are stored in an .mdb file that can be edited using Microsoft Access.

How Our Circ Works

Patrons can browse the dispenser's own web catalog either from home or from the library's OPAC stations and place holds on up to two titles. Holds can only be placed on available items, and the holds expire automatically after 5 hours. When customers insert their library cards into the machine, they are prompted to first return any discs they currently have and are then issued their holds. Customers are expected to return discs directly to the machine and are charged $2 per item if they're returned elsewhere. Our loan period is 3 days. Astoundingly, the dispensers' web catalog gets more web traffic than our main bibliographic catalog even though the DVD collection that the machines manage contains less than 1% of our collection.

We first introduced the dispenser with its local touch screen catalog enabled. Pent-up demand combined with an entirely new collection of Hollywood movies resulted in long lines at the machine as customers browsed the catalog before borrowing. We temporarily withdrew the machine from service while the web reservation software was adapted for library use and then reintroduced the machine-this time with only pickups and drop-offs enabled at the machine.

We continued to have customer queues, but they moved much faster than before. While customers often resented having to stand in line to return DVDs, most chose to do so because they could be assured of getting the movies they'd reserved on the same day. Combining returns and pickups also mitigated this for many customers.

Our usage showed us that machine capacity is secondary to throughput. Our machine, which has a capacity of slightly under 1,000 DVDs, achieves a maximum of 92 transactions per hour (i.e., check-ins or checkouts), so were we to use a significantly larger machine, it's unlikely that circulation would increase proportionately, as the system is ultimately limited by its transaction rate. Larger machines would best be used for less-popular collections or when loans of 1 week or longer are permitted.

Room for Improvement?

Even with all of our success, there is certainly room for improvement in a few areas.

We've needed a way to quickly reload DVDs after weekend-return deluges. Recently, a new fast-loader feature has been added that allows us to define a set of slots for this purpose, manually fill these slots, and have the machine perform the check-ins as a scheduled batch job overnight or during idle times when we're open. While this feature opens up the possibility of allowing returns through book drops, we haven't decided to change our circulation policy of returning them directly to the machine just yet.

The receipt printer was too slow so we've retrofitted a high-speed printer similar to those found on ATMs to reduce transaction times.

We'd like to be able to place 856$u links in our ILS's OPAC, but the Mediabank catalog currently requires patrons to log in before browsing. Not requiring logins until the point of hold placement and allowing deep links to title records would allow better integration with our OPAC.

In order for holds to be placed through our ILS, the machine would need to pull its holds from ILS via a proprietary interface because SIP does not support this kind of messaging. Now that we've had some experience with the system, we have no interest in attempting to integrate it with our ILS's hold management features. Mediabank's catch-as-catch-can holds work better for our DVD collection anyway.

A catalog that would allow customers to drill down from a TV series title record to episode volume records would reduce the clutter of having a bib-level record for each episode.

Where multiple machines are installed at a branch, they can be configured so that media can be returned to and borrowed from any machine. While pooling balances the workload, patrons who reserve two discs may have to pick each of them up at a different machine. For the moment, we're avoiding this potential problem by dedicating one of our machines to Chineselanguage DVDs and the other to English-language ones in order to minimize the likelihood of this happening.

Processing and Cataloging

Mediabank considerably reduces the cost and complexity of processing, since there's only a donut bar code to apply and a special case to facilitate the robotic handling of the media. Together these cost about $1.60, which is cheaper than DVD security strips alone. With fewer labels, there's considerably less labor involved. The cases are durable, generic, and reusable. It's not possible to mismatch cases and media, and the machine will not accept an empty case. In contrast, our regularly circulated DVDs receive security strips/film overlays and eye-readable bar code numbers on the discs, along with bar codes, spine, and policy labels on the cases.

We do bare-bones cataloging of dispenser DVDs on our ILS-titles, summary notes/ratings, call numbers, unique identifiers such as ISBNs, ASINs (Amazon Standard Identification Number) or locally assigned numbers, and a genre code. We extract the MARC records from our ILS, convert them to MARCXML using a Perl script or Terry Reese's MarcEdit utility (http:// oregonstate.edu/~reeset/marcedit/htm l/index.php), and then load them into the dispensers' database using the provided Windows utility.

Deciding what to do with Mediabank's seven-digit bar codes was easy for us as our ILS does not perform Codabar check-digit calculations, so we opted to use the numbers directly. People whose integrated systems perform checking would do better to embed their seven-digit bar codes within a Codabar number like this: 312900 12345674 (where "1234567" is the Mediabank bar code). The dispenser's software maps between the two, using the longer Codabar string for all SIP interaction with the ILS and the short one internally. "Why not use a round 14-digit Codabar bar code?" you ask. "Because a bar code that size would obscure part of the data area on doublesided DVDs," I answer.

Return on Investment

How long does it take to recover the $30,000 cost of a dispenser in labor savings? A mid-band circulation clerk at our library earns $17.88 per hour, to which you can add 28% for benefits for a total of $22.89 per hour. At this rate, keeping one post covered for a week costs $1,750.81 (given our Brighouse Branch's 76.5 open hours per week). That's $91,042 per year. Assuming that a clerk spends one-fourth of his or her time managing a closedstack collection of DVDs, that's $22,760 in wages per year. At that rate, the $30,000 capital cost of a dispenser would be recovered in 16 months.

As I'm uncertain of the percentage of time circulation clerks would spend dealing with a secured DVD collection, you'll have to make your own ROI calculations, but my sense is that breakeven occurs between 6 months and 2 years after purchase if losses to theft are not included in the calculation.

Pondering What Comes Next

We're considering placing a machine at a community center in an area that currently has library service only on Saturdays. The steep upside is a huge increase in service without additional staff, and the potentially steep downside is the potential for lengthy service calls or long periods of downtime if the machine ever needs physical attention.

The Mediabank dispensers have virtually eliminated theft, and they reliably handle the entire circulation cycle for 8,000 to 10,000 DVDs per month with much reduced staff involvement. While we can wish for cheaper, faster, and more convenient solutions to the DVD circulation dilemma, Mediabank has demonstrated itself to be as good an alternative as any.

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This image shows the robotic arm and the disc cases inside the DVD dispenser.

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Here's a screen shot from our online catalog of DVDs.

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This picture shows the exterior of the DVD dispenser

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To Contact the Companies

Gamma Macchine E Utensili s.r.l.

Via San Morese

26 - 50041 Calenzano (FI)

ITALY

Fax: 011-39-55-8878493

info@gammasrl.com

www.gammasrl.com

[Now part of Cinemastore Group s.r.l.

Vicenza (CI) Italy

www.alibaba.com/company/11208837.html]

Libramation Library Systems

12527 129 St. N.W

Edmonton, AB

CANADA T5L-1H7

(780) 443-5822

(888) 809-0099 (toll free)

Fax: (780) 443-5998

info@libramation.com

www.libramation.com

AUTHOR_AFFILIATION

Mark Ellis is manager of Information Technology for Richmond Public Library. That's the Richmond in British Columbia, Canada-not the one in Virginia! He holds a B.A. from the University of British Columbia and is a grizzled veteran of several software codevelopment projects. You can pepper him with questions at mark.ellis@yourlibrary.ca.