Visited the City of Orange’s Main Public Library yesterday. Although, so far I still see the Cerritos Public Library as my favorite library, the City of Orange has a pretty amazing library. It is very efficient and well planned.
In the back they have a sorter that when books are returned will automatically sort the items into individual baskets for different areas of the library, such as fiction, YA or even to another branch in the city. When pages work on sorting and putting things away they can easily wheel the baskets to another work area or unload out of them onto carts to move around the library to put things back on the shelf. It is quite impressive to see this in action.
They are also using RFID tags on their items, something I’ve read in many Library journals, but haven’t come across personally yet. They have a number of self check-out machines and when checking out items you can see the RFID tags in use as the item information pops up on the screen without your having to physically scan a barcode or anything.
There are a number of other fascinating things in that library that seem to create a phenomenal library experience and appears to make the work tasks of employees flow efficiently. It is a beautiful library inside and out, so I highly recommend checking it out if you are in the vicinity such as stopping for lunch in the Circle where there are a couple great places to eat.