Books in elementary libraries were entered into computer database during the fall

Students in Lebanon School District's six elementary schools were without access to school libraries during fall term as library personnel entered about 60,000 books into computer databases and placed barcodes on the books. With the opening of the Pioneer School library in late February, all libraries in the district are now open.

Lebanon High School (LHS) has used a barcoding system to track its book inventory since 1986, and Seven Oak Middle School has used a similar system since the mid-1990s. As part of the upgrade to the elementary school libraries, LHS and Seven Oak converted their databases to the new district wide &#8220Destiny" system purchased from Follett Software. Because Seven Oaks and LHS were already using Follett software and did not need to re-inventory, students retained access to the libraries.

Judy Wells, certified librarian for grades K-8, said the new system creates a database with every library book in the district in one catalog. Librarians and media assistants can now run reports on overdue books in minutes that took days to complete under the old manual system.

After the school district hired Wells in 2001, it took her two years to finish a report on the status of the elementary schools' library books. That was enough time to make the information obsolete, she said. The same report now takes minutes.

Another advantage of using the automated system is the amount of time required to put new books on the shelf is greatly reduced.

&#8220They can buy a batch of new books and get them into the system and on the shelves for kids to use within a day. In the old days a batch of 50 new books would take three weeks to process," Wells said.

As part of state-mandated benchmark testing, students must answer questions on information literacy: how to find information electronically. Wells said that a lack of a computerized information system has hampered students in the past.

&#8220Our kids haven't been well prepared to answer those questions on a test," she said.

With no money available to have staff enter by hand each library's 8,000 to 10,000 books into the system over the summer, the decision was made to close the libraries during fall term, Wells said.

Students will see a marked increase in the ease of finding books with the computerized catalog. When a search term is entered, the database returns a list of all books available on the subject and whether they are checked out and when they are due back. Prior to adopting the Destiny software, to find out which books were available at other libraries, media assistants needed to send an e-mail inquiry to each library.

Although the lack of library access did cause grumbling from some students and their families, the Linn Library League Bookmobile stepped in to fill the void, as did the Lebanon Public Library. Teachers, most of whom have a large collection of books in their classrooms, still had access to checkout books for students during the closures.

The total cost of installing the system throughout the district, including scanners, barcodes and software, was about $42,000. Wells said the cost was covered with grant money.