FLORENCE — Help is just a touch away at Florence County’s Drs. Bruce & Lee Foundation Library.
Members of the library’s staff now have four iPads on hand to assist library patrons in their search for books and references. The iPads hold the Florence County LIbrary System’s entire catalog listing, meaning staff members can access the system anywhere in the library.
Need to know where to find John Grisham’s latest novel? Got a question about an obituary that ran in the local newspaper 20 years ago? With the iPad, librarians can help patrons anywhere in the library.
“We can be mobile now,” Florence County Library System Director Ray McBride said. “Staff members are not tied to the reference desk. They can be out in the stacks and throughout the library and still have access to the systems they need.”
The iPad is a tablet computer designed and marketed by Apple, meant for internet browsing, media consumption, gaming, and light content creation. Unlike many older tablets, it uses fingertips for input instead of a stylus. Released in April, it introduced a class of devices between Smartphones and laptops.
The library staff got the iPads about a week after they were released nationwide.
“We’re one of the very first libraries to use them,” McBride said. “We’re already getting a lot of questions about them from other libraries. it’s very likely a lot of libraries will be going in this direction.”
Before the iPads, many members of the library’s staff used the iPod touch throughout the facility. The Smartphone allowed them to be more mobile but didn’t have the capabilities of the new iPad.
“With the Touch, you had minimal computing ability,” Library Systems Administrator Rogan Hamby said. “There’s all kinds of software that can run on here that can’t run on a smartphone. These were tailor-made to solve the shortages of the iPad touch.”
The iPad also can be used for reading books and has proven easier on the eyes because of its color configuration and backlighting.
The library used stimulus money to purchase the iPads, and McBride said so far, they’ve proven to be a worthwhile investment.
“We’re in a budget crunch like everyone else, but we had the stimulus money for technology and we are fortunate to have a county council that’s been conservative in its spending and budgeting, which has allowed us to do a little more,” McBride said.
“We need to get away from traditional models of the reference desk,” he said. “In tough economic times like these, we have to capitalize on technology to be able to do more with less staff.”
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